A final afternoon in Burque reminds me how relatively easy things are down here. There is less drama, more anonymity (for me at least), a tad more oxygen. But I think this may not be the time for prioritizing ease.
I will now be living in a yurt, and occasional tent, in the hills. There is a month or so for my friend and I to get power, water, and heat squared away for the autumn, which comes early at 8000 feet. It is nearly half an hour on rough roads to work, where we do twice the volume of the store I worked at down here. I currently have less than $200 in the bank.
Why? I am following the calling of Spirit as best I can. I am helping one of my closest friends, who has been ill for several years, to try and get a safe place to live, so he can begin to rebuild his strength. I am seeking to purify the channel between myself and Creator, and I have been impressed by the power of the land to support it offers my meditations.
In this regard, I have been vegetarian for nearly two months now, as well as free of alcohol and sexual activity. Because I was ready for them, these practices have not been particularly difficult. It also has helped that my focus is clear: I want to become the change I seek in the world. I long to be on a path of spiritual service, less concerned with fleeting satisfactions of the self, more invested in that which persists.
So these are some of the things I have chosen to that end. I don't know where I will be called or how the economics will manifest. I am trusting that by doing the things I am more immediately called to, a path unfolds.
-----
This week, I have added an intention to eliminate what have proven to be further distractions: coffee and pot. I expect this will be harder, as I work at the busiest retail environment in New Mexico, and as most of my closest friends are stoners. I have also, at times, just enjoyed using these substances. Shunning them, I will be sacrificing some of those endorphin-rich spaces people use for bonding.
It is no coincidence I am dealing with these together, as they share similarities in the experiences they promote. Both promise more. Users of either dismiss any concerns about their use. Pot expands awareness, and coffee generates greater performance in the world, right?
Well both are hindering the clarity of my chi now. Coffee drains the natural energy of the body, that which comes from sleeping deeply and waking up refreshed. And pot creates too much desire--spiritual desire included. There is too much chatter, perhaps too much enlightenment? Both generate a kind of drama I no longer need. Caffeinated heroic achievement of overworking for peanuts turns out to be self-defeating. Anandamide synapse-mediated weaving of vast abstractions becomes confusing to try to maintain or translate.
I want greater simplicity.
-----
I don't know if there is a monastery or community I will belong to. I don't know if I will farm or take up some particular form of service to others. I don't know if family needs will call.
Perhaps these will prove to be times of social collapse, and we will find ourselves exactly where we are, with just our deepest resources to find our way.
In all cases, I wish to be as ready as I can be to follow the callings that may arise, by following those callings I find now. On the way.
Wednesday, August 31, 2011
Monday, August 29, 2011
how it is
This sore throat night-sweat illness
while packing all my stuff out of the construction zone-yard to move to a place where there is no space for my stuff
before going to work on a night shift the day after a morning shift at the most manic retail biz in the southwestern united states
is about right as a metaphor for my life.
-----
I pay the price for my arrogance every day
Friday's dream had a cross on top of a church yell to me hey mike and then turning into a white knight accelerating toward me with long pike.
I moved out of the way to watch him land in a heap.
This made no sense to me until Saturday's dream in which I was at work at some nebulous job surreptitiously yet quite unselfconsciously downloading pornography.
I realized that the first dream was quite clearly an expression of my libido as superego, and the second dream, libido as id.
This is strange for I am not a Freudian and have not gathered much meaning from that spiritless worldview.
These dreams imply the question: where is the integration of the ego-self? In doing so, they pose a direct challenge to the no-self of my waking conscious zen and gnostic pursuits.
Yet that is how it is these days--
complicated.
-----
Sunday's dream was very vivid, even lucid in moments.
I was racing up a staircase on some spirit quest and arriving at a landing felt extreme vertigo.
I remembered in the past I had made a leap at that point, but the leap in front of me was much too far, so i turned to see the staircase rise in an unexpected direction
I then found myself facing my recently deceased friend, Mike Brown. He was in a typical (for him) relaxed posture on the stairs, and was very radiant. He was young, even younger than when I'd originally met him, perhaps 19, strong, with a full head of curly hair.
He was speaking already as I arrived, and said that he is "continuing to profit," which as a lifelong businessman was an appropriate thing for him to say. It arrived in my mind as an expression of his zen, that he was continuing to reap benefit to his soul's journey from the years of his spiritual practice.
He said I should go visiting on the 5th. I was lucid enough to ask if he meant I should attend the services coming up for him on the 4th. He said the 4th and 5th--it would be "money well spent." He also offered some other sage advice which was promptly forgotten upon awakening.
I then heard his voice in my mind saying, "I said be gentle with yourself. And take good care." The oddness of his voice coming into my head when I was already awake, with another message, was also very typical of the offbeat humor that colored Mike's life.
Sadly, there is almost no way I can get to those services, between getting time off, expenses, energy reserves, and organizing my current move to the chaos of the land.
Again it's just how my life is: Even honoring messages from close friends from the other side get deprioritized while I try to keep life and limb together in this wage-slave waking nightmare.
I will try to be gentle with myself.
while packing all my stuff out of the construction zone-yard to move to a place where there is no space for my stuff
before going to work on a night shift the day after a morning shift at the most manic retail biz in the southwestern united states
is about right as a metaphor for my life.
-----
I pay the price for my arrogance every day
Friday's dream had a cross on top of a church yell to me hey mike and then turning into a white knight accelerating toward me with long pike.
I moved out of the way to watch him land in a heap.
This made no sense to me until Saturday's dream in which I was at work at some nebulous job surreptitiously yet quite unselfconsciously downloading pornography.
I realized that the first dream was quite clearly an expression of my libido as superego, and the second dream, libido as id.
This is strange for I am not a Freudian and have not gathered much meaning from that spiritless worldview.
These dreams imply the question: where is the integration of the ego-self? In doing so, they pose a direct challenge to the no-self of my waking conscious zen and gnostic pursuits.
Yet that is how it is these days--
complicated.
-----
Sunday's dream was very vivid, even lucid in moments.
I was racing up a staircase on some spirit quest and arriving at a landing felt extreme vertigo.
I remembered in the past I had made a leap at that point, but the leap in front of me was much too far, so i turned to see the staircase rise in an unexpected direction
I then found myself facing my recently deceased friend, Mike Brown. He was in a typical (for him) relaxed posture on the stairs, and was very radiant. He was young, even younger than when I'd originally met him, perhaps 19, strong, with a full head of curly hair.
He was speaking already as I arrived, and said that he is "continuing to profit," which as a lifelong businessman was an appropriate thing for him to say. It arrived in my mind as an expression of his zen, that he was continuing to reap benefit to his soul's journey from the years of his spiritual practice.
He said I should go visiting on the 5th. I was lucid enough to ask if he meant I should attend the services coming up for him on the 4th. He said the 4th and 5th--it would be "money well spent." He also offered some other sage advice which was promptly forgotten upon awakening.
I then heard his voice in my mind saying, "I said be gentle with yourself. And take good care." The oddness of his voice coming into my head when I was already awake, with another message, was also very typical of the offbeat humor that colored Mike's life.
Sadly, there is almost no way I can get to those services, between getting time off, expenses, energy reserves, and organizing my current move to the chaos of the land.
Again it's just how my life is: Even honoring messages from close friends from the other side get deprioritized while I try to keep life and limb together in this wage-slave waking nightmare.
I will try to be gentle with myself.
Sunday, August 21, 2011
god of exhausted amusements
My dark cloud morning was enhanced by the beauty I knew was all around me, but I could barely see.
With spirit shut down from overwork, there was little I could do to find anything beyond my own grouchiness. I wondered why each of my grand plans over the years turned into a brutally unfulfilling regime. Why do I imagine there will be any pleasure in working a fulltime job with midnight shifts, while moving stuff yet again, while hauling wood and arranging goat care in my time off?
I dragged my creaky posture up the trail on aching feet one more time, with one more box to put in the already overcrowded yurt. Screeching tree-bird barely catches my attention, but offers at least a moment of distraction, which is more than I can say for my morning attempts at the chanting. Was it re-reading Sensei's harsh appraisal of what it will take to save this civilization that got me in such a funk? It has been known to in the past.
Was it trying to go a day without coffee? Was it the email I sent to a Nicaraguan farmer, and the subsequent dread of getting stuck in some barely disguised labor camp in a foreign country? Who knows--just get to the now, somehow! Finally the last box is moved, and I sit in the car, grateful for a moment of rest in this life. Maybe that is all I get now, at 48 summers-passed. But it is enough, and my spirit begins to return.
Whose handwriting is that? On top of a box of journals is a list of notes from someone to me, apparently organizing my appointments. When did I ever have a personal assistant? And why do I need to keep these things? I tell the boxes this is the last time they will be moved. My twenty years of journals will be either be stored on this land, or they will be burned here. I will not move them again.
I imagine it is like everything else. We shlep around our stuff, this body, trying to get this or that done, and then it all gets burned in the end. And we hope some god is amused. I start to feel lighter, reconnecting to the nothingness of all this sturm-und-drang of the mind.
On the way into town, I notice the lush greenness that has taken over the hills overnight with the rains. I glance at the driveways where friends' homes are or were. My all-wheel-drive welcomes the mudslides that have temporarily reclaimed much of Old Santa Fe Trail.
Realistically, I will help out with land-based work as I can. The right amount of such physical work is deeply enjoyable. But look at this body: I am no ox. My calling is more to the monastery, where I can help revive the world with a different sort of effort. And to the social world, where I can serve the love that is our nature.
Arriving at the cafe, I receive an unexpected message on my phone. My young friend Alex reports he has two even-younger friends eager to help out with the hoop house, gardens, and otherwise working to set up the land.
I could almost laugh out loud.
With spirit shut down from overwork, there was little I could do to find anything beyond my own grouchiness. I wondered why each of my grand plans over the years turned into a brutally unfulfilling regime. Why do I imagine there will be any pleasure in working a fulltime job with midnight shifts, while moving stuff yet again, while hauling wood and arranging goat care in my time off?
I dragged my creaky posture up the trail on aching feet one more time, with one more box to put in the already overcrowded yurt. Screeching tree-bird barely catches my attention, but offers at least a moment of distraction, which is more than I can say for my morning attempts at the chanting. Was it re-reading Sensei's harsh appraisal of what it will take to save this civilization that got me in such a funk? It has been known to in the past.
Was it trying to go a day without coffee? Was it the email I sent to a Nicaraguan farmer, and the subsequent dread of getting stuck in some barely disguised labor camp in a foreign country? Who knows--just get to the now, somehow! Finally the last box is moved, and I sit in the car, grateful for a moment of rest in this life. Maybe that is all I get now, at 48 summers-passed. But it is enough, and my spirit begins to return.
Whose handwriting is that? On top of a box of journals is a list of notes from someone to me, apparently organizing my appointments. When did I ever have a personal assistant? And why do I need to keep these things? I tell the boxes this is the last time they will be moved. My twenty years of journals will be either be stored on this land, or they will be burned here. I will not move them again.
I imagine it is like everything else. We shlep around our stuff, this body, trying to get this or that done, and then it all gets burned in the end. And we hope some god is amused. I start to feel lighter, reconnecting to the nothingness of all this sturm-und-drang of the mind.
On the way into town, I notice the lush greenness that has taken over the hills overnight with the rains. I glance at the driveways where friends' homes are or were. My all-wheel-drive welcomes the mudslides that have temporarily reclaimed much of Old Santa Fe Trail.
Realistically, I will help out with land-based work as I can. The right amount of such physical work is deeply enjoyable. But look at this body: I am no ox. My calling is more to the monastery, where I can help revive the world with a different sort of effort. And to the social world, where I can serve the love that is our nature.
Arriving at the cafe, I receive an unexpected message on my phone. My young friend Alex reports he has two even-younger friends eager to help out with the hoop house, gardens, and otherwise working to set up the land.
I could almost laugh out loud.
Tuesday, August 16, 2011
third way
I want to remember: this is not forever.
On my second day back up in Santa Fe, I fall into the norms of its life rhythm. The spaciness of the additional 2000 feet of altitude is mitigated by caffeine. Work is more tolerable than expected, its frantic realness a welcome change from the robotic malaise of recent months. Beautiful women walk by all day long, amidst crowded aisles and a friendly crew.
Two years have passed since I worked here, yet there are many familiar faces on the crew. This strikes me over and over as odd, for I have lived several lives since then. I have lived in two other cities, fallen in and out of love, made dear friends a thousand miles away, quit my job, watched money run out, played music on the street, slept on a pier and lived in a van, had people in my life pass away. I have found out those things in life that matter.
That is why I want to remember this is not forever. It is not because I am suffering some difficult oppression. It is because then I can remember what is real: transformation, and the emptiness of form.
I am not sure what I will get done here. Getting anything done anywhere in these quickening times is a proposition perhaps bold, perhaps delusional. Getting stuff done in this thin air--who knows? Will I get to Lama Thursday as I planned? Will I get back to Burque and get some of my stuff moved? Will I even get up to the land this week? Or will it be embodydance class, marimba class drop-in, or the music party being planned by a friend, which already conflicts with the men's group I was supposed to be a part of starting up? What about those mountains?
Such community, you might think. But as anyone who has lived here knows, this is also a lonely place. I may get to none of the socializing, amidst the demands of work and self-maintenance. It is all okay either way, for my path is set apart from all these happenings, whether they be considered richness of opportunity or illusory distractions. And neither is my path drudgery.
These two opinions of life are quite pronounced up here. Neither are these paths of ecstasy and drudgery mutually exclusive. People indulge a great deal here in alcohol, meat consumption, sexual relations, and getting high. It can be confusing to be around suffering that does not recognize itself as such, as it depletes itself and negativity creeps in.
How long I can remain here, I am not sure. Already the great gift of immediate awareness of mortality feels lessened amidst all this color and personality. If I can maintain a 95% follow through on my commitments around these matters, I will feel good about it. I must keep my eyes on the prize. I am saving money for the communal leap, for the path of service, for putting my soul power to the karmic wheel.
For now, the yoga continues. Breathing, receiving vegetables, finding the calm focused chi, dying each moment into love. As perverse as it may seem, by meditating AMIDST all the stimulation, by somehow finding silence amidst all the noise, I can become stronger in the stretch. To fully drop into that zero point of my Source is easier said than done. Yet the work is always NOW.
I am on my way to remembering.
On my second day back up in Santa Fe, I fall into the norms of its life rhythm. The spaciness of the additional 2000 feet of altitude is mitigated by caffeine. Work is more tolerable than expected, its frantic realness a welcome change from the robotic malaise of recent months. Beautiful women walk by all day long, amidst crowded aisles and a friendly crew.
Two years have passed since I worked here, yet there are many familiar faces on the crew. This strikes me over and over as odd, for I have lived several lives since then. I have lived in two other cities, fallen in and out of love, made dear friends a thousand miles away, quit my job, watched money run out, played music on the street, slept on a pier and lived in a van, had people in my life pass away. I have found out those things in life that matter.
That is why I want to remember this is not forever. It is not because I am suffering some difficult oppression. It is because then I can remember what is real: transformation, and the emptiness of form.
I am not sure what I will get done here. Getting anything done anywhere in these quickening times is a proposition perhaps bold, perhaps delusional. Getting stuff done in this thin air--who knows? Will I get to Lama Thursday as I planned? Will I get back to Burque and get some of my stuff moved? Will I even get up to the land this week? Or will it be embodydance class, marimba class drop-in, or the music party being planned by a friend, which already conflicts with the men's group I was supposed to be a part of starting up? What about those mountains?
Such community, you might think. But as anyone who has lived here knows, this is also a lonely place. I may get to none of the socializing, amidst the demands of work and self-maintenance. It is all okay either way, for my path is set apart from all these happenings, whether they be considered richness of opportunity or illusory distractions. And neither is my path drudgery.
These two opinions of life are quite pronounced up here. Neither are these paths of ecstasy and drudgery mutually exclusive. People indulge a great deal here in alcohol, meat consumption, sexual relations, and getting high. It can be confusing to be around suffering that does not recognize itself as such, as it depletes itself and negativity creeps in.
How long I can remain here, I am not sure. Already the great gift of immediate awareness of mortality feels lessened amidst all this color and personality. If I can maintain a 95% follow through on my commitments around these matters, I will feel good about it. I must keep my eyes on the prize. I am saving money for the communal leap, for the path of service, for putting my soul power to the karmic wheel.
For now, the yoga continues. Breathing, receiving vegetables, finding the calm focused chi, dying each moment into love. As perverse as it may seem, by meditating AMIDST all the stimulation, by somehow finding silence amidst all the noise, I can become stronger in the stretch. To fully drop into that zero point of my Source is easier said than done. Yet the work is always NOW.
I am on my way to remembering.
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