Category: Uncategorized (So Far)

Two major themes today:

1. Over the past week or so, I’ve found it something of a challenge to find and maintain center while on the meditation cushion. This morning, I found my way to the question, “Am I living what I claim to be living?” In asking this and then exploring what I found in my body, I discovered a spot on my back that suggested a block worth examining. From there, I found myself thinking of a comment a friend made a couple of days ago: she said that I’m not as happy as I claim to be, an assertion with which I disagree–but a comment that also raises alarm bells, because I remember that I was in denial about my depression for a long, long time. These two thoughts in rapid succession told me meditation was done for the day, and I went to the computer to zero draft. I found my way to some interesting stuff, but nothing that has yet resolved into a piece.

2. Within the zero-drafting on these subjects, I found myself again regarding my propensity towards clutter. Two points worth making: (1) Clutter is stuck energy made physical. (2) Clutter represents a physical manifestation of a scarcity mindset. (“I better hang on to that. What if I need it?”). If I am trying to invite energetic opening and abundance into my life. I need to deal with my clutter. So I devoted a little time today to doing so.

The weather in Colorado this late fall has been pretty shitty, and by “shitty” I mean, “sunny, and about 20 degree above what we used to call ‘normal.'” Beautiful weather for late September; downright creepy for late November. I would love the outdoor opportunities it’s presenting were it not so indicative of just how quickly the weather patterns are changing. As a skier, it just sucks.

I’ve learned over the years that keeping myself away from the madness of Black Friday is crucial for my sanity. I had thought of going on a mountain bike ride today–the weather certainly cooperated–but instead, I just got outside to hit some tennis serves, and otherwise kept substantially to myself. Erie, where I’ve lived for the past several months, is kind of the exurban boondocks, which can feel isolating some days, but today gave a welcome buffer between myself and the poison energy of Black Friday.

I’d rather have been skiing. But taking care of yourself means controlling what you can control, and letting the rest go.

You know, if you make Thanksgiving a celebration of abundance and gratitude rather than a paean to overindulgence and media shrieking that urges you to buy! Buy! BUY!! (which is actually a means of insidiously reinforcing a scarcity mindset by disguising it in the robes of abundance), it’s actually a pretty sweet holiday, well worth celebrating.

Today I spent time with family, and also with people I didn’t previously know, and I felt welcomed by all. There was too much food, of course, but the Too Much was in part because so many different people contributed to the meal, and it’s hard to look askance at people sharing what they have and what they enjoy. I sent messages to people I love, telling them that I’m grateful to have them in my life.

I’ll save my disgust for what tomorrow is about until tomorrow. Today, I feel gratitude.

I asked my cousins what I should bring for Thanksgiving dinner. I was told that I could bring whatever it was I wanted to drink. “I know,” I said, “I’ll bring cocktail fixins’ to share.”

So I’ve packed two bottles of gin (one admittedly already open), sweet vermouth, dry vermouth, some fernet, some bitters, my cocktail glass, a measuring cup, a cocktail spoon, some olives, some homemade ginger syrup, some lemons and some Luxardo cherries. I still need to get a bottle of bourbon or rye for Benhattans. Once I do that, we’ll be set for martinis, Manhattans, Benhattans, and whiskey gingers.

This is Free Refills. Are you surprised that we tend to go a little, um, overboard where delicious beverages are concerned?

The profundity of change that I have experienced in my life over the past three-ish years did not come from my discovery of the quiet power of the breath on the Greatest Day, which first brought light into the darkness, nor of all the guidance Jerry gave me with respect to cultivating energy through centered, embodied awareness and the consciousness it develops. All of that was necessary, but it wasn’t sufficient.

The other crucial piece happened when I hit Bottom. That day, I looked at the shambles my life had become, felt the pain and anguish in my heart, and declared that I would change everything, literally everything, if that’s what it took to bring myself back to health.

I need to be very, very clear about this, because the universe took me at my word. It asked: Everything? You will truly let go of everything that blocks your flow?

I’d be lying if I said that I never hesitated. I hesitate still. The lives we live, no matter how attenuated, tend to give us a certain comfort. After all, we know it here. We know our way around.

But really think about it: if you are deeply unhappy, what do you gain by holding onto anything that doesn’t serve you? Are you not saying, in essence, “I choose to suffer?”

I’ve been talking about the Bottom without fully describing it. I wrote a piece about it a couple of years ago. You can find it here.

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For quite some time, I’ve been trying to fully articulate to myself why it is that I don’t regard the Greatest Day, as the day I came closest to suicide, as my Bottom. I’ve used the respective terms for quite some time, and they both feel totally right, but still, this seeming contradiction has struck me as kind of odd. Friday’s piece reawakened that feeling.

I was on the cushion for only about thirty seconds this morning before the answer came to me. On the Greatest Day, it was like I was in a deep pit during the blackest night I had ever experienced. Everything was dark. By following the breath, I found my way through the night, and eventually dawn broke, and far above me at the mouth of the hole I was in I could see light. Things weren’t as dark.

“I gotta find a way out of this hole,” I said. Then I looked around and grabbed the only tool that appeared to be available to me. I picked up my shovel and resumed digging.

The Bottom was the day I finally put the shovel down.

In last Friday’s piece, I said that it was by connecting with the breath that I was able to get through the Greatest Day. But I do not count the Greatest Day as the day from which the real changes in my life began. It wasn’t until early August, about nine months later, that I hit what I call my Bottom. (I steal the term from the 12-Step movement, while also alluding to this solid piece of advice: “When you find yourself stuck in a deep hole, first of all, STOP DIGGING.”)

On the Greatest Day, I chose not to die. But it wasn’t until the Bottom that I decided to truly live.

In last Thursday’s piece, I wrote this: “I’m still learning how to be happy. It turns out that happy as a baseline demands a different approach to life than what I lived previously.” On reflection, I feel a need to be a bit more careful with my words.

Happy is a tricky word. The way I used it, I implied that happy is something more consistent and sustainable than the normal rise-and-fall of emotions. But feelings are just feelings. When I think of Mango, which I do pretty much daily, I feel grief and sadness. When I scan the headlines in the NYTimes or WSJ, I usually feel some combination of anger and fear. When I think that my beloved Tottenham Hotspur play hated arch-rival Arsenal THIS COMING SATURDAY, WHEE, I feel excitement. All of these are just emotions. They arise when they’re appropriate. They pass away when they’re not.

What I’m really saying is that I live much more in flow now. Because of how flow drives one’s attention to the present, I’m much more likely now to notice the pleasure life offers moment by moment, and that leads, pretty directly, to feelings of happiness. But happiness remains an ephemeral emotion, just a feeling, no less transient than any other.

But I’m finding that there is a baseline emotional difference that comes from living in flow, and that it’s actually hard to put into words. I stumble around and end up saying something along the lines of “I’m happier now,” which, again, isn’t exactly wrong, but doesn’t capture the deeper truth.

After enough consideration, something occurred to me: it’s hard to put this difference into words in English because modern English developed in cultures that haven’t lived in flow for a long, long time.

(Seriously, he just about pissed himself.)

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HOLY SHIT HOLY SHIT HOLY SHIT THEY GOT ALL FIVE SPICE GIRLS FOR A NEW ALBUM AND TV SPECIAL!? IT’S LIKE THE VERY UNIVERSE ITSELF IS SAYING THAT 2018 WILL BE VERY SPECIAL INDEED.

CAN YOU BELIEVE IT!? THEY GOT GINGER AND POSH.

I FEEL A LITTLE BAD FOR OSTRICH SPICE, THOUGH. SHE NEVER FULLY FIT IN. BUT I KNOW SHE DID HER BEST.

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(Shout out to Dawn for making Ima’s day.)

None of the shirts have returned. Not so far, anyway.