Hello…

Well, first of all I want to thank all of you who have sent birthday wishes in advance of

my date of birth. I feel good about this birthday.  ‘Chrystallia is coming along. ‘Hope sooner than later. I hate to be vague, but the further along in this process I get, the further there is to go. Which isn’t bad at all when you consider that process is everything and while the result may be gratifying, (or not) for my ego, the true joy is in the creating. Therefore, I am giving myself as much time as I need to get it right. I believe it is that valuable a story for us to share. So, please be patient.

I have also heard rumblings of my blogging habits. While I would very much like to accomodate a schedule of frequency, that’s not who I am. I write as it moves me, but I’m here and I know your there and I don’t have any plans on going anywhere. I’ll  not forget, but there’s every possibility that’ll I’ll be late, (or early, depending on the person).

See that? Pretty fast, huh?

So I’m wondering about how living things communicate. There’s definitely an exchange in vibration that occurs, Then there are sounds created and languages formed of those sounds.

Different languages. The languages create sounds of their own as they’re interpreted in so many ways through so much emotion. The complexity of language is a mirror to the complexity of our emotions. It’s also the way in which we try to learn to listen to what we mean when we say  what we say.

In a room filled with English speaking people from a block on the street you grew up on, the appearance of communication on so many levels is, in truth, gratifying for a fleeting moment. Then your auditory senses immediately upload to the keenest level of their ability to read intention, fear, or seduction in a voice. Because one word can be said so, so many ways. You may not know what you’re hearing subconciously.

Interesting notion; the sound(s) we do not hear…or don’t think we hear and most of the time don’t even listen for. Its  like ‘the tree falls in the forest…’…if you don’t see it happen, or hear it happen, then…did it happen at all?

I believe it happened, even if only as far as an idea happens. At least on this dimension, we know that an idea is energy that is manifested in an electrical pulse organized by your brain so that you can quantify the ‘reality’ of the ideas’ existence, or do everything in your power to deny it even exists.

In other words, all existence being composed of thought/consciousness, having a thought, or an idea is to even the smallest degree a cognisant manifestation of energy. It exists.

Anything the human mind can imagine exists on some dimension. Why? Because we’re all part of the whole of everything, which at our most primal level we know to be true, because everything is part of us and we are part of everything.

However, it’s easier to find difference than similarity. We covet that person, color, occassion, smell, addiction to power who best mirrors ours. She’s our dream girl, he’s our dream boy…Ken and Barb….

We spend the majority of our energy finding our differences. Why? Because first of all, our mind believes it is important. Very important. “I like to smell the leather before I buy it,” it says with heartfelt sincerity and believing every word of it, proud to be in control of everything everywhere, or at least proud to think that it could be in control….

It’s very comforting for the mind to apply differences. It’s right in its wheelhouse. And there’s so much to do! So many evaluations and definitions, likes, dislikes, do’s, don’ts,  this ‘type’ of person to love, that to hate. Learn as much as we can so we can someday bring Mother Nature to our knee,…I mean, there’s a lot and still more! The sky? The universe is the limit!

This is the way the mind thinks and does everything in it’s power to support and recreate that illusion that it can do anything, know anything…even when the fact that our bodies fail us and we leave this life still lurks in the shadows of our mind, always threatening to come out.

Difference to the mind isn’t candy. It’s heroin. To find similarity is, as far as the all powerful mind is concerned, is counter productive…(I’d say ‘counter-intuitive’ except the mind…yours and mine, has very strict rules regarding intuition, or sixth sense and quickly relegates all of that ‘unknowable’ stuff to the category of ‘what we’ll master some day, eventually’…control,control,control).

To find similarity, the mind must find how another mind is similar and the result is usually a perceived complete likeness, a la the love story of all time and the ensuing and all consuming drive to identify anything or anybody that threatens what the mind has interestingly identified as our ‘unique similarity,’ and either change them or own them and do what  you will with them.

Because the mind does not really like similarity, especialy similarity with seniority. the mind’s very existence, as far as it knows is entirely dependent on its ability to control, know,  be able to find, build, destroy, grow, and even approximate love is within its reach. There is no reason to ‘not know.’

Interesting that my mind would think of there being ‘no reason to not know.’ Interesting in that it seeks a ‘reason,’ as if knowing or not knowing is part of its kingdom.

Especially reading this, you get a good sense of how devious the mind can be. It can’t sit still. ‘Hates anthything it cannot sense, measure and control and therefore either subtley or overtly defends against it.

And how lucky are we that we have this thing called ‘consciousness?’ Where we can sit back and watch the show, take in a film.’This is your life__________________________  (Did you fill in  your name?)

We have this amazing ability to watch ourselves exist. See ourselves, hear ourselves, watch ourselves feel, and think. We have this clear, clear window into our mind that we can choose to look through or not. We can see and feel what feels good and what doesn’t, what is  our fear, to experience our courage and find compassion for ouerselves in our struggle and compassion for (yes, similarity) our selves in others.

There it is again: We’re all one.

To be conscious is, in truth to be with God, truth, love. It is our most sacred gift recieved from our own great power of consciousness and we have an obligation to pursue it, know it, and yes, love it. An obligation to our selves and everything that is a part of our selves, and all that is a part of everything that is.

pmg

Contemplate that. Everything is apart of me and I am a part of everything. (Don’t read any further. Just take a moment and contemplate that thought.  See where it takes you.)

————-

I like the act of contemplation, where you can allow yourself to let go of the where and when of it all and just sit with a thought and the endless broods of thoughts that come with it.

Another favorite contemplation is:  Find that place where thought becomes matter.

The only thing I can absolutely, positively and completely promise you is this; when you contemplate that place where thought becomes matter…you ARE in that place, you ARE the place.

On the other hand…

I read the discussion of “…can you hurt someone by helping too much,” and I marvel at the emotion in people’s words. Sometimes I think that our words and the way we say them are completely out of our control.

We say one thing, mean another, describe one thing, ask another. We rarely reread what we have said, or if we do our eyes play tricks on us and our minds, thinking that we have already read this fails to really see what it is we’re really saying…or in some cases, asking. The fact that we have chosen the words and say/write them as we do and this act creates a window into our person… conveniently escapes us.

But we’re visible.

The computer, the act of communicating by word through air doesn’t really remove our vulnerability or visibility. It just creates that illusion. An illusion that we mistakenly inerpret as strength. So ironic, that we try to experience ’strength’ in the fantasy of a non-intrusive, non-intimate relationship.

So what are we looking for? When we say our ‘hellos’ and communicate our woes, write our headlines? What are we doing in this act of communication?

Trying o identify ourselves in terms of what we believe, know, have determined to be true?

However, we need someone there to communicate to and back with, someone in whom we can find ourselves, see ourselves mirrored beyond our standard humanoid features. Someone who is ‘like’ us. We like to memorialize our similarity by defining rules, rights, wrongs, what’s true, what isn’t, what’s acceptible, what isn’t. We take comfort in our similarity, we celebrate it by  flying flags, singing songs, worshipping agreed upon deities. We take care to teach our children to do the same.

In the name of what? Peace, Love, Contentment….Heaven? And the thing that’s going to get us there is what? Our ability to recreate that which we believe to be true? Our ability to control our lives and teach our children to control theirs? There are rules and they must be adhered to or else the ‘big bogeyman’…Mr. Fear, is going to eat you alive, forever…eternal damnation.

We know that adherence to the ‘rules’ is something we can control, so ‘control’ becomes the optimum condition, or status, and is equated with security, comfort, nurturing…no fear, no fear, no fear.

The problem occurs when things happen that we can’t control, when our minds/egos are submitted to the naked horror that there are things that we can’t control.

Our first reaction, either conscious or sub-conscious may be to rationalize that the ‘idea’ of controlling everything is absurd; obviously one can’t control everything we generously admit to ourselves while secretly harboring the believe that if we hold tight enough onto the illusion of power thru control, immortality will be ours.

There is one little thing, though.

Death.

Yup. We’re powerless over that. Big problem. Our minds’ first reaction is to try harder and so we hone our skills, (which are considerable) of denial. We become so good at denial that  we are even able to deny that we are in denial. Not everybody is in denial. Are they?Are they?

All of this thinking and over analying instead of just trusting what  you’ve been told.  Why complicate things? Not everybody has to see it your way. I don’t have to believe what you believe. Believe me, I know what I believe.

Remember that cousin to control; ‘belief?’  We seem to put more emphasis on ‘the act of believing,’ of commiting to ‘belief’  because we are told therein is our salvation, than to listening, really listening to our selves? Why?

Because  if we really listen to ourselves, there are some questions that have no answer…and our minds/egos abhor not having an answer….or at least the promise of an answer. (Call that ‘faith?).’

The fear that visits us in our dreams and our very private moments, or more dramatically in catachlism is to be avoided at all costs, even if you have to deny that fear is there at all?

Why do we go to horror films?  What is it that we are able to experience in the relative safety of a dark theatre that bears a striking resemblance to this  deep-down primal fear within us?

However, outside the theatre, it’s daylight and other people are walking around getting somewhere and there’s no place for fear out here. Not in a safe, comfortable society, right?

Before we know it, we’re in a traffic jam, we’re late, one of the kids is coming down with a nasty cold…you shouldn’t have even brought him to the movie and now you can’t control that he’s getting sick and will likely get everybody in the family sick….and doctor’s bills, missed work…nothing that we have control over. Why? What’s wrong with us? Are we weak? Stupid?

So we get angry with ourselves, but we can’t bear looking at what we’re angry about, (no control), so we get angry at others; for reminding us that we are feeling out of control. Or we become envious, or jealous, spiteful, hurtful, lose our feelings of insufficiency in eating, drinking to much, collecting and exercising power, …there are so, so many intricate and subtle ways our minds continue to glue together the experiences of our lives to help us avoid our fear. There are whole studies, schools of thought, phd’s, licenses provided to identify those that have become a mainspring in our society’s quest to better itself.

So, along comes someone who basically says what the very first caravans meeting in the Euphrates valley at the onset of worldly communication said after the necessary inspection that each was indeed human and not out to eat the other…tonight:  This is what I see, this is what I feel, this is what I think about, this is what my experience has meant to me, this is how I hurt, feel joy, feel pain and fear…what about you?

Well all’s fine as long as we stick to the rules. You can talk about all those other feelings with varying degrees of sensitivity as to who you show them to…however, fear …..we are very careful about how we even raise the issue. We have created whole mythologies built on belief that we can overcome fear. Our sports ethic is a test of how well we can maintain control, not succumb to your fear.

Talk about fear? Outside the accepted ways and means? Imply that because I feel fear that others must?

I’m not assuming that anybody has the same fears as I, except for one; fear of no control over mortality. That seems to be the human condition. A condition we all journey with.

And please know that I have no intention of claiming ‘the truth.’ I am claiming  A truth…that I have experienced, and upon examination seems to emanate from all humans.

Agree with me, or disagree…please. I’d only ask that you maintain your curiosity about the way that  you agree or disagree. It has nothing to do with how good or bad you or I may seem to the other. Even if we practice curiosity in the privacy of our minds, we may get a glimpse or two into how we really feel, or why we act as we do. Again, no judgment, because,whatever we find, we have the ability to remind ourselves that we are able to find it in others.

I am constantly astounded at the ways in which I go blind, in which denial has it’s way with me, or my mind’s protection against my fear of no control. Humbled beyond words.

pmg

On blogging and shared thoughts…

Perhaps I presume too much. I  sail along as I share my thoughts and assume that if I write it clearly enough, it will be understood. I know better than that. What is clear to one may not be clear to another. So I will try to be clearer.

In the meantime, consider this: Not all of what I study and share is ‘understandable’ in the traditional way of wrapping one’s mine around it. Some, if not all seems to fall into that netherworld of experiencing it. I say ‘netherworld,’ because it is the ‘un’-known and the only way to ‘know’ it is to experience it, feel it.

Our minds would have us demand proof, measure and qualification of these ‘netherworld’ things before giving it them the seal of worthiness of faith. Because the mind thinks it can do that. It believes it can, has to determine what is true, what is not. And it’s not a question of the mind defending itself against something new. The mind is reasonable, it offers the unrealistic rationale that it can find faith – providing the information passes muster.

So, unless you give the mind something that it can ‘know’…ie. relate to in its memory as an  identifiable  religion or philosophy…..it balks. If you give the mind a truth that is old as the hills but seen from a new perspective and that perspective is either unfamiliar, (or too familiar in that it brings up feelings you’ll do anything to avoid),the mind will disect and measure  it down to the last inch and then, ironically, invoke the ‘I don’t know.’

Is it that we don’t know, or that we resist letting ourselves know? (These are dangerous semantics so let me be clear that I think of two kinds of knowing: That which our mind labors to achieve, and that which our being senses, feels, experiences. Now I’m speaking of ‘knowing’ as a feeling experience as in ‘knowing it with our body….which also happens to include the mind. Does that mean the mind feels? Where’s the connection between thought and feeling? Does one come before the other? Or visa versa? (Try to contemplate this question and resist the need to define, come up with an answer, judge in any way the thoughts and feelings that come up. The mind wants to judge. It thinks that’s its job)

I think ‘thoughts’ are our mind’s attempt to understand, and by understanding, control our feelings. Of course, fear is the hardest of the feelings to ‘control.’ Often the best way is at every turn to deny that fear exists in you. Denial is our mind’s greatest weapon of self-defense.

So how do we know when we’re in denial, and not that river in Egypt? There’s only one way.

After all the medicines to relieve stress and/or the pain and disease that come from stress (virtually all), have had their day, no matter how numb or dumb the medicines, intoxicants, mountains of food or guns of power have made us, we are still nagged at by our fear. Sometimes quietly, but always there, eating at the foundations of our mind. If you get really quiet and look at yourself objectively, you can hear it, however faintly…eating.

i have talked repeatedly about our powerlessness to affect our mortality. Again, it’s interesting how many people read ‘fear of helplessness’ as ‘fear of death.’  There’s a difference.

What we fear about death is our inability to ‘know’ it, or understand it.The mind’s idea that ‘knowing’ it provides the fantasy that we can then do something about it. We can have power over it because we ‘know’ it; what it looks like, where it’s located, (Heaven or Hell).

It’s a fantasy because any way you look at it, your mind still doesn’t know anything about death except that it, (your mind) ceases to exist. Or so your mind thinks.

What does this thought of powerlessness to ‘know’ anything about death bring up? Fear. Fear of being helpless.

For that, the great masters, students and teachers throughout history have come up with an answer; a way to use that fear of helplessness to  achieve the peace and clarity of Heaven. However, there’s a catch: You have to be able to identify when this fear of helplessness is happening. This is not easy. Our mind has seen to that.

We get angry with ourselves for being helpless, (old examples: caught in a traffic jam and late for an appt….a loved one who is suffering.) and that becomes depression. We seek a sense of ‘power’ in food…have another cupcake. We find that the easiest way to feel powerful is to be more powerful than someone else, (this also translates into knowing more than them, having more than them, making them accept what we believe, controlling them by lying to them, threatening their security, judging them as good or bad, beautiful or ugly, week or strong, right or wrong.)

All of this just to avoid that feeling of helplessness and the fear it induces. We navigate the world with our minds, building, owning, killing, and controlling, but when it comes to an answer to the deepest unknown, the mind fails us. (So we immediately try to do more of the same….and more and more….and hello war, famine, greed, avarice….all those guys.)

Okay. So say that I can get in touch with my helplessness when some guy slams into my car or some phone robot hands up on me, then what?

And we’re right where we should be.

Seeing ourselves in that situation from that place of awareness, our human consciousness that is the same place from where we can choose to acknowledge or human struggle with helplessness. That placc of awareness from where we can  acknowledging it, finding compassion for ourselves for our courage and determination, for our yearning to be at peace…to truly ‘know’ in the biblical sense of the word. Then it’s a hop-skip- and a jump to our hearts, to our ability to love ourselves in our struggle, and by extension love others.

In that experience of love, we are feeling our connection to all that is and all that we belong to. It is an anthema to the mind that we have to surrender to being one with everything in order to ‘know’ it; the ‘answer.’………….

…to know,to  experience, to feel with your whole being that you are a continuation, not only of the light, sound, and all that exists around you including the air that envelops you, but a continuation of all matter, all thought, all sound that is always in motion, always changing…dying and being reborn eternally…changing.

We can use the ‘power’ of our mind to focus itself from its conscious place, to focus and witness without judging anything as right, wrong, good bad, true or untrue…and experience/feel and know ‘eternal change’ that we are a continuance of along with everything that exists.

Okay…I’ve gone off on this stuff again, but ‘all roads lead to Rome…and no matter how I slice it, bread is bread.

When you meditate on light with your third eye, it’s when  you don’t look for the light that the light comes. As does all the creativity and falling in love in our lives. It always comes from left field when you least expect it, or to be more accurate, when your mind least expects it.

pmg.

Ruminating on sound.

Consider sound; everything from music to noise, and how these sounds make us feel.

Noise makes us angry, music makes us fall in love. There are sounds that make us feel sad, irritable, scared, happy, young and old. How is that? How can sound evoke so many different feelings? Does it tap into all our memories and what we associate them with? Absolutely. Does it tap into something more, an even more basic experience of our existence that we have known from the moment of our conception, if not before?

Vibration is to sound what thought is to matter.

Contemplate where vibration becomes sound, or where thought becomes matter. The very act of contemplating this moment, of trying to imagine it puts us in that moment in that we are experiencing it and feeling it as it is happening. In our effort to contemplate where thought becomes matter, we become the ‘where’ because we are feeling it as we use our minds’ attention to witness how it manifests in our body. When our minds try to define or interpret the experience, we are no longer feeling it.  Interesting.

The mind creates concepts; of ‘infinity’ and ‘eternity’ as a way to understand and define that experience of change and becoming. It abhors witnessing without judging and seeks to define, quantify and qualify that experience because it needs to believe  it can. The mind needs to experience some power over this event of existence, this state of always becoming. It needs to see itself as ‘apart from’ and not’ a part of,’ because being ‘apart from’ implies some control, and acknowledging being  ‘a part of’ implies that the mind is in a state of change over which it has no power.

Everything vibrates. Every molecule, atom, every particle of energy that makes up thought which makes up everything that is, is in motion and at some moment in its transition to sound and matter, it experiences itself and that’s what we feel; the vibration of all existence coming into being and our belonging in its fabric.

As humans, we have the gift of consciousness and the ability to focus our minds on the act of witnessing our existence without judgement or the need to define or know. That’s when we feel God, truth, love…

Reactions.

I would like to thank those that have offered words of support and encouragement I would also like to thank those  who have found themselves reacting negatively, for I get to be reminded how difficult it is for all of us to acknowledge our fear and how we defend against it by judging and defining ourselves and others.  I don’t want to linger in the negative, I want to acknowledge how instructive it can be.

As any of us, I have received through my life lessons an experience that has come to motivate much of what I do. It has inspired my creativity and made me see the importance of reaching out and sharing. That is what I am doing. I am sharing what has come through me and my life. I am not proslytizing. I am not preaching. I certainly don’t want to preach.

Perhaps what I have learned and what I study is not as easy to share as I had hoped. You will note that I did not say I was going to suspend all communication with my blogs, just that I found it impractical, given the amount of time in the day, to answer all. This is difficult, for it is in my nature, it is in all of our natures to want to communicate, to share. It’s part of experiencing ourselves as together in this journey of life. One of the recent blogs asks how we are to teach, or share and be of help to our children who are so innocent and open with their feelings. My first reaction is that we have more to learn from our children and being in their presence than we often admit. And while half of being a teacher is to acknowledge our desire to learn, the opposite is true. For what is teaching but a ’sharing,’ a desire to communicate our life’s experience in an effort to help ourselves learn and recognize ourselves in each other, in order to experience/know our existence as ’shared’…that we are not alone. So, as I share and teach, I study and learn. The best way to teach our children, (those inside of each of us as well), is to listen, hear and be taught by them in their yet to be inhibited ability to stay present. Then what we are teaching them mirrors the best in them and in ourselves, and gives them the reaffirming experience of being together. This experience, this ‘knowing’ of our one-ness constitutes hope and our faith that we can return to that knowing, that feeling.

I have to acknowledge that my innocence would have me believe that all will hear and understand what I share. The truth is that some will and some won’t. Some will feel what I share, not because of who they perceive I am or am not, but because what I share resonates in their own experience. For those that find my shared thoughts frustrating, confusing, pretentious, presumptuous or just plain negative, I would humbly ask you to try not to judge me or yourselves. Instead, you might witness your own reactions and words and the extent to which you need to define me.  It’s an interesting excersize, because as we witness our feelings and thoughts and don’t try to defend or justify them, but see them as something that is happening to us and something we are reacting to, we get to make the distinction between the part of us that is learned behavior/conditioning, and the part of us that transcends that behavior and allows us to recognize ourselves in each other.

I always find that I learn more from my negative reactions, (read: ‘expressions of fear’) and those of others when I am able to not personalize or judge them.

Someone wrote that this all seemed a defense on my part, a need to withdraw from people and from my feelings. This is not my intention, nor my need. On the contrary, it is to find and experience my connection to my humanity and the humanity of others. Celebrity is an odd experience in that the object of celebrity often becomes a canvas where others get to paint their needs, their fantasies.  We all have a need to ‘celebritize,’ to take someone we ‘connect’ with and see our own humanity in and make them more than human, make them more powerful than us. We make them our heroes who, we fantasize, don’t have to deal with the fear of powerlessness like we do. We then want to touch them, adore them, have something of them, an autograph, a ‘hello’ a photo. We need to put them there and we resent any effort or occurence that makes them  human. It’s as if we want to have our cake and eat it too. We want our ‘gods’ and at the same time we need them to be human, so we tear them down, or sacrifice them…(ie. the virgin thrown into the volcano), or take exception to their own human efforts to deal with powerlessness.

I remember when my t.v. series had taken off and I was being ‘celebrated,’ I was invited to a birthday bash where there happened to be a lot of celebrities. I was standing by the buffet, (there’s that ‘eating’ thing again), and I heard a voice that sounded really familiar, turned around and bumped into Cary Grant, one of my heroes.  I couldn’t speak. This man had come to represent so much to me as an actor, had become such a ‘god’ to me, that I could only look away. How is that different from someone idolizing Starsky and then trying to relate to me. They don’t really know me…any more than I ‘knew’ Cary Grant. Yet I had built a tremendous amount of fantasy about what Cary Grant was like because I had experienced a connection to him, something in him that I wanted to experience in myself. Had I ever met Cary Grant thereafter, I most likely would have been brought up short when I got close to him and saw the cracks, the foibles, his yearning, his humanity.

I do not find any strength in setting myself apart. I yearn for connection the same as any person. However I also have to take some  responsibility for this occurrence of celebrity and try to understand the nature of it and establish parameters that allow me to live my life and continue to learn. My life’s experience has accrued into these lessons that I seek to share through my ‘celebrity’ on this relatively new phenomenon, the internet. It does not mean that what I say is ‘gospel’ truth, only that it is my truth and has moved me to write two books, has inspired, I now realize so much of my creativity, and my celebrity or visibility gives me the opportunity to share what I am learning.

Perhaps this is too great an effort to answer the negativity I perceive while I try to understand it.

Okay, that’s my blog. Thank you for allowing me to share.

pmg.

On blogging.

I have to confess to something. I never thought answering these blogs would be so time consuming. To those that write of their anger and difficulties in accepting the possibility of what I’m sharing, I will still review the blogs and try to answer some, however I am going to limit myself to posting blogs and when I do, I’ll try to address some of the themes expressed in those questioning blogs.

Thanks for understanding. There’s only so many hours in a day. For now, I have nothing new to post except what is in my responses to today’s blogs.  pmg.

a distinction between fear of death and fear of powerlessness inthe face of death.

I have read, and answered a few blog entries and it is interesting to me that there is a common thread running through many of the reactions to my thoughts. Oftentimes, the ‘fear of powerlessness’ becomes the fear of ‘death’ in many of the blogs.

I believe it is an important distinction. Animal and human equally share/experience the fear of death. The ANIMAL’S reaction is all about survival. The HUMAN reaction involves both our ego/mind’s experience of being HELPLESS  in the face of death, no matter what we build, own, believe, destroy, and our experience of our consciousness of our own existence at any point, (like right now, your ability to see yourself reading this).

While the experience of being powerless is an anathema to our mind/ego that experiences itself in its ability to create the illusion of being power-full…by what it can do, judge…yes, even deny , our ability to be conscious, to be able see this reaction in ourselves and choose to honor our struggle and choose compassion for ourselves in the face of this seemingly irreconcilable predicament/threat to our existence, gives us the experience of being one with all that is.

If we considers that everything that is, is made up of thought, and that consciousness is also thought. Then, in the act of acknowledging our consciousness, we are experiencing our ‘one-ness’ with all thought, with all that is…call it God, truth, beauty….or love.

When we experience our primal fear of being helpless, there is the opportunity to choose to employ that consciousness, to identify it and from that place choose to love ourselves rather than condemn our selves or others for experiencing and/or denying our  helplessness.

pmg

We have a choice

A friend was talking to me today about how he is looking for something he can be passionate about at this point in his life, and he was concerned that he wouldn’t find it. I replied that his concern was his passion and that his act of searching was something not to be judged in terms of whether he found or didn’t find, but rather his creative process which he could embrace along with his fear of not finding anything. The two can co-exist. The trick is allowing them to co-exist.

Imagine you are standing on the top of a double black diamond ski run. Are you scared? You bet. Do  you ski down it? When you choose to do so, you are acknowledging your fear and your ability to co-exist with it.  Your mind would have you believe that  you have defeated your fear, over come it. Rather,  your choice to acknowledge it and choose to ski down that slope with that fear, is your integrity; your sense of worth. ‘Who’  you are.

I find fear to be a very allusive thing. Often we don’t want to acknowledge it. We call it anger, or depression, (anger at ourselves for being powerless), or boredom, (a form of depression), or obsession, ( a grasping at control with the subconscious belief that what if we’re in control there will be no fear). Our minds/egos go to great lengths to deny the existence of fear for fear that fear will destroy us. Why? Because there is a real fear: that we have no control over our mortality. We have no power over the fact that we are going to die, (read: change). Actually, this is the only fear and it is an anathema to our mind which believes it should and has to be avoided at all costs.

‘The only thing to fear is fear itself,’ we tell ourselves. There is another reality.

When we can acknowledge this primal fear and the fact that there is nothing we can do to get rid of it, we then are given the opportunity to discover its purpose. Why is it in our lives? What did we do to deserve this? Have we been ‘bad?’ Are we being punished with this hellish feeling? Is there something we can take(food, drugs, alcohol) ? Someone who can make it go away, (Daddy, Mommy, religion, a lot of money, success, fame, power)? Is there a mantra, a prayer that we can say over and over?

If we are able to acknowledge the existence of our fear in all its subtle and not so subtle manifestations, and acknowledge that we are powerless to affect our mortality…if we are able to see that a part of us is scared, but just as with the ski run, that there’s another part of us that can choose to act, not in spite of our fear but in recognition of it,then from that same place of ‘knowing,’ we can honor our struggle as human beings, honor our courage and find compassion for ourselves in this seemingly irreconcilable predicament. We can find compassion for ourselves in our fear and by extension, compassion for others. We can find our hearts. We can find our capacity for love.

The purpose of our fear is to lead us to our hearts. It gives us the power to love. It’s what makes us human. It is not the anathema that our minds/egos and our conditioning would have us believe. It won’t kill us. It makes us stronger in our act of acknowledgment and our ‘knowing’ that we are all afraid, we all have courage, we all want love, we all are love.

It’s that time of year again.

It’s that time of year again. The leaves have fallen into the delicious childhood memory of rustling and crisp mountains piled so high that you just had to jump into them. Leaves that are offered up to the Gods of Fire and Winter.

Nights in Massachusetts were long, dark and cold. I remember walking back from my friend’s house, past all those houses whose lights made the falling snow dance on its way down to the white blanket that squeaked beneath my feet as I trudged home.

I remember that time; the cold nips of snowflakes on my nose and cheeks, my breath exploding in puffs of steam, the distant headlights of a car piercing the woods, the soft sound of steel chains. I liked walking home at that time. I felt at one with the world.

I wondered about the lives in ‘those houses,’ how much like mine, how different. I would imagine them having everything I wanted plus what already I had and I’d walk steadily through the crunching snow with every hope and dream keeping me company. Everything was possible. Hope made all the difficulties of my youth seem manageable.

I look back on that and my hope has stayed with me. It has drawn me forward in my yearning, my seeking. It has picked me up when I thought I was all the way down. It has brought me a life full of learning, rich, succulent, and fullfilling and I am the richer for it.

This is our moment. There is no other. The remembered moment is only an echo heard through our desire and need.

This is our moment. Here, now as I write this. This is my life, right here, right now. This is my mantra. When I can remember this, everything else becomes insignificant and I only want to know this moment, and the next and the next, never lifting my eyes to an imagined horizon, but being here, on my own horizon.

In this moment, I wish all of us a healthy New Year and the blessing to realize that the death of this year is here for a reason…so that we may experience our love and oneness with each other.

A boy making his way home through night snow will always know that.

Pmg.