Intuition bests degree

One thing I never knew or "got" about so-called "counselors" - that somehow by virtue of my paying them, I/we on both sides of the couch assumed or let precedent be set on the idea that maybe they knew something more than me about life, relationship, ME, etc....

bullshit.

Intuition cannot be equalled or bested, nor should you/we/I ever allow it to be subjugated.

Hope deferred

maketh the heart sick.

and that is all.

Groundlessness

Learning much - intellectually as well as experientially and spiritually, i.e. in a truly internalized learning way - about this concept lately.

If it doesn't all kill me first, I might just finally learn to be a little at peace with this life. :p

Fingers crossed for me, eh?

Spiritual but not religious, blah blah, who am I now?

"I define a 'spiritual' person not as one who believes in a particular doctrine or religion, but rather as one who is actively pursuing the qualities of character that constitute a life of goodness and love. I have met the most devoted religious people who think little of examining their own hearts authentically to ferret out selfishness and deceit. I have also met those who profess to be atheist or agnostic who go to great lengths to cultivate the quaities of loving-kindness, compassion, and mercy in their lives. Because of this, I have come to disregard those labels and credentials that normally make up the definition of a 'spiritual' person and [have] grown to appreciate profoundly the complexities and uniqueness of each person's particular path."


Katherine Woodward Thomas

Raising my bar - why has it taken me so long

This is for me and also for a good friend of mine here. You know who you are. :)
Say it with me:

I deserve a partner who is an emotional adult.
I deserve a partner who willingly and freely offers support and care, without doing it just to garner something for himself.
I deserve a partner who does at least as much giving as he does receiving (and no 'taking' - an interesting and notable difference), and heck, maybe even a little more. :)
I deserve a partner who encourages me to grow and to become my best self.
I deserve a partner who wants to grow and become his best self.
I deserve a partner who strives for authenticity, who is self-aware, and who is open to looking for blind spots in his self-awareness.
I deserve a partner who is generally happy, optimistic, and positive, and who doesn't approach life from a "victim" position.
I deserve a partner with whom I can share my deep creative and emotional passions, and also my intellect.
I deserve a partner who will treat me with compassion, grace, and selfless love, and who can internalize it when I do the same for him.
I deserve a partner who brings his own store of life energy to our relationship, rather than expecting to ride along on mine.



More to come...

And I thought I was so alone in it

It has been the height of folly or self-absorbed foolishness on my part to think or ever have believed for one moment that my sense of desperate aloneness has been something wholly unique to me, as in some scourge with which I alone - oh woeful victim of the universe, I - have been plagued.

This from a favorite author, David Richo, in this case in his introduction to "When Love Meets Fear":

"We will look at some major fears... [including] the fear of aloneness. We will discuss the void: the inner sense of total emptiness in which nothing works and we feel hopeless in the grip of desolation and desperation. I feared all these things myself in the course of my life - with many currently on the screen - so I share what I have learned with you."

I've been encountering it left and right in my readings of late. This horrid lost aloneness bullshit, the subplot of my life, turns out is just... a regular 'ole common part of the human condition, the human fragility born of fear... born of being human.

Who knew.

Open, close, implode

Thought my life was opening up... I really did. So I took a risky step forward into the unknown to embrace it... and then KABLOOEY! ... Everything blew up in my face. The whole damn thing imploded, just like that. Reduced to shell-shocked rubble. All the energy that had gone into building it up - for naught, wasted. All the hopes, the fantasies of what might be - foolishness, mockery.

Reading this book right now about learning to live "consciously," and the author promises how life will open up with new creativity and aliveness when you get it down. And I just want to say, "Fuck that! Am I really supposed to open up to such foolish, narcissistic hopes again? How long have I been on this train of life?"

Damn long, that's how long.

Alone alone alone alone alone

I'm about to go crazy from aloneness. Alone alone alone alone alone.

I have a dog in distress laying at my feet, and enough adult capability to deal with and take care of him - but just barely - and he is and has been my closest and most faithful companion these last two years, and all I can think (secondary to thoughts of anger at the supposed "pet sitter" who is responsible for his injuries) is how I don't want to be going through this alone, how I want and need some comfort and assurance in this, the safety of someone else by my side to cope with this with me and to offer comfort in my distress about it all. And yet there is, as always, no one. No one.

And I'm just weary. Weary and trying to maintain an adult state and be present and available for the care of my buddy when what I could more easily do is regress into the giving up state of depression. I've been fighting it up to now for my own sake and with small steps of hope, but this latest painful trial has come when there is nothing ahead to look toward and I'm confronted with anger, with the heartless selfishness of humanity on so many several sides, with the emptiness of ALL... I feel like a balloon never tied off, released accidentally, whirling around with a screech and as the air inside starts to finally runnnnnn out...

I heard the Governor of Colorado today offer this quote - am I the only one who thought he offered it soooo misguidedly and without understanding the context around which the author wrote it? - He offered only the very first line but the rest is so very important from the author's intent and mindset! "The world breaks everyone and afterward many are strong at the broken places. But those that will not break it kills. It kills the very good and the very gentle and the very brave impartially. If you are none of these you can be sure it will kill you too but there will be no special hurry." Ernest Hemingway

Should I break? Someone tell me how and maybe I'd do it. I think I keep resisting... and here seems to be my fate spelled out.

Who is in the lifeboat?

I read this great quote a few days ago in "Patience with God" by Frank Schaeffer, and laughed very hard over it.  He said that he would rather be in a lifeboat with Christopher Hitchens (the avowed atheist) than with any hardline evangelical/fundamentalist Christian.  His reasoning was that Hitchens wouldn't try to make the lifeboat sink in order to make Jesus come back sooner and that Hitchens might even bring along a case of wine.

I've gotten to thinking tonight about lifeboats and life(giving) resources, and thinking about who is in my "lifeboat."  Wondering what to do about a partner, a boat mate, who consumes more resources than I do.  Who consumes more of MY resources, who seems to need, or at least want, always more of and from ME than I do, ever, from him. Most of the time I find myself building structures, internal and external, and contemplating survival strategies.

Does he want more than he "should"?  Do I have less to give than I "should"?  Can we ever come to resolution or sustainable middle ground about the allocation of resources?  I don't know how to negotiate fairly and well when it seems like I turn into myself to fill my need while he seems to turn to me to fill his.

I find myself ... I want to turn inward more so as to avoid becoming stingy or selfish.  Harder faster wiser boundaries so that I retain integrity of self and don't descend beyond the precipice of the slippery slope I know this all to be.

All requires vigilance, and the energy and awareness and time to see, contemplate, know, understand -- these things that seem only available when I do well what my previous post considered.

Must continue to seek my internal North.  I alone hold the compass on this lifeboat.  I never had a navigation course so I'm charting by instinct and the star chart of life experience.

A few weeks ago I sailed for the first time with a gracious skipper who believes in teaching charting and navigation the "old fashioned" way.  It was just me and him on his boat, and he sat me down first thing in front of some charts (maps) and gave me a couple of strange tools and told me to find magnetic north instead of true north.  He taught me the difference, and I learned that "true north" is less reliable than one might think based on the name.  Magnetic north changes as Earth revolves and the other planets in our solar system also move.  None of it is as simplistic as where the "North Pole" is located.  It's all rather organic, changing along with nature and very life forces of matter, land, sea, etc.

This knowledge brings me some comfort.  If I expected things to be easy, clear cut, predictable, unchanging, as set and dependable as an "always NORTH of North POLE" I could grow very discombobulated by the uncertainties of life, the questions, the what-ifs or "wait 'n sees."

Boundaries are important when living aboard a lifeboat.  So are charting skills, which the ancient mariners had based on knowledge of the heavens - the sky and the stars.  There's an awful lot of wisdom to be contemplated there...  

Searching for an internal North

How does one go on when dreams have been shattered. Fallen to the ground like the house of cards they apparently were.  Crushed into worthless pieces like cubic zirconia smashed under the weight of a thousand betrayals in life.

I need something new to live for, but I can't figure out what to make it be.  Faith is all but gone, the few remnants scattered and chased into the wind daily by the follies of crazy men (and women) full of certainty and hatred.  (Where does love shine a true light anymore?  I would walk toward that light, could I find it.)

The hopeful dreams of youth have been roundly disassembled, rendered mute as the pathetic naivetes they were.

Searching for an internal North.

I want to be at home more.  I want to keep interpreting, but not to be running all over kingdom come at every hour, increasing my carbon footprint and burning myself and my body and spirit out.  I want to be in a writing kind of life.  I want to find some sort of spiritual center for myself, from within myself.  I want a sense of peace and security.  I want more simplicity -- though "more" and "simplicity" sound as though they must surely be at odds with each other, so maybe that is the problem to start, so maybe what I really want is less.

I need to reconnect to self.  To do that, I need to run less, be still more.  Read, journal, think, write, be present with the pets and absorb their innocent committed love more.  Can I own that this is the kind of person I am, the kind of person I must be in order to be whole?  To feel, think, learn, write, muse, rest, contemplate, breathe, meditate, be still, be active in mind but less so in body?  A different sort of productivity - can I own it, respect it?  Can I find security in it and trust in some form of "higher power" to take care of the necessities?  I can be uber responsible, take every job I can get, but lose my soul in the process.  Can I say "no" and trust that I will still be taken care of?

Can I find the pause button, that magic gold watch from that t.v. show I loved when I was a kid, push the stop watch button on it and all motion around me pause so I can take time to examine and understand better?

Do I have the strength, the gumption, to do another reorg?  I feel I must, for the current pace seems unsustainable.  Worse, not only will it run me dry very quickly over time, but it leaves me empty and becomes a self-perpetuating cycle of increasing emptiness leading to madness.  But to do a full-stop, a reassessment, and then to take the necessary steps to make change . . . by now experience dictates that this will take time and concerted effort.

My guiding thought at the beginning of this year was Simplify. I made some initial good-effort stabs at it.  But it seems that the horses and wagons need to be circled now.  No one else will do it for me.  What is truly important to me?  What do I truly need to sustain and fulfill me?  How do I give that to myself?