blissmonger.com

while you're not looking

You are the creator of your own experience, and you do it while you're not looking.

~Abraham-Hicks

experiencing the snark

Ah, there it is.

I'd been waiting for it all day.

Hanging in a snark-laced space for the better part of the day, I hoped/knew/expected to be feeling better at some point.

Holding out for a shift that eventually had to appear, but took its sweet time, or so it seemed to this soul that was experiencing the snark.

We can be pissy about how long that takes.

And we can be pissy about having to dip below boredom, too. Why not feel great all the time?

Contrast. Contrast infuses the every day with necessary, life-giving dichotomy.

But I digress.

What seemed different this time was my awareness of something about to show up. And when even just a layer of this relief, this movement up the emotional scale, this shift shaping finally happened, I could feel it in my body and intended to catalog the sensation for further documentation.

Or not.

The attentive/expectant waiting is what deserved the notice, not the eventual overhaul of my mood. The latter is a given. The former is by no means standard issue.

The snark isn't completely gone, either. After a leisurely bath and a good night's sleep however, I imagine bliss will be back in full force in the morning.

The waiting is where so many unarticulated decisions are made that determine how long it takes and how deep it goes. The rest of the evening could go so many different ways.

I have my bliss snorkel on and am near the surface.

Just waiting.

beauty, giving, receiving

Single-strand, eye candy creations to consider for your gift-giving delight. Their faces will light up when they take the presentation of the box in their hands, read the blissmonger quote on the tag, untie the hemp twine and breathe in the experience.

And then thank you profusely.

The beauty of giving, and of receiving.

Native

Magic

 

Sleek

Earrings and bracelets to match are easily arranged.

you've got a friend

When I was in sixth grade, I moved away from familiar surroundings and acclimated to yet another new town. Carole King's Tapestry album soothed many a weary and angst-filled 'tween moment, and the stylus on my stereo must have ridden the vinyl grooves of You've Got A Friend maybe a thousand times.

I've got different resources now and different friends, including this one, to short-circuit the angst and refocus it into energy for living the way I want to.

This one's for you, cuz you've got a friend.

06 6

cognitively dour

I think that's the term.

But I'm too lazy to go look it up in the book I'm reading--generosity: an enchantment by Richard Powers.

So if i get it wrong, I'll figure it out and fix it later. I like the gist of it, so I'm leaving it for now.

A novel about a happiness genome. And those who are supposedly genetically predisposed to thinking negatively are cognitively dour.

God, I love that.

Fascinating enough of a concept to get me to bring the book home from the shelf at the library. I'm not a big fiction reader--haven't been for decades--but this grabbed me, and I listened.

I glanced at some reviews on Amazon a little while ago thinking I could verify the dour term, but I stopped myself, because I want to have my experience of it, not someone else's. There are hints of subterfuge and foul play, but that's probably not what I'll take away from it.

My experience of it will be through my filters, of which one of many, of course, is blissmongering. Which predisposes me to observe and appreciate and launch another sequence of events and circumstances from there.

So I'll probably have an entirely different experience than most. I'll take what serves me and leave the rest.

I won't feel compelled to focus on the denouement. I might not even get that far if the value of the story for me has evaporated by then, given my opinion on forcing oneself to finish what on starts to read.

I love that the narrator knows Chicago. I love that the narrator is an observer. I love that the characters get to witness up close what the choice to live happily, no matter what, despite all evidence to the contrary, looks and feels like.

Ooo. I just got an image of the cast for the movie version.

Glam--several versions

Version A:

Version B:

 

Version C:

flexibility enabled through a solid foundation

The Golden Gate Bridge is a stunning example
of flexibility enabled through a solid foundation.
It can sway some twenty feet at the center of its
one-mile span. Our beliefs have the same power
to sustain us through whatever comes our way,
if we let them.

~Blissmonger

a shudder down my gullet

Usually the topic of homework sends a shudder down my gullet.

I don't look forward to it, and I put as little energy into the conquering of it as possible, because it is an endless landslide of inertia that leads to nowhere except columns filled with numbers in gradebooks.

And I used to be one of those gradebook owners.

But today for some energetically profound reason, homework was a piece of cake. The tasks in front of Little Man and I were accomplished one by one, with gusto and even a bit of enthusiasm, until I realized free hours of time stretched out in front of us, a folder ready with pieces of paper to hand in tomorrow in the right hand pocket labeled "done".

Could be the recent lock-down on repetitive video viewing. Could be that he just so happened to like the homework he had. Could be that I was rested and able to redirect without strong-arming him.

Who knows.

But it was glorious.

And I appreciate that more than words can say.

Usually the topic of being "chosen", or not, sends a shudder down my gullet.

I don't look forward to it, and when it's happened in the past, the wincing and wounded pride involved was been painful.

But not this time.

Could be the hours of listening to Abraham-Hicks recordings. Could be requirements I've recently been honing in on, the foundations of what I need to live my life authentically. Could be that I don't particularly feel the need to be "chosen" right now.

Who knows.

But it was glorious not to wince, not to whine, not to wonder, "why not me?"

Because it is so not about that anymore.

And I appreciate that more than words can say.

everything is OK

I want to do some kind of performance guerrilla art like this. Ideas, anyone?

the poem I found on my external hard drive

the occurrence

muted,
vague,
listless,
our line of sight
obstructed
by the cacophony of "other".

distracting us from our real work,
from rediscovering
our selves.

we bear
the familial trunk-load
of can't-won't-shouldn't

until The Occurrence.

prompted by some
primordial insufflation,
the tiniest shoot of
"I've had enough"
pushes up
to the surface.

numb begins to feel.

details form around "that/not-that".

work, yes.
years in the making, yes.
but where else
could you possibly be going.

#LOA #Abraham and something more

Amazingness.

I still come back to this and read it, every day.

This is why we're here.

To remind each other. With our words, actions and thoughts, of who we really are.

Consider yourself reminded.

requirements

~Requirements~

Fun. Awareness. Appreciation. Ups and downs. Knowing. Not knowing. Exercise of the soul, the mind and the body. Work. Play. Connection with others. Solitude. Change. Routine. Good food. Flowing abundance through me and back out into the general stream of the universe. Laughter. Love. Faith. Good coffee. Hot showers. Leisurely baths. Paper. Color. Texture. Dreams. Inspiration. Friends. Enemies. Ecstasy. Pain. Source. Fire. Water. Air. Earth. Ether. Children. Organic dark chocolate. Black licorice. Basil. Cilantro. Cumin. Books. Film. Sleep. Expression.

~Appreciation~

Fun. Awareness. Appreciation. Ups and downs. Knowing. Not knowing. Exercise of the soul, the mind and the body. Work. Play. Connection with others. Solitude. Change. Routine. Good food. Flowing abundance through me and back out into the general stream of the universe. Laughter. Love. Faith. Good coffee. Hot showers. Leisurely baths. Paper. Color. Texture. Dreams. Inspiration. Friends. Enemies. Ecstasy. Pain. Source. Fire. Water. Air. Earth. Ether. Children. Organic dark chocolate. Black licorice. Basil. Cilantro. Cumin. Books. Film. Sleep. Expression.

making the world a better place, one electromagnetic field at a time

"It feels good when our efforts are gratefully acknowledged and hurtful when our efforts are met with indifference, grudgingly offered thanks, or ingratitude. The effect of receiving gratitude goes beyond an emotional or cognitive satisfaction in knowing that we have contributed something useful, however. Modern research in the emerging field of neurocardiology suggests an intriguing physiological basis for why receiving heartfelt gratefulness is itself physiologically beneficial for the receiver.

Recall that researchers have shown that gratitude and the related positive emotions of love and appreciation are associated with a smooth, ordered, coherent pattern in the heart's rhythmic activity (see Figure 3.1). What was left unsaid earlier was that the heart itself generates an electromagnetic field. In fact, the heart is the most powerful generator of electromagnetic energy in the human body, producing the largest rhythmic electromagnetic field of any of the body's organs. The heart's electrical field is about sixty times greater in amplitude than the electrical activity generated by the brain. Furthermore, the magnetic field produced by the heart is more than five thousand times greater in strength than the field generated by the brain and can be detected a number of feet away from the body, in all directions, using a device known as a magnetometer. Prompted by findings that a person's cardiac field is modulated by his or her different emotional states, several studies have now documented that the electromagnetic field generated by the heart may actually transmit information that can be received by others.

"For example, when two people are at a conversational distance, the electromagnetic signal generated by one person's heart can influence the other person's brain rhythms. When an individual is generating a coherent heart rhythm, synchronization between that individual's brainwaves and another person's heartbeat is more likely to occur. In other words, one person's brain waves harmonize with the other person's heart waves, an effect that has been measured between individuals up to five feet apart. This deep form of communication establishes a heartfelt connection between people, resulting in perceptions of, among other things, really being understood and appreciated by the other. So when a person expresses heartfelt gratitude toward us, there is the potential for us to experience all sorts of benefits, driven by this exchange of electromagnetic energy. What kicks this energy exchange system into gear is the coherent heart rhythm produced by grateful feelings. The flip side is that a force this strong may also repel, possibly explaining why we feel an immediate dislike for someone whom we barely know, as well as providing a physiological explanation for why perceptions of ingratitude are so profoundly aversive. "

excerpt from THANKS!: How the New Science of Gratitude Can Make You Happier, by Robert A. Emmons, Ph.D.

~*~

"What kicks this energy exchange system into gear is the coherent heart rhythm produced by grateful feelings."

Another scientist stepping up to provide evidence for the skeptics among us of how blissmongering changes the world.

Focusing on what's intended and wanted and appreciated before it gets here, rather than continually taking score of what's wrong along the way, has documented, physiological benefit for those who practice this seemingly radical world view, and for those around them.

We really do help make the planet a better place, one electromagnetic field at a time.

bliss bling for the holidays

Need some gift ideas for the holidays for your beloved, or for yourself? Add the URL of this post to your Wish List, and see what happens. 

Swooning will occur when she opens the box. Click here to purchase.

 

I do commission designs for the special people in your life. Click here to initiate the talks for a special design. She will love it.

Earrings and bracelets can accompany these necklaces. Click here for details.

random Rumi

The grief you cry out from

draws you toward union.

~*~

Cry out! Don't be stolid and silent

with your pain. Lament! And let the milk

of loving flow into you.

The hard rain and wind

are ways the cloud has

to take care of us.

Be patient.

Respond to every call

that excites your spirit.

Ignore those that make you fearful

and sad, that degrade you

back toward disease and death.

~*~

Having nothing produces provisions.

Ask a difficult question,

and the marvelous answer appears.

~*~

Muhammed says, "I come before dawn

to chain you and drag you off."

It's amazing, and funny, that you have to be pulled away

from being tortured, pulled out

into this Spring garden,

but that's the way it is.

Almost everyone must be bound and dragged here.

Only a few come on their own...

Those that make you return, for whatever reason,

to God's solitude, be grateful to them.

Worry about the others, who give you

delicious comforts that keep you from prayer.

Friends are enemies sometimes,

and enemies friends...

If you can't do this work yourself, don't worry.

You don't even have to make a decision,

one way or another. The Friend, who knows

a lot more than you do, will bring difficulties,

and grief, and sickness, as medicine, as happiness,

as the essence of the moment when you're beaten,

when you hear Checkmate...

~*~

You could be moving in a circuit without wing,

nourished without eating, soverign without a throne.

No longer subject to fortune, you could be luck itself,

if you would rise from sleep, leave

the market arguing, and learn that

you own essence is your wealth.

from The Vigil

Every holy person seems to have a different doctrine
and practice, but there's really only one work.

Someone listening to a millstone falls asleep.
No matter. The stone keeps turning.

Water from the mountain
far above the mill keeps flowing down.
The sleepers will get their bread.

Underground it moves, without sound, and without
repetition. Show us where that source of speech is
that has no alphabet. That spaciousness.

Where we are now is a narrow fantasy
that comes from there, and the actual, outside world
is even narrower. Narrowness is pain,
and the cause of narrowness is manyness.

Creation was spoken with one sound, BE.
The two letters, B and E,
to record it,
came after.
The meaning and its resonance are one.

~Rumi

train tracks in Holly

from Send the Chaperones Away

Inside me a hundred beings
are putting their fingers to their lips and saying,
"That's enough for now. Shhhh." Silence
is an ocean. Speech is a river.

When the ocean is searching for you, don't walk
to the language-river. Listen to the ocean,
and bring your talky business
to an end.

Traditional words are just babbling
in that presence, and babbling is a substitute
for sight. When you sit down beside your beloved,
send the chaperones away, the old women
who brought you together.

When you are mature and with your love,
the love letters and matchmakers
seem irritating.
         You might read those letters,

but only to teach beginners about love. One who sees
grows silent. When you're with one of those,
be still and quiet, unless he asks you
to talk...

~Rumi

the pickaxe

Some commentary on I was a hidden treasure,
and I desired to be known: tear down

this house. A hundred thousand new houses
can be built fro the transparent yellow carnelian

buried beneath it, and the only way to get to that
is to do the work of demolishing and then

digging under the foundations. With that value
in hand all the new construction will be done

without effort. And anyway, sooner or later this house
will fall down on its own. The jewel treasure will be

uncovered, but it won't be yours then. The buried
wealth is you pay for doing the demolition,

the pick and shovel work. If you wait and just
let it happen, you'd bite your hand and say,

"I didn't do as I knew  should have." This
is a rented house. You don't own the deed.

You have a lease, and you've set up a little shop,
where you barely make a living sewing patches

on torn clothing. Yet only a few feet underneath
are two veins, pure red and bright gold carnelian.

Quick! Take the pickaxe and pry the foundation.
You've got to quit this seamstress work.


What does the patch-sewing mean,, you ask. Eating
and drinking. The heavy cloak of the body

is always getting torn. You patch it with food,
and other restless ego-satisfaction. Rip up

one board from the shop floor and look into
the basement. You'll see two glints in the dirt.

~Rumi

Humankind is being led along an evolving course

Humankind is being led along an evolving course,
through this migration of intelligences,
and though we seem to be sleeping,
there is an inner wakefulness
that directs the dream,

and that will eventually startle us back
to the truth of who we are.

~Rumi

I wish I knew what you wanted

The Blocked Road

I wish I knew what you wanted.
You block the road and won't give me rest.
You pull my lead-rope one way, the the other.
You act cold, my darling!
Do you hear what I say?

Will this night of talking ever end?
Why am I still embarrassed and timid about you?
You are thousands. You are one.
Quiet, but articulate.

Your name is Spring.
Your name is wine.
Your name is nausea
that comes from wine!

You are my doubting
and the lightpoints
in my eyes.

You are every image, and yet
I'm homesick for you.

Can I get there?
Where the deer pounces on the lion,
where the one I'm after's
after me?

This drum and these words keep pounding!
Let them both smash through their coverings
into silence.

~Rumi

are you jealous of the ocean's generosity?

Are you jealous of the ocean's generosity?
Why would you refuse to give
this joy to anyone?

Fish don't hold the sacred liquid in cups!
They swim the huge fluid freedom.

~Rumi

be the change

retire the reactivity and acquire some creativity

You cannot ask for improvement until you stand in a place that causes the improvement to occur to you. ~ Abraham-Hicks

~*~

Outrage is helpful when you're in a place of despair. Outrage becomes misplaced glue in the problem mode. Pointing fingers and reactivity only cement the problem ever more in place. Unplug the energy from the problem. Stoke the fires of creativity. Leave the power mongers ignored and eventually powerless because you un-selfrighteously took your power back.

It belongs to you in the first place.

I require

I require that I pass by the cave of “I don't deserve/I'm not worthy/I'm a fraud” when on my morning saunter through the synapses of my mind. There are other more hospitable land formations that serve me that are just as accessible, if not more so, with even a fraction of the practice I’ve dedicated to the cave over the decades. I require that I see that giving in to entering that cave is a result of believing a lie, a lie that is certainly laughable at best, debilitating at worst, but still, a lie.

a mouse and a frog

A mouse and a frog meet every morning on the riverbank.

They sit  in a nook of the ground and talk.

Each morning, the second they see each other,

they open easily, telling stories and dreams and secrets,

empty of any fear or suspicious holding back.

To watch and listen to these two

is to understand how, as it's written,

sometimes when two beings come together,

Christ becomes visible.

The mouse starts laughing out a story he hasn't thought of

in five years, and the telling might take five years!

There's no blocking the speechflow-river-running-

all-carrying momentum that true intimacy is.

Bitterness doesn't have a chance

between those two.

The-God-messenger, Khidr, touches a roasted fish.

It leaps off the grill back into the water.

Friend sits by Friend, and the tablets appear.

They read the mysteries

off each other's foreheads.

But one day the mouse complains, "There are times

when I want sohbet [mystical conversation on mystical subjects], and you're out in the water,

jumping around where you can't hear me.

We meet at this appointed time,

but the text says, Lovers pray constantly.

Once a day, once a week, five times an hour,

is not enough. Fish like we are

need the ocean around us!"

Do camel bells say, Let's meet back here Thursday night?

Ridiculous. They jingle

together continuously,

talking while the camel walks.

Do you pay regular visits to yourself?

Don't argue or answer rationally.

Let us die,

                and dying, reply.

~*~

The mystery does not get clearer by repeating the question,

nor is it bought with going to amazing places.

Until you've kept your eyes

and your wanting still for fifty years,

you don't begin to cross over from confusion.

~Rumi

he sputtered, stopped and disappeared

I appreciate the dream I was in the middle of downloading when I woke up this morning. I was on a train to see my brother in Seattle, but the car I was riding in was more like the front room of an elderly woman’s house, full of bureaus and other pieces of furniture that could hold a plethora of collectibles–-my collectibles.

There were other people riding in this car with me, and as I started disgorging this old stuff from the drawers they were entombed in, I would just set them out to see who would be interested in them and take them for their own. One drawer had disposable cameras. One had little boxes of various kinds. One had statues. Another had flat rocks with designs on them. Occasionally I would decide to keep something that I really liked, and then continue purging.

I kept listening for the announcement of arriving in Seattle soon, and asked those around me a few times how much longer it would be, if I had enough time to finish what I was doing. A stranger came up to me and touched me and started talking to me like he knew me, and I started telling him what my requirements were around that.

He sputtered, stopped and disappeared.

Letters to a Young Poet

Most happenings are beyond expression; they exist where a word has never intruded.

~*~

If your everyday life appears to be unworthy subject matter, do not complain to life. Complain to yourself. Lament that you are not poet enough to call up its wealth. For the creative artist there is no poverty--nothing is insignificant or unimportant.

~*~

In this there is no measuring of time. A year doesn't matter; ten years are nothing. To be an artist means not to compute or count; it means to ripen as the tree, which does not force its sap, but stands unshaken in the storms of spring with no fear that summer might not follow. It will come regardless. But it comes only to those who live as though eternity stretches before them, carefree, silent, and endless. I learn it daily, learn it with many pains, for which I am grateful: Patience is all!

~*~

Why should anyone wish to exchange a child's wise incomprehension for resistance and disdain, since the incomprehension is aloneness, and resistance and disdain are an involvement in the things you seek to escape from.

~*~

If there are some who outwardly give the impression of granting more freedom, know that there really exists none that is related to the important things that make up real life.

~*~

What is keeping you...from living your life as though it were one painful beautiful day in the history of a great pregnancy? Don't you see that everything that happens becomes a beginning again and again?

~*~

That is basically the only case of courage required of us: to be courageous in the face of the strangest, the most whimsical and unexplainable thing that we could encounter...The fear of the unexplainable not only impoverished the existence of the individual, but also caused the relationship of one person to another to be limited. It is as though fear has caused something to be lifted out of the riverbed of limitless possibilities to a fallow stretch of shore where nothing happens.

For it is not inertia alone that causes the unspeakably monotonous and unrenewed human condition to repeat itself again and again. It is the aversion to anything new, any unpredictable experience, which is believed to be untenable.

~*~

We have no reason to mistrust our world, for it is not against us. If it has terrors, they are our own terrors. If it had precipices, they belong to us. If dangers are present, we must try to love them.

~*~

Why should you want to exclude any anxiety, any grief, any melancholy from your life, since you do not know what it is that these conditions are accomplishing in you? 

~*~

It is always my wish that you might find enough patience within yourself to endure, and enough innocence to have faith. It is my wish that you might gain more and more trust in whatever is difficult for you, in your aloneness, among other things. Allow life to happen to you. Believe me, life is right in all cases...Every advancement is good if it pervades your whole bloodstream, when it is not due to intoxication, not due to being conditioned to sadness, but to transparent joy. Do you understand what I mean?

Your doubt can become a good attribute if you discipline it. It must become a knowing, it must become the critic. Ask it, as often as it wishes to spoil something, why something is ugly. Demand proof of it, test it, and you will find it perhaps perplexed and confused, perhaps also in protest. But don't give in; demand arguments. Act with alertness and responsibility, each and every time, and the day will come when doubt will change from a destroyer to become one of your best fellow-workers, perhaps the wisest of all that have a part in building your life.

Rilke8

swooning will result when she opens the box

 

Blissmonger jewelry excels at unique design that augments your beloved's personality.

Tell me about her essence. Send me a photo of what she has in her present collection.

If she owns something in need of repair or tucked away because of lost elements, I specialize in reinvigorating left-for-unwearable treasures.

Either way, swooning will result when she opens the box.

When's the last time that happened?

Contact me for details.

flow

Flow.

The Csikszentmihalyi kind of flow.

That's what was dancing through my veins yesterday.

I was fully engaged in the pursuit in front of me, namely design, pulling in color and texture and hue, reveling in the inspirations that popped into my head.

No distractions, no drive-by negative thoughts, no interruptions of my reverie on a soulular level.

This is living, right here.

Flow.

corners on the curving sky

Our earth is round, and, among other things

That means that you and I can hold

completely different

Points of view and both be right.

The difference of our positions will show

Stars in your window. I cannot even imagine.

Your sky may burn with light,

While mine, at the same moment,

Spreads beautiful to darkness.

Still, we must choose how we separately corner

The circling universe of our experience.

Once chosen, our cornering will determine

The message of any star and darkness we

encounter.

~Anonymous

I Shall Paint My Nails Red

Because a bit of color is a public service.

Because I am proud of my hands.

Because it will remind me I'm a woman.

Because I will look like a survivor.

Because I can admire them in traffic jams.

Because my daughter will say "ugh!".

Because my lover will be surprised.

Because it is quicker than dyeing my hair.

Because it is a ten-minute moratorium.

Because it is reversible.

~Carole Satyamurti

all one can really ask for

That pain that comes and goes

it feels like life.

It feels like being awake and satisfied even though

you might not have slept much last night.

It feels real

and that is all one can really ask for.

hell, no

in front of his wife

I tried controlling myself but it did no good.

My senses are

aflame.

I heard You singing.

That started all my blessed madness.

I openly made love with everything in sight last night

and this morning

the constable showed up and wrote out twenty citations.

I guess I should not have jumped naked

on him in front

of his

wife.

The hypocrite, he wouldn't have complained

at all

if we were

alone.

~Mira

stay with me awhile

I lived with her night and day--

the Nag.

I don't mean my wife or my mother-in-law,

they are both angels.

I am talking about that voice in me that would not

let me hold each moment

as I did my son when

he was born.

How to slay the Nag?

I am afraid I have become fond of you,

dear student,

if I spoke the answer,

you might

run.

~Kabir

A Breast in the Sky

I hear talk about the famous.

I hear talk about different cities.

The most intimate events of families come to my ears.

I hear about temples and

mosques and

saints.

All that can be said I have heard.

All that can be wanted I

have seen.

My interest in this world has waned though,

not because I am

depressed.

A fish in a bowl I was,

a bottom feeder,

but now I nurse

upon the breast in the sky.

~Rabia

some fill with each good rain

There are different wells within your heart.

Some fill with each good rain,

Others are far too deep for that.

In one well

You have just a few precious cups of water,

That "love" is literally something of yourself,

It can grow as slow as a diamond

If it is lost.

Your love

Should never be offered to the mouth of a

Stranger,

Only to someone

Who has the valor and daring

To cut pieces of their soul off with a knife

Then weave them into a blanket

To protect you.

There are different wells within us.

Some fill with each good rain,

Others are far, far too deep

For that.

~Hafiz

damn thirsty

First

The fish needs to say,

"Something ain't right about this

Camel ride--

And I'm Feeling so damn

Thirsty."

~Hafiz

pretty shiny things

 

Currently available at Sweetgrass in downtown Davisburg.

I want to go deep

Jane, I tried, I really did.

Fueled with enthusiasm for this endeavor, I eagerly started reading Sense and Sensibility. After experiencing several chapters of unrequited enthusiasm however I realized I had to put it down, for good, knowing that I would continue to enjoy your work from a 20th-century vantage point through the directors and the screenwriters and the actors and the films that have been inspired by them.

In another lifetime I rehabbed my reading students from this "should" of having to finish a book that they had started. 

Guess what? You don't have to.

It's no reflection on your character or your ability to discipline yourself or your tastes and refinement.

You simply are choosing to engage with text that engages you. 

No guilt, no cultural deprivation, no reproach from the inner censor, who BTW would not have a voice at all if it hadn't been implanted and internalized at some point in your childhood.

You are simply choosing to engage with what engages you.

Attempting the opposite provides the evidence of how inappropriate it is. Varying degrees of skin crawling let you know that there is something/somewhere/someone else you have a prior engagement with, and you need to go find out who/what/where it is.

There is something else going on here too. When I invest my time in a book, or a person, or a circumstance, I invest my soul in it as well. I want a connection that takes me to a place I couldn't go without that particular interaction.

I want to go deep.

I want to go deep, a layer or two or ten underneath the surface treatment of life and what's offered up in this culture as pinnacle experience. I've tunneled my way under the industries of education, spirituality, self-help, health care, food supply, media and marketing, to discover over time a common discrepancy between what is status quo and what is possible.

I've learned that reactivity around those discrepancies is an industry too, and only helps keep them firmly in place.

Beyond pointing fingers and beyond the self-recrimination for not measuring up, there's freedom to be found in that layer of deep.

Jane, you "got" it because that's what your life was all about--making choices that weren't popular but that allowed you to maintain your personal integrity. So I know you don't mind as I take this book back to the library only partially inhaled.

You didn't settle. You supported inhaling the whole enchilada.

I go there on a regular basis, and I know that there are others who are seeking the relief and the re-invigoration that only going deep can provide.

I call it blissmongering. 

I work with people who are craving the freedom of going deep, even though the thought of going there might trigger some occasional resistance, or disbelief, or uncertainty.

You probably have accomplished some amazing things in your life, measured by the usual yardsticks of the culture. But you've also asked yourself, "Is that all there is?" and you know the answer.

Hell no, there's more. Your previous successes just didn't teach you how to get there. I hold the space for what's beyond those barriers and help you get to what you're craving.

You.

I have openings for two deep exploration clients.

Contact me for details.

Your first assignment will be to watch Sense and Sensibility.

Popcorn's on me.

did I really throw out my ear plugs?

Did I really throw out my earplugs?

I must have.

They are nowhere to be seen, and there aren't that many nooks and crannies around here where they might be hiding.

Note to self: The next time you are about to do something you even get a twinge of possible fuzzy-on-the-details read on, write it down before you do it so your future self remembers what your former self did. Cuz she won't otherwise.

So of course tonight is the first night in awhile the need has arisen for the bloody things. I live near an exit ramp on an interstate, and some evenings I am able to hear the semis when they hit the rumble strips. Must be something about certain weather patterns carrying sound more than others, or something.

I've had those earplugs for at least four years, maybe more. They were connected by a length of cord, and I never lost them because of that cool feature. I believe I found them in the hunting aisle at Meijer. 

When my family was visiting, I remember picking the plugs up off the floor and thinking about what to do with them while the fam was here, vaguely considering whether I should invest in a new pair.

Guess where I'm going tomorrow.

So why can't I sleep? I've been on this binge of going to bed earlier than most adults in the Western Hemisphere, getting as much sleep as my body tells me it wants, and it feels amazing not to be sleep deprived. That hasn't been true for many decades, I'm sure. Too many thrilling ideas buzzing through my synapses tonight? Possibly. Too much anticipation charging up the cortisol levels? Maybe. 

Maybe that Jane Austen novel will do the trick.

the jane austen book club

Watched this film yesterday. Lots of Jane swirling in my awareness these days. Even though I'm an English major, none of her titles ever showed up on a required reading list in college. Amazing, I think. So I'm deciding to delve into her worlds, and pondering which one to choose first. Perhaps the choice will be made for me by what's available at the library, what the cover looks like, or what jumps out at me from the shelves.

The hints of winter coming are getting more and more insistent, and my body is winding down as well. Gave myself permission to heed its call and slept more than my let's-get-busy-on-that-project side might have normally allowed the last few days. Feels good in an honoring my rhythms kind of way, not in a pull-the-covers-up-over-my-head sort of way. Maybe that's why I was cleaning like a crazed nesting person yesterday--in anticipation of what's to come, season wise.

I'm looking forward to it. Sure, the loss of daylight sucks, the snow makes things slow and precarious, but then there's fireplaces, and snuggling up to a good book, and idea simmering time that only winter can hold the space for. Snowshoes. Slowcookers. Coffee. Tea. Given I'm a Northern Woods girl by upbringing but not by birth, I embrace this version of the frozen tundra in which I live because it's balmy compared to where I originally learned this kind of weather, where the handle on the stick shift on the steering wheel snapped off in my dad's hands one frigid morning on which the temperature was probably -35---that's 35 below zero. Without the windchill.

Balmy, I tell you.

So Jane, you may be joining me this winter for some romps into the psyches of human beings that are, according to everything I've read about you, quite unique and revered by your contemporaries, men writers to boot. They couldn't do what you did, and some weren't afraid to say it.

Excellent.

making room for our own fears

OK, two more David Whyte quotes, and then I'm done, For now.

Making room for our own fears, we suddenly have room for the fears of others. Once we have renounced the need to live without suffering, to be special, to be exempt from t he losses and doubts that have afflicted all people since the beginning of time, we can see the difficulties of others without being afraid ourselves. Our fearful, disappointed surface face starts to fall away. We can welcome other people into our lives because no matter their fears, they do not make us afraid. Suffering is the natural cyclical visitation that comes from being alive. We can be present, we can give them a listening ear; we can even be helpful and useful to them...We can suddenly see a larger person than the one in front of us who is afraid, but we understand that misunderstanding and that disconnect--we have traveled that way ourselves.

~*~*~

A strange and seemingly eternal dynamic that seems to keep up both apart and firmly cemented together in any marriage is out refusal to give our partners the very thing they most want in the relationship. There seems to be something almost instinctual about our targeted withholding of specific forms of requested love. We withhold these intimacies not only because we sometimes cannot find the wherewithal to offer them, bur many times because some interior whispered voice tells us that what is being requested is the very thing partners must grant themselves. That we, in effect, cannot supply what is being demanded, even if we tried. Some wiser part of us refuses to buckle under the coercion and though it may not be able to articulate why, withholds the desperately needed commodity in an unconscious effort to educate the other person into their own inherited sense of lack.

~*~*~

OK. David goes back to the library, and who knows what sublime poetry of life will show up next.

the existentially disappointed gentleman

The existentially disappointed gentleman on the other side of the fire had no idea how much his defensive posture reinforced his notions of the world, what he had driven off or what had not even come out of hiding to be driven off in the first place. He did not meet my daughter, because he did not even know she was there. How many other possibilities in life had hidden or run the other way at his appearance? To him the world constantly withheld itself from him and that was another piece of evidence pointing to the equally awful way the world was made.

~David Whyte, The Three Marriages

~*~*~

More David Whyte goodness.

I finished the book several days ago, but the nuggets of wisdom haven't quite exhausted themselves yet.

I loved this section. It leaped out at me from the page, with a "Yes! Another great example of law of attraction. What shows up is what you believe to be true."

There is another gentleman at the very same party, sitting by the very same fire, who does get to meet David's daughter, is in fact almost bowled over by David's daughter, who was eight at the time, because his presence, his essence called her to him.

That old saying, something about vinegar and flies, that's law of attraction in action too.

Like attracts like.

Nothing new here, but somehow it is each time it resonates on a deeper level, registers a cha-ching with the universal laws.

Cha-ching.

There's that old shadow-side magic again

No real conversation can occur without some vulnerability. We often close the conversation by forcing ourselves to make a premature and sometimes absurd choice between our self-preservation and having a proper conversation, even when there is no real threat to our person. We exaggerate and even create a sense of threat so that we are saved the necessity of a real dialogue. Calling someone a "little Hitler" may feel satisfying at the time, but it is a very efficient way of closing down any possibilities of redemption, either for the little Hitler I am judging or the little Hitler inside me that called him a little Hitler in the first place.

~David Whyte, The Three Marriages

There's that shadow-side magic again. Whatever we dislike in someone else wants desperately to be let out of the cages we've built for it because we think if it gets out for a second, all hell will break loose. Well, it might, but it might only because we've had those constraints on part of us for so long that any taste of freedom may be permission to let things fly. But all it wants is to be acknowledged and allowed some breathing room. And our fear of all hell breaking loose is probably unwarranted, based on some previous experience of someone else's behavior that can't begin to correlate with our own.

the lame lament of why we can't get that creative idea out there in the world

The greatest, most prized excuse for a writer is the lament over our lack of time in which to write. It is a false and paper-thin defense against another more difficult, underlying dynamic; the inability to have the will to find the time. It is quite sobering to find with experience that if we write only a hundred words a day--a normal paragraph--we will have a book of ninety thousand words in three years. Three years is about the average time for a good prolific writer to produce a new work, given that the first year is often spent not writing at all, the second year telling ourselves that we must write, and the third in a gradually increasing frenzy building up to perhaps three or four thousand words a day.

The sober truth is that any of us can find the time to write a book, no matter the schedule of unstoppable events in out life. Finding the part of us that wants to write the book is a different matter altogether. 

~David Whyte

~-o-~

Finding the part of us that wants to actually do whatever that creative endeavor is, is a different matter altogether. Finding the part of us that is willing to peel away the meaning or belief that is actually the culprit is a different matter altogether. Finding the part of us that is wants to divest ourselves of that doubt, fear and self-sabotage is a different matter altogether.

Finding the part of us that wants to love ourselves is a different matter altogether.

Advice to a human being on planet earth

It's like being in the ocean when the waves are really rough and high. They knock you over and you find yourself on the floor of the ocean with your face in the sand. The sand is getting in your nose and your mouth and your eyes and the waves are holding you down. But then the wave recedes and you stand back up and you walk until the next wave comes in and knocks you down and the same thing keeps happening. And each time you just stand back up and after a while it seems to you that the waves are getting smaller and smaller.

Chögyam Trungpa

revolutionary road

Revolutionary Road.

What an amazing journey through film.

I instantly identified with April's character, having tried the stay-at-home mom thing and almost lost my mind. And I can also identified with Frank's finding himself becoming the man he never wanted to be, showing up every day to a job that provides for his family that at the same time makes him want to scream.

Entertaining the idea of seizing an opportunity to live their lives the way they want to enlivens them both and offers a glimmer of hope for a time to an existence that is defined by hopeless emptiness. As one of the characters so brilliantly says, "Plenty of people are onto the emptiness, but it takes real guts to see the hopelessness."

This might have been the 50s and the stultifying societal expectations that went with them, but I don't think things have changed all that much. The chasm between happy and empty seems to be that much wider now because of the intense pressure that marketing puts on us to buy in to its clever distraction. The layers are deeper, more insidious, and more devastating given the extremes to which humanity goes to numb itself out, and with which the culture happily complies on many levels to supply us with.

We don't know and aren't told that there are other ways of living, because the perception is that money can't be made from uncontrollable, happy people. I disagree, and hold the space for the powers that be to catch on.

I had a great discussion with a friend after wards about how crucial communication is in any relationship, and I was able to articulate ideas I've had about how important it is to me that, if I should find myself in one again, to remain vigilant about living the way that makes sense for both parties, and not to so easily fall into gender roles or comfort roles or accommodating roles or any kind of role just because it's been beaten into our psyches from the culture.

Discussing how we want our lives to be together as first interactions happen, and not letting resentment get a foothold, is absolutely essential. That takes enormous dedication and persistence and awareness, but the investment holds such an incredible payoff, I don't see any viable alternative.

My casting director has the esteemed assignment of lining someone up for me who wants to walk that walk as well. With this bit of evidence showing up in the form of a film, I so appreciate it. It has given me grist for real-life application, I'm curious to see what shows up next.

*I appreciate being able to recognize when thoughts that don't serve me show up and that I have counter measures to diffuse them and not allow them to ruin my day. And when they work, I demonstrate to myself that I can trust myself, again and again. Important stuff.

*I appreciate the machinations that I put into effect with my casting director when that happens, shifting my thoughts and therefore shifting who and what comes to me. I love thinking about my casting director standing offstage with all kinds of things queued up beside him, and him sitting at a huge console, and every moment I do or think or say something, it alters what he sends across the stage, depending on any shift I might make in the trajectory of my thoughts, up or down  the emotional scale. I love thinking about that.

*I love remembering what it was like going to high school dances. The anticipation during the week building up because I knew how great it would feel to be in the gym and hearing the music, doing its thing to my nervous system and pumping tons of energy through me--never failed. I could count on losing a pound or two in those three hours. One particularly satisfying night, a group of four of us were standing up near the band and we started dancing together in a four cornered box that rotated and criss-crossed and twirled in on itself. We held that magic together for what seems like half an hour or so, two guys and two girls just blissing out to the music and the fun. Priceless.

how do we proceed

How do we proceed when there is actually not meant to be a plan, because we are actually working with a way of being, a slowly building conversation between want we want for ourselves and what we are most afraid of?

~David Whyte

~*~*~

With wild abandon and glee, that's how.