Connected and Committed

We are the immune system kicking in

"Any discomfort of your past activated the ego to experience suffering. Without the pain, the global immune system is not activated. We have done this individually and collectively. We are the immune system kicking in. We are also the imaginal cells that are the intelligence lying dormant in our own DNA. It is our job to find each other. We are part of the largest movement in the history of the world. There is no center to this movement. There is no spokesman and humans from all walks of life and corners of our world are turning their complaints into a commitment larger than themselves."

The Warrior Imaginal Cell
by Dr. Jeff Alexander

I have quieted down, stopped dancing

"Was he talking directly to you, Ang, with that submissive business?" Gallo jokes.

"Who knows? That was so weird." I think about the Angela Sheltons telling me to be independent and not rely on a man. Submissive means to yield oneself to the authority or will of another, like being controlled, kept silent, and having to behave. I realize as I drive onto the on-ramp that I've been submissive for the better part of my life. I was submissive with my dad in court when I was little. I was submissive in many of my past relationships. I have quieted down, stopped dancing, changed the way I dress, fixed my hairstyle, halted my creativity, and stopped singing all because these characteristics and actions made some men nervous or uncomfortable. I've been submissive.

~from Finding Angela Shelton by Angela Shelton

We learn very early to submit to other's opinions of us, make them sacrosanct, allow them to carry greater weight in our estimations of ourselves than they have a right to. We learn to look outside ourselves for validation of who we are and how we're doing, and along the way when we question that whole set-up, we are causing trouble. No one seems to want to name this thing, this fear, this power that fuels us--men, women, entire ethnic groups, entire countries, the entire planet--on a few levels and saps us of life on most others.

To name it would be pulling back the curtain of the Wizard of Oz, and for some reason that seems more threatening than enduring this partial life we are taught to lead.

We're afraid. We're afraid we'll be punished. We're afraid we'll fall apart if we let go of our known version of reality. We're afraid the economy will fall apart if we try something sustainable. We're afraid that it's too late to bring to life the dreams we have that pinch us awake momentarily from time to time, when we let them.

There is a name for this reign of fear: lies.

We learned to believe them, and we learned to tell them to ourselves over and over again so we keep believing them. 

We punish ourselves more than anyone else could. We won't fall apart. There are trillions to be made in a sustainable economy. It's not too late, ever.

Name it.

simple 33

I have no idea what this means, but it means something to someone.

photography by little man

Hamming it up in the doc's office. An hour and a half not totally wasted.

 

literary validation of downsizing/lifesizing--Harriet the Spy

"That's because you have known another life," said Ole Golly and smiled at him.

Harriet wondered what other life Mr. Waldenstein had known.

"Yes," he said, turning to Harriet, "it is one thing to come to this the way I have, to give myself time to think, and another thing to just be this all your life and never want more. I had a big business, you see, Harriet. Once long ago I had a very big business. I was a jeweler. I made a lot of money. I had a wife and a son, and my wife went to Florida every year with my son. I had a lot of money and I was the most miserable man alive." He looked at Harriet as though he expected absolution. She said nothing at all but looked straight at him. "I had a terrible ulcer, terrible pains every time I ate or drank. Life was worth nothing. It was so much dust in my hands. And then..." Mr. Waldenstein looked off into space as though he had forgotten what he was going to say.

"Life is very strange," said Ole Golly gently. This was one of her favorite expressions, and hearing it, Harriet felt somehow reassured.

"Yes," said Mr. Waldenstein and then, having recovered himself, he continued. "I saw that life was going   to be dust if I kept it up, always dust, nothing more. And so I told my wife to take all the money and my son too. I told her that if she wanted to come with me and start over she could. But she didn't." A harshness crept into his voice. "She didn't. Well, that as her choice. We all make choices."

"Every minute of every day," Ole Golly intoned.

"And so I became a delivery boy. And suddenly life was sweet," Mr. Waldenstein let out a ringing little laugh, the laugh of a happy child.

"Well," said Harriet, because she could think of nothing else.

"It must have taken a lot of courage," said Ole Golly, bending over the stove.

"No," said Mr. Waldenstein,"--desperation."

Suddenly Harriet liked him. She couldn't think why, but she did.

Searching for Angela Shelton

I bumped into Angela Shelton's work online the other night, and I've been inhaling it ever since.

Just got done watching her documentary.

I've watched video of her speaking to groups of people, video she does from home about how the thoughts in our heads rule so much of our existence, even when they are lies.

I'm not an incest or rape or molestation survivor.

But the stories that have traveled the neuropathways of my brain for decades have gone to some insanely dark places.

And back.

Thank you for speaking your truth, Angela.

Thank you for doing what you couldn't not do.

Thank you for allowing your humor to color your world.

Thank you for living a joyful life.

pretty fanschabulous

shining the way

Why do you keep pretending you don't have what you need?

I'm here, waiting for you to see me. Why do you keep walking by the door? Why do you keep bumping into an imaginary wall? Why do you keep falling into an imaginary hole? Why do you keep pretending you don't have what you need? Why do you keep telling yourself that's it's hard? Why do you keep pretending there's not enough good to go around?

~Michael Beckwith

Rorschach test

Hmmmm, what do I see? A windshield in winter, perhaps? This is actually from a rooftop--paint and tar.

bizarre but true

An anomaly, this.

Whenever I see a payphone, it's an installation of performance art.

I have great memories about pay phones.

Like the one about being able to talk long-distance from Italy to anywhere, for free, from certain payphones, by sticking the end of an ordinary, unbent paperclip into the center of the metal mouthpiece and then holding the other end in contact with the metal cord while speaking.

Bizarre, but true. I did it several times, until the powers that be caught on and disabled that feature.

Now I don't need the paperclip to talk at my leisure with anyone, anytime, anywhere in the world.

Bizarre, but true.

more nebulous mist

We don't hold these seminars to save the planet or to fix things that are broken. We have these gatherings because you all want to be more consciously in on the deliberate game of creation for your satisfaction. You don't need to know this in order for it to be, but you do need to know it in order to have fun in the becoming.

~Abe, Alaska Cruise 07/22/08

Eyebeam challenges convention, celebrates the hack, educates the next generation

Eyebeam Art + Technology Center

Founded in 1997, Eyebeam is an art and technology center that provides a fertile context and state-of-the-art tools for digital experimentation. It is a lively incubator of creativity and thought, where artists and technologists actively engage with the larger culture, addressing the issues and concerns of our time. Eyebeam challenges convention, celebrates the hack, educates the next generation, encourages collaboration, freely offers its output to the community, and invites the public to share in a spirit of openness: open source, open content and open distribution.

~*~*~

Ah, New York. You don't know what you're missing with me being here in the Midwest :-)

Oooooommmmmmm...and green jello

   

An Unnumbered Grouping of Days of Resistance Toys - A

This is a stack of Jenga blocks.

You may notice that it's slightly out of alignment.

On more than one plane.

If we could photograph how our beliefs line up with our dreams and desires, this is how that arrangement would look.

Sort of a curvature to document how we bend over backwards to accommodate others.

Jabs and pokes whenever we judge, criticize, blame and fear something in others.

Jabs and pokes whenever we judge, criticize, blame and fear something in ourselves.

Our inner being knows that neither state is accurate, and doesn't go there with us.

Which makes those emotions feel as uncomfortable as they do.

Our inner being's alignment is like a perfectly cut two-by-four.

And it holds the place for us to slowly line those blocks up when we wake up to the game.

And that feels really good.

photographers

tubes and wires

An Unnumbered Grouping of Days of Resistance Toys

If you aren't yet familiar (gasp!) with what Resistance Toys are, enlightenment awaits.

Go ahead, we'll wait until you get back.

~*~*~

Given my dislike of even a vague directive to conform to a list of objectives, I am launching the 'An Unnumbered Grouping of Days of Resistance Toys" campaign.

When I feel like it and when I am inspired with an idea, which is happening fast and furiously these days--hence the campaign--I will be posting a new Resistance Toy that has been created by me and perhaps road tested by other blissmongering types who like that sort of thing.

To celebrate creativity.

To have a ton of fun.

To crack myself up.

And to inspire you to create your own. Once you get the hang of it, Resistance Toys are everywhere, just waiting to lend their transformative talents to your life-enhancement efforts.

I'd love to post images of what you create too, if you are so inspired to send them, or add a link to their existence on the web to a comment below (this does NOT mean you, scum-sucking spam bottom-dwellers).

To get things started, here is a reprise of the one that jump-started this whole wacked thing in the first place:

Intrigued by what resistance toys can do for you? Check out the e-book here.

And if you are drawn to work/play on those pesky beliefs that dredge up the efficacy of Resistance Toys on a 'go-deep" level, contact me.

You are your own worst enemy

It's about something else, every time you feel uncomfortable. And that something else is, you're not up to speed with you right now. You are your own worst enemy. Only you can think the thoughts, and only you can offer the vibration, and it's only your vibration that keeps you from who you really are, that ever negatively affects you. 

~Abraham-Hicks

Turns out though, that writhing creature? It's really us

Expose the soft underbelly of unexamined beliefs behind every story we tell ourselves.

They hate that.

Picture a writhing, reptilian entity, accustomed to the safety and false sense of bravado that hanging out in the dark can provide.

Suddenly the lights are turned up, and there is nowhere to hide. The creature's awkward build keeps it from being able to skitter away, but it is slippery, and it is tenacious. See, we've been feeding it buffets' worth of sustenance all along, and it's not at all interested in giving up that free meal ticket.

Turns out though, that writhing creature? It's really us. And the slipperiness is us, too, caught up in our beliefs about how impossible it is to change a belief that we've honored for decades.

It's not impossible.

It's hard, difficult, uncomfortable, painful, awkward and agonizing.

But here's the thing: that string of adjectives can also be a fairly accurate description of present circumstances of certain areas in our lives.

If the sensations are the same and one set leads to guaranteed stagnation while the others offers the promise of improved quality of life if we actually do the work, why do we often choose the stagnation?

Known unpleasantness is apparently less objectionable than unknown unpleasantness. This is why when given the choice of keeping our own "problems" or trading for someone else's, we'd probably keep our own.

Until a tipping point gets reached, when we are on our knees in a metaphorical or very literal sense. 

Our human tendency to fall on one side or the other of the optimist/pessimist fault-line plays into this as well.

Expose the soft underbelly of unexamined beliefs behind every story we tell ourselves.

They hate that.

Do it often enough, gently enough, persistently enough, with feeling, and that writhing reptile will shrink in submission to the alpha synapse of the pack.

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.

fall 2009

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?

repetition that bears repeating

As human beings we are created to surpass ourselves and are truly ourselves only when we transcend ourselves. Only the slightest of barriers separates us from our sacred unconscious; it is infinitely close to us.

But we are infinitely far from it, so for us the barrier looms as a mountain that we must dig through with bare hands. We scrape away at the earth, but in vain; the mountain remains. Still we go on digging at the mountain, in the name of God or whatever.

Of the final truth we for the most part only hear; very rarely do we experience it.

The mountain isn't there.

It never was there.

Huston Smith

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.