You will never know the world aright till the Sea floweth in your Veins, till you are Clothed with the Heavens and Crowned with the Stars; And perceive yourself to be the Sole Heir of the Whole World; And more then so, because Men are in it who are every one Sole Heirs, as well as you.  Till you are intimately Acquainted with that Shady Nothing out of which this World was made; Till your spirit filleth the whole World and the Stars are your Jewels; Till you love Men so as to Desire their Happiness with a thirst equal to the zeal of your own.

-Thomas Traherne

Hoo boy, do I have a long way to go.

“Just write.”  Is what the psychic told me this afternoon.  It’s been quite a while since I’ve had my cards read – I think the last time was in the summer of 2008 in Sedona. 

And I think that psychic told me to write as well.  The psychic in Sedona also talked about my “spirit guide” (that I should give my will over to him) and the psychic at the Ren Faire today told me to follow my “holy guardian angel(s)”.  Interesting.

But yeah, in my conversation with the psychic today – RozeLisa is her name (and I shall henceforth refer to her as such) – she said I should write.  I said, “Write what?  Like work stuff or fiction or what?”  And she said “I don’t know, just write.”  So yeah, here I am writing.

When I started this blog, I posted every day for about a year.  Then I started to take a few days off here and there, and eventually I got to where I’ve been for the last few weeks – probably averaging two posts per week.  Man, do I hate bloggers that post about blogging or their blog-habits – almost as much as I hate blog posts that start with things along the lines of  “sorry I haven’t posted in so long…”

So that’s enough situational reference for me.

Today was a good day.  I woke up, showered and hung out with my brother for about an hour before Katie and Scott arrived (in separate cars) at my house.  We shot the shit for a bit, drinking coffee and smoking cigarettes, and headed off to the Renaissance Faire.  We met Heather Rolland (yes, the famous author), her husband Tom Moeller, her daughter Maya and Maya’s friend Chelsea at the Cock ‘n Balls Bull just inside the gate, and headed out to explore for the day.  While we were at the knife-throwning show, Christine (Laila Jo’s mommy) and her b/f Ryan called me to say that they had arrived.  I wandered over to the Kissing Bridge to pick them up, waited a few minutes and recieved a text that they were at the stage where the knife-throwing show was.  So I sauntered back over that way.  By that time, our cousin Danny and his girlfriend Pauline had arrived.  I think.  Maybe they got there sooner.

After the show, we rolled out – 12 deep - to check out the rest of the Faire.  It was a good day.  As is commonly done with a group that large, we split up into smaller cells and did things separately, occasionally meeting up to discuss what booty we had gathered or things we’d seen. 

As we were wrapping up with the card reading, RozeLisa gave me her card and I gave her mine – pointing out this web address and stating that this is where I predominantly write.  She noticed that my card says Wyckoff on it and I explained that I live in Ridgewood.  RozeLisa then said that she’s opening up a shop in Ridgewood – about a block away from my dad’s store, as a matter of fact. 

I think I’m going to see RozeLisa again in a couple of months – I don’t think the Ren Faire is the place for me to get psychic readings anymore: it’s too busy; too many people.  Whether it’s taxing on a psychic, I couldn’t say, but I don’t see how that kind of a situation wouldn’t be.  Plus, I can’t imagine that the tarot cards have that much of an opportunity to be cleared of the last person’s energy and fully accept mine with such a high turnover rate of clients.

I think that next time I’ll ask RozeLisa if we can use her future-seeing cards, instead of the ones that read the recent past – most of the stuff that came through the cards had just happened to me in the past couple of weeks.

No real luck to speak of on the “will I find love” question (at least not from the cards).  I’ve sent out a couple of emails on okCupid in the last week (no responses, but that’s t be expected).  RozeLisa said that I should probably get out more, and that I should basically man-up and make my own decisions and be confident in them – that they’re the right ones.

I’m in a pretty good head-space right now:  I didn’t really have any particular questions in mind when I sat down to have my cards read (which probably explains the lack of granularity in the reading).  I’ve been making my own decisions and following through with them, and I feel comfortable that they’re the right ones.  Mercury is in retrograde for the next couple of weeks, so I’ll be careful with my communications and try not to misread anything.

I’m taking Wednesday, Thursday and Friday off from work this week and will spend that time in the Adirondacks, bagging peaks and sleeping in the woods.  Right now, it looks like it’s going to rain the whole time.  I’ll bring my raingear.  I’m looking forward to the time alone.  I’ll reflect and get centered.

November is National Novel Writing Month, so it looks like this is my year to get on that.  Any novel suggestions?

I think I need to meet with a psychic or spiritual healer.   I’ve got something going on with me that I can’t put my finger on to fix.  I mentioned a week or two ago that I’d been struggling with self-doubt.  Well, that hasn’t abated:  the struggle continues.  I don’t know why this is or where it’s coming from, but this is exactly the wrong time for me to be feeling like this.

I suppose it’s possible that I’m being guided towards caution, but I feel more like I’m running scared.  Not necessarily running towards something or away from something, so I don’t mean ‘running scared’ as in overly fearful – what I mean is closer to overly cautious.  Cautious to the point where it’s hampering.  It’s a fault, not an asset.  At least, that’s how I feel.

I’m in a relatively new situation at work – insofar as the players are the same and the circumstances have changed and/or the circumstances are the same but the players have changed – depending upon the circumstances and players I’m dealing with – if that makes any sense.  The situation isn’t entirely unfamiliar, even though it’s different from one I’ve been in before on many levels.  So, that said, I suppose I have good reason to be cautious.

In fact, I think that caution is definitely an asset right now.  But not this much caution.

So yeah, something weird is going on inside of me.  This is a time when I should be – figuratively speaking – taking the bull by the horns – both in my work situations and my outside-work situations.  But I’m not.  I’m dissembling.  I know I should be taking the bull by the horns, and I know how and where to grab those horns and from which direction I need to approach the bull so that I’m not gored, but it feels like I’m spending too much time evaluating the direction from which I’m coming, figuring out my hand placement and calculating the angles and forces involved, when what I really should be doing is letting go and simply acting.  Allowing myself to act and having the confidence that, even if I miss my initial grip, I’ll be able to adapt to the situation and turn it to my advantage.

But knowing the right thing and doing the right thing are two different animals.  Normally, I can snap myself out of these things, but this has been going on for a while.  Maybe I’m still coming down on the back end of feeling duplicitous about being at a job I knew I was going to leave.  But still, I’ve had enough breaks in the continuity of my mental reality that such a feeling shouldn’t still be lingering.

That’s basically why I feel that there’s something else going on.  Mercury isn’t in retrograde for another few weeks – and I’m not having communication issues anyway – and I don’t know enough about astrology to make another guess.  Any suggestions are, of course, welcome, if you’re an astrologer, dear reader.  There’s something that’s mucking up my internal energy flow.  I think it’s an internal thing, but my gut says it could very well be an external thing.

I’m going to spend some time cleansing the feng shui of my apartment tonight and see if that helps.  And then I’m going to get up tomorrow and face a new day and try all over again to get past whatever’s currently blocking me.  Hopefully my spirit guide will have some more definitive guidance for me soon.

On the ride up to RI at the beginning of my MINIs on Top trip, I popped into my CD player a series of CDs my friend Jason loaned to me two or three years ago:  it was a talk by Eckhart Tolle called The Flowering of Human Consciousness.  It was pretty good – both for the content and because it took my mind away from the traffic of the drive.

For my trip this past weekend, I bought Tolle’s first book The Power of Now on CD to listen to on the longer sections of the drive.  I got through about half of it and am looking forward to another long drive as an opportunity to finish it.

I’m not really one for books-on-tape (I prefer paper), but I don’t think I’d read Tolle’s book even if I bought it – or I’d probably put it down halfway through.  But Tolle has an interesting enough voice (he speaks the Queen’s English with a German accent), and I find this kind of material to be better transmitted through the spoken word than in print.

Tolle’s main thesis isn’t all that different (and, to his credit, he admits as much) from what various spiritual teachers have been saying for pretty much millennia:  that all we have is this moment – there is no past and no future, and thus no point in spending time living in either.  That we must be completely present in the now in order to live a complete and fulfilling life.

He talks about transcendence and enlightenment as well, but these are relatively foreign concepts to me and while they seem nice to think about as ideals, they’re not part of my everyday life.  I dig the fact that he brings an element of everyday life to his spiritual teachings.

I’m not going to go all starry-eyed for the guy, but I can get with many parts of what he says.  I think I most identify when he relates things to zen and yogic teachings.

Anyway, listening to this was an excellent set-up for my vacation:  it reminded me to stay in the moment.  I did so as much as possible and doing so played an integral role in the fulfillment I received while I was in the woods.

I have plenty more to say on this topic, but I think that’s enough for now.

The last five days passed like a dream.  I was really hoping for some kind of spiritual experience or battery recharge or something when I headed off to the woods last Wednesday.  And I got it.  Well, I got something.  Not entirely what I thought it would be, but something nonetheless.

I’ve been looking forward to spending a few days in the woods, hiking and camping, for the last few months (ever since just before the busy season started).  The last couple of weeks have been melancholy and frantic – in that rushing-to-do-everything-and-not-getting-anything-done kind of way.  I was hoping to walk out of the woods with a life-plan for the next few months laid out in my head.  What happened instead was that I waked out of the woods with a calmer and more peaceful mind, which is therefore more able to put together a life-plan for the next few months . . . maybe sometime this week – I’m really not all that worried about it right now.

So here’s a quick run-down before I head off to bed:

I left my house Wednesday morning and met my buddy SoloJoe Whalen at the Sloatsburg rest stop on 87N (about fifteen minutes or so from my house).  We then caravanned up to The Mountaineer in Keene Valley NY, so that Joe could pick up an air mattress and some other supplies.  We stopped briefly at a cabin called Random Scoots in Keene NY to visit with a couple of friends from the ADKHP forum.  Then we boogied back to the Northway, south one exit, and over to the Upper Works parking area.  The sun was just going down as we got there and we had decent light for the first mile or two.  Around 4.5 miles in (it was dark by this time), we bumped into the monument to the man for which the river we were following (Calamity Brook) got its name (his death was a calamity).  The monument was, however, a side trail, so after snapping a few photos, we booked it back onto the trail, happy in the knowledge that we only had to carry our heavy packs another .4 miles before we started passing lean-tos at which we might sleep.

Well, about two miles later, we hit a sign that read “High Water Bridge” – one which we found familiar.  We put our packs down, wiped the sweat off our faces and looked at each other in perplexity.  I pulled out my iPhone (upon which I was tracking our progress via my GPS app) and pronounced us to have backtracked.  We then said the F word a lot.  And then some more.  I laughed quite a bit at our predicament, as it meant we still had at least another three miles to walk that night and we were already exhausted from carrying those heavy packs.

By the way, when I say “it was dark”, I don’t mean the kind of dark you’re probably used to.  I mean the kind of dark wherein there is no visible light ANYWHERE.  If we switched off our headlamps, we could not see each other standing only a few feet away.  Starlight, yes.  Moonlight, not this evening.

Anyway, we finally made it into a lean-to close to 1AM, scaring the couple within it half to death.  Joe’s got great people skills, though, so he smoothed everything over pretty quickly.  I told them that we were bears, but they didn’t believe me.  Probably Joe with the whole talking-thing.  Joe and I decided not to eat, as that would prolong the already lengthy time we’d be keeping the nice couple awake.  Night comes early in the Adirondacks – about 9PM this season – so even if they had plenty of steamy sex in the lean-to before we arrived, they still must have been asleep for a couple of hours.  As we lay our heads down to rest, I could not, however, resist muttering to Joe “don’t make any moves on that guy, ok?  We just met and you hardly know him.”  I’m sure that was good for an extra couple of minutes of awake-time for the dude.

lolz

We woke up around 6AM on Thursday, had breakfast and were on the trail by 8:30AM.  The lean-to we stayed at was the third one we poked our heads into, and the only one not full.  As such, it was also .4 miles farther away from the trail upon which we would start our march.  It was kind of a long day.  Not in a bad way, but in terms of hours.  We hiked for around 10 hours, returning to the lean-to just before 7PM and covering probably between 12 and 15 miles.  We climbed Gray Peak and Mount Redfield (both “bushwhacks”), putting me at 9/46 for the Adirondack High Peaks and Joe at some ridiculous number beyond my meager 9.  I put ‘bushwhacks’ in quotes back there because the trailless peaks of the Adirondacks have very clear trails on them, but they’re just not marked with blazes or signage.  The bushwhacks in the Catskills are much tougher in a navigational sense, though I can’t imagine trying to get through the growth on the sides of the mountains in the Adirondacks – it’s wicked thick.

On the hike, Joe and I discussed literature, relationships, philosophy and other things sublime.  Come to think of it, I don’t think I said ‘boobs’ more than once or twice.

When we got back to the lean-to, we had something to eat while Joe packed his pack and got ready for the five-mile hump out of the woods.  I have no idea how that sonofabitch made it – I was completely exhausted.  But he did.  And then he drove 5.5 hours back to NJ, packed his stuff and was on a plane from Philly to Colorado by 8:30PM on Friday night.  Joe’s out there now, bagging 14,000 foot peaks.

I had the evening and the lean-to to myself, and I made good use of my time.  By which I mean, I walked down to the beach of the Flowed Lands reservoir (or whatever kind of body of water it is) and rinsed myself off in the cold mountain water.  I also rinsed out my shirt and socks and pumped some more drinking water from the spring.  I didn’t have a computer, so I couldn’t blog, but I made some notes in a notebook and read some of Haruki Murakami‘s The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle (thanks, Sara, for loaning it to me – it only got a little wet on the hump out of the woods and none of the pages are currently sticking together), which I am currently enjoying immensely.

I went to bed early Thursday night – maybe 10:30 or so – both out of pure exhaustion and lack of stuff to do when it’s black as pitch outside of the lean-to door (which is really the whole front of the place).

I woke up early on Friday morning, said “fuck-it” and dozed for a few hours.  I finally got moving around 10 or 10:30AM, just as the first raindrops began to patter on the lean-to roof.  I made and ate breakfast and arranged my gear so as to minimize the possibility of anything getting wet besides my raingear and my pack’s rain cover.  Then I humped the 5 miles back out of the woods to my car.  In the rain.  And when I say “rain”, I’m talking mountain lions and timber wolves.  It was effin pouring.  The trail wasn’t so much a trail as it was a series of rock-tops upon which to step, and small streams in which one might step without fear of the water coming above the tops of one’s boots.

Not that it mattered in any case; my boots were soaked by the time I got to the car.  I had on these goretex waterproof socks, though, which kept my feet and socks dry, despite the fact that my boots were soaked through.  I couldn’t believe how heavy my boots were when I took them off.  Nor could I believe that the next thing on my plate was to get down to the Cats to meet Scott and hump around all night and day in the woods in those heavy wet boots.

By the way, the hump out of the Adirondacks was simply splendid.  Even though it was raining, I had a great time.  The weather was warm enough that it really didn’t matter if I got all wet (not that I did – I was wearing raingear).  I kept a steady pace and it seemed by that point that my backpacking muscles had figured out what they were doing and gotten stretched out – they were not nearly as sore and painful as they were on Wednesday night.  On that hike, I thought about various hiking-related things, but mostly just enjoyed myself and my vacation.

I got to the car and headed down to the Cats to meet Scott.  Well, actually, I headed back north to Keene to get gas (should have done that Wednesday afternoon), and then south to the Catskills.  I toweled out my boots as best I could and put them in the passenger side footwell, under a blast of hot air.  My wet socks and shirt went on the dashboard, to be warmed and dried by the defogger.  Which created some fog, but not too much.

Believe it or not, by the time I got to the Cats, my socks and shirt were dry, and my boots were barely damp.  It took quite a bit of maneuvering on the drive to achieve this, but I’m glad I did.

I met Scott at the Alder Lake parking area at around 9:50PM on Friday night and we humped the 2.25 miles in to the Beaver Meadow Lean-to.  This night hike also involved some backtracking, though probably only about .5 miles-worth.  I wonder if there’s a patch for night-hike backtracking miles.

We hit the lean-to around midnight and ate, then slept in on Saturday morning and hiked a rather lazy six miles or so along Mill Brook Ridge, bagging the high point and the high point of Woodpecker Ridge (a quick bushwhack), while talking of recent events and things sublime.  That puts us at 47/102 for the Catskill Hundred Highest.

We then stopped back at the lean-to, gathered our heavy stuff and humped back out to our cars.

When we got home, I took a nice long hot shower and went to Steve’s Sizzlin’ for a big steak, then swung by Scott’s house to hang out for a bit.

Today was a lazy day, but I got all my errands run.  It was an excellent weekend and I’m currently walking the earth with a deep sense of peace in the background.  I’m pretty ok with going back to work in the morning, which means it was a successful vacation.

=)

Swami Ramananda wasn’t really all that prepared for the satsang on Sunday.  I think the topic was something along the lines of “the obstacles of commitment” or some such.  I think the original point of the topic was for him to discuss issues that come up for those committed to yoga as a spiritual path.  At some point, it kind of devolved into relationship advice from a single dude who’d never been married and took a vow of renunciation (mostly material things, I think, though it’s technically ‘everything’) twenty-something years ago.

I’ll give you a quick thread I pulled from the satsang overall and probably leave it at that.

One of the things Swami Ramananda touched on repeatedly was “sustained effort”.

Crap.  I think this is going to turn into more than just one thread.

Ok, whatever (“starting on the left…” – “That’s the right foot, Daddy!”) it’s too late; keep going:

I think what he was really doing was defining ‘commitment’ as “sustained effort” – that even though the path may sometimes be rocky or uneasy to walk upon, commitment means staying on that path in order to find out where it takes us.

Swami Ramananda told the story of a seeker who was on his way to heaven – this one passed two other seekers who were still on their respective paths (of the eight-limbed path of yoga).  Both asked if he would bring back some news for them once he reached enlightenment.  The first was on the path of meditation (as a means of achieving enlightenment – I forget the name of this path), and the second was on the path of joyous celebration (also on the way to enlightenment – I think this is called Bhakti yoga).

The first seeker had been sitting in unmoving meditation for so long that an anthill had grown up around him.  But no matter how uncomfortable the ants were, he wouldn’t move.  The second was dancing and singing and smiling and doing lots of happy things.  When the seeker returned from heaven (being now enlightened), he kept his promise and stopped by the other two on his way to I don’t know where – maybe Katie’s party last Saturday.  Anyway, the meditating seeker asked the enlightened one how much longer until he achieved enlightenment.  The answer was “two more births,” to which the seeker replied “Jesus effin Christ on a stick, I don’t know if I can make it that long” (I’m paraphrasing here).  He doubted his commitment.

The second seeker asked the same question and the enlightened one pointed to one of the trees and said “you have as many lifetimes left to go as there are leaves on that tree over there”.  This seeker (who was partying pretty hard) said “sweet!  A finite number – so it’s totally countable!”  He immediately became enlightened.

The overall point being that the joy is in the journey – that if one is joyful about the journey, that is the quickest path to enlightenment.

Were I the one telling the story, I probably would have flipped it around and told it the other way as well – where the first seeker said “two more births?  No prob, I dig meditation” and the second seeker said “f*ck me, but my legs are tired!” – and the first being enlightened, while the second was stuck with partying.  Just for the sake of illustration, would I have told it this way as well.

So toward the end of the satsang, when Swami Ramananda was answering questions and most of them related to marriage or some other relationship-type commitment, one dude said in that nasally stoner-sounding voice (with the all-famous I’ve-just-had-an-epiphany-and-I’m-sharing-it-with-you tone of voice) “I’ve been realizing more and more that love is a choosing.  A choosing. . . [blah, blah, blah] . . . a choosing.”

Seriously, dear reader, he said “a choosing” like six times – I think those two words were like 45% of his statement’s word count.

And me, in my infinite wisdom (I mean, c’mon the dragon is my current totem), sitting behind him, subvocalized “shit, bro – have fun with that anthill”.

My point here is that, yes, “the joy is in the journey”, but more so that the journey is about finding the joy.  For me.  I’m not going to speak on behalf of anyone else.  It’s about finding the joy in life for me.  Because, as I mentioned in yesterday’s post (at the end – the part after the mundanities), there’s nothing but the here and now.

I’ll tell you what:  enlightenment sounds pretty cool, but it’s like any other projection or pipe-dream:  it’s not here, and it’s not now.  Not for me.  Maybe not now, maybe not ever.  I’m not even sure I feel like believing in enlightenment.  Hell, give me a sunny day and a good book or some good company or a full tank of gas and no traffic or a spreadsheet full of data with secrets buried inside – or a million other things – a blank screen and some thoughts to tumble onto the pixels.  Shit, life is good right now.  I’m one happy camper.  If you can tell me enlightenment is better than the here and now, then I’ll probably say that you have no idea what you’re talking about.

Go ahead:  tell me you’re enlightened.  I dare you.

Not that this site is really getting all that many hits from www.Nirva.na – you know?

Anyway, one more digression before I go:

The thing with the stoner-sounding dude talking about love being a choosing – I don’t know that I really buy that.  During the satsang, the Swami talked about commitment as being kind of a grey area – that it’s not always all-or-nothing:  sometimes one needs to leave the path one has been committed to walking.  Take it from a guy who’s walked the path of ‘the hard way’ for a real long time:  the rough patches aren’t the ones that define commitment or the right path.  Oh, they’re there in both cases, and commitment must necessarily be tested, but there are a million ways up the mountain – not all of which are rough all the time.  And the one that’s rough all the time, well, as much as I like to think myself the tough guy for making it through, I don’t necessarily know that it’s the best way to the top of the mountain – it’s just a way.

Fuckit – I’m starting to think in thircleth right now.  Pick a way up the mountain – there are a lot of them – I’m going to try to enjoy myself as much as possible on the way up; I’ll meet you at the top either way.

This past weekend was a decent one.  I spent an inordinate amount of time sleeping.  Went to bed around 11:30 on Friday night, after getting out of work around 8:30, which precluded any trip up to the Adirondacks.  Got up around 1 or so on Saturday (yes, in the afternoon) and had to have my brother stop by and jump start my car.  Man, was I glad I wasn’t in the Adirondacks for that call!

After John jumped my car, I threw my laundry in and received a call from my mother – her battery had died and she needed to pick up a new one from the Toyota dealership.  So I picked her up and we got her battery and installed it.  I drove straight from there to the Pep Boys in Paterson and got myself a new battery (and installed it).  No more battery issues for me after that.

After my laundry was done and I had eaten, I took a shower and picked up John and then Scott to head in to Astoria for Katie’s birthday party.  We all had a fantabulous time.  Well, Scott and I did.  John was ludicrously drunk (ah, memories) and fully succeeded in embarrassing himself.  The DJ played 80s and 90s hair and regular metal and (some dance) and Denny and Brad (guitar and djembe) played a set that Katie designed.  Pretty excellent, overall.  As always, I was humbled that Katie’s friends all remembered me and were happy to see me.  It was very cool to see them as well and spend some more time hanging out.

Scott, John and I left around 1:30 or 2 and I dropped those fuckers back off at their respective apartments.

Scott showed up at my house at 8:30 on Sunday morning so that we could head off to the puja at 10.  The puja was pretty excellent.  That’s a yoga prayer service, for those of you who are as uninitiated as I was prior to Sunday (well, truth be told, I knew what a puja is before that – just hadn’t been to one before).  After the puja was a satsang with Swami Ramananda of the Integral Yoga Institute of New York City.  In between, we did a bunch of chanting.  Overall, a very fly way to spend a bunch of hours in a row.  I particularly dug the chanting.

After that, Scott and I had lunch at Whole Foods (my Burger King) and discussed the puja and satsang.  Then we went to Ramsey Outdoor Store and visited our stuff.

I got home around 5 or so and fell asleep shortly thereafter.  I woke up around 10 to put my pyjamas on and got up in time to be not as late to work as I usually am.

Both Scott and I were aware of the fact that we were not particularly self-conscious during the puja, chanting or satsang – when once we would have been incredibly so.

Being around a group of people dedicated to a particular spiritual path was pretty cool.  It wasn’t very much like going to church – there were only about 10 people there (including Scott and me) and it was relatively informal.  Very comfortable.  Normally, I’d feel out-of-place and would have spent the time measuring my own spirituality against the people there – comparing and coming to the conclusion that I really should be along their spiritual path (and farther along on it, for that matter).  Or finding my own spirituality coming up short.

Not so this past Sunday.  I was very comfortable with the whole situation.  I was comfortable in my own spirituality and felt no need to compare.  For the most part, I spent my time identifying aspects of my own spirituality with what was displayed and discussed among the others around me.  But at no point did I feel inferior.  And this had nothing to do with anyone else present – not I caught any kind of condescending vibe anyway – it was entirely due to the fact that I was cool with me.

I don’t really know that I can describe my spiritual path to you, dear reader, but I must be doing something right if I was able to hang out with that bunch of yogis and be pretty comfortable with myself.

I lean a lot on zen stuff, but I can’t really say that I’m a Zen Buddhist.  I’ve read a bunch about zen, but I think the more I read – treatises and whatnot – the less I’m learning.  For me, zen means simplicity.  It means that if I think I know something, I really don’t.  That there’s no such thing as ‘understanding.’  That if I think I get it, well, that’s the surest proof that I don’t.  That there’s nothing but the here and now.  Nothing beyond it.  That life is meant to be lived and experienced.  That’s it.

Be kind, be grateful and live.

My plan was to test out this new plugin with a post this afternoon – er, yesterday afternoon, as it’s now 13 minutes into tomorrow.  But I didn’t get a chance to.  Work was crazy busy today and I left feeling like I still have a million things to do.  Which isn’t true:  I only have a handful and the projects I’m working on are (so far) well in hand (pun).

When I jumped over to Lauren Flax’s blog via my Outlook feed this afternoon, I scrolled down to leave a comment and saw that I already had – but it was a comment I left on her facebook page.  I was all like “wtf?  How tf did that happen?”  (I say f a lot – in my head.)  So I went to Lauren’s facebook page (yeah, we’re cool like that) and clicked on her latest post.  It brought me right to her blog.  If you click on the link to one of my posts – via my fb page (“Notes”) or via The Quixotic Jedi Fan Page – you get either the “Note” version of one of these here blog posts, or you get kind of a window on this here actual page, basically enveloped by the Networked Blogs facebook page.  So people (that’s you, dear reader) read my posts on facebook, but not HERE.  WTFrig.  So I installed the Wordbooker plugin (just like Lauren).  Total fb-integration (if I want).

So yeah, we’re (that’s you & me, dear reader) taking this pig out for a test-drive.  Let me know what happens or if anything goes wrong or seems annoying – such as double-posting on fb.  Your fb-comments will (read: should, if I set the damned thing up right) migrate over here, and vice-versa.

*  *  *

I was talking to my buddy Mike this evening – he turned 63 last Monday – about gratitude.  About how that feeling of gratitude is something that can be practiced.  What I mean is that it’s like meditation:  finding the void is hard at first – it’s slippery and seems impossible to hold onto.  Until, of course, I let go.

After enough practice, I can slide into that void pretty much any time I like.  The world can be chaos around me – and I can be all kinds of caught up in that chaos – but (if I remember to do it) I can let go of it all and find the void – that calm in the storm.

Gratitude is the same way.  Even when I’m feeling like a total piece of sh*t, self-pity verily oozing out of every pore, if I remember to be grateful (even for something small), I can get right back to that overall feeling of gratitude.  Like the void, I become a channel again, instead of a vessel.

At this point in our discussion, Mike got a bit animated and said “yeah, it’s just like remembering what it was like to be in love all over again.”  And I was like “sh*t”.  Only I said it with the ‘i’ in the middle (no pun).

I don’t remember what it feels like to be in love.  I can remember that I was in love, but I can’t replicate the feeling.  Maybe ‘replicate’ is the wrong word.  It’s more like I can’t empathize with myself.  Or, rather, my former self.

Oh, I can remember (sort of) the time in my life when I was in love – and I define being “in love” as a two-way street:  it doesn’t work one way – that’s more of an infatuation thing.  But I can’t remember what it feels like.  I remember feeling grounded – that as long as I had that love, anything could go wrong and I’d be ok.  I suppose I felt ‘complete’, but again, I’m not sure that’s the right word.

It’s like I’m forced to play the tape all the way through:  that beginning period of hanging out with my (ex-)wife which morphed into courtship, and then the time after the “I-dos” – all of it flows inexorably into the heartbreak and heartache of the end.

Don’t get me wrong here, dear reader:  I’m not crying on my keyboard right now or anything.  I suppose the flip side of the “holy sh*t, call the wa-aaaambulance – I can’t remember what it feels like to be in love” coin is that neither can I feel that most vicious and ubiquitous of pains I felt at the end.

Verily, I could probably go digging around in my mind/soul/whatever for a fingerful of that ambrosia that love was, but then I’d also be left with the tainted aftertaste.  I’ll pass, thankyouverymuch.

All that said, I feel pretty complete right now.  (Knock on wood) I’m pretty sure that if anything goes wrong, I’ll be ok.  Being able to find gratitude (if I can remember to do it) is part of that, and it’s pretty sweet.

I finished my peaks today for my Catskill 3500 Club winter patch.  A total of 28 mountains climbed this winter.  I met three guys as I was just about to the summit of Eagle and we shot the shit for a bit before I headed out ahead of them.  After I hit the summit and saw them again on the way down, they all congratulated me (complete with fist bumps – or “daps” as they say in Britain).

Thing is, today was just another day on the mountain for me.  I didn’t have any kind of crazy feeling of elation when I hit the summit of Eagle, and frankly didn’t even realize that I had completed my goal until these guys reminded me.  Kinda weird.  I really hope I don’t get into one of those “I just don’t know what to do with myself” funks in the next week or two.  I need to find myself a new goal and start planning for that soon, I think.

I’m tired from hiking yesterday and today (7.2 and 8 miles, respectively), and I just barely got my laundry done, cake baked, dinner made and tally sheet ready to be mailed, so I’m off to bed shortly.  I’ll talk more about this weekend’s hikes and the completion of my winter peakbagging extravaganza tomorrow.  I’ll also figure out how to post my pics, vids and maps sometime this week.

One thing that occurred to me this evening:

Once upon a time, I worked really hard to feel “full” – I took and took and took and held everything that was “mine” close, not wanting to let anyone else have it.  I just noticed it, but I’ve been grooving on the “he who says does not know; he who knows does not say” (Lao Tsu) vibe for quite a while now.  Which is to say that I’ve been keeping my mouth shut and listening to other people (whether or not they’re just talking a bunch of bull), rather than trying to tell everyone all about what I’m doing or what I think.

I’m finding that I feel more “full” the more I continue to empty myself out.  I get more fulfillment out of being a channel than being a vessel – I’m constantly being emptied and filled at the same time.  It’s almost like being at one with the Universe.

At least, I think I have.  Maybe this would be more properly entitled “Turning A Corner” – I’m not sure.

For a little longer than the last two weeks, I’ve been feeling a bit off.  Less self-confident than normal.  Kind of an irrational insecurity – I don’t really know how to describe it.  Being nervous for no apparent reason.  Watered-down delusions of persecution:  that kind of thing.

I’d like to say I’ve turned the corner on it, but I think I might be in the middle of it – the final throes, as it were.  A few more shudders and it should be spent and I can get back to my normal mackdaddy-of-iz-all mentality.  Or whatever passes as normal for me.

I think I entered the corner-turning phase after talking to my friend Emily this past Friday.  I mentioned that I’d felt a bit off for a couple of weeks or so and she said “hey – like since the 12th?” and I was like “yeah, that sounds about right” and she said “Haiti happened on the 12th”.  And everything just kind of clicked into place for me:

It’s the vibes.  The concentrated, localized, intense trauma happening to the human species in Haiti is affecting my mood.  I’m not psychic by any real stretch, but I’m definitely sensitive.  Sure, I knew about the earthquakes when they happened, but Haiti is so far away from me and there’s really nothing I can do – in a physical sense – to help, so it’s not really been on my mind all that much.  Pretty much all of the information I have about the earthquakes I’ve gleaned from facebook and Twitter.

I don’t have a tv, don’t really listen to the radio (except the jazz station in the morning), and don’t really pay much attention to the news on the internet.  I’ve not read one single article about the earthquakes – the only thing I’ve seen have been status updates and whatnot, and even those I haven’t paid too much attention to.  I haven’t really spoken to anyone about it either, and couldn’t tell you one horror story I’ve heard about the whole thing.

That’s why the whole vibe thing clicked to precisely for me.  It makes too much sense.  There’s really no ACTIVE way I’d be able to assimilate the anguish that’s going on in Haiti – it’s somehow reached me, though.

From that conversation with Emily on, it was like a burden was lifted:  “if you can name it, you can tame it”, they say.  And I believe that.  Oh, I’m still feeling echoes of low self-esteem, indecisiveness, fragility and insecurity, but now I have an idea of where that’s coming from and why it’s not necessarily a fact.

Sure, to a certain extent I’m being reminded of my own inherent fragility and insecurity as a human being – in a very subtle fashion.  And as I’m writing this, I’m getting a diluted sense of deja-vu:

No man is an Iland, intire of it selfe; every man
is a peece of the Continent, a part of the maine; if a
Clod bee washed away by the Sea, Europe is the lesse,
as well as if a Promontorie were, as well as if a Mannor
of thy friends or of thine owne were; any mans
death diminishes me,
because I am in-
volved in Mankinde; And therefore
never send to know for
whom the bell tolls; It
tolls for thee.

That’s definitely a reminder of my interconnectedness with mankind.  As solitary as I may be, I’m still a part of the main.  Any man’s death diminishes me.

So I’m able to work with this faint level of pain and ignore it (to a certain extent) because I know where it’s coming from.

I’m saying prayers and sending good vibes – “light” if you wish – to Haiti.  That’s all I can do.  I’m not going to send money because I don’t really believe that my money will help.  But I believe my vibes will help.  That’s all I can do.  Maybe tomorrow I’ll see if there are any prayer groups, meditation sessions, or satsangs going on for the people in Haiti.  That would be much more powerful than just me sitting alone in my apartment sending energy that way.

I think I’m going to be taking it easy for a little while.  I spent the first couple of weeks of the month trying to get myself back into high gear, but I think I ended up just spinning my wheels and effing up my spiritual connection.  My ego is starting to resurface.  Nothing I’ve really acted on to my detriment – yet – but I can feel myself getting close.

I was talking to my old man this evening and he analogized the part of what I was telling him to which he was actually listening to my grandfather’s bit of wisdom that it’s important to take a car out and red-line the engine every once in a while to blow out the carburetor.  You know, work out all the junk and accumulation that comes with just driving around the neighborhood.  While I think my old man probably wasn’t picking up what I was putting down, his analogy still holds.  I fully believe that it’s important to blow the engine out on a regular basis – both with my car and with myself – but it has to be done properly.  What I’ve been trying to do (back to the analogy) is red-line my engine while I’m still driving around the neighborhood.  And that’s not the best way to do it.  In fact, that’s probably the best way to throw a rod or get the engine to seize or some such other bad thing that happens to a car when you’re up- and down-shifting too much and too quickly.

Blowing the engine out means doing it on the highway – the blowout has to be sustained, or the cleaning isn’t thorough.  Revving the engine and chirping the tires around the neighborhood isn’t the answer.  Sure, drive around the neighborhood a bit to get the engine warmed up – there’s no point in blowing out a cold engine: that leads to bad stuff too.  Once it’s warm, though, it’s got to get on the highway and spend some time at speed.

I’ve been doing all the wrong things.  I can see the highway ahead of me (read:  work and life getting very busy), but I’m not there yet.  And my engine’s still cold.  I need to spend some time driving around the neighborhood – which means getting back to basics:  setting up a solid routine so that my up- and down-shifts are smooth and regular.  Once that gets comfortable, I can start to pick up some speed and push the tach a bit here and there.  Once everything’s running pretty smoothly, I’ll be able to get out there and blow out my engine – a sustained and controlled burn which can only then be truly cleansing.

That means I need to back off a bit from trying to pack too many things into my life right now.  I need to concentrate on laying down the big blocks of my schedule first.  I need to be comfortable and regular with them before I can start adding more (smaller) pieces to it.  That means regularizing my work schedule as best I can, nourishing my body on a regular basis and not killing myself every Saturday when I hike (read:  slow the pace down, Ted, it’s not a race to the summit), taking care of my evening commitments and making sure I leave myself time at the end of the day to decompress (read and meditate).

Once I’m comfortable in this schedule (which really shouldn’t take more than a couple of days), I can start to add copywriting and other things back into my evenings (slowly).  As time passes, by the time I realize I’m blowing my engine out, it’ll be one helluva fun ride.

Ok, kiddies: I don’t really know how much I have for you tonight.  I had some really effin weird dreams again last night (which is to say Monday night), but I’m not sure I remember them all that well.  I took Bob Marley out of this evening’s rotation, so I’m about as un-not-focused as I can be this evening, what with my constant snorting and nose-blowing.

I’ve got to give this cold credit:  it’s got staying power.  I started to feel poorly on Thursday, left early and slept all afternoon, then slept for alternating 12+ hour cycles through the weekend, and the damned thing is still with me.  Normally, I’m down for a couple of days and then back to normal after a short recovery period.

Overall, I’ve been as productive as usual these last couple of days, but I kind of think I should be taking it easy for a bit.  Hence the (hopefully) shortness of this post.

So back to my dream from the other night:

I’m starting to wonder if it’s related to this new cayenne pepper I’ve been using – I think I may have cooked with it both nights before having the odd dreams.  Hold on…no, I don’t think I had any cayenne last night before my weirdo dream, so that hypothesis is for sh*t.

And that, dear reader, was the scientific process at work:  hypotheses are only useful until disproved.  And they can never be proved.

Staying with the current theme of randomness:

I pulled something out of C. S. Lewis’s That Hideous Strength (p. 191) while eating dinner that I’d like to share with you:

All day the wind had been rising and they found themselves looking out on a sky swept almost clean.  The air was intensely cold, the stars severe and bright.  High above the last rags of scurrying clouds hung the Moon in all her wildness – not the voluptuous Moon of a thousand southern love-songs, but the huntress, the untameable virgin, the spearhead of madness.  If that cold satellite had just then joined our planet for the first time, it could hardly have looked more like an omen.  The wildness crept into Jane’s blood.

And into mine when I read those words.  I’ll tell ya, dear reader, Lewis put into words a feeling that I have so often when I look upon the full moon.  When I’m doing so, sometimes I pray to Diana, and sometimes I howl my loneliness at her.  Often, it’s a little bit of both.

Above is the whole paragraph, but it’s the words “…the huntress, the untameable virgin, the spearhead of madness” that get my blood going.  Congratulations, Clive Staples, you’ve managed put into words that which I’m looking for in a woman.  And there I’ve gone and made it all petty.

In any case, here are some apropos sounds from Apocalyptica, to which I was just now listening, that added to the chill in my spine, the thrill in my blood as I read those words again:

My dream(s) of last night were strikingly clear, but again not what I would call lucid.  I was on an island – a very small but British-y island – but more dangerous and in its wild state.  I discovered the dangers the hard way.  My trek with my unknown but ne’er-do-well companions was wracked with misfortune.  At least, at the time it seemed like misfortune.

When I had occasion to look upon a map later on in the dream, the unfortunate occurrences served to help me remember the path we took and see where we had turned wrong.  Which is not to say that there was a safe path from one point to the next – only that there might have been a slightly shorter way.

At one point, we were beset by a group of brown-skinned and bare chested natives in a swampy area.  There were waist-high, thick grasses throughout.  I only remember one of the natives of the group clearly – he was a young boy who was cut to the bone along the inside of his forearm by the spinning helicopter-like blades of one of my companion’s backpacks.  As he looked down in alarm at the wound (which hadn’t quite started bleeding yet – it really only takes a couple of seconds before the bleeding starts, but that always seems like a lot longer), he started spinning on his vertical axis.  Something had drawn a crocodile, which had a-hold of his legs and spun him down into the water, which got deeper as he spun.

The look on his face was one of profound confusion:  as though what was happening to him shouldn’t be happening, and he couldn’t figure out why.  It was over quickly, though I remember feeling a pang of regret for him.

Later on in the dream, I was running to different places with another group of people.  Kind of in a spy-ish, police-ish manner.  We were moving around a city made of cobble-y stones, righting wrongs.  I had some sort of handgun in pieces that I kept trying to put together quickly so that I could fire it, but never really got it all the way together and never really got to fire it.

Probably because I was always trying to do too many things at once.  Feel free to headshrink me on that one all you like, dear reader; it shouldn’t be too hard.

I’ve been giggling my ass off all night long.  And I’ve got Bob Marley playing on the stereo right now.

No, dear reader, I’m not pulling tubes in my apartment.  I’ve been having a great time on facebook with my buddy Matt Helmick (@IntegralHack on Twitter), and for whatever reason, I can’t blog to Marley.  I have no idea why, but my thoughts just don’t stay on track when he’s in the background.  I know these CDs back-to-front, so one would think it would be as meditative for me as anything else, but it’s just not.

Anyway, Matt and I bumped into one another via the yoga circles on Twitter.  After spending some time slinging 140 character one-liners back and forth, he found me on facebook.  And facebook’s functionality has definitely trumped Twitter as far as cross-country friendship-building possibilities go.

So yeah, before this gets to be sounding too gay – frig, I lost my train of thought again.  Damn you, Bob.

Oh yeah:  Matt and I have three fellow mateys on facebook (read: three friends in common – I view facebook in English (Pirate), so I don’t see things quite like you do):  Andrei Codrescu, Liz Wilhite and Jennilyn Carson.  Jennilyn came first – she also travels in the Twitter yoga circles as @yogadork; her blog is on my blogroll (down and to the right).

Andrei is some author for the New York Times or some such publication for The Man – I don’t remember.  I think Matt, Liz and I were going back and forth in Matt’s facebook comments about something Andrei wrote – so I friended him and passed his link along to them.  Liz and Matt are friends IRL, I think.  Somewhere in there, I friended Liz as well – her comments and status updates are dry and witty and totally fits her url slug “Satirica”.  Awesome.  I just noticed that.

I’ve been meaning to ask Liz for a cake recipe or two.

This evening, Matt’s sister Wendi posted a comment in the thread that Liz and I were in.  I chanced to mention to Matt that Wendi is H4WT, and he suggested a sister-swap.  Being ever the gentleman and protective brother I am, I of course declined, but said that I would certainly friend-suggest my favorite sister Katie (who always brings the awesomeness) to him, that we might have more fellow mateys.  Which I did.

And to my surprise, Matt also suggested Wendi as a possible swashbucklin’ matey fer me!  Will wonders never cease.  I am continually astounded at the bounteous synchronicity of this Universe.  It’s honestly a wonder that I’m still agnostic.

So if everything works as the Universe seems to have planned – totally independent of any meddling on our parts – Matt and I will, sometime in the near future, have 5 fellow mateys.  Oh frabjous day, caloo calay!

KATIE IF YOU DON’T FRIEND MATT I’M GOING TO SET YOUR CAR ON FIRE *AFTER* I COVER IT IN BOLOGNA.

Seriously.  I know you’re logged in to facebook right now.  JUST DO IT.

Stupid reggae.  Where was I?  Huh.  I totally lost my train of thought.  Again.

In any case, I’m off to bed now, to lay my head a-rest on that sweet pillow of balance in the Universe – the pillowcase being gratitude, of course.

There’s a saying that goes:

“Pray to god, but for f*ck’s sake, row away from the rocks!”

As you know, dear reader, I’m something of an unwilling agnostic.  I pray – and it works – but I have no idea to what I’m praying.  I don’t have that fundamental concept of a higher power that (supposedly) spiritual people talk about.  See?  Even in my writing, I can’t help but qualify everything with just the teeniest bit of doubt.

Part of the 1.75 hour mass on Sunday was “A Brief Stewardship Reflection and Offeratory Sentence”.  Though he was introduced beforehand and was wearing a nametag, the name of the gentleman who gave this short speech in his own words escapes me.  He had a French first name and a Spanish last name.  I was hoping it would be in the bulletin, but it’s not.

In any case, although I found his words to be a bit intentionally poetic and therefore contrived, his statement was probably the most powerful call to his fellows I heard that day.  He spoke of a 34-year separation from god – a kind of wasteland walking in which everything was made of ashes.  He said that he was introduced to St. Paul’s by the reverend who gave the sermon that day; that it was “the softest of soft sells:  stop by sometime, the music is lovely”.  Reverend Lang, he said, was in flip flops and matching Hawai’ian shirt and shorts.  That was 2.5 years ago, and the man with the contrasting names said that while he hadn’t quite found god again, he felt closer than he has in a long time.

He described St. Paul’s (the church, the community – not the stone and wood structure itself) as “one of those ‘thin places’” where he didn’t feel quite as separated from the divine as he might.  He said that it is as though he were looking through a backlit screen, upon which shadows are cast.  Though he can’t see the players themselves, he can see the forms and discern some of the movements.  He was very near crying when he left the podium.

I was a bit too caught up in his analogy – he didn’t use the word ‘screen’, his description analogy was that of seeing through granite vs. seeing through alabaster.  I was thinking that quartz might be a better referential than alabaster, as the former is most certainly translucent; I don’t think the latter quite completes the description, despite its more poetic nature.  Maybe he was thinking of eggshell-thin alabaster.

In any case, the french spaniard finished off by quoting Dylan Thomas – that famous Welsh athiest and poet.  I prefer the full context (the quoted part is italicized):

I read somewhere of a shepherd who, when asked why he made, from within fairy rings, ritual observances to the moon to protect his flocks, replied: ‘I’d be a damn’ fool if I didn’t!’  These poems, with all their crudities, doubts, and confusions are written for the love of Man and in praise of God, and I’d be a damn’ fool if they weren’t.

(Dylan Thomas, Laugharne, Wales, November, 1952)

Thomas died in 1953.

[This would be a fitting place to end the post, but I'd still like to wrap back around to the truism with which I started.]

Reverend Lang’s sermon was on the beatitudes (“…Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth…”).  To paraphrase, he said that the beatitudes were Jesus’s revolutionary re-working of old truisms.  Prior to the beatitudes, people would say things like “blessed are the wise, for they will not be fooled”.  These were sayings that people used as anchors:  things that helped remind them of what was real and what was not.  The beatitudes were Jesus’s new take on what is real and what is not.  The old truisms were basically self-confirming statements, and Jesus wanted to turn society’s way of thinking on its head.

I won’t get in to my own critique of the reverend’s sermon – I see the beatitudes in more of a political/propagandic light.  My point is simply this: the above-referenced statement

“Pray to god, but for f*ck’s sake, row away from the rocks!”

is a truism for me.  I can’t rightly call it a beatitude, but it’s somewhat of an anchor for me; it reminds me of what’s real.

While I can certainly make use of prayer and trust that everything is just as it should be, I’m a damn’ fool if I’m not pulling hard on my oars.  I need to stay away from the tiller – at the helm, I will certainly crash my boat onto the reef, so I leave the steering up to whatever’s out there that’s greater than me.  All I can do is provide the power to get from point A to point B – whatever and wherever those may be.

Now, to bring this from the theoretical to the practical, dear reader, what this means for me is that I’m going to head off to bed now, as it’s still not too late to get a decent night’s sleep.  I got quite a bit done today – work stuff and personal goal stuff.  And tomorrow I’m going to take advantage of daylight savings time and my (currently) hour-early circadian rhythms.  I’m going to get my work done at work, talk to a man about a horse that involves some website copywriting (and additional income for me), and then meet with a buddy of mine to discuss his career options.

After that, I’m going to come home and talk to you, dear reader.  And hopefully, somewhere in the middle, I’ll plan out a good hike in the Adirondacks for this weekend.

On Friday night I mentioned that Saturday’s hike would probably be a short one.  It wasn’t.  Here’s the story:

Let me begin with a digression, though:

All that stuff I talked about last week in my Inventory & Priorities posts – the things I’m looking to get out of moving toward my goals (emotionally, spiritually; that sense of accomplishment) – they’re happening.  Besides sticking to my goals in the big ways (e.g. climbing mountains on the weekends), I’m also sticking to my goals in little teeny ways, the realization of which (by me) are quite possibly more fulfilling than the completion of the big ways.

I went to bed around 11 on Friday night, after talking for a few minutes with a handful of other dudes who were staying at the same hostel about their hiking plans for Saturday.  They figured they’d hike Street and Nye – two bushwacks with no views – because Saturday was going to be rainy and overcast and not a good day for seeing all that far from the top of a mountain.  They offered for me to join them, which I declined, even though they figured they’d be done by noon, which worked out well with my plans to get back to NJ by 6PM.

Even though it was tempting to hike with other people and possibly make some new friends, I figured I’d stick to my original plan.  Good move on my part.  And one of the aforementioned “little ways” by which I achieved a sense of accomplishment (in almost immediate retrospect).

My blackberry alarm (who knew they had those?) I set for 7AM, figuring that would give me enough time to get coffee for the 40 minute drive to the top of Whiteface.  I woke up at 4 – wide awake in a bed that was not my own, so it was kind of weird going back to sleep – and then again at 6.  I figured this was close enough to my planned wake time and got my ass a-movin’.  Another good move.

One of the guys from the hostel mentioned that he thought the road to the top of Whiteface might be a seasonal one and therefore closed.  If it was, that would mean that my hike would be just about doubled, because I’d have to start from a different trailhead (at the base of the mountain).  The road was closed.

So I started from the next closest place, which was near the Atmospheric Science Research Center on Marble Mountain Lane (about 2000 feet elevation):

View Larger Map

I followed the trail from the ASRC for about a mile to the top of Marble Mountain (2753 feet), and then proceeded on for another 3 miles to the summit of Whiteface Montain (4867 feet elevation), passing the turnoff for Esther mountain on the way.  Though it was overcast, I didn’t stop to put on my raingear until after the turnoff for Esther.

There was a little bit of snow in the lee between the trail and the embankment for Route 451 where they just-about intersect, and small patches of ice on the rock here and there for the rest of the way up to the summit.  The last bit of the trail on the way to the summit (maybe 300 or 400 yards), I walked along a rock ridge with a very steep dropoff to my left (south-southeast).  This elevation was right in the middle of the clouds, and I was able to watch the wind blowing the clouds into the side of the mountain, where it then swirled back on itself.  Pretty fly.  The wind was heavy, but not strong enough to blow me around all that much, thank goodness.

I summited Whiteface and took a couple of crappy pics of me with my crappy phone (the wind kept blowing my hand around – and it was cold, so my fingers pretty much turned into claws), and sent the best pic I could take to pretty much everyone in my text-message recent contacts list.  Make a note, dear reader:  don’t forget to text Ted just before he climbs a mountain, and you might get some crappy picture mail.

View Larger Map

On the way up the trail, I noticed I was following someone else.  My tracking skillz ain’t all that great, but it had rained on Friday night, so it was pretty easy to tell fresh boot prints.  They were small – right around my size (8.5), so I figured it might be a chick.  That was a nice thing to think about on the way up the mountain.

It turns out it was a dude – I didn’t meet him, but I caught a glimpse of his back for a second when I reached the summit of Whiteface.  No time for love anyway, Doctor Jones.

I passed three people on the way back down Whiteface – one dude just below the summit wearing nothing remotely waterproof (pity that fool), and two dudes just before the Esther turnoff.  One of whom was a fellow Catskill 3500 Club member, and the other was a forty-sixer.  I talked to them for a few minutes and headed back down.  The forty-sixer was pretty old and kept saying stuff to us that included “your club”.  Whatever.  At least our bushwacks are, in fact, bushwacks, and not total herd-paths.

I summited Whiteface at around 10:30 and hit the turnoff for Esther at 11:24.  On the way to Esther (4239 feet), I had to first climb Lookout Mountain (4085 feet).  Lookout isn’t labeled on the map – it’s that little bump just to the south of Esther.  I summited Esther at 11:58 – which makes 4 peaks before noon.

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It was 1:30 when I got back to the car.  By my calculations, I figure I was slip-sliding my way down the mountain(s) at about 3 miles an hour – which is a pretty good clip, especially in the rain.

As much as I poo-poo the herd path aspect of my ascent of Lookout and Esther (one part of the Esther trail actually had a 20-yard log causeway over a swampy section!), the fact that the trail was so well-travelled was a big help.  That said, it’s only fair to mention that this convenience is not present on more than one or two of the bushwacks in the Catskills.  To that extent, the 46ers have it kind of easy.  I’ll not speak too soon, though, as Esther was my first bushwack in the ‘dacks; I certainly don’t expect the rest to be that easy.

It’s getting late and high time I wrapped this up.  At the end of the day, I ended up hiking about 12 miles or so in a total of 5.5 hours, with an overall elevation gain of just under 3000 feet.  I believe I called that ‘ludicrous’ in Friday evening’s post.  I’m not even going to do the math on the total elevation gain (up and down and up again), but I’m sure it was a lot.  I can’t wait to update my Peakbagger.com page.

The 4.5 hour drive at 80 mph home in the pouring rain was uneventful.  I was glad for the couple of asshole drivers I had occasion with whom to duel on the way back, as they kept my wits sharp and didn’t allow any time for me to fall asleep while driving.  I ate and ate and ate on the way home, and then ate like a horse at my parents’ anniversary celebration – for which, I might add, I was on time.

Everything about the trip – the hiking, the driving – was beautiful.  I am so glad I set that goal and accomplished it.  And I’m glad I digressed in the beginning of this post to talk about the fact that the little bits of determination were the most rewarding.  I could have tagged along with the other hikers from the hostel.  I could have skipped Esther and played it safe time-wise.  In the end, it all worked out.  But it all worked out because I planned in advance as much as possible and kept track of where I was geographically and temporally the whole time.  These are just some of the little things that add up to a great sense of accomplishment.

Again, all that stuff I talked about moving towards in my Inventory and Priorities posts, I’m getting.  The sense of peace I felt on the drive home on Saturday and for the whole day on Sunday has not yet left me.  Work and other things have conspired to take it away here and there, but I’ve thusfar been able to return to that peace with barely a thought.  It’s a wonderful feeling.  I’ve been laughing louder, harder, and more often in the past couple of days than has been normal for me in the past few months.  This is exactly where I want to be.

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The wrecking is complete, please continue the checking:

So I think that in my last post I basically covered numbers three and four of my prioritization process, but for the sakes of continuity, repetition and closure, I’ll cover them once more:

3.  After that, I’m going to put those groups into an order of priority – which ones I want to get/achieve first

So the process I ended up following was making kind of a spectrum of my priorities.  I put the “Gig” list at one end:  decisions too big and all-encompassing to make right now; and the smaller stuff from the “Have”s list (clothes, etc.) at the other end:  things that are too small to worry about right now.  I’ll count on the muse to move me to buy new jeans; I don’t need to plan that out.

In the middle are the achievable goals that require some sort of planning or preparation:  the Catskill 3500 Club winter patch and, to a lesser extent the Adirondack 46ers patch.  As I said in yesterday’s post, the former has more stringent time-constraints, and the latter will have to be stretched over such a long time-horizon that it’s not worth my time to fully plan that goal out in detail right now.

Other things that fall into the middle of the list are the MAT and the iPhone.  Both of which are “just do it” items.

4.  Then (I may skip that last step and go directly to this one) I’m going to figure out a couple of long- and short-term life goals and start moving toward them.  Inexorably.

I didn’t precisely skip #3 and go to #4, instead adding a #2a in there as well, but I think you got the picture.

As to moving – inexorably – toward these goals:

Today (Tuesday – I’m a night-blogger, remember?) I put the 3500 Club mountains into a spreadsheet and organized them by area of the Catskills, after removing the mountains I’ve already climbed in the winter.  I then highlighted them on my maps in blue and have started a list of which mountains can be climbed together and which can only be climbed by themselves.

I also emailed one of the hostels in Lake Placid requesting a reservation for a bed this Friday night.  I plan to climb Whiteface and Esther mountains in the Adirondacks on Saturday (and make it home in time for my parents’ anniversary dinner Saturday night at 7).

Tomorrow (Wednesday, which is today for you, dear reader), I plan to call the schools that offer the MAT and book myself a seat at the next convenient testing.

I’ve already been on the Apple website and filled out my information for the iPhone, as well as spoken to several people about their feelings on iPhone vs. Google Android.  I still need to figure out how to get Apple to let me keep my 202 area code phone number, even though my primary service area will be in NJ.  That may take a few days.

So that’s it, dear reader.  Maybe I’ll give you some of my rationale behind all these decisions in Thursday’s post.  And maybe not.  Stay tuned.

Please continue checking the wrecking; we’re almost there.

So I’ve made my list and I’ve organized it.  And here’s what I’ve got so far:

I’m leaving off the “Gig” topic for now.  There’s a lot to it that I need to spend more time researching and thinking about. Two of those points (Attorney & Teaching) involve an complete directional change in my career.  My current mindset is a bit too shaky for me to be making decisions that drastic at this time.

The “Gig” topic won’t be far from my mind, though.  I spend a lot of time on the internet and I’ve seen some possible options for part-time (e.g. while not-at-work) gigs in social media and writing.  I’m in a handful of social media and writing groups on LinkedIn, so I’m fairly well in-touch with the internet possibilities (copywriting, etc.) for those outlets.  I’ll keep my eyes open for things that look interesting; this will be an ongoing kind of goal that doesn’t require much more than that.

That leaves me with my “Do” and “Have” lists.  As Apoc so aptly pointed out in yesterday’s comments, the “Have”s tend to support the “Do”s.  So I’m going to start with the “Do”s:

Of those, getting my winter patch for the Catskill 3500 Club has the most rigid requirements.  To wit, in order to qualify as a “winter” peak, I must climb each of the 35 mountains in the Catskills that are over 3500 feet between December 22nd and March 22nd.  There are 13 weekends in this time frame and I have 27 mountains left to climb in that span.  Yes, that works out to about 2 mountains per weekend – in the snow – give or take.  This is a tough goal, but not an unattainable one, given that

1. each weekend has two days,
2. climbing more than one mountain per day is entirely possible,
3. I’ve climbed all these mountains before,
4. I own the proper gear, and
5. the Catskills are close enough for me to do day-trips (i.e. drive up, climb mountain(s), drive home for a hot shower and meal and a night in a warm bed – rinse and repeat if necessary).

So all that’s left is to sit down and figure out which mountains I plan to climb on each of those thirteen weekends.  I’ll spare you those particular details, dear reader.  Stay tuned:  each weekend is sure to be encapsulated in a blog post.

Next on the list is the Adirondack 46ers patch.  This goal is completely attainable, albeit over a longer period.  I have thusfar climbed 2 of the 46 required peaks.  Given:

1. that this goal will probably take me a year or more of weekend hiking to complete,
2. that the weekends between 12/22/2009 and 3/22/2010 will be spent in the Catskills, and
3. that the May/June months in the Adirondacks are more-or-less unhikeable due to black fly season,

I’m going to put this goal down as “long-term” and basically back-burner it for the purposes of this inventory.  I’m going to need to get in shape for the Catskill 3500 Club winter patch goal, and I’m also going to need to get used to driving up to the ‘dacks (and learn my way around), so I’m going to try to get up there and knock a few of the high peaks off my list between now and 12/22.  The best way for me to do this will be to drive up on Friday night and stay somewhere in the area so that I can get an early start on the hike on Saturday morning.  To this end, I’ve already found a couple of inexpensive hostels in the area at which to stay.  I’ll email them this week for details and booking requirements.  This also means that I’ll have to find someone to cover me for my Friday night commitments for a few weeks here and there.

The rest of the bullets on the “Do” list are fairly easily eliminated:

• MAT (Miller Analogies Test):  Just take it.  Sign up this week for the next available seat and commit.  Study/prepare as needed.
• Practice my bass and do pushups:  Just do it.  Finger the strings a bit each night; do a few pushups every morning and every evening.
• Bar Exam:  No change:  Still a major life-decision; see “Gig”.
• Book:  Maybe consolidate my blog posts and put together a book on my hikes.

Finally, as I mentioned before, the things on my “Have” list dovetail almost completely with my “Do” list.  And I think the iPhone my be the answer to the GPS and digital camera desires:  the iPhone has a camera and I think I’ve found a GPS application for it that does pretty much everything I want in a GPS unit (which is basically a detailed tracking of my progress while hiking).

The wardrobe aspect of my “Have”s list is something I can figure out as I go.  I feel no pressure to completely refresh my wardrobe right away.  The suits I currently own are fine; maybe I’ll buy a new one at some point if I have the scratch and the overwhelming desire to do so, and I’ll leave the replenishment of my argyle supply to Mom at Christmas and impulse buys.

No, dear reader, I’m not forgetting that “Girl” is on my list of “Have”s as well.  That’s another one that I’m going to back-burner for the moment.  I’m very tempted to set up a Match.com profile – it seems to be the best website for a single dude in NNJ to join and get dates (you should meet some of the retards I know that get dates from that site) – but especially after my eHarmony experience, I’m wary of fantasizing a(nother) website into the realm of panacea.

Besides the fact that Match.com is going to run me about $138 for a 6 month membership, I also need to consider the fact that I’m a gentleman and enjoy paying for things on dates.  I’m not completely backward, going dutch or letting the lady pay is fine by me, but I’m kind of a stickler for taking a girl out on at least the first few dates.  And if I assume that I’ll get some dates from Match (ergo, it would be worth the membership fee), I also have to assume that I’m going to be out-of-pocket quite a bit of scratch for said dates.

I’m going to think more on the Match.com thing.  Philosophically, if I’m doing all the things on my “Do”s list, I’ll be having a damned good time and will be giving off all kinds of successful come-fuck-me vibes.  That said, I’ve been doing said things and giving off said vibes for quite a while now, with not much to show for it in the XX chromosome category.

Yes, I understand that I’m blurring the fuck/love line right now, but that’s strictly for the purpose of brevity.  This is really more of a topic for a whole ‘nother post entirely.  So I’m going to leave it at that.  Besides, if I’m dropping the f-bomb in with my oh-so-professional writing style more than once in 500 words, then it probably means that my filter is off and I’m just heading down the road of morning-after embarrassment.  So yeah, I’m leaving it at that.  Er, this:  the whole girl-issue is so far from far-from-my-mind that I think I’m better off thinking about other things for a bit.  You dig?

Check it as I continue to wreck it.

I reorganized my list into groups of things that are like each other.  And then I did it again.  What I came up with were three main ideas:  things I want to do, things I want to do, things I want to have and “Gig”.  Here’s the breakdown:

Have

• iPhone
• GPS
• Digital Camera
• Clothes (sundry; I’ll spare you the complete list)
• Girl

Do

• 3500 Club winter patch
• Adirondack 46ers patch
• Book (write one)
• MAT (Miller Analogies Test)
• Bass/pushups (daily stuff)
• Bar Exam (see Gig)

Gig

• Social Media (part time?)
• Writing (part time?)
• Attorney – solo practitioner
• Teaching (PhD/Professorial – graduate/undergrad)

So that’s it for this step.  All of the foregoing was done with pen and paper, and I went through a few drafts of each.  The above is a much cleaner version of what I’m actually working with; it’s also a lot less detailed.

In between this step and the next one (#3, prioritization), I’ve been doing a bit of research on what each of these goals will require of me – whether it be monetary, temporal or emotional.  This is something I need to do in order to set my goals and prioritize them.  Some will be relatively easily attainable, and others will require significant monetary, temporal and/or emotional investments on my part.

Ok.  Check it as I wreck it:

I’ve been all over the place lately.  Looking for instant gratification in all the wrong places.  Well, the right places, but instant gratification isn’t what I need; I get too wrapped up in it and forget about long-term goals.

So here’s my plan:  I’m going to do an inventory and figure out what my goals are (or are going to be or should be or whatever).  That way, I can start out on the path toward these goals, instead of running around (figuratively) jerking off all over the place and not really getting anything substantial done with my life at present.

1. I’m going to start by making a list of all the things I want to do or have.  The beginning of that list is below.
2. Then I’m going to group those things in the list into…well, things that are like each other.
3. After that, I’m going to put those groups into an order of priority – which ones I want to get/achieve first.
4. Then (I may skip that last step and go directly to this one) I’m going to figure out a couple of long- and short-term life goals and start moving toward them.  Inexorably.

You see, I’ve been all over the place lately and I realize that I haven’t been moving toward any particular goals at all.  I’m just kind of doing things for a “feel good” sensation as soon as possible.  But I’m repeating myself.

The purpose of this is to get me back onto a normal cycle of effort and sense of accomplishment.  I know that even just a little bit of a sense of accomplishment is like a catalyst for more effort.  It’s definitely an ouroborean chicken/egg thing:  one begets the other.

It’s an unending cycle.  Except that at some point in the past few months, the cycle ended for me.  Well maybe not ended.  Maybe a wave analogy would be better at this point:

My emotional wave has become completely irregular – amplitude, wavelength, and period are not predictable.  In my attempt to increase the frequency of my “feel good” moments (metaphors officially mixed), I shorten the wavelength by messing around too much on facebook and other social media sites (or doing other things), but eventually get bored and flatline for a bit – before starting all over again.  But again, everything is irregular.  There’s no predictability.  I need to get back to the rolling waves of the deep ocean (see me in my little lifeboat, riding to the crest, then surfing into the trough).

Seriously, I know you don’t usually click the links, dear reader, but if you check out the bewitched pictures in the last couple of links, you’ll get a better feel for what I’m talking about.

Did I mention that my facebook time is now spent reading in English (Pirate)?

So.  Before I digress further, here’s the beginning of my list (I’ll continue to add to it in the next few days)”

Things I’d Like to Do/Have

• pushups
• iPhone
• GPS
• 46ers patch
• 3500 Club winter patch
• girl
• more $
• my own business
• bar membership(s)/solo practitioner attorney
• social media gig
• new suit
• topcoat
• pay off student loans
• new jeans
• be more on time to work
• become a more proficient bass player
• more social media followers/friends/influence

Yes, yes, I know that most of these things are material and that I seem to be ignoring the spiritual.  But please remember, dear reader, that I’m a zen pragmatist.  I believe strongly in “chop wood, fetch water, seek enlightenment” and other such things.  “Bring the body and the mind will follow” is a good one too.  My mind is always going anyway; as long as I’m doing something, my thoughts tend to be clearer and less jumbled.  This lonely philosopher achieves enlightenment through action.

What’s your current outlook on life?  Is it rosy?  Is the glass half-full, or half-empty?

What’s your focus on right now?  Not in general; I’m not asking if you’re an optimist or a pessimist, but rather how you view life right at this moment.  If that’s a bit too pressing or hard to nail down, then what has your focus been on for the last week or so?

Work?  Play?  Dating?  Family?  Adventures?

For a lot of people (mostly nine-to-fivers), Labor Day marked a turning point: summer’s over, back to work.  Was that the case for you?

I have a friend who’s a schoolteacher, so the beginning of September signalled back-to-school; and, consequently, back to work.  She’s a hard worker and a perfectionist and wicked stressed out.  Weekends are too short and there just doesn’t seem to be enough time to get everything done during the week.

I want to urge her to enjoy life – to step back, take a deep breath, and enjoy the scenery.  Smell the roses, as it were (though I’m more of an hyacinth kind of guy – but I’m sure, dear reader, that you’re picking up what I’m putting down).

Thing is, I don’t know that that’s necessarily the right advice.  The Beatles did that song “to everything (turn, turn, turn) / there is a season (turn, turn, turn)…”  Those lyrics are actually from the Bible:

Ecclesiastes 3: 1-8

To every thing there is a season, and a time to every purpose under the heaven:
A time to be born, and a time to die; a time to plant, and a time to pluck up that which is planted;
A time to kill, and a time to heal; a time to break down, and a time to build up;
A time to weep, and a time to laugh; a time to mourn, and a time to dance;
A time to cast away stones, and a time to gather stones together; a time to embrace, and a time to refrain from embracing;
A time to get, and a time to lose; a time to keep, and a time to cast away;
A time to rend, and a time to sew; a time to keep silence, and a time to speak;
A time to love, and a time to hate; a time of war, and a time of peace.

I’m not a big Beatles fan, but I think they get the vibe across pretty well:  it’s about balance.  Sometimes we’re supposed to sit back and figure out what the cloud-shapes mean, and other times, we’re supposed to buckle-down, put our noses to the grindstone and work.

So my basic question is this:  is that right?  Is it proper or even possible to enjoy the ride all the time?  Is my friend just in one of those times of war, sewing, gathering, breaking down, planting, etc.?  Do those times have definite beginnings and endings, or are they more grey than black and white?

That is, are these times measured in hours, days, months, or are they measured in moments?  Does proper balance dictate that these times be part of our daily lives, ups and downs within each day, or should they be segregated and confined to busy-times and vacation days?

I don’t really have an answer.  That’s why I’m asking you, dear reader.  I suppose that for me, everything is always grey.  That’s why I call myself agnostic.  Sure, I’ve had those buckle-down, no enjoyment times, but they’re not all drudgery:  I get a certain enjoyment out of the accomplishments along the way.  “Life is a journey, not a series of destinations.”

What do you think?  What’s your outlook right now?  Are you pursuing your passion(s) daily with your every waking breath, or trying to fit it (them) in where you can?  Are you succeeding?

The muse isn’t speaking to me particularly clearly tonight.  My mind is kind of nowhere right now.  Which, in a zen/yogic sense, is probably ideal.  My belly is full, my apartment is warm, Laila Jo and I are chilling and listening to one of my metal tribute to Metallica discs; I really can’t think of anything more for which to ask.

My friend Mike bought me a kitchen knife set for my 4th anniversary of not being a complete asshole.  It’s pretty sweet.  I’ve been cooking more lately, and I can’t begin to tell you how much easier it is to cut onions with an actual cleaver than it is to cut them with a big ass hunting knife.

I’m grateful for the Gratitude Drum Circle this past Saturday evening.  Quite a few people showed up, no drama ensued (to which I was privy, at least), I’m pretty sure everyone had a good time, and my apartment is cleaner and more organized than it has been in a while.

In order to have room to fit everyone, I had to put a lot of my (albeit “organized”) clutter away – I’m grateful for the abundant closet space in my attic-like apartment.  I bought a vacuum on Saturday; sweeping the cat fur off of the rug was becoming a full-time job.  I picked out a good vacuum cleaner from the new Target on Route 4, but didn’t look at the box I actually bought.  This one has a bag and is much bigger than I the one I was looking at.  I don’t really like vacuums with bags.  Maybe my mother, brother, or sister could use a new one.  In any case, the overall feng shui of my apartment has improved significantly since I put all my junk away.

Come to think of it, I also bought the wrong silkscreen ink on Saturday as well.  I needed black ink for the shirt I’m making for Jim Spaulding, and instead of picking up black fabric ink, I bought black acrylic ink.  The latter isn’t designed to be washable.  Pearl paint was all out of black fabric ink, and I really thought I found the last one – that’s what I get for being right-brained:  the words ‘fabric’ and ‘acrylic’ are awfully similar in a holistic sense.

As I was driving to the car wash on Sunday, I was thinking about the Gratitude Drum Circle of the night before and was – get this – overwhelmed by a feeling of gratitude.  Go figure.  Probably the coolest part about the experience was that it happened on a section of road upon which I drive to work every day.  So it happened again for me this morning.  I’m hoping this feeling continues whenever I drive over that particular bit of macadam.

Several people said they’d come back for another drum circle on the next full moon.  I wish I could figure out how to set up an audio link to the *.m4a file that Alli sent me with one of the drum circle grooves on it, but I can’t even get my media player to open it.  If anybody has any suggestions, let me know.  I’ll probably google it another time; I already did, but the conversion program I installed wants me to give them $39 for the year to make it work – which I’m not going to do.  I’m sure there’s a free way to do it, if I only look a bit harder.

Someone else put up a blog post about Star Wars characters on Twitter, so I posted the link to my list in the comments section.  My stats have been blowing up all day.  Which is good for my ego and (theoretically) my pocketbook – I’m going to guess that Google owes me about $5 for the ads over the past year.  I’m not going to bother checking; this blog isn’t that popular yet anyway.

So yeah, that’s pretty much it.  As I said, my mind isn’t anywhere in particular right now, and I kind of like that.  I’d like to spend some time setting up a separate directory and installing WordPress MU and Buddypress, but that’s going to take some time and stress, and I don’t feel like harshing my mellow right now.  I’m going to go practice my bass for a bit – I printed out the tablature for Jason Newstead’s bass solo at the Mexico City concert from the Binge & Purge boxed set.

When I think about my character defects, I generally try to relate them back to the seven deadly sins.  This keeps me from coming up with more character defects than I can possibly work on.  For example:  I’m constantly late for work.  Being late in and of itself is not a defect of character – it’s merely the way that my character defects affect my behavior.  In looking at my constant lateness, I can drill down to two things:  pride and sloth.

Pride, insofar as I feel I’m so special and do so much good work that I don’t need to show up at work when I’m supposed to.  I consider myself above the rules.  Now, I don’t think “I’m above the rules, so I can show up to work whenever I want” – but I stay up later than I should blogging and messing around on various social media outlets.  What I’m doing is putting my personal desires and pursuits ahead of my responsibilities.  To a certain extent, this indicates a lack of respect for my job, and maybe even my co-workers.  Again, these are not explicit thoughts that I have, but my actions imply them.

Sloth, in that I’d rather lie in bed, hitting the snooze bar for an hour, than wake up when my alarm goes off.  That’s just plain lazy.

Over the past few days, my considerations of my character defects (an ongoing effort) have led me to focus specifically on pride and fear.  Fear itself is not necessarily a defect of character – it’s more of a catalyst, something that causes me to be more likely to act out on my defects of character.

Pride – in all its various incarnations – and its children, rationalization and self-justification is a constant struggle for me.  It guides me subtly to places I don’t want to be – mentally and emotionally.

Fear gets me there faster.

Over the last few days, I’ve been thinking about fear of success and fear of failure.  I have both.  And I can tell you that both were instilled in me mostly by my father.  (Have no fear, I’ll not get into a discussion of my Oedipus Complex here.)  Teachers and male role models have also installed these buttons in me.  I’m not going to lay this all at the feet of my father.

I’m the eldest of three children.  When I was young, it was impressed upon me that I shouldn’t “outshine” my siblings.  Failure was also not tolerated in my childhood household – nor, really, here in America (land of capitalists).

So I’m afraid of doing too well at something, because by doing so I’m necessarily doing better than someone else, and that’s not good for their feelings or development.

I’m also afraid of not succeeding, which translates into a kind of perfectionism on my part.  Growing up, someone was always pointing out how I could have done something better.  Whatever their intentions, I translated this to mean that I had failed at my task (in however small a way, failure is still failure).

The enemy of good is perfection.

When I dream (and remember what I dream), I usually dream about some sort of inability to succeed.  For example, I’m running away from or toward something, but I just can’t seem to make my legs go faster.  They’re just so tired.  I know I’m well-rested and should be able to increase my speed, but I just can’t.

Or I’ll be in a fight with something and just can’t seem to hit it hard enough – or I simply won’t decapitate it, even though I know full well that my sword is long and sharp enough and that I have the skill to do so.

For the most part, when I’m dreaming, I know I’m dreaming.  But for whatever reason, I never give myself cool super-powers; I never think “hey, I’m dreaming, why don’t I fly around for a bit?”  (Sometimes I’m telekinetic, though – but only a little bit.)  Being predominantly right-brained, my dreams are more holistic and deal with emotions – feelings - than actions.

Last night I dreamt that I was playing soccer on a team against a much superior team.  There was no way that we could possibly win.  We decided to go balls-to-the-wall and play as hard as we could, even though winning was impossible.  When I woke up (or the dream ended), I think the score was like 2-1 (us).

I scored one of the goals.  It wasn’t pretty or fancy or perfect, but it was a goal.  In another attempt, I hesitated and hit the post.

I played soccer from elementary through high school – on school and club teams – and I don’t think I ever scored except in practice.  It was an entirely new feeling for me.

So I think my dream indicates a kind of moving-forward for me, mentally and emotionally.  My dad has a coffee mug on his desk that says “You Miss 100% of the Shots You Don’t Take”.  And that’s exactly what I was like growing up.  I never took any shots – mostly out of fear.  Fear of success (that I’d be part of the reason why someone on the other team felt like a loser) and fear of failure (that I had to take the perfect shot in order to score).  Pride plays more of a part in the former.  Again, these are more subconscious thoughts than conscious ones.

I think my dream last night is an indication that I’m not so much afraid of failure or success as I used to be.  That I’m more willing to take the shots than I’ve been in the past – whether I miss them or not.  I can’t score if I don’t shoot.

If you’re giggling to yourself now, saying “heheee: he said ‘score‘,” well…so am I (a little), but sex isn’t all I think about.

It’s now 3AM and the drum circle is still going on.  There’s no actual drumming happening right now: it’s more of a party-cum-hangout session.

Ok.  Now it’s 3:42 and everybody’s gone.  I just vacuumed, swept, mopped, did the dishes, rolled up the extra rug, and took out the garbage – mostly because I don’t want to leave the cleanup for the tomorrow-me.  It’s not exactly altruistic, but I’m pretty sure he’ll take it.

Laila Jo is sitting in my lap as I type, rubbing her face against mine and purring like a little engine.  I think what she’s saying is “I missed you.  Let’s not do that again, shall we?”

I think Laila Jo will probably just have to suck it up and deal with all the attention and noise next month.  Several of tonight’s attendees promised to come back at the next full moon and make some noise again.  I’m looking forward to it.

Being that it’s wicked late at night / wicked early in the morning and Laila Jo is giving me those bedroom eyes (yes, they’re the only ones she has, and yes, my apartment is a studio, so technically the whole thing is the bedroom), I’m not going to get into all the hijinks of the evening.  And I’m tired.

I may not get into any of the hijinks at all.  Attendees were Christine, Jeanne, Crystal, Alessandra, Emily, Alexis, Alyssa, Meredith, Simon, Mark, Dimitri, Mike, Darren, Scott,  Will, and Jim Spaulding in New Mexico (via the moon).  Under normal circumstances (i.e. I’m blogging at 1AM), I would include hyperlinks to everyone’s facebook page.  These are, however, not normal circumstances.

Alli is going to send me the audio file of one of the grooves – it came out pretty well – and I’ll figure out how to post it hereon.  In the meantime, here’s a link to Christine’s album on facebook (which she set up before she left); you don’t need to have facebook to view the album.  I think.

Overall, I’d say the evening went pretty fucking well.

Yes, that’s a technical term – don’t harsh my mellow, man.

Check it:

No H8rs allowed.

I’m sure I haven’t mentioned this before, but I really need to go through my friends on facebook and get them all on their proper lists.  I just sat down to make sure everyone who lives nearby (and who actually qualifies as my friend in real life) gets the invite to the drum circle at my house on Saturday night, and realized that there are definitely some people way at the beginning of my facebook friends list that aren’t on any actual “Lists”.

So if you’re on facebook and have not yet become a fan of The Quixotic Jedi, you can do so by clicking here.  If you’re on facebook and have not yet become my friend (and you have any desire whatsoever to do so), click here.  Add a message, too, to let me know you found me via this site.

If you’re already a fan, or just became one, you should be able to share the invite to the drum circle with whomever you like.  My place isn’t that big, so please RSVP so I know if I have to rent out the local K of C hall and invite The Dan Band or something.

It’ll be interesting to see who shows.  I kind of feel like Juliette Lewis from Old School inviting Frank the Tank over: “just me and a few friends from the internet; you should come.”

Anyway, I’m not holding out for a big turnout or any kind of ridiculously spiritual experience.  But be warned:  if you choose to attend, the one thing you must bring is an open mind.  I repeat:

No H8rs allowed.

I know of at least two hotties that will be there, and if it’s just the three of us and some organic drum beats amidst a haze of incense smoke, well, I’m pretty sure I’ll have fun.

Either way:  9PM on Saturday at my place, under the light of the full moon in full view of the goddess, we’ll get together and make some noise to say thank you for what we’ve got.

Ok, so check this:

A blind man was begging in a city park.  Someone approached and asked him whether people were giving generously.  The blind man shook a nearly empty tin.

His visitor said to him, “Let me write something on your card.”  The blind man agreed.  That evening the visitor returned.  “Well, how were things today?”

The blind man showed him a tin full of money and asked, “What on earth did you write on that card?”

“Oh,” said the other, “I merely wrote ‘Today is a spring day, and I am blind.’”

So my question to you, dear reader, is as follows:

Does this make sense to you?  Would you be more likely to drop some loot in the blind dude’s mug if you saw “Today is a spring day, and I am blind” on his cardboard?

To put it in perspective, this story appears in the beginning of the Gratitude chapter of The Spirituality of Imperfection (one of the books I’m currently reading).

So yeah, I’d like to hear what you think.

Overall, I think the sin I struggled with most during my trip to San Diego was envy.  I’d like to discuss this at length, but I’m tired and would like to make it to work on time tomorrow – even if it is a Friday.  So this will be short.

[Famous last words of Ted Wallace.]

I just finished Life of Pi – Yann Martel is the author, by the way.  I really should update my Goodreads profile; there are a lot of books I’ve read recently that aren’t included therein/on.

I’d have to say that I would recommend this book relatively highly.  I’d give it two semi-enthusiastic thumbs up.  I can’t really go off on a tirade about how wonderful it was, because it wasn’t.  But it wasn’t crappy either.  Very (brown) Indian – lots and lots of adjectives piled atop one another, which I find to be somewhat tiresome and frilly.  The story, while not ridiculously exciting, moved along at a fairly brisk pace, for which I was and am grateful.

As far as making me believe in God (with a capital ‘G’), I’m not so sure.  Probably less than Millman’s book Way of the Peaceful Warrior was a “life-changing” read [read my semi-half-assed review here].  Maybe I am and was too tired to take Martel’s implications and run and dance with them.  Maybe they just need time to sink in.  Man is an animal.  Yay and duh at the same time.

Overall, though, it was an interesting and quick read and didn’t conform (in my mind at least) to one of the 21 (or however many) major plotline archetypes.  Two thumbs, but not all that far up.  Maybe waist-high, but not as stiff as the Fonze’s.

I don’t know if it’s the book, some bit of jet lag, or a combination of both and other things as well that’s left me a bit off today.  I didn’t get very much done at work, which isn’t unusual – though I did take care of everything that might qualify as immediately pressing.

It was nice to sit in my chair and read with Laila Jo in my lap, purring like a fuzzy engine.  She shad quite a bit while I was petting her – and while I was away.

Overall, I have an overwhelming sense of solitude.  It’s not the sweet kind that comes with finally having some time to myself after a stretch of busy-ness, nor is it the bitter kind that’s soured by loneliness.  My solitude is more of a fact: it just is.

I flew to the other side of the country and back again over the course of three days – albeit accompanied (to a certain extent) the entire time.  I returned home to find things pretty much as I had left them.  I did not have a sense of home-coming.  In fact, when I returned a text to a friend of mine, I couldn’t bring myself to say “it’s good to be home”, rather, I said “it’s good to be back“.  I struggled with my choice of words for a moment, deciding to err on the side of truthfulness.

Not that I’m not home.  Nor am I in some sort of melancholic malaise.  I just am, and that’s a very bland fact right now.  Not nearly as exciting as the yogis and zen masters make it out to seem.  At least not right now.  I’m going to bed.  Things are always different in the morning.

It’s about 60 degrees outside right now (it’s midnight), and I’m guessing it’s about 70 in my apartment.  The windows are open and the ceiling fan is on, but that’s not enough to pull in too much of the cooler degrees outside.  The kitchen floor (downstairs, tile on concrete) is pretty close to the temperature outside.  All in all, I’d say the climate in my apartment is pretty perfect.

Christine’s cat, LailaJo is alternately hopping on my lap to make spelling corrections as I type, rolling on the carpet, or sitting to her back with me and giving me dirty/coy looks.  I can’t really tell whether they’re dirty or coy – I’m pretty sure that has something to do with my Y chromosome.  Understanding the fairer sex – or rather, not understanding – is a bit of karma I’ll have to carry and work out during the next turn of the wheel.

I went to yoga tonight (and fell asleep during the deep relaxation portion).  It was awesome.  Not the falling-asleep part, but the overall class.  Nothing special happened, though I was definitely able to get my head/chest closer to my knees in Janusirshasana (head to knee pose) and Paschimothanasana (full forward bend) than ever before – and noticeably so.  Instead of grabbing my ankles and increasing the tension on my back, I laid the backs of my hands on the mat by my calves and let my breathing do the work.  Whoulda figured that listening to the instructor was such a good idea?  Not me.

The yogis are starting to remember me – even remember my name.  Yogi Pat Brown (he’s too cool for a cool yoga name) is in his sixties or seventies and sat in on the class tonight.  After our manly elbows-down, thumbs-up “handshake” (like the brothers do) introduction, he even gave me a hug.  At one point during class, he let one rip and I was really close to giggling.  Not very spiritual of me, but fuckit, it was funny.  I don’t think he noticed or cared – I’m guessing that when I get to be that old, my body will squeak of its own accord as well.

The instructor was fairly new, but he knew his stuff pretty well.  I think he’s taken lots of classes, but hasn’t taught very many.  He has a great understanding of how to explain the postures, but not the well-practiced rote way of guiding the class that I’ve seen with most of the experienced instructors.

One other not-very-spiritual moment for me (this was after Pat farted, I think) was during Dhanurasana (bow pose).  In that asana, one lies on one’s stomach, bends the knees, grabs one’s feet, and lifts oneself by pushing one’s feet away from the head – I end up rocking back and forth on my belly button.  The instructor suggested that we keep our knees spread apart, though I thought they should be as close together as possible.  I peeked (my eyes are generally closed during yoga) to see what Pat was doing, and his knees were together.

Again, I almost giggled, because I imagined myself asking both instructors (did I mention that Pat’s one of the regular instructors?) which way is the proper way to execute the asana.  In my mind, they disagreed and I got impatient and said something along the lines of “listen, you fucking hippies, which one is it??”  Yeah, not too spiritual – the thought or the near-giggle.

Whatever, I had fun.

A couple of weeks ago, I had a nice chat with one of the instructors.  I asked her if she’d ever been to Ananda Ashram in Monroe NY and she replied that she had.  There was something about her demeanor that suggested to me that she didn’t dig the people or their type of yoga or something, so I asked her.  She responded by explaining that Ananda Ashram is simply a different community.  She doesn’t have anything against them or their yoga, but Integral Yoga is really her ashram – her community.  That definitely resonated with me, and the more time I spend there, the more clear her explanation becomes.

So I walked in to Barnes & Noble tonight and asked the girl at the help desk if she could point me in the direction of the self-help section.  Her reply:  “Wouldn’t that be defeating the purpose?”

Joke.

I know full well where the self-help section of the B&N is – it’s like the section on the map marked “Wilderness”.  As far as I’m concerned, there’s nothing there.  Except maybe tygers and dragons.

My favorite character from Ayn Rand’s novel Atlas Shrugged is Ragnar Danneskjöld.

I didn’t have meaningless sex last night.  But I did go to yoga.  Did it help?  Yes.  Quite a bit, in fact.

There were two chicks in the class that were about my age – one was kind of cute.  It a bit distracting, but probably just the challenge I needed.  I still have knots in my shoulders, but damn did it feel good to stretch every effin part of my body.

In case you’re not a yogi/yogini, one practices with one’s eyes closed.  That was a bonus for me, what with the chicks in the class.  I’m usually none too good at keeping my eyes to myself.  So I was glad that I had them closed.

Yoga practice is meditative – one is (at least in my mind) supposed to be in a state of meditation for the entire class.  I try to be, at least.  In meditation, I try to detach myself from my thoughts – to be aware of the facts that I am not my body, nor am I my mind.

I try to let my mind focus on my the postures (my body) while I’m practicing yoga.  I try to let my thoughts pass through my mind, without getting lost in them or attempting to control them.  As a matter of fact, I try to do this all the time – whether I’m “meditating” or not.

Supposedly, that’s one of the stages of yoga and/or zen practice – to be basically in a state of constant meditation.

I’m out of practice at formal meditation, so I had a little trouble watching the river of my thoughts rush by without getting caught up in them.   They started to sweep me away a few times.

All in all, though, I consider last night’s endeavour a success.  For me, personal change has to take place slowly, in small increments.  As much as I would hope that an hour and a half of yoga practice would relieve all the tension in my body and set my mind at peace, I can’t expect these things to happen immediately.  But last night’s exercise was a step toward those goals.  I just need to continue.

Although the knots are still there in my shoulders, they’re not nearly as tight as they were yesterday.  And, by the same token, even though my mind still runs away with me, I did hit upon a realization last night:

At the end of class, before the breathing exercises, we do yoga nidra – deep relaxation.  We lie on our backs, tense up each muscle group and let them relax, and then direct our attention to relaxing our bodies completely, from our feet up.  We spend 5-10 minutes in complete silence and relaxation – and meditation.   Normally, I fall into a light sleep/stupor at this point (as do many in the beginner class – some even snore).

Tonight, however, I did not.  As I was meditating, trying to “tie the puppy to the post” (and realizing that I didn’t have a post), my thoughts started to pull me into themselves.  Instead of following a pleasant one down into slumber, I just let them pass by and didn’t fall asleep, as is my wont.

I think that’s what I’m supposed to do.  At least, it felt more right/proper than simply falling asleep.

Overall, the class was very good for me.  But again, it was but one small step toward peace of mind and body.  I need to continue walking that path if I want to get away from my recent state of tension.

So I’ve been thinking about my current (semi-reviled) bachelorhood.  A couple of months ago my friend Jody (from Twitter) suggested that maybe the reason I’m still single is because the goddess was keeping me to herself.  I took comfort in that thought for a bit. 

Right now I’m wondering if maybe the goddess hasn’t put anyone in my path because I’m not ready for a relationship.  This is a particularly hard thought for me to have, as I’ve been doing quite a bit of work on myself.  Lots of self-evaluation and -appraisal.  I don’t know that this is necessarily an Occam’s Razor kind of situation, but it is an easy answer.

The more I think about my obsessive behavior during my marriage, and the more I think about when I’ll next be in a relationsip (and with whom), the more I wonder if I’ve changed.  Will I still obsess over the next girl? 

Besides the “My Story Mondays” divorce posts this past June, I’ve spent plenty of time looking at myself and how I was in my marriage.  I was definitely not a “whole” person in that relationship.  As I said, everything in my life revolved around her.  I’ve had a couple of (relatively short) relationships since then, and I suppose I did and didn’t obsess.  I’ve only been on the “dumper” side of things when those relationships ended, and my reasons generally revolved around the fact that I didn’t want to take the relationship any further.  I was also not happy with the status quo – which I think is something that has not and will not change about me.  If the relationship isn’t progressing, I have no interest in staying in it.  I don’t want to waste my time or hers with something that’s not going anywhere.

But this all begs the question:  progressing toward what?  Where do I want the relationship to go?  Well marriage and kids (duh) is kind of an obvious direction for me.  But I can’t have those without love. 

And the ‘L’ word begs other questions:  what exactly do I mean by that, and how is that different from obsession?

Tough questions, to which I don’t know if I have the answers.  Is there such a thing as a healthy obsession?  Is love nothing more than just that?  Hmm.  See what I mean?  Maybe I need to be able to answer these questions before I’m ready for a relationship.

But what the fuck – how am I supposed to figure out the answers to relationship questions when I’m all kinds of single like this?  I’ve said it before:  I don’t learn but by making mistakes.  At this point, I’m also wondering if the next one will be The One simply because I’ll remember how much being single sucked.

Nah.  I don’t think so.  I think I’ve got my head screwed on pretty straight.  If my next relationship isn’t what I’m looking for, I’m pretty sure I’ll recognize that and bounce.  I think my aversion to stagnation will overcome any remembered frustration about my bachelorhood.  Besides, even though it’s frustrating quite often, being single isn’t really all that bad.  I’ve been able to do a lot of good for other people that I might not have had the opportunity to do, had I been in a relationship.  I wouldn’t necessarily have had the time.

Life is good.  I’m a pretty happy camper.  I’d just like to have someone smokin’ hot and wicked sma’t with whom to share all the cool shiz that my life is.

So let’s continue the theme of yesterday’s post, shall we?  Sometimes I wonder if this blog isn’t some kind of fancy-dancy prayer service of mine. 

I’m extremely grateful for the good advice that was offered to me in yesterday’s comments.  I’ve got two things on my mind:  how my prayers are answered, and my own stubbornness.

I’m also going to talk about god a little bit (I may also interchange this liberally with ‘the goddess’).  I’m still agnostic and all that, but sometimes it’s just easier to use the word ‘god’ for semantical purposes.  That is, it makes it easier for me to get my point across without constantly qualifying my statements, as I am wont to do anyway.  Feel free to substitute your own word for my three-letter choice at whatever time you feel you’re picking up what I’m putting down.  Fate or luck are very close to what I’m describing, but, as I said, I don’t want to get too far into semantics right now.

Most of this is going to end up being metaphorical, but wtf, that’s kind of what I do.  If you don’t get it, that’s ok, you’re probably not meant to.  No hard feelings – either way, I hope.

I walk a certain kind of path that I don’t really talk about here – and I’m not going to go into detail about it here and now.  Suffice to say that part of this path involves helping others along at certain times.  And with that come successes and failures – not mine and not theirs, and not really successes and failures exactly:  It’s really more of particularly fortunate days interspersed with some unfortunate or unpleasant ones.  In either or any of these cases, helping others along is intensely rewarding.

Over the last two years or so, I’ve noticed a kind of pattern:  as soon as I loose a prayer for a woman in my life – as I did to a certain extent in my last post – the goddess puts one of these others in my path.  It’s almost as if she’s saying “Not yet, Ted, but here’s a good way for you to stay occupied in the meantime”.

About 8 hours after I published yesterday’s post, I received a text message from a friend of mine – one from whom I hadn’t heard in a couple of months.   The last time I heard from him, he had asked me for help walking the path I walk, and I assented.  Then a few months passed with no word from him.  He asked me to meet him to talk, and I once again assented.  Long story short, we’re back where we left off, and it looks like the few hours a week I’ve been spending feeling lonely will once again be filled.

While I don’t think my prayer could have been much more specific, I think the goddess probably gets a kick out of filling the request behind the request.  Or rather, that what I want isn’t necessarily what she wants for me – and maybe not what’s best for me either.

The charge I get out of helping these others along this path is pretty indescribable.  And it’s really good for me, too, because it reminds me to keep reaching for the person I can be and want to be .

To paraphrase the first mystery (or whatever) in that new age hooey book The Celestine Prophecy “there are no coincidences”.  Or maybe closer, “pay attention to the things you think are just coincidences”.  Here’s the reading from my God Calling meditations reader from this morning:

June 18

Wait

The world has always seen service for Me to be activity.  Only those near to Me have seen that a life apart, of prayer, may, and does so often, accomplish more than all the service man can offer Me.

If man lived apart with Me and only went out to serve at My direct command, My Spirit could operate more and accomplish truly mighty things.

Anybody else get the vibe of “sometimes it’s ok to be a hermit”?  That’s how I read it this morning – and I felt a little better for it.

So that’s it for the prayers being answered aspect.  I know I’m being vague, but if I get more specific, we’ll be sure to see another “Scott hit with wall of text” comment – and we can’t have that, now can we, dear reader?

So.  On to my own stubbornness:

There’s a prayer with which I’m sort of intimately familiar.  I don’t have it memorized, though the thought’s crossed my mind a few times.  In some circles, it’s called the St. Francis Prayer.  It’s called other things in other circles, but that’s what I’m going to go with here.  It was written by St. Francis of Assisi and goes like this:

Lord, make me a channel of thy peace – that where there is hatred, I may bring love – that where there is wrong, I may bring the spirit of forgiveness – that where there is discord, I may bring harmony – that where there is error, I may bring truth – that were there is doubt, I may bring faith – that where there is despair, I may bring hope – that where there are shadows, I may bring light – that where there is sadness, I may bring joy.  Lord, grant that I may seek to comfort rather than to be comforted – to understand, than to be understood – to love, than to be loved.  For it is by self-forgetting that one finds.  It is by forgiving that one is forgiven.  It is by dying that one awakens to Eternal Life.  Amen.

I’m currently listening to some live Led Zeppelin – we’re at the end of Dazed and Confused and it’s just flying along.  It felt really good to type that out with my fingers in time with John Bonham’s beat.

There’s lots of good stuff in that prayer that helps me to remind me to watch out for my ego.  The one thing that rings particularly true – and that I pray often, because I need nothing short of divine help in this area – is “grant that I may seek…to understand [rather] than to be understood”. 

That’s a big problem for me.  I’m stubborn.  If you’re not picking up what I’m putting down, I’ll pick it up and put it down again.  Then I’ll pick it up, fold it into a nice little origami turtle and put it down again.  Then I’ll pick it up, bunch it up, and throw it down – hard.  Et cetera.  I have a desire to be understood that’s exacerbated by my stubbornness.  And it can be pretty embarrassing sometimes.

People on Twitter right now are shading their avatars green to support democracy in Iran.  I noticed the green shading about a week or so ago, but haven’t spent much time on Twitter, so today was the first day that I actually found out what it meant.  I posted a couple of snide remarks, stemming from my own (fairly disgusted) apolitical views.  Apolitical, I said.  I’m not into politics or government in any way, shape, or form.

But I sure like to argue.  And I sure like to needle people.  Unfortunately, DarthTraya was one of the few who were paying attention to my tweets today – because she’s a friend.  Unlike me, DarthTraya has some pretty strong political views.  And I chose to needle her a bit about it.  Which wasn’t really all that nice – I wasn’t trying to be mean, but I could tell that I was getting her dander up a bit. 

This isn’t about whether my views (or lack thereof) conflict with DarthTraya’s, but rather that what my ego really wanted to do was get into an argument and convince her of the righteousness of my apoliticality.  I’m glad that I was handicapped by the 140 character limit on Twitter and that the combination of the character limit and my tendency toward loquaciousness frustrated me enough to break off the conversation.  I shouldn’t screw with the views that others hold dear, and I was well on my way to doing that today.  With a friend.  I’m sorry, DarthTraya.  I know I didn’t hurt your feelings or anything, but that still wasn’t right on my part.

I’ll leave the substance of my apolitical views for another post.  Believe you me, dear reader, it’s something I don’t think I’ll have a problem expressing.

In any case, partly in an attempt to avoid the aforementioned Scott-comment, and partly because it’s getting to be past my bedtime, I’m going to wrap this up:

My experience on Twitter this afternoon was a good reminder to me that I can still struggle with my ego’s desire to be understood.  And it was but one reminder:  My temptation to respond to the comments to yesterday’s post with something starting along the lines of “but you don’t understand…” was great.  By which I mean that I was greatly tempted.

The next couple of posts may be pretty easy ones for me, dear reader.  I do have some things to say in response to yesterday’s comments – though not necessarily in rebuttal.  In a sure-to-fail attempt at brevity:  I have considered the possibility that I’m waiting for my “ideal mate”.  That said, I think TNR’s advice was particularly poignant:  I am going to make a concerted effort to be less independent in the future.  Hopefully, one of the next few posts will be written from a local SBUX (though, by “local” I mean somewhere that’s likely to have chicks my age in it – like maybe Hoboken). 

So that’s it.  A two-paragraph wrap-up isn’t too bad.  Maybe I didn’t fail at the whole brevity thing after all.  ;-)

One of my ‘marketing’ bits for this blog is “Read this blog, it’ll make you smarter.  Guaranteed.”  And that’s not a lie.  I use a lot if large and/or obscure words, and even if you don’t google a definition here and there, just reading the words and puzzling out a meaning from the context of one of these posts is good enough exercise for your brain to make you a little bit smarter.

Getting smarter is as much about practice as anything else.  Sure, there’s a genetic component, but everyone can always use more exercise for their brain. 

Following my danged digressions is also another way to keep your brain loose.  My point to this is that I don’t usually stop along the way and help you along, dear reader, when I think I may be pulling something out of my vocabularic quiver that you haven’t seen before – I rarely define my terms.  That’s partly becuase I don’t really care if you’re picking up what I’m putting down, and partly because I’m pretty sure you’re picking up what I’m putting down already, and stopping to drop a definition effs with the flow.

That said, I’m going to define ‘catharsis’ for you.  Without the use of a dictionary, even though Google is one of the tabs open in my browser right now.  You can do it yourself if you feel like testing me or crave a little more specificity.

Catharsis is an outpouring of emotion.  It’s what all the old greek plays used to try to do to the audience.  I daresay it’s also the main objective of any literary endeavour – on paper, canvas, pixels or screen.  Whether written in words, symbols, notes, or whatever, the whole idea of the various forms of media we experience is to get us to feel something.

Though most bits of media get us to feel something, it’s not always cathartic.  Something that’s cathartic is, to a certain extent, painful, but it leaves one with a light, empty, clean feeling afterward.  You know it when you feel it afterward.  A good cry is always cathartic.  So is, if you’ll forgive me a bit of a gross analogy, puking one’s guts out.  And I’m talking not talking about merely tossing one’s cookies.  I’m talking about throwing up out of one’s entire face.  Puke, snot, tears and all kinds of other nasty stuff flowing out of every possible opening.  In my experience, this has really only happened after consuming an absurd amount of beer and then throwing a relatively intense stimulant on top.  Once all that stuff is out, walking back to bed carries a floating sensation and “sleep” comes easily.  No more bed-spins.

Because of its cleansing efffect, catharsis can serve many purposes.  And I believe it’s an essential ingredient to emotional health and stability.  We see it various forms in all different cultures:  the catholics confess their sins to a duly appointed agent of the lord and receive absolution (after penance).  Recovering alcoholics do it in steps four and five of their twelve steps.  Ever go dancing and really let yourself go?  Forget about everything around you and just be the personification of the music?  That’s cathartic.

In any case, I’ve used the term ‘cathartic’ many times in various posts, most recently in my ones about my divorce.  I’ve said things along the lines of “I need the catharsis”.  So, insert the above (short) definition into the equation and you get “I need the outpouring of emotion”.  While it might be simple to say that I’ve never really dealt with my divorce before, that would just be a simple thing to say.  I have, in fact, dealt with my divorce before, in many ways, shapes and forms.  I look at my posts about my divorce as just another opportunity for some spring cleaning of my soul.

People have said to me in person and in the comments sections that it must be hard for me to write about my divorce in such intimate terms.  It’s not.  One of the ways I’ve dealt with all the emotions (effed up and not) permeating my experiences with getting divorced has been talking about them.  Oh, sure, it was hard at first.  There were bits and pieces that I thought I’d take to my grave with me.  After a while, though, I got more comfortable with my various listeners and became able to share a little bit more than the last time.  Eventually, I’d said it all at some point or another. 

It’s just as important for me to say that I fucked up some parts of my marriage as it is for me to say that getting divorced was the most emotionally painful thing that I’ve ever been through.

I’m probably getting off track here and talking about some stuff that’s meant for later posts in the “My Story Mondays” segment, but whatever.  The main point of this post and the ones that specifically center around my divorce experiences is for me to scrape out all of the crap that’s inside of me, shake it up a bunch, and puke it out of my face.  Sure, it’s not always comfortable to dip back into those memories and feel those things all over again, but each time I do, they get diluted just a little bit more with healthy fresh air and I get rid of just a little bit more of the crap that’s stored inside.  And I feel lighter and floatier afterward.  I don’t get high off of it by any means, but I get healthier and stronger for sure.

The end.  Yay catharsis.

Diana.  Huntress.  I pray to you.

Under this full moon.  Your moon.

Grant me strength. 

Grant me speed and stamina in the pursuit of my quarry.

Grant me clarity of purpose.

Grant me a steady hand and a sharp eye.

Thank you. 

Goddess.

Yes, another post about that which I do not possess.  But it seems so cool!  It must be awesome to have faith.  Again, I’m talking about the kind of faith that works in all seasons, in all situations.  The kind that people who “walk with god” have.

Yeah, yeah, I know:  be careful what you wish for…

Well, I’m not wishing here; I’m hypothesizing.  And this hypothesis is about an evolution of faith.  I don’t think that it necessarily comes to those like me all at once - sure, there’s the “white light experience” and whatnot.  I’m not discounting that possibility.  It’s happened enough for other people.  I just don’t know that it would work for me.  I’m too much of a skeptic and a contrarian.  I’m the proverbial (or John-gospial) Doubting Thomas; though that dude believed after sticking his fingers in the holes.  I’d probably chalk the white light up to an aneurysm or something and be all psyched for my coming psychic powers and eventual death, like in Phenomenon.  Man, it would be cool to learn Brazilian Portuguese that fast!

So back to the hypothesis.  I think that faith comes to guys like me over time.  Through practice and repetition.  I suppose there’s worse karma to bear.  I’m not ready to give my will up to a higher power all at once; but I can do it in little bits and pieces.  A couple of situations here and a couple of situations there.  String them together and eventually I’m acting on faith for most of the time.  And who knows, maybe I string together a few years of complete faith just before I die.

I was discussing faith in terms of humility - or humility in terms of faith (take your pick) – with some friends not too long ago.  In that scenario, one asks/prays for something, but always remembers to append the request with “…if it be thy will”.  I think this is an excellent ego-deflation tactic, and I use it often.

I think that after doing this for a while, if one is truly attempting to align one’s will with that of one’s higher power, those prayers are answered in the affirmative (as opposed to in the negative or with “not yet”) more and more often.  After a while, one stops asking/praying for one’s own desires, and simply prays “thy will be done” – because that’s what one wants.

Tuesday’s reading in God Calling by A. J. Russell touches a bit on this.  And, if you’ll bear with me, dear reader, I think it can be linked to and – in a way – will bear out my hypothesis:

May 26:  Claim More

You are doing your claiming as I have said, and soon you will see the result.  You cannot do this long without it being seen in the material.  It is an undying law.

You are at present children practicing a new lesson.  Practice – Practice – soon you will be able to do it so readily.

You see others manifesting so easily, so readily demonstrating My Power.  But you have not seen the discipline that went before.  Discipline absolutely necessary before this Power is given to My disciples.  It is a further initiation.

You are feeling you have learnt so much that life cannot be a failure.  That is right, but others have to wait to see the outward manifestation in your lives before they realize this Spiritual Truth.

What I read from this is definitely not a “humble request” of the higher power, it says claiming – as though one had a right to it.  I think this is kind of the next step after the humble request.  That once one is walking with god and acting in concert with the will of a higher power all the time (notice I don’t say “on a regular basis”), these prayers/requests cannot but be fulfilled.  My will and god’s will are one.  Thus, the use of the term “claim”.  And all of a sudden, that “right” to something becomes “righteous” and takes on an entirely different meaning from that which we Americans usually view it (e.g. the Bill of Rights, right of privacy, right to free speech, etc.).

But all of this doesn’t happen overnight.  It comes through the practice and discipline of aligning one’s will with the higher power.  Which must necessarily have humble beginnings with the appendage “…if it be thy will”.  Like the effin Karate Kid, I don’t need to know that painting the fence or waxing the car or sanding the froor will help me block the punches and kicks that evil Johnny will eventually throw at me in the tournament:  I just need to know that Mr. Miyagi told me to paint the fence, wax the cars, and sand the froor.  I practice the motions with the faith that Mr. Miyagi knows what he’s doing and has a higher purpose for all this crap (other than whiter pickets, shinier cars, and smoother froors).  And keeping my mouth shut through all of this requires discipline, dear reader-san.

I’ll not here get into the real and metaphorical pain that’s involved in said discipline.

Q:  Does this fit with my zen-pragmatist views?  A:  Sure, why not.

For a while now, I’ve been meaning to talk about my experiences in Sedona last summer.  I mentioned Sedona in a couple of other posts – “2012” and “Alcyone – At the Feet of the Master” – but I haven’t yet discussed my psychic reading on our last day there.  I kept a journal of sorts while I was in Sedona, and sketched out the bones of the trip when I returned home, planning on putting together a nice long post for my Myspace blog (the precursor hereto).  But I’ve since misplaced that journal.  I honestly can’t think of anything more annoying than losing something I’ve written.

So in another of my ever-failing attempts to be brief, here we go:

The trip to Sedona was about 10 months ago, so I can’t say that I remember every detail of my encounter with the psychic (which is why I wrote it down), but I’ll here explain the things that are still stuck in my mind.

The first is that the psychic kept saying “so much self doubt” with her face all screwed-up in a painful expression.  The next is that her first/immediate impression of me was that I must be an artist.  She worked with a deck of tarot cards of a type which she designed herself.  She had me shuffle the cards (to infuse them with my energy) and then choose 5, which I then laid out face down.  The only one I can remember right now was Saturn – representing chains/binding.  In my case, we deduced that it probably stood for my sense of responsibility.

She said that there were three things I needed to “shut the door on”.  And asked me what happened when I was six.  She also said that I stopped doing something around the time I started to drive, and that something was in some way related to my higher calling.  We kind of figured that one of the “three things” was my divorce – a bit obvious, and, in my opinion, not necessarily correct simply because it’s so obvious.  But I’m a contrarian and am always looking for the hard way to do things, so I’m probably wrong on this, too.  I sat down and talked to my parents about what may have happened when I was six and what I may have stopped doing when I started to drive, but the three of us couldn’t really come up with anything.  The only thing that kept coming to mind was writing – but I think that I really started to write around the time when I started to drive.  I became a lot more independent then and had a lot more going on in my head.  I’ll chalk that up to hormones and teenage angst.

She also said that my spirit-guide was a very stern man named Ed, who was standing just over my right shoulder.  She seemed to be a bit afraid of him.  I definitely got the impression that she was holding a lot back, almost for fear of reprisal from my spirit-guide.  She told me that if I chose to follow my spirit-guide, life would be beyond my wildest dreams.  That all I had to do was tell my spirit-guide to take the wheel and I’d be in for a wonderful roller-coaster ride of a life.  That all I had to do was tell my spirit-guide “ok, you take over” – whether out loud or not, as long as I did so with my heart.

I said those very words – and a few other variations too – many times over the next few weeks/months.  Both out loud and to myself.  I don’t know, though, if I actually relinquished control.

She also warned me that if I acted too much from my own will, my spirit-guide would start influencing my life in negative ways – kind of corralling me onto the right path.  She said I’d start losing things – and very specifically said “you’ll lose your job”.  Which stuck in my mind because most of the other negative things she said might happen were only possibilities.  This was the only real, hard declarative statement she made regarding this issue.

She also told me that I’m a good person, through and through.  But my skepticism tells me that she must say that to all the guys.

On the “holding a lot back” vibe I got, it almost seemed like she was afraid of hurting my feelings.  That she didn’t want to tell me that I had some rough shiz to go through in the not-too-distant future.  That I’d be better off not knowing what was coming – or even that something was coming.

As to the spirit-guide, it’s entirely possible that he’s my grandfather – the original Edward Benedict Wallace.  Her description of him fits what my father has told me about him, and he died just before I was born.  I’m Edward Benedict Wallace III, in case you didn’t already know.

I still haven’t really worked out what the “three things” are, but I’ve been very careful in the past 10 months to avoid acting solely on my own will.  The good news is that I still have the same job I did last July – with a decent raise since then.  As to whether my spirit-guide is at the wheel, I don’t know that I can really say.  Probably.  As I said, I’ve been avoiding selfishness in my actions.  I’ve also been trying to live in the moment.  As I look back, the past ten months have passed incredibly quickly, and I’m very happy with where I’m at right now.

I don’t know that I’m much closer to being an artist than I was back then - at least, not in a career-sense.  I started writing again in earnest since then – you are currently reading the product of those efforts, dear reader. 

When I think about stuff that relates to psychics and whatnot, I usually think in terms of metaphor:  being “an artist” doesn’t necessarily mean that I have to be a painter or a musician.  For me, it means more that I’m paying attention to my intuition, instead of relying on cold reason to make decisions.  Oh, I do both, but I think that I’ve learned to trust my intuition as a solid basis for decision-making than I used to.  Which is definitely a form of “letting go”.

I talk to a lot of people who are working on enlarging their spiritual life.  One topic that often comes up in conversation is that of hope.  I sometimes have a hard time relating.  In a way, I can analogize it to the concept of faith, but I still see the two as being different creatures.

Maybe it’s my Y chromosome talking, but hope sounds too care-bearish to me.  It’s too fluffy and nice.  Like wishful thinking.  I’m all for thinking positively, but I’m not into naivete.

The closest I’ve been able to get to a concept of hope in my own life is a confidence that I’ll be able to handle whatever future situations I encounter.  Which I suppose isn’t too bad for a man lacking in faith. 

To me, hope sounds too much like dependence.  Like the whole footprints in the sand piece.  Don’t get me wrong – I dig the poem.  It’s just that if hope is the faith that whatever happens, god will pick me up and carry me through the tough stuff, I’m not so much down for that.  I’d rather believe that when the rough patches come along, I’ll be ok – that I’ll be able to be proactive in whatever situations I find myself and come out on top.  I just can’t get with the notion that if I just hang on, god will carry me through.  It’s too passive for me.

Without being all egoistic, I prefer to look back on the rough patches I’ve experienced in life as reference points for current and future situations.  If I made it through some rough shiz in the past, I can certainly make it through whatever seems tough right now.  I don’t look back and say “wow, there’s no way I could’ve made it through that without god carrying me”.  I look back and say “wow, that sucked; I’m glad I made it through”.

Now, I’m fairly certain that it’s my ego/pride that keep me from a true relationship or conscious contact with a higher power, but what can I do?  That’s just the way I am.  I’m certainly trying to get to a place of faith, but not if it means losing myself in the process.  Which, I suppose, is kind of a tautology – or, probably more correctly a kind of spiritual paradox.  For what’s the path to conscious contact with god but through destruction of the self? 

Anyway, I’m still a long way off, but I’m getting there.  I pray regularly, though to what I have no idea.  I just know that it helps.  I work on ego-deflation on a regular basis and I’m a lot closer to humility than I once was.  So I guess that’s the best I can do right now.  It’s really all a journey anyway – not a series of destinations.

Again, for me, hope amounts to a confidence that I’ll be able to handle the rough patches ahead.  Things are good right now, and I’m enjoying that.  They may suck later on (if only for a bit), but based on past experience, the rough shiz hasn’t killed me yet.  As my buddy Friedrich Nietzsche once said “That which does not kill me only serves to make me stronger”.

Sunday’s reading in my “God Calling” meditations book was pretty interesting:

Weeping may endure for a night, but joy cometh in the morning.”

My bravest are those who can anticipate the morning and feel in the night of sorrow that underlying Joy that tells of confident expectations of the morning.

I’m a contrarian striving to be objective, so when I read this, I see both sides.  I read it both ways.  When I’m sorrowful, I recognize that it will eventually pass, and try not to get too wrapped up in the unhappy feeling.  Likewise, when I’m joyful, I recognize that it, too, shall eventually pass, and try to enjoy the feeling while I have it.

If you’re reading this on Saturday morning, I’ll be in the Catskills, after a two week hiatus.  I can feel my need to be in the woods, closer to the goddess and working and sweating to achieve that closeness. 

A couple of weeks ago, I posted “Driven” late on Friday night, expecting to bushwack Kaaterskill High Peak in the morning.  Unfortunately, my body had other ideas.  I think I woke up around 8AM, realized I was too far behind schedule, and lay my head back down – not to pick it back up until the early hours of the afternoon.

Please read that post if you’re interested in where I’ll be hiking today.

This week has been crescedoing steadily and I’m not sure I’ve yet reached its peak.  No pun intended.  Work has been getting busier and busier for me, but I’m proud to report that I haven’t been freaking out and wasting time being over-anxious.  Along with work getting busy, I’ve managed to continue to fulfill my other daily commitments as well.

I think I’m currently struggling with my people-pleasing character defect – my desire to be “all things to all people”.  It was well that I posted about the Oxygen Mask Analogy earlier, as that has started to have particular significance in my life.  I need to take care of myself first, if I wish to be of any use to others.  If you read that post, I’m doing pretty well so far in my 30-day quest to eat breakfast, do pushups, and meditate every day.  I’ve slipped a bit with being purposeful about meditating, but that’s ok – this is a good reminder for me that I need to be more mindful of that promise to myself.

As far as my goals for the week go, I’ve made a good effort.  I still haven’t finished plugging my edits into Nicole’s novel, but I made a start and spent some time on that this week.  I’ve also spent some time searching for the missing piece to my car’s kayak-rack, even coming up with a separate solution – which didn’t work, but that’s ok too.  I made the attempt and it’s been raining all week, so I’m not kicking myself about not being prepared to kayak after work.  Things are still up in the air as far as wrangling a date or rejection out of a certain girl, but that’s fine as well – I made my attempt early in the week and am smart enough to recognize when the goddess is trying to teach me patience.  I’ve got a whole life ahead of me and really have no intention of feeling like a stalker.  Things will happen if/when they do.  Maybe I’ll start that Tai Chi DVD Saturday night – the week ain’t over yet.

Which brings me around to isolation.  I took care of my commitments this evening and pulled away from possible social engagements with friends.  I usually spend some time on Friday nights doing social things, but I recognized the need for a bit of decompression from the various stresses of the week.  I’m listening to some Bob Marley, which is a good change from my usual Metallica or J. S. Bach.  I’ve stayed true to Monday’s “Monday Monday” post and have shaken my routine up a bit this week – even though it went by as fast as the past several.  I made myself a solid dinner and am content to be alone tonight, not rushing to return emails or come up with a blog post topic.

I think I may now understand what the goddess was trying to tell me on Wednesday night when she pointed out that “a wise prince, marching the whole day, does not go far from his baggage waggons.  Although he may have brilliant prospects to look at, he quietly remains (in his proper place), indifferent to them.”  I can’t go running off half-cocked in search of every next thing that might bring me some pleasure for the moment.  For now at least, I need to stay close to home and diligently monitor the progress of the wagon-train of my life.  It’s time for me to stop setting new things in motion for a while and follow along with those aspects of my life that are already steadily rolling.

Dear Santa,

After much deliberation, list-making and sundry other things I’d rather not discuss in public, I’ve completed my Christmas List for this year.  I’m sure your jolly round ass will be happy to learn that there’s only one item on it.

Faith.

Yes, Santa baby, all I want for Christmas this year is faith.  It’s still April, so you’ve got plenty of time.  239 days, to be specific.  I’m not sure what the deal is with your elves - how many you’ve got, how many hours a day they work, cost basis per, etc., but that works out to roughly 5,736 hours for y’all to work with.

Specifically, I’d like that complete and utter devotional faith that the fanatics have, sans fanaticism, of course.  I’d like a faith that is not in any way based on rationalization.  E.g. “I’ll get xyz if I believe.”  A faith that works in all seasons, under all circumstances.

I’ll leave it up to you to work out the details – and don’t pull any of that lamp-genie stuff on me where I wake up Christmas morning with a faith that Metallica isn’t going to break up anytime soon.  Nor do I want my capacity for rationalization removed – if I wake up with a piece of my brain missing, I’ll know it and I’ll be pissed.  And you don’t want me pissed at you, Santa.  Ever read The Count of Monte Cristo?  Yeah, I’m patient like that.

I want a faith in a higher power, a spirit of the universe, a grand design, the tao, prana, chi - whatever, as long as it’s bigger than me and I don’t have to worry about whether I’m doing a good job of driving the bus or not.  I want to feel comfortable going about my business, living in the moment and doing the next right thing – with a knowledge, a faith, that what I’m doing serves a good purpose.

Between you and me, I’d prefer to pass on the anthropomorphic kind of higher power, but if that’s all you can come up with, I understand.  I’d really like something custom-made.  I’ve spent plenty of time in church and whatnot and that kind of faith just doesn’t seem to fit.

So I know it seems like I’m a bit demanding, but come on, man, I’m only asking for one thing this year.  While I’d like to say that I’ve written this in haste and that I’m not technically threatening you, my New Year’s Resolution for 2009 was to tell the truth at all times.

So pretty please?  With sugar on top?  Shoot me an email or message me on Facebook what kind of cookies you’d like this year.  I’ll be sure that mom puts out whole milk instead of that bluish skim crap that she has in the past couple of years.  And I’ll make sure the carrots for the reindeer are fresh and come with ranch dressing for dipping.

And listen, you effin reindeer, I know you’re reading this last section because I’m writing it in reindeerese and antaSay skipped over it because it’s not written in atFay eepleAy anguageLay:  I’m a carnivore and reindeer-burgers are leaner and more tender than buffalo burgers.  And I love buffalo burgers.  If antaSay doesn’t hook me up with some solid faith this year, I’ll be having reindeer burgers and winter hiking with reindeer jerkey for the first part of 2010, if you get my iftDray.

Thank you, Mr. Claus for considering my respecful and humble request.  As always, I remain,

Yours ever truly,

/s/
Ted Wallace
Age 32

When I was in Sedona last July with Scott and his wife, I spent a lot of time thinking about my spirituality.  Sedona is kind of a center for modern-day spiritual activity on our continent, and I was very cognizant of this while I was there.  We visited many metaphysical bookshops, crystal shops, and psychic abodes.  The most moving experiences for me were the sweat lodge ceremony, the various hiking outings Scott and I went on, and the Amitabha Stupa.  I didn’t really “feel” anything at the various energy vortexes we visited, but I did at the Stupa.  Perhaps because it’s man-made.

I spent a lot of time while in Sedona trying to stay open to signs.  Emotionally/intellectually, I was in a pretty good space, so as I was reading about the different things that all the crystals in the crystal shops were supposed to be good for, nothing really jumped out at me.  Neither did any of the books in the various bookshops we visited. 

I did, however, come across a thin blue book called “At the Feet of the Master” by Alcyone (which, it turns out, is a pen name for Jiddu Krishnamurti).  I’ve reproduced the entire text of the copy of the book I found below (Source).  It’s a very short book.  I know it’s very long for a blog post, but I don’t really care – it’s important to me.

There’s nothing particularly special about the writing that jumped out at me.  Nor did I feel more enlightened or anything when I read it.  But I’m glad it’s so short, because I can easily carry it with me and read it in one sitting.  The principles it professes are nothing particularly new to me, but I find them to be a good reminder of things I “already know”.  This is the book I brought with me and read before the Soulive show a couple of weeks ago.

Without getting too hokey, I’m glad I read this book again a couple of weeks ago.  I was in a situation just the other day where I was extremely tempted to gossip, but the thought of one of the paragraphs in this book made me hold my tongue.  I was very surprised at the time. 

So ends my words in this post, and begins the words of another:

Preface

The privilege is given to me, as an elder, to pen a word of introduction to this little book, the first written by a younger Brother, young in body verily, but not in Soul. The teachings contained in it were given to him by his Master in preparing him for Initiation, and were written down by him from memory–slowly and laboriously, for his English last year was far less fluent than it is now. The greater part is a reproduction of the Master’s own words; that which is not such a verbal reproduction is the Master’s thought clothed in His pupil’s words. Two omitted sentences were supplied by the Master. In two other cases an omitted word has been added. Beyond this, it is entirely Alcyone’s own, his first gift to the world.

May it help others as the spoken teachings helped him–such is the hope with which he gives it. But the teaching can only be fruitful if it is lived, as he has lived it, since it fell from his Master’s lips. If the example be followed as well as the precept, then for the reader, as for the writer, shall the great Portal swing open, and his feet be set on the Path.

-Annie Besant

To Those Who Knock 

Foreword

These are not my words; they are the words of the Master who taught me. Without Him I could have done nothing, but through His help I have set my feet upon the Path. You also desire to enter the same Path, so the words which He spoke to me will help you also, if you will obey them. It is not enough to say that they are true and beautiful; a man who wishes to succeed must do exactly what is said. To look at food and say that it is good will not satisfy a starving man; he must put forth his hand and eat. So to hear the Master’s words is not enough, you must do what He says, attending to every word, taking every hint. If a hint is not taken, if a word is missed, it is lost forever; for He does not speak twice.

Four qualifications there are for this pathway:

• Discrimination
• Desirelessness
• Good conduct
• Love  

What the Master has said to me on each of these I shall try to tell you.

I

The first of these Qualifications is Discrimination; and this is usually taken as the discrimination between the real and the unreal which leads men to enter the Path. It is this, but it is also much more; and it is to be practiced, not only at the beginning of the Path, but at every step of it every day until the end. You enter the Path because you have learnt that on it alone can be found those things which are worth gaining. Men who do not know, work to gain wealth and power, but these are at most for one life only, and therefore unreal. There are greater things than these—things which are real and lasting; when you have once seen these, you desire those others no more.

In all the world there are only two kinds of people—those who know, and those who do not know; and this knowledge is the thing which matters. What religion a man holds, to what race he belongs–these things are not important; the really important thing is this knowledge–the knowledge of God’s plan for men. For God has a plan, and that plan is evolution. When once a man has seen that and really knows it, he cannot help working for it and making himself one with it, because it is so glorious, so beautiful. So, because he knows, he is on God’s side, standing for good and resisting evil, working for evolution and not for selfishness.

If he is on God’s side he is one of us, and it does not matter in the least whether he calls himself a Hindu or a Buddhist, a Christian or a Muhammadan, whether he is an Indian or an Englishman, a Chinaman or a Russian. Those who are on His side know why they are here and what they should do, and they are trying to do it; all the others do not yet know what they should do, and so they often act foolishly, and try to invent ways for themselves which they think will be pleasant for themselves, not understanding that all are one, and that therefore only what the One wills can ever be really pleasant for any one. They are following the unreal instead of the real. Until they learn to distinguish between these two, they have not ranged themselves on God’s side, and so this discrimination is the first step.

But even when the choice is made, you must still remember that of the real and the unreal there are many varieties; and discrimination must still be made between the right and the wrong, the important and the unimportant, the useful and useless, the true and the false, the selfish and the unselfish.

Between the right and wrong it should not be difficult to choose, for those who wish to follow the Master have already decided to take the right at all costs. But the body and the man are two, and the man’s will is not always what the body wishes. When your body wishes something, stop and think whether you really wish it. For you are God, and you will only what God wills; but you must dig deep down into yourself to find the God within you, and listen to His voice, which is your voice. Do not mistake your bodies for yourself—neither the physical body, nor the astral, nor the mental. Each one of them will pretend to be the Self, in order to gain what it wants. But you must know them all, and know yourself as their master.

When there is work that must be done, the physical body wants to rest, to go out walking, to eat and drink; and the man who does not know says to himself; “I want to do these things, and I must do them.” But the man who knows says: “This that wants is not I, and it must wait awhile.” Often when there is an opportunity to help some one, the body feels: “How much trouble it will be for me; let some one else do it.” But the man replies to his body: “You shall not hinder me in doing good work.”

The body is your animal–the horse upon which you ride. Therefore you must treat it well, and take good care of it; you must not overwork it, you must feed it properly on pure food and drink only, and keep it strictly clean always, even from the minutest speck of dirt. For without a perfectly clean and healthy body you cannot do the arduous work preparation, you cannot bear its ceaseless strain. But it must always be you who controls that body, not it that controls you.

The astral body has its desires—dozens of them; it wants you to be angry, to say sharp words, to feel jealous, to be greedy for money, to envy other people their possessions, to yield yourself to depression. All these things it wants, and many more, not because it wishes to harm you, but because it likes violent vibrations, and likes to change them constantly. But you want none of these things, and therefore you must discriminate between your wants and your body’s.

Your mental body wishes to think itself proudly separate, to think much of itself and little of others. Even when you have turned it away from worldly things, it stills tries to calculate for self, to make you think of your own progress, instead of thinking of the Master’s work and of helping others. When you meditate, it will try to make you think of the many different things which it wants instead of the one thing which you want. You are not this mind, but it is yours to use; so here again discrimination is necessary. You must watch unceasingly, or you will fail.

Between right and wrong, Occultism knows no compromise. At whatever apparent cost, that which is right you must do, that which is wrong you must not do, no matter what the ignorant may think or say. You must study deeply the hidden laws of Nature, and when you know them arrange your life according to them, using always reason and common-sense.

You must discriminate between the important and the unimportant. Firm as a rock where right and wrong are concerned, yield always to others in things which do not matter. For you must be always gentle and kindly, reasonable and accommodating, leaving to others the same full liberty which you need for yourself.

Try to see what is worth doing; and remember that you must not judge by the size of the thing. A small thing which is directly useful in the Master’s work is far better worth doing than a large thing which the world would call good. You must distinguish not only the useful from the useless, but the more useful from the less useful. To feed the poor is a good and noble and useful work, yet to feed their souls is nobler and more useful than to feed their bodies. Any rich man can feed the body, but only those who know can feed the soul. If you know, it is your duty to help others to know.

However wise you may be already, on this Path you have much to learn; so much that here also there must be discrimination, and you must think carefully what is worth learning. All knowledge is useful, and one day you will have all knowledge; but while you have only part, take care that it is the most useful part. God is Wisdom as well as Love; and the more wisdom you have the more you can manifest of Him. Study then, but study first that which will most help you to help others. Work patiently at your studies, not that men may think you wise, not even that you may have the happiness of being wise, but because only the wise man can be wisely helpful. However much you wish to help, if you are ignorant you may do more harm than good.

You must distinguish between truth and falsehood; you must learn to be true all through; in thought and word and deed.

In thought first; and that is not easy, for there are in the world many untrue thoughts, many foolish superstitions, and no one who is enslaved by them can make progress. Therefore you must not hold a thought just because many other people hold it, nor because it has been believed for centuries, nor because it is written in some book which men think sacred; you must think of the matter for yourself, and judge for yourself whether it is reasonable. Remember that though a thousand men agree upon a subject, if they know nothing about that subject their opinion is of no value. He who would walk upon the Path must learn to think for himself, for superstition is one of the greatest evils in the world, one of the fetters from which you must utterly free yourself.

Your thought about others must be true; you must not think of them what you do not know. Do not suppose that they are always thinking of you. If a man does something which you think will harm you, or says something which you think applies to you, do not think at once: ” He meant to injure me.” Most probably he never thought of you at all, for each soul has its own troubles and its thought turn chiefly around itself. If a man speak angrily to you, do not think: ” He hates me, he wishes to wound me.” Probably some one or something else has made him angry, and because he happens to meet you he turns his anger upon you. He is acting foolishly, for all anger is foolish, but you must not therefore think untruly of him.

When you become a pupil of the Master, you may always try the truth of your thought by laying it beside His. For the pupil is one with his Master, and he needs only to put back his thought into the Master’s thought to see at once whether it agrees. If it does not, it is wrong and he changes it instantly, for the Master’s thought is perfect, because He knows all. Those who are not yet accepted by Him cannot do quite this; but they may greatly help themselves by stopping often to think: “What would the Master think about this? What would the Master say or do under these circumstances?” For you must never do or say or think what you cannot imagine the Master as doing or saying or thinking.

You must be true in speech too—accurate and without exaggeration. Never attribute motives to another; only his Master knows his thoughts, and he may be acting from reasons which have never entered your mind. If you hear a story against any one, do not repeat it; it may not be true, and even if it is, it is kinder to say nothing. Think well before speaking, lest you should fall into inaccuracy.

Be true in action; never pretend to be other than you are, for all pretence is a hindrance to the pure light of truth, which should shine through you as sunlight shines through clear glass.

You must discriminate between the selfish and the unselfish. For selfishness has many forms, and when you think you have finally killed it in one of them, it arises in another as strongly as ever. But by degrees you will become so full of thought for the helping of others that there will be no room, no time, for any thought about yourself.

You must discriminate in yet another way. Learn to distinguish the God in everyone and everything, no matter how evil he or it may appear on the surface. You can help your brother through that which you have in common with him, and that is the Divine Life; learn how to arouse that in him, learn how to appeal to that in him; so shall you save your brother from wrong.

II

There are many for whom the Qualification of Desirelessness is a difficult one, for they feel that they are their desires—that if their distinctive desires, their likings and dislikings, are taken away from them, there will be no self left. But these are only they who have not seen the Master; in the light of His holy Presence all desire dies, but the desire to be like Him. Yet before you have the happiness of meeting Him face to face, you may attain desirelessness if you will. Discrimination has already shown you that the things which most men desire, such as wealth and power, are not worth having; when this is really felt, not merely said, all desire for them ceases.

Thus far all is simple; it needs only that you should understand. But there are some who forsake the pursuit of earthly aims only in order to gain heaven, or to attain personal liberation from rebirth; into this error you must not fall. If you have forgotten self altogether, you cannot be thinking when that self should be set free, or what kind of heaven it shall have. Remember that all selfish desire binds, however high may be its object, and until you have got rid of it you are not wholly free to devote yourself to the work of the Master.

When all desires for self are gone, there may still be a desire to see the result of your work. If you help anybody, you want to see how much you have helped him; perhaps even you want him to see it too, and to be grateful. But this is still desire, and also want of trust. When you pour out your strength to help, there must be a result, whether you can see it or not; if you know the Law you know this must be so. So you must do right for the sake of the right, not in the hope of reward; you must work for the sake of the work, not in the hope of seeing the result; you must give yourself to the service of the world because you love it, and cannot help giving yourself to it.

Have no desire for psychic powers; they will come when the Master knows that it is best for you to have them. To force them too soon often brings in its train much trouble; often their possessor is misled by deceitful nature-spirits, or becomes conceited and thinks he cannot make a mistake; and in any case the time and strength that it takes to gain them might be spent in work for others. They will come in the course of development—they must come; and if the Master sees that it would be useful for you to have them sooner, He will tell you how to unfold them safely. Until then, you are better without them.

You must guard, too, against certain small desires which are common in daily life. Never wish to shine, or to appear clever; have no desire to speak. It is well to speak little; better still to say nothing, unless you are quite sure that what you wish to say is true, kind and helpful. Before speaking think carefully whether what you are going to say has those three qualities; if it has not, do not say it.

It is well to get used even now to thinking carefully before speaking; for when you reach Initiation you must watch every word, lest you should tell what must not be told. Much common talk is unnecessary and foolish; when it is gossip, it is wicked. So be accustomed to listen rather than to talk; do not offer opinions unless directly asked for them. One statement of the Qualifications gives them thus; to know, to dare, to will, and to be silent; and the last of the four is the hardest of them all.

Another common desire which you must sternly repress is the wish to meddle in other men’s business. What another man does or says or believes is no affair of yours, and you must learn to let him absolutely alone. He has full right to free thought and speech and action, so long as he does not interfere with any one else. You yourself claim the freedom to do what you think proper; you must allow the same freedom to him, and when he exercises it you have no right to talk about him.

If you think he is doing wrong, and you can contrive an opportunity of privately and very politely telling him why you think so, it is possible that you may convince him; but there are many cases in which even that would be an improper interference. On no account must you go and gossip to some third person about the matter, for that is an extremely wicked action.

If you see a case of cruelty to a child or an animal, it is your duty to interfere. If you see any one breaking the law of the country, you should inform the authorities. If you are placed in charge of another person in order to teach him, it may become your duty gently to tell him of his faults. Except in such cases, mind your own business, and learn the virtue of silence.

III

The Six points of Conduct which are specially required are given by the Master as:

1. Self-control as to the Mind.
2. Self-control in Action.
3. Tolerance.
4. Cheerfulness.
5. One-pointedness.
6. Confidence.

[I know some of these are often translated differently, as are the names of the Qualifications; but in all cases I am using the names which the Master Himself employed when explaining them to me.]

1. Self-control as to the Mind. – The Qualification of Desirelessness shows that the astral body must be controlled; this shows the same thing as to the mental body. It means control of temper, so that you may feel no anger or impatience; of the mind itself, so that the thought may always be calm and unruffled: and (through the mind) of the nerves so that they may be as little irritable as possible. This last is difficult, because when you try to prepare yourself for the Path, you cannot help making your body more sensitive, so that its nerves are easily disturbed by a sound or a shock, and feel any pressure acutely, but you must do your best.

The calm mind means also courage, so that you may face without fear the trials and difficulties of the Path; it means also steadiness, so that you may make light of the troubles which come into every one’s life, and avoid the incessant worry over little things in which many people spend most of their time. The Master teaches that it does not matter in the least what happens to a man from the outside; sorrows, troubles, sicknesses, losses—all these must be as nothing to him, and must not be allowed to affect the calmness of his mind. They are the result of past actions, and when they come you must bear them cheerfully, remembering that all evil is transitory, and that your duty is to remain always joyous and serene. They belong to your previous lives, not to this; you cannot alter them, so it is useless to trouble about them. Think rather of what you are doing now, which will make the events of your next life, for that you can alter.

Never allow yourself to feel sad or depressed. Depression is wrong, because it infects others and makes their lives harder, which you have no right to do. Therefore if ever it comes to you, throw it off at once.

In yet another way you must control your thought; you must not let it wander. Whatever you are doing, fix your thought upon it, that it may be perfectly done; do not let your mind be idle, but keep good thoughts always in the background of it, ready to come forward the moment it is free.

Use your thought-power every day for good purposes; be a force in the direction of evolution. Think each day of some one whom you know to be in sorrow, or suffering , or in need of help, and pour out loving thought upon him.

Hold back your mind from pride, for pride comes only from ignorance. The man who does not know thinks that he is great, that he has done this or that great thing; the wise man knows that only God is great; that all good work is done by God alone.

2. Self-control in Action. – If your thought is what it should be, you will have little trouble with your action. Yet remember that, to be useful to mankind, thought must result in action. There must be no laziness, but constant activity in good work. But it must be your own duty that you do—not another man’s, unless with his permission and by way of helping him. Leave every man to do his own work in his own way; be always ready to offer help where it is needed, but never interfere. For many people the most difficult thing in the world to learn is to mind their own business; but that is exactly what you must do.

Because you try to take up higher work, you must not forget your ordinary duties, for until they are done you are not free for other service. You should undertake no new worldly duties; but those which you have already taken upon you, you must perfectly fulfill all clear and reasonable duties which you yourself recognize, that is, not imaginary duties which others try to impose upon you. If you are to be His you must do ordinary work better than others, not worse; because you must do that also for His sake.

3. Tolerance. — You must feel perfect tolerance for all, and a hearty interest in the beliefs of those of another religion, just as much as in your own. For their religion is a path to the highest, just as yours is. And to help all, you must understand all.

But in order to gain this perfect tolerance, you must yourself first be free from bigotry and superstition. You must learn that no ceremonies are necessary; else you will think yourself somehow better than those who do not perform them. Yet you must not condemn others who still cling to ceremonies. Let them do as they will; only they must not interfere with you who know the truth—they must not try to force upon you that which you have outgrown. Make allowance for everything; be kindly towards everything.

Now that your eyes are opened, some of your old beliefs, your old ceremonies, may seem to you absurd; perhaps, indeed, they really are so. Yet though you can no longer take part in them, respect them for the sake of those good souls to whom they are still important. They have their place, they have their use; they are like those double lines which guided you as a child to write straight and evenly, until you learned to write far better and more freely without them. There was a time when you needed them; but now that time is past.

A great Teacher once wrote; “When I was a child, I spake as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child; but when I became a man I put away childish things.” Yet he who has forgotten his childhood and lost sympathy with the children is not the man who can teach them or help them. So look kindly, gently, tolerantly upon all; but upon all alike, Buddhist or Hindu, Jain or Jew, Christian or Muhammadan.

4. Cheerfulness. — You must bear your karma cheerfully, whatever it may be, taking it as an honor that suffering comes to you, because it shows the Lords of Karma think you worth helping. However hard it is, be thankful that it is no worse. Remember that you are of but little use to the Master until your evil karma is worked out and you are free. By offering yourself to Him, you have asked that your karma may be hurried , and so now in one or two lives you work through what otherwise might have been spread over a hundred. But in order to make the best out of it, you must bear it cheerfully, gladly.

Yet another point. You must give up all feeling of possession. Karma may take from you the things which you like the best—even the people whom you love most. Even then you must be cheerful—ready to part with anything and everything. Often the Master needs to pour out His strength upon others through His servant; He cannot do that if the servant yields to depression. So cheerfulness must be the rule.

5. One-Pointedness. — The one thing that you must set before you is to do the Master’s work. Whatever else may come in your way to do, that at least you must never forget. Yet nothing else can come in your way, for all helpful, unselfish work is the Master’s work, and you must do it for His sake. And you must give all your attention to each piece as you do it, so that it may be your very best. The same Teacher also wrote: “Whatsoever ye do, do it heartily, as to the Lord, and not unto men.” Think how you would do a piece of work if you knew that the Master was coming at once to look at it; just in that way you must do all your work. Those who know most will most know all that that verse means. And there is another like it, much older: “Whatsoever thy hand findeth to do, do it with thy might.”

One-pointedness means, too, that nothing shall ever turn you, even for a moment, from the Path upon which you have entered. No temptations, no worldly pleasures, no worldly affections even, must ever draw you aside. For you yourself must become one with the Path; it must be so much part of your nature that you follow it without needing to think of it, and cannot turn aside. You the Monad, have decided it; to break away from it would be to break away from yourself.

6. Confidence. — You must trust your Master; you must trust yourself. If you have seen the Master, you will trust Him to the uttermost, through many lives and deaths. If you have not yet seen Him, you must still try to realize Him and trust Him, because if you do not, even He cannot help you. Unless there is perfect trust, there cannot be the perfect flow of love and power.

You must trust yourself. You say you know yourself too well? If you feel so, you do not know yourself; you know only the weak outer husk, which has fallen often into the mire. But you –the real you –you are a spark of God’s own fire, and God, who is Almighty , is in you, and because of that there is nothing that you cannot do if you will. Say to yourself: “What man has done, man can do. I am a man, yet also God in man; I can do this thing, and I will.” For your will must be like tempered steel, if you would tread the Path.

IV

Of all the Qualifications, Love is the most important, for if it is strong enough in a man, it forces him to acquire all the rest, and all the rest without it would never be sufficient. Often it is translated as an intense desire for liberation from the round of births and deaths, and for union with God. But to put it in that way sounds selfish, and gives only part of the meaning. It is not so much desire as will, resolve, determination. To produce its result, this resolve must fill your whole nature, so as to leave no room for any other feeling. It is indeed the will to be one with God, not in order that you may escape from weariness and suffering, but in order that because of your deep love for Him you may act with Him and as He does. Because He is Love, you if you would become one with Him, must be filled with perfect unselfishness and love also.

In daily life this means two things; first, that you shall be careful to do no hurt to any living thing; second, that you shall always be watching for an opportunity to help.

First to do no hurt. Three sins there are which work more harm than all else in the world –gossip, cruelty, and superstition – because they are sins against love. Against these three the man who would fill his heart with the love of God must watch ceaselessly.

See what gossip does. It begins with evil thought, and that in itself is a crime. For in everyone and in everything there is good; in everyone and in everything there is evil. Either of these we can strengthen by thinking of it, and in this way we can help or hinder evolution; we can do the will of the Logos or we can resist Him. If you think of the evil in another, you are doing at the same time three wicked things;

1. You are filling your neighborhood with evil thought instead of with good thought, and so you are adding to the sorrow of the world.

2. If there is in that man the evil which you think, you are strengthening it and feeding it; and so you are making your brother worse instead of better. But generally the evil is not there, and you have only fancied it; and then your wicked thought tempts your brother to do wrong, for if he is not yet perfect you may make him that which you have thought him.

3. You fill your own mind with evil thoughts instead of good; and so you hinder your own growth, and make yourself, for those who can see, an ugly and painful object instead of a beautiful and lovable one.

Not content with having done all this harm to himself and to his victim, the gossip tries with all his might to make other men partners in his crime. Eagerly he tells his wicked tale to them, hoping that they will believe it; and then they join with him in pouring evil thought upon the poor sufferer. And this goes on day after day, and is done not by one man but by thousands. Do you begin to see how base, how terrible a sin this is? You must avoid it altogether. Never speak ill of any one; refuse to listen when any one else speaks ill of another, but gently say: “Perhaps this is not true, and even if it is, it is kinder not to speak of it.”

Then as to cruelty. This is of two kinds, intentional and unintentional. Intentional cruelty is purposely to give pain to another living being; and that is the greatest of all sins – the work of a devil rather than a man. You would say that no man could do such a thing; but men have done it often, and are daily doing it now. The inquisitors did it, many religious people did it in the name of their religion. Vivisectors do it; many schoolmasters do it habitually. All these people try to excuse their brutality by saying that is the custom; but a crime does not cease to be a crime because many commit it. Karma takes no account of custom; and the karma of cruelty is the most terrible of all. In India at least there can be no excuse for such customs, for the duty of harmlessness is well-known to all. The fate of the cruel must fall also upon all who go out intentionally to kill God?s creatures, and call it “sport.”

Such things as these you would not do, I know; and for the sake of the love of God, when opportunity offers, you will speak clearly against them. But there is a cruelty in speech as well as in act; and a man who says a word with the intention to wound another is guilty of this crime. That, too, you would not do; but sometimes a careless word does as much harm as a malicious one. So you must be on your guard against unintentional cruelty.

It comes usually from thoughtlessness. A man is so filled with greed and avarice that he never even thinks of the suffering which he causes to others by paying too little, or by half-starving his wife and children. Another thinks only of his own lust, and cares little how many souls and bodies he ruins in satisfying it. Just to save himself a few minutes? trouble, a man does not pay his workmen on the proper day, thinking nothing of the difficulties he brings upon them. So much suffering is caused just by carelessness-by forgetting to think how an action will affect others. But karma never forgets, and it takes no account of the fact that men forget. If you wish to enter the Path, you must think of the consequences of what you do, less you should be guilty of thoughtless cruelty.

Superstition is another mighty evil, and has caused much terrible cruelty. The man who is a slave to it despises others who are wiser, tries to force them to do as he does. Think of the awful slaughter produced by the superstition that animals should be sacrificed, and by the still more cruel superstition that man needs flesh for food. Think of the treatment which superstition has meted out to the depressed classes in our beloved India, and see in that how this evil quality can breed heartless cruelty even among those who know the duty of the brotherhood. Many crimes have men committed in the name of the God of Love, moved by this nightmare of superstition; be very careful therefore that no slightest trace of it remains in you.

These three great crimes you must avoid, for they are fatal to all progress, because they sin against love. But not only must you thus refrain from evil; you must be active in doing good. You must be so filled with the intense desire of service that you are ever on the watch to render it all around you—not to man alone, but even to animals and plants. You must render it in small things every day, that the habit may be formed so that you may not miss the rare opportunity when the great thing offers itself to be done. For if you yearn to be one with God, it is not for your own sake; it is that you may be a channel through which His love may flow to reach your fellow men.

He who is on the Path exists not for himself, but for others; he has forgotten himself, in order that he may serve them. He is as a pen in the hand of God, through which His thought may flow, and find for itself an expression down here, which without a pen it could not have. Yet at the same time he is also a living plume of fire, raying out upon the world the Divine Love which fills his heart.

The wisdom which enables you to help, the will which directs the wisdom, the love which inspires the will—these are your qualifications. Will Wisdom and Love are the three aspects of the Logos; and you who wish to enroll yourselves to serve Him, must show forth these aspects in the world.

Waiting the word of the Master,
     Watching the Hidden Light;

Listening to catch His order
     In the very midst of the fight;

Seeing His slightest signal
     Across the heads of the throng;

Hearing His faintest whisper
     Above earth’s loudest song.

Every morning, I read from two different sets of meditations.  This is the third year in a row that I’ve been reading from the Page-a-Day Zen calendar (“zen-a-day” in my head) – each year, the readings are different.  The other slot is a rotating one.  This year, “God Calling” by A. J. Russell fills that role.  It’s a very Catholic reader – which is not exactly my cup of tea (I’m agnostic), but it was a gift and I had an opening for 2009. 

Though I characterize myself as agnostic, I’m also a seeker.  I’m searching for god.  I drink in the experiences of others, and revel in my own.  I can’t really say that I’m getting “somewhere”, but I’m certainly not where I was.

I’ll start with yesterday’s reading from the latter set of meditations, and then move to the former.  And I’ll only paraphrase the “God Calling” reading, repeating the words that really spoke to me yesterday:

First Reading

You will conquer.  Do not fear changes…

As breathing rightly, from being a matter of careful practice, becomes a habit, unconsciously, yet rightly performed, so if you regularly practice this getting back into My Presence, when the slightest feeling of unrest disturbs your perfect calm and harmony, so this, too, will become a habit, and you will grow to live in that perfect consciousness of My Presence, and perfect calm and harmony will be yours.

Life is a training school.  Remember, only the pupil giving great promise of future good work would be so sinigled out by the Master for strenuous and unwearied discipline, teaching and training…

…take this training, not as harsh, but as the tender loving answer to your petition.

I read these meditations in the morning while I’m getting dressed.  I’m not a “morning person”, so I’m half-asleep and generally operating on auto-pilot when I read them.  Which, in the case of “God Calling” is probably for the best, because it’s quite dogmatic – and I don’t mix well with dogma.

What struck me this morning was the discussion of regular practice, with the example of breathing rightly.  As I’ve mentioned before, I’m a yoga practitioner and a student of zen.  Both of these schools stress meditation, and consciousness of the breath is always among the first lessons in any kind of meditation. 

In school, I hated taking beginner classes.  I attended a few classes in psych 101 and started counting the days to the next term, trying to figure out how to get into abnormal psych – a 300 level class – without taking any 200 level classes.  Same for philosophy, biology, and any other damned subject I found interesting.  I read the first few chapters of a book on zen and started daydreaming about the koans I would put to my students and whether or not I could get away with slapping them in answer to their questions, as so many other zen masters did.  A couple of beginner yoga classes, and I was looking for literature on how many hours I needed before I could teach (lol - and what cool “yoga name” would be my handle).

See the pattern?  I do.  I attempt to skip from beginner to master without dealing with the mundanity of the intermediate levels.  And I’m usually successful, though I generally have to go back to teach myself the intermediate levels while I’m trying to keep up with the advanced levels – I learn everything, as I should; but I do it the hard way, and it takes longer.

But I digress.  I’m currently working on not attempting mastery of entire fields of study at once.  It’s uncharacteristic, but I’m trying to take (and I hate this term:) baby-steps in my current endeavours.  Which is why yesterday’s reading got through my sleep-deprived morning haze:  I’ve been practicing “right breathing” more. 

That’s it.  Five paragraphs to get to those last six words.  So much for practicing brevity.  And being conscious of my breath as the beginning of meditation is where I’m at in my studies of zen and yoga.  But this is just an example that, like a fractal, is one small piece of the overall picture of the habits I’m trying to develop.  I’m doing so in small bits, but every day.  And I’m taking joy in doing so.

Second Reading

The second reading from yesterday was a Khalil Gibran quote:

Work is love made visible.  And if you cannot work with love but only with distaste, it is better that you should leave your work and sit at the gate of the temple and take alms of those who work with joy.

An apropos reading, as I’ve been concerned about my work ethic in the past couple of weeks.  I’ve been spending more time than I’d like messing around on Facebook, Twitter, and other social media sites, instead of finding more work to do at work.  And I’ve been rationalizing this behavior.

As with right breathing and the other good habits I’m attempting to acquire, this is a bad habit that I’ve acquired through practice.  And now I have to undo it by forming a good habit to take its place – and do so with practice.  Which means that I can’t get all pissed at myself for not walking into work and keeping my nose to the grindstone the whole time.  That all-or-nothing attitude that I’ve had in the past does me no good – because I’ll end up saying effit and settling for nothing and social media distraction all day.  Instead, yesterday I did just a little more work at work than I did on Monday; and just a little less messing around on the internet than I did on Monday.  And I’ll continue this practice tomorrow, until I’m back to where I used to be – working hard at work to further my career.  Because I’m not an alms-taker.

As I did yesterday, tomorrow I’ll do these things with joy.

“Move along, folks. Nothing more to see here.” 

I’m going to do some subjective blogging for a bit:

Yesterday (Sunday 4/19) was a great day.  I climbed two mountains using only a map, compass and digital altimeter.  And my wits.  I feel phenomenal.  Seven miles of bushwack made for a hard hike, but my overall sense of accomplishment more than makes up for my physical exhaustion. 

I’d love to tell you all about it, but I just don’t have the words to accurately explain my experience right now.  As my friend Quentin remarked this afternoon: “So it was just you and God today, huh?”

Yesterday’s hike was extremely good for my overall self-confidence level – I feel like I can do anything.

Including writing a short blog post.

I was up until about 3:30 in the morning on Friday night, messing with my new SlideShare account, in order to get “NASA’s Next Spacecraft – Alternatives to Ares?” posted properly, so I there was really no way in hell I was waking up two hours later to bushwack 7 miles and climb two mountains.  I’ll be doing that today.  Here’s yesterday’s post, if you want to read about it.  Sorry, cousin Danny, I’m screwing you over on the AM kayaking thing.

I slept right through my alarm and got out of bed just before 15:00 EST.  What a glorious day yesterday was!  I spent it running errands – don’t worry, I won’t regail you here with tales of the laundromat and car wash.

Pleasant Irony #1

As I was on my way to the (DIY) car wash, my friend Cheryl popped into my head, and I wondered if we were friends on Facebook.  Cheryl and I comment on each others’ blogs from time to time.  She’s married, lives in Florida, and is a fellow Mensa member.

As I’m sure you’ve gathered by now, I’ve become somewhat addicted to Twitter, so I checked my @replies from my blackberry while I was driving, and what do I see at the top of the list?  A tweet from Cheryl:

cliopatra#hunkalert @niceguyted nice guy – funny – smart give him some love, ladies!

Needless to say, we’re now friends on Facebook.  What a cool surprise!  This was completely out of the blue.  Cheryl and I hadn’t spoken (via twitter or blog comment) in at least a day.  Chalk it up to intuition or my burgeoning psychic powers, I found it a pleasant irony that I was thinking about Cheryl at just about the exact moment that she was tweeting about me.

Pleasant Irony #2

After running my errands, stopping by to say hello to sister Katie and Cousin Danny at MacMurphy’s Pub in town, and cleaning everything I own (or rent), I went to my local SBUX to get some time away from Mafia Wars, Facebook, Twitter, etc.  I figured if I changed environments I’d be more apt to finish plugging my edits into the word version of Franco’s novel so that I can (finally) get that back to her.  I also planned to get a couple of emails out of the way – one to Didi, and one to another Twitter friend, @yogadork.

I didn’t do a very good job of putting this post together or working on Nicole’s novel while at SBUX (or writing that email to Didi, for that matter).  I did, however, get to upload a bunch of winter hiking pics to my Facebook page, which you can view here (even if you’re not on Facebook). 

As I was composing my email to @yogadork, I pulled up YD’s facebook page and then Twitter page, and what do I see but this re-tweet (about 3 minutes old):

yogadorkted on the prowl, what did I say about wolf? RT @niceguyted: @cliopatra #hunkalert nice guy -funny- smart give him some love, ladies!

Neither tweet has netted me any dates (yet), but they both made my day.  And the pleasant irony of reading both tweets right as I was thinking about these two did not go unnoticed – it’s the stuff that saying “there are no coincidences” is made of.

Feng Shui

When I returned home from the SBUX and took my laptop out my bag and put it on my desk, I was struck by a feeling that I can’t quite describe.  I recognized immediately that it was due simply and completely to the energy flow in my apartment. 

I’m a pretty neat person – I definitely have clutter in my apartment, but that’s relegated to certain specific areas.  When I cleaned yesterday afternoon, I didn’t do any major moving of items in the apartment – everything has a place and generally stays in its place.  I clean about once a week, so the difference between before and after isn’t immediately recognizable to one looking in from the outside.  But last night, it was immediately recognizable to me.  It felt really good and comfortable to walk into my apartment and sit down at my desk and write to you.

So by writing the name once again, I’m officially giving my ascent of Fir Mountain way more pixels than it deserves – the mountain or the ascent.  

I had a great day yesterday.  Woke up at about a quarter after five – fifteen minutes before my alarm was scheduled to go off – got dressed, and headed out the door.  I was so ahead of schedule that I had to drink Dunkin’ Donuts “coffee” on the way up to the Catskills.  My local SBUX doesn’t open until 6AM, and I have no idea what time the one at the Sloatsburg rest area opens – but it was after 6 when I got there.  Today was actually the first day in recent memory that I didn’t have any SBUX coffee – I wonder if there’s a support group out there for which I now qualify.

But I digress.

And now that I think about it, let me give you a quick overview of why yesterday was a great day – for those of you who don’t dig my verbosity.  Fir was all bushwack, which means that I walked into the woods with just a map and a compass, signed in at the canister at the summit, and walked back out of the woods – about a 4 mile round-trip – without setting foot on a trail.  Pretty good for a guy with no sense of direction.  It was a great experience because I was prepared - I had the gear, experience, and physical fitness to accomplish my goal.  I took care of a few responsibilities via phone on the way back home, and spent the afternoon dozing in bed and trading voicemails and text messages with Sabrina.  We never did get a chance to get together.  I met up with some friends in the evening and and was really grateful for actually living the maxim of “you’ve got to put on your own oxygen mask on yourself before you can put one on anybody else.”  (explanation forthcoming)

Ascent/Descent of Fir Mountain

I’ve done several bushwacks before; conceptually, they’re all pretty much the same.  “Bushwacking” basically means walking in the woods without the aid of a trail and attendant directional signals called “blazes” on the way.  For a guy totally lacking any sense of direction, bushwacking is quite a daunting prospect.  As I’ve mentioned before, the sense of accomplishment I get from bushwacking to the top of a mountain is incredible.

In today’s case, I was only climbing one mountain, so my land navigational skills weren’t put as much to the test as they have been in the past (e.g. navigating from the car to the summits of more than one mountain, and then back to the car).  There is one basic rule to follow when considering single-mountain ascents: the rule of “up”.  Just keep going up (dickhead) until you’re at the top.  Easy enough: go up the hill really fast; if something gets in your way, turn. 

It was raining off and on to varying degrees today.  Whether it was raining at any given moment or not, everything (trees, bushes, branches, rocks, leaves, snow) was wet the whole time.  As I mentioned previously, I had the right gear for this: waterproof jacket, teflon pants, gaiters, and waterproof boots.  Hiking while wet all the way through is a completely miserable experience – trust me.  No matter how waterproof, everything is a little bit heavier when wet.

I made it to the summit easily enough.  The descent was the tough part – which made this one of the toughest bushwacks I’ve done so far.  After signing in at the canister, I used my map and compass to take my bearing back to the car: about 15 degrees north-northeast.  And proceeded to hike south for a couple of hundred yards.  Yeah.  No sense of direction, remember?  I lost a couple of hundred feet of altitude before checking my compass again (to be sure I was still going the right way).  Basically, I had to hike in a semi-circle around the summit to get back to the other side.  And the semi-circle I had to hike was along a pretty steep ridge – going up or down a ridge like this is certainly daunting, but going across is much more of a pain in the ass.

Here’s where my experience came into play: 

First, even though I felt like I was going in the right direction when I was headed south, I knew enough to trust my instruments – that magnetic north hadn’t changed.  Second, I’m able to read a map and approximate my location via instrumental and environmental clues.  Third, I’ve been turned-around before and made it out ok.  I knew which in which direction I needed to head and that the hike was going to take a little bit longer than I anticipated, and I didn’t freak out.  Having no sense of direction, being lost is a pretty big fear of mine.  I took it slow, knowing that a twisted or broken ankle wouldn’t get me out any faster.  And fourth, I made sure that I ate all day long – “stoked my furnace” on the car ride up, and ate what I brought with me while I was on the mountain. 

The hike took longer and was a lot harder than I anticipated, but again, I was prepared.  I put an extra layer on when I started my descent, because I knew I wasn’t going to be exerting myself as much as on the way up.  I switched gloves when one set got wet.  I had plenty of food and water (and I consumed both).

Prayer

As I’ve said I-don’t-know-how-many-times, I’m not a “god guy”.  I’m agnostic.  That said, even though I’m also a destination hiker, I always find time to stand quietly and enjoy my surroundings while I’m alone in the woods.  When I’m doing this, I usually pray aloud.  I don’t have any set prayers that I recite, but I usually hit a couple of main themes:  “thanks” (for the day, the woods and mountains around me, current and past experiences, etc.) and “guide me”.  I usually begin these prayers with and address them to the “Great Spirit”.  I used to ask for protection and guidance, but the protection thing made me feel like a wuss, so now I just ask for guidance. 

Guidance to help me recognize opportunities for growth – spiritual and otherwise – and opportunities to recognize where I can be of maximum service to the world around me.

I sometimes pray for selfish things – a girl, money, success – but they generally ring hollow, and I figure if I can get the aforementioned guidance, the selfish things will either follow, or they’ll turn out to be things I didn’t want/need anyway.

I’ve found that this type of prayer works well for me.  If I do so while I’m hiking, I generally find that I am able to recognize the opportunities over the course of the week that follows.

The Oxygen Mask Maxim

Goes something like this:  If I’m on a plane that loses air pressure and the oxygen masks come down, I have to put my own mask on before I can put it on the child sitting next to me.  Selfish though it may sound, if I don’t put mine on first and pass out while trying to put on the child’s mask, we both die.

I spoke with several friends today and was able to give good advice and (hopefully) say the right things when speaking to them because I’ve been living this maxim.  I’ve been taking care of myself first, instead of being a people-pleaser all the time.  I’m happy to say that I’m living up to my professed change of attitude of which I spoke in Ramble On.  I had a great day yesterday (and a great weekend overall) because I took care of the things I needed to take care of – which allowed me to be there when other people needed my help.

If you have the album Led Zeppelin II, I recommend you flip over the record and point the needle to the third set of grooves – track 7 on the CD:  Ramble On is the title of this post and the theme for today in my life.  Here’s a live version from I-don’t-know-when-or-where.  For maximum effect of this post, please listen and read along with the lyrics.

How and why Led Zeppelin’s “Ramble On” is a proper metaphor for my life today:

Leaves are fallin’ all around, time I was on my way
Thanks to you, I’m much obliged for such a pleasant stay
but now it’s time for me to go, the autumn moon lights my way
for now I smell the rain, and with it, pain
and it’s headed my way
Aw, sometimes I grow so tired
but I know I’ve got one thing I got to do

Spring is coming, I can smell it in the air.  Days are getting longer; the sun rises earlier and it’s easier for me to get up in the morning feeling energetic.  The past few seasons have been good to me, but things are changing in my life.  I can smell the pain headed my way if I try to hold on to what’s past.  Hard decisions have to be made; the time for them has been approaching for a while.  It’s time to strap my gear on and head on down this metaphorical road.  As Plant says “I know one thing I got to do:”

A-ramble on, and now’s the time, the time is now
Sing my song, I’m goin’ ’round the world, I gotta find my girl
On my way, I’ve been this way ten years to the day
Ramble on, gotta find the queen of all my dreams

Today, I’ll be hiking alone.  Scott and I haven’t gone hiking for the past three Saturdays – we’ve hardly missed a Saturday in the past few seasons.  Never three in a row.  We have nine mountains left to climb in our goal of joining the Catskill 3500 Club.  Most of them are trail-less peaks, which means they’ll be tough hikes.  Today I climb Rusk Mountain – the easiest (in my estimation) of the bushwacks.  I’d try something harder, but I’ve never walked into the woods with just a map and a compass by myself before.

Got no time to for spreadin’ roots, the time has come to be gone
And though our health we drank a thousand times
it’s time to ramble on

I’ve spent the last few weeks waiting on other people:  waiting for Scott to be available on the weekend to hike, waiting for a certain girl to (metaphorically) look in my direction, waiting for my boss to spontaneously give me a raise.  As though I were actually walking through this life with other people.  I’ve had a good few seasons of companionship – made some friendships, solidified others.  Sure, I’ve been lonely here and there, but somewhere along the line I forgot I was alone.  Or maybe I should say and somewhere along the line I forgot I am alone.  I’ve been holding back waiting for others to catch up – gathering moss, if you will.

A-ramble on, and now’s the time, the time is now
Sing my song, I’m goin’ ’round the world
I’ve gotta find my girl
On my way, I’ve been this way ten years to the day
I gotta ramble on, I gotta find the queen of all my dreams
I tell you no lie

So my gear is in the car behind me, full tank of gas, and I’m off.  Literally and figuratively.  I’m hereby putting myself on notice that if anybody wants to roll with me, they’d better hustle up and roll with me, ’cause I’m not stopping to wait.  I need to be “The Big O“, not just think about it.  Companionship is nice while it’s there, but it fades and wears and loneliness shows through.  And loneliness isn’t something I can abide for long – what I can do, though is embrace my alone-ness and get back to taking care of me.

Mine’s a tale that can’t be told, my freedom I hold dear
How years ago in days of old when magic filled the air
’twas in the darkest depths of Mordor, mm-I met a girl so fair
but Gollum and the evil warg crept up and slipped away with her
her, her, yeah, and ain’t nothin’ I can do, no

So today I have no hiking partner, no girl, and no raise.  I just have my map & compass, my gear, and myself to keep me company.  I’m the only one that can make me happy.  But please, dear reader, don’t misunderstand:  I’m not unhappy.  I don’t feel deserted.  This isn’t me whining.  This is me girding my loins and polishing my armour.

I guess I’ll keep on ramblin’, I’m gonna
Sing my song/Sh-yeah-yeah-yeah-yeah, I’ve gotta find my baby
I’m gonna ramble on, sing my song
Gonna work my way all around the world
Baby, baby/Ramble on, yeah

Scott’s probably reading this now.  We’re not breaking up, buddy.  You’re still my hiking partner – if you want to be.  I’m just off to climb Rusk by myself today.  In hiking, as in life, I’ll be right there with you when you’re ready to climb it; I have no problem climbing this mountain twice.  Dear reader, I hope you’re listening to the music.  This isn’t a sad song, this is a song of rebirth and renewal.  It’s about getting a move-on to see what’s around the next bend, over the next rise.  New and exciting adventures lie ahead and I plan to drink of them as from the cup that overfloweth.  I’m skipping my way up these mountains, whistlin’ a happy tune. 

A-do-do-n-do-n-do-n-do, my baby/Baby
A-ramble on, baby
A-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-de-do-de-do-de-do-de-do-de, yeah, yeah/
I can’t stop this feelin’ in my heart
Everytime I feel I will leave, I really gotta part
Gotta keep searchin’ for my baby/
Baby, baby, baby, baby, baby, baby, baby, baby, babe
I’ve gotta keep a-searchin’for my baby
My, my, my, my, my, my, my baby/
Yeah-yeah, a-yeah-yeah, a-yeah-yeah
My, my, my, my, my, my baby/
Yeah-yeah, yeah-yeah, yeah-yeah, yeah-yeah, yeah-yeah
Ooh, my, my, my-my, my-my, my-my, yeah/
I can’t find my bluebird, I’d listen to my bluebird sing
but I, I can’t find my bluebird
I keep a-ramblin’ baby/ Ah, ah, yeah
I keep a-ramblin’, baby/I keep, keep, keep, keep, keep
Babe, babe, babe, babe/
I keep a-ramblin’, baby, baby, baby, baby, baby, baby, baby
My, my babe
Bay-ya-by/A-goodbye, goodbye, a-goodbye, baby
Well, something’s wrong

Oh, and if that lovely girl of whom I speak is reading this,

;-) 

I may not be waiting around gathering moss, but you know how to get ahold of me.

So again, I’m off.  Catch on up and roll with me if you like – I plan on having fun.

Today’s Hike:  Rusk Mountain

 
View Larger Map

All the aforesaid aside, I don’t plan on dying today.  This ain’t no suicide note.  Rusk is a bushwack of the releatively-easy type:  straight up and straight down.  I shouldn’t have too much trouble keeping the summit in sight, as there still aren’t any leaves on the trees.  Rusk is also 3,680′ high, the twenty-first highest of the thirty-five mountains in the Catskills over 3,500′, so it won’t take me forever (part of the way up is on a trail, anyway).  I’ll be sans-GPS tracker, so I apologize, dear reader, that you won’t be able to follow my progress.  But then again, this ain’t about you. 

Current Meditation:

Every so often, I’ll hear someone say “life is a journey, not a series of destinations”.  And every time I do, I close my eyes and meditate on this for a bit. 

I have goals – things I want to accomplish.  Some are long-term, some are short-term.  Pay off my student loan debt, wax the car, a meaningful relationship with a smokin’-hot member of the opposite sex – things like that.  My problem is that I all-too-often blur the line between long- and short-term goals.  Everything becomes a short-term goal and I end up wondering why I haven’t accomplished anything.

My long-term goals are long-term for a reason:  they can’t be accomplished in the short term.  Sometimes they’re built brick-by-brick of short-term goals, and sometimes they’re accomplished by a series of decisions along the way.

When I meditate on the fact that life is a journey, all those pressing issues that are unresolved and burdensome just melt away.  Tomorrow is another day.  All those things on my to-do list suddenly become relatively insignificant and I can let go and just be.  Besides “unresolved” and “burdensome” are the direct result of me setting expectations for myself.  Reasonable expectations are ok – the handful of things on today’s to-do list – but getting rich and married before the week is out are not (reasonable or ok as expectations).

When I keep my head down and get done the things I need to do today, I move closer to accomplishing those long-term goals.  And in the same way that it’s ok if I don’t get one or two of the things on today’s to-do list done (e.g. the dishes), the same is true of my long-term goals:  some of them just won’t get accomplished, either.

And that’s ok, too – when I remember that life is the journey:  I don’t recognize destinations except in hindsight anyway.

Ode to the Open Road

by Ted

The Road
unfolds
unfurls
uncurls
before me.

My eyes look farther
to the horizon.

Myopia is stretched.
Possibilities.
A longer view.

Switch gears and
accelerate past the
car formerly in front of me
and driving becomes
a metaphor for life.

Maybe I should just stick with prose.  My point here is that I didn’t realize that I needed some good highway time until I was actually there.  This happened yesterday.  This past weekend was the third one in a row that Scott and I didn’t go hiking.  I knew I needed some kind of physical release and the Moving Energy class on Friday night took care of some of that.  What I didn’t realize was that I had also become accustomed to the 2.5 hour drive to and from the Catskills.  I needed to get away from the hometown streets with their attendant stop signs and streetlights and really let go for a bit.  Well worth it, even if my trip to Woodbury Common didn’t bring me back with any new oxford shirts.

There’s No Fourth Thing

Or is there?  The title of this post is “A Poem, Among Other Things” – which means that in order to be a true-to-form title, I need at least four things to qualify for use of the word “among”.  I should have just gone with “between”.  Oh, well, only someone as knit-picky as me would pick that up, anyway.

The “Moving Energy” class was interesting.  It was in the main hall of a Presbyterian church not too far from me.  Big room, high ceilings, commercial loop pile carpet glued down over concrete on the floor.  Three-piece band in the corner (guitar, double bass (a.k.a. “standup”), percussion).  The band was pretty good; very relaxed and low-key.  The percussionist didn’t use any sticks as far as I could tell, and that was pretty apropos.  He was seated behind a drumkit of a few bongos, cymbals, and other things.

When I walked in, my friend Anna was talking to the instructor MeriLynn.  Anna introduced us and we talked for a bit, mostly joking that I was one of two people there possessing a Y chromosome (exluding the band).  I was impressed with MeriLynn’s genuinness (genuity?) and the fact that she’s as pretty as her picture on the internet.
 
We started off in a big circle and MeriLynn led us in different movements loosely based on the music, but mostly “characteristic” of the particular chakra we were working on.  So, basically seven sections to the class.  She was very specific in saying that everything was up to interpretation and that we didn’t have to necessarily follow her movements exactly, which was good because she kept changing things up.  A lot of the movements were reminiscent of an 80s-style aerobics class (do people still do aerobics classes?).  There were quite a few places where I just gave up trying to follow what the instructor was doing and enjoyed myself dancing to the music. 

I was expecting more of a stationary setup – three or four movements designed to bring our mental and physical attention to each of the chakras in turn – but it was much more of an interpretive dance session.  We ended up running around the room, clapping and yelling, kind of doing whatever came to mind at the time.  There was, however, a definite beginning and end to each section. 
 
I mostly just suspended my judgment and tried not to be too self-conscious.  And I’m glad I did, because I had fun.  Some of it was a bit weird for me – for example, the few times we were told to ”grab a partner”:  I had no intention of touching other people.  I’m no touch-freak, but that’s a bit intimate for me.  Being that there was only one other guy in the room, I got to dance with a lot of different women.  I wasn’t too comfortable with the pheromones I was putting out – these were mostly housewives going out for some exercise and to play for a bit.  I’m a 32 year old dude in prime rutting condition – that’s very high on my body’s priority list, so I felt uncomfortable about the energy I might give off.  I don’t mean to imply that I was planning on effng any of the women there – or even really thinking about it (more than is normal, of course) – just that I was worried that my energy might not mix well with what they had going on.  I felt like the only male indian in the women’s sweat lodge.   
 
MeriLynn worked from the bottom up and I got the feeling that she thinks the root chakra is located between our feet.  She also referred to the chakras as earth, water, fire, air, creativity, third eye (and I don’t think she has a name for the crown chakra, because we didn’t dance to that one).  I wasn’t a big fan of her chakra-annotations – they don’t really go with my conception of the chakras.  And she pronounced the word with a hard ‘ch’ (cha-kra, instead of shock-ra).  Most of the movements for the earth, water, fire and air made sense, but when we got to third eye, I just crossed my legs and meditated.  We ended the session similar to a beginner’s yoga class:  a kind of yoga nidra in whatever asana the corpse-pose is (shavasana – thank you, Wikipedia) – and 6 oms chanted together.  I guess that was supposed to be the movement for the crown chakra (unless I meditated through it).
 
Overall, I thought it was pretty cool.  Definitely something interesting to do.  I don’t, however, think I’d necessarily want to do it again.  I like my yoga practice to be a heck of a lot more disciplined than that.

1.  Life means suffering.

2.  The origin of suffering is attachment.

3.  The cessation of suffering is attainable.

4.  The path to the cessation of suffering.

The path to the cessation of suffering is called the Eighfold Path.  It consists of the following components:

Wisdom

1. Right View

2. Right Intention

Ethical Conduct

3. Right Speech 

4. Right Action

5. Right Livelihood

Mental Development:

6. Right Effort

7. Right Mindfulness

8. Right Concentration

For anyone who’s ever buried a dead self…

 The Grave-Digger

by Khalil Gibran

Once, as I was burying one of my dead selves, the grave-digger came by and said to me, “Of all those who come here to bury, you alone I like.”

Said I, “You please me exceedingly, but why do you like me?”

“Because,” said he, “They come weeping and go weeping – you only come laughing and go laughing.”

I found a printout of this a couple of weeks ago and added it to my blog-post-topic pile.  In keeping with poetry appreciation week and given Scott’s recent comment to yesterday’s post, today seems to be a particularly apropos day for this one. 

I particularly like Gibran’s brevity, so I’ll try to stay succinct as well:  this piece brought a bittersweet tear to my eye, a wrinkle to my forehead, and turned the corners of my mouth upward in a comfortably painful way when I read it.  I can identify.

Here’s the link to the full *.pdf version of The Madman by Khalil Gibran.  Definitely recommended reading.

Scott and I will be at church this morning, as I mentioned in yesterday’s post. 

Today’s reading will be from the Gospel According to (Robert) Frost:

Pan With Us

Pan came out of the woods one day—
His skin and his hair and his eyes were gray,
The gray of the moss of walls were they—
     And stood in the sun and looked his fill
     At wooded valley and wooded hill.

He stood in the zephyr, pipes in hand,
On a height of naked pasture land;
In all the country he did command
     He saw no smoke and he saw no roof.
     That was well! and he stamped a hoof.

His heart knew peace, for none came here
To this lean feeding, save once a year
Someone to salt the half-wild steer,
     Or homespun children with clicking pails
     Who see no little they tell no tales.

He tossed his pipes, too hard to teach
A new-world song, far out of reach,
For a sylvan sign that the blue jay’s screech
     And the whimper of hawks beside the sun
     Were music enough for him, for one.

Times were changed from what they were:
Such pipes kept less of power to stir
The fruited bough of the juniper
     And the fragile bluets clustered there
     Than the merest aimless breath of air.

They were pipes of pagan mirth,
And the world had found new terms of worth.
He laid him down on the sun-burned earth
     And ravelled a flower and looked away—
     Play? Play?—What should he play?

So as I sit here with a cheekful of cherry Skoal, my green money candle and stick of some kind of incense burning, listening to somebody play Bach on the harpsichord pretty well, I thought I might write a little more about what D. T. Suzuki has been telling me about Zen Buddhism.

I read a bit at lunch today that resonated well enough to get my head nodding rather vigorously and the meatballs falling out of my sandwich.  The book I’m reading is called Zen Buddhism and it’s a collection of Suzuki’s writings edited by William Barrett.  The part I was reading at lunch is called “The Zen Doctrine of No-Mind”, and I’m about to start quoting from (and paraphrasing) it rather liberally.

But before I do, how about a quick digression to set the stage?  Whether it’s a penchant of Suzuki or merely Barrett’s editorial decision, this book has a lot about the historical journey of Buddhism from India into China, where it there became Zen.  I’ve mentioned this before, so I won’t get too far into it here, but suffice to say that Suzuki seems to have a pretty good handle on where the various branches of the Buddhist tree derive and separate from one another.  He often repeats that ritualization leads to stagnation and thus dead branches. 

One such example occurs with respect to the three subjucts of the Buddhist Triple Discipline:  Morality(sila), Meditation (dhyana), and Wisdom (prajna).

“Morality consists in observing all the precepts laid down by the Buddha for the spiritual welfare of his disciples.  Meditation is the exercise to train oneself in tranquillization, for as long as the mind is not kept under control by means of meditation it was of no use just to observe mechanically the rules of conduct, in fact, the latter were really meant for spiritual tranquillization.  Wisdom or Prajna is the power to penetrate into the nature of one’s being as well as the truth itself thus intuited.”  [emphasis mine]

Suzuki goes on to describe how the three aspects of this (single) discipline became separated from one another into specific schools of study.  Basically, these three are meant to be practiced together - to balance one another.  Spending too much time specializing in the study of one is to forsake the others, and thus to forsake the entire point of the Triple Discipline.  Suzuki continues:

“That all these three are needed for a devoted Buddhist goes without saying.  But after the Buddha, as time went on, the Triple Discipline was split into three individual items of study.  The observers of the rules of morality set down by the Buddha became teachers of the Vinaya; the Yogins of meditation were absorbed in various Samadhis, and even acquired something of supernatural faculties, such as clairvoyance, mind-reading, telepathy, knowledge of one’s past lives, etc. and lastly, those who pursued Prajna became philosophers, dialecticians, or intellectual leaders.  This one-sided study of the Triple Discipline made the Buddhists deviate from the proper path of Buddhist life, especially in Dhyana (meditation) and Prajna (wisdom or intuitive knowledge).”  [emphasis mine]

This is the point at which my meatballs landed in my potato chips.  Suzuki goes on to discuss specifically the split between meditation and wisdom, which is exactly what I was thinking about and needed to read.  I can’t forego one for the other without becoming imbalanced in who I am.  In a very simple sense, my actions, thoughts, and feelings must be in harmony with one another - which corresponds directly to the balance among the practices of morality, wisdom, and meditation – otherwise I am not whole. 

Maybe that’s not as simple a statement as I would like it to be.  I think an elaboration would be more suited here than trying to break this idea down further:

Morality:  I was raised here in America according (more or less) to the Roman Catholic code of morality embodied in the Ten Commandments.  My parents taught me to be a gentleman – speak when spoken to, open doors for people, help little old ladies across the street – things like that.  I’ve got a pretty good handle on the rules of polite society (and how not to go to jail).  But if I simply follow these rules with no thought at all to the true moral underpinings – why it’s wrong to kill, why it’s wrong to steal, etc. – and go about my merry way doing whatever I like without transgressing these boundaries, then I’m a sociopath (or just an asshole).

Wisdom:  I chose to study philosophy because I like to think.  I like dialectical and analytical problems because they keep my mind exercised and sharp.  If taken to the extreme, I get completely lost in my books and in my head and never really do anything.  I spend lots and lots of time thinking about what’s right and wrong, true and untrue, what should and should not be.  I forget about reality and become completely absorbed in the hypothetical.

Meditation:  I enjoy yoga.  I like going to class and practicing at home.  I enjoy the breathing exercises and postures.  Yoga helps me get centered and clears my cluttered mind.  Some days, I feel that I would like to be a yoga instructor.  In order to become an instructor, (in my mind) I would have to spend years in study and discipline.  Lots and lots of meditation so that I become “completely” centered.  If I did that, I’d have to quit my job and live in poverty, even though I’d be “full” and “wealthy” “on the inside”. 

Any one of these, if taken to the extreme, automatically foregoes the other two.  And I don’t want to live that way; it makes me feel incomplete.  To a certain extent, I have direct experience with each of these – living as though that one thing (morality/wisdom/meditation) were the most important way to live.  In each case, I felt strange, though I couldn’t have told you why at the time (and probably would have denied it anyhow). 

So, without making this post any longer than it already is, I’ve reached this conclusion:  it really is ok for me to be a jack of all trades (master of none).