the turning wheel turns

i am staying sober, for good this time! i will admit that i have renewed interest in committing to this new state of being because someone i admire seems to be doing very very well newly sober and is ecstatic about it, but the fact still stands.

to abstain from drinking altogether isn't extraordinarily easy or extraordinarily difficult, but it feels like the absolute right thing for me to do. the feeling i used to find so pleasurable is actually quite sickening - i can hardly even think about being in that place, two drinks or so in and already feeling the pull downward into a need for more, without a dizzying nausea.

nope nope nope.

and it may be more difficult this way. in order to fully face reality's absolute fullness, to embrace all of the confusing and painful and absolutely maddening parts, one must carefully create space to accept and a willingness to experience. the creating and the willingness are the key elements of the practice, they are where the central focus must go in order to become truly independent of desire/perpetual unfullfilment. to be open you must accept your own power to change your experience.

i think the less you hide from discomfort the more your body and soul will respond with a stronger resilience.

resilience is the mechanism by which perseverance thrives. if you are mentally and physically prepared to persevere, you are more able to do so without any thought of giving up. there is something in me, and perhaps in you too, which desires laziness. the monkey is quite apathetic and bratty about life in general, and would like nothing more but to lay in bed eternally doing nothing and hiding from its responsibility, generally hating existence and projecting nothing but negativity into the world. the more one faces this unfortunate and self-destructive aspect of their humanity with a trained mind and soul one is far less likely to succumb to it.

exercising virtue is how one gains virtue. it is in the practice, moment by moment, that we grow stronger, more resilient.

prosperity. compassion. purification. peace. knowledge.

yamamoto kanae - garden, 1918

☸️

my partner and i put up tibetan prayer flags yesterday at the front of our house with a shared intention, together. he said something about imagining that the flags, five-colored fabric squares blowing in the wind, are like the sails of a ship pointed towards our intention. on each of the flags is printed a symbol, some text, and one of the five words shown above ( ^ ).

the physical ritual can be incredibly important when done with full intention - a symbol is useful or effective only if properly understood, respected. to physically demonstrate that i am on this path, to be unafraid to share that with the world and especially myself, a new page is turned. a new awareness is cultivated, a new plane attained.

there's something very right about a ship set firmly on its course, i think.

if you have yet to arrive at your destination... perhaps it is best to keep going.

☸️

erykah badu - "sometimes," baduizm (1997)

^ can. not. stop. listening. ^

鳥

the tree must not be painted, but manifested.

true tree-ness comes through the painting as itself -
no process of creating the tree required.

as the wheel turns, 
realities merge
and that which was and will be now is.

there is no more distinction.

there is no more separation.

there is only the one unfolding.

the one, unfolding.

do you still resist?

yamamoto masao: tori 

                                                                                                                                                                    
lately i've been in that place of defeat. it really sucks. somehow i have accumulated so much negative energy either from others or from my own thoughts that a cyclical loop of these thoughts will often play in my mind without end, a constant dialogue of negativity that hounds me morning til night. i think i have just become used to it. on some days i find distractions through work, a hobby, or obligations and the voice gets drowned out. sometimes, though, these distractions don't really work, and the negative internal dialogue feels almost amplified out over the field of my life and it's hard to ignore.

when you have a bully constantly shouting at you, attempting to take away any power you might muster, it is very easy to completely collapse. to hide inside the shelter of your dark cave, to mistrust anyone and anything, to despise even yourself. in this place i do not come out for anything. it is too hard to imagine things going well for me if i do, so i project into the future that there will only always be failure and pain.

i know, it's not good, but it's real. it's really what i've been dealing with. and i have come to breakthroughs regarding this particular thought pattern many times only to lose track of my progress, bringing me back to a place of not being able to imagine a way out.

thankfully i have recently discovered something seemingly obvious but that had been hidden from me in regards to digging out the poison root once and for all. a way to actually be happy all the time, in any situation, at any point or place. and it is mine.

hashimoto okie

awareness is all. once my consciousness can be trained to expand outward so that i am looking at the looker, watching the feeler, seeing the seeker, holding the thinker - once i am beyond my immediate self - then i am tapping into primordial consciousness, the very fabric of the One that includes me but also includes everyone and everything else. and from this place i can start to see that i am not merely a victim of a constant mental barrage, i am a powerful creative being;

something i have begun incorporating into my daily and even momentarily experience is the diagnosis and calling to awareness of wasteful, repetitive thought. thought can be a great servant to the mind, and the mind can be a great servant to us as individuals, but without proper awareness of its power we are likely to succumb to wasteful and repetitive thought patterns. the great hamster wheel of the mind will turn itself ragged, endlessly, and take you along with it. there are no laws which prohibit the mind from turning and spinning, projecting and analyzing, idling and plummeting downward, all at a clip seemingly beyond our control.

More than those who hate you, more than all your enemies, an untrained mind does greater harm. More than your mother, more than your father, more than all your family, a well-trained mind does greater good.

Dhammapada

i didn't quite know all this starting out. i also didn't know that most of my depression was because i was stuck on the hamster wheel, turning and turning, slaving away in a repetitive cycle of wasted energy. i would almost constantly be wasting my waking energy thinking about the future, trying to imagine what was going on in other people's heads and hearts, trying to micro-manage my emotions and my life, all to the point of not being able to function, or at least with any degree of fluidity. it became a trap all too easy to fall into.

since making this realization (perhaps not for the first time in this lifetime, or even others), it all has become very simple, once you get the hang of it. it's very much like walking on a tightrope, this meditative state of consciousness - too much slack or too little can cause extreme imbalance, and the more times one cannot strike this balance the practice gets forgotten, and one feels defeated. it's incredibly hard to walk on a tightrope in real life, and i'm not good at it at all, but the metaphor still works well for how i have found taming the mind to be.

georgia o'keefe - light coming on the plains, no. 1

so what does this look like?

well, i can tell you that today was one of the best days i have had in a while. every moment has felt full, full of itself and full of my awareness of it, and my unconscious mind hasn't been secretly draining itself away in the background.

"but if it's an unconscious process, the mind wasting energy on worrying, how can one consciously attend to it?"

the practice requires that you are always looking at yourself, indelibly connected to what thoughts and projections are flashing across the broadcast of your mind. when we look out at the world we see what we want to see, we are concerned with exactly that which is related to our karmic destiny. if we are depressed, we look out into the world and see misery, poverty, suffering, emptiness. we are projecting that out onto the world, and of course it feels like it's confirming some truth we have created. but it's important to note how our thoughts affect our entire momentary existence.

Mind precedes all mental states. Mind is theirchief; they are all mind-wrought. If with an impure mind a person speaks or acts suffering fol-lows him like the wheel that follows the foot of the ox.

Dhammapada

i'm having to live this life in a state of relative solitude in order to heal the rift in my very existential fabric. i'm taking each moment as more important than my whole life put together, because in a way it is. when i feel myself start to ruminate over that which i cannot see or touch i gently guide myself away from that abyss, back to the present, and that includes the presence of my body. i listen to what my body wants and needs in this moment, and i obey, no questions asked. if i am tired, if i am hungry, if i am bored, if i am inspired, i am aware.

i am.

and that is all i ever need to be.

max ernst - paysage de choix

rain run

you ever get so high you need to climb back down the rope to earth and find your feet again, find your own little patch of earth?

that's kind of what i've been dealing with for the past few hours, but it's fine - i am already seeing myself step back into the /usual/ normal, whatever that is.

it's been the same rainy day for a few weeks now. every day we get that it is not raining has been a gift, and i've tried to use them wisely by being out in them. rainy days are also beautiful, and i can hardly remember when they weren't part of my every day.

frank wilbert stokes  - the phantom ship

one of the things i like about the rain is that in it i have started running again. running in the rain is almost more fun than running in the sun. you are constantly getting cooled off by the drops and the surroundings are alive and moving in ways often overlooked under the sun's glare. running with my dog is an even more interesting phenomenon. with her leashed to me, i feel almost as though i am driving a sled, and she is pulling me. i have to stop when she stops to explore whatever smells she must because it's about mutual respect, in the end. and then we are off, together, back into the mist and the green.

where we run it is as if we are at the bottom of a giant bowl with a mountainside wall of trees spreading above us in a giant semi-circle. looking far up the sides of that darkly green and lush wall the white mist claims the tops of the trees and the sky seems both far and not far. me then green then white then beyond. to stop amidst the onward push of your body's pumping machine and find yourself right in the middle of that giant crater of beauty, surrounded by birds and the rushing of the river water and the wetness of the dripping leaves, is to be placed right in the center of an all-encompassing experience of nowness.

heart racing and breath acutely aware of itself. that's why i run, in the end... to feel the most alive i possibly can, to be as close as i can stand to the physicality of what my body was made to do.

hello. when you hear that "god is on your side" what does it make you feel?

these days i have been primarily concerned with what the self is, and what its importance should be, if any. the self, the atman, is our own individual spark of the divine contained within us.

"The final stage of moksha (liberation) is the understanding that one's atman is, in fact, Brahman" (source).

i've been thinking a lot about what it means to be on "god's side," because isn't that the same thing as accepting that "god is on your side"?

"god" is just one of the infinitude of words we have created for the One, for Brahman - the great and all-encompassing primeval love which contains/consists of the very fabric of existence.

if it's on our side, then we should try to be on its side too, no?

(oh so typical of a human to think in such dualistic terms)

mc escher - fluorescent sea

雨

so it's been raining a lot.

i always like rain but there have lately been fewer raging thunderstorms than i would like - the kind where the air is positively electric, and the sky is both dark and light, and one hides in a warm, well-lit place to watch tiny rushing rivers form in the grass and puddles well into pots of dirt.

no, these rains have been light and unceasing. gentle mists with varying pulses of intensity scattered across fields. my favorite part of rain in this season is what it does to the colors. already brilliant, flashes of new greens, yellows, pinks take on their fullest hue as they reach adulthood by feasting on sunlight. and the rain melts together these petals and leaves, budding shoots and tattered bark strips - a palette for the eyes to paint with.

i'm not the first to notice this phenomenon - it is well known that rainy days make for wonderful photographs, swirling inspiration for paintings. being a central shadowy figure both in and outside of this saturated landscape is quite a beloved experience for me. walking among the mossy, sodden ground, a light spring in each step - the great roaring stillness of the vast earthy surface is overlaid with a curtain of raindrops, faintly drumming. even the sonic landscape mixes the sounds differently - variables no longer dry and lain next to each other with their sharp edges, the air is a-hum with our shared experience of water and the nesting inside of wetness.

i encountered these beings whilst walking through the wet painting and as ever when i encounter wild life we sort of sized each other up from a distance with what felt like gentleness, an urgent curiosity. we passed by each other without much of a fuss but these moments always stretch the boundaries of time for me.

i think i'm always subconsciously looking for these moments, as they feel more close to whatever alive is supposed to mean  than does my normal state. of course, i am always alive - and it is wonderful to be breathing, to have a mind, etc... but then there is being alive, where you are even more aware than usual of this quality of having a consciousness, and it's an electric feeling. like the node in which you reside on the infinite fabric of reality shows itself to you, makes itself known, and you get a glimpse at a little bit more of what this experience really might be...

a shared experience of the elements with each other, with the other, with yourself.

'tis pretty neat.

雨

with the global pandemic going on i encounter many less people when i go out. trudging through what feel like ruins i am always awash with thoughts on the beingness of the structure which surrounds me, and i think i've had enough. the enjoyment of conjecture has its limits and i must say i have long since reached them.

this much is absolutely true - that i will be miserable if i try to measure myself by anyone else's parameters. 

it is said that the concept of self (and concept of concepts, too, really) is a source of suffering, but i have yet to figure out how to transcend an experience of self and reach pure experience. it is said that having a mind hurts a little bit, and that meditation is a way to sort of neutralize the pain of consciousness by sitting with it and accepting it. these are things that i have yet to sort through fully but i want to keep meditating on them until i come to my own understanding.

ciao~

 雨

cat power - "say" (moon pix, 1998)

joanna brouk - "going through the veil - becoming a swan" (hearing music, 2016)



caroline polachek - "ocean of tears" (pang, 2019)



modest mouse - "gravity rides everything" (the moon & antarctica, 2000)



HTRK - venus in leo, 2019

spring is here!

(sort of...)

the mountain winter keeps stopping and starting up again, but somehow a smattering of tiny purple crocuses have still sprouted up all around the garden. i never planted them, and didn't see them there last year... but they are incredibly gorgeous. little fans of purple petals with yellow centers and pale green shoots, and when the flowers are not yet spread open they look like sleeping babies.

 

☾

my external world has been relatively silent lately. speaking, singing, or expressing myself out loud has been minimal, but my internal world is just as vibrant as ever, for better or for worse.

so, what's been having the most immediate and wonderful effect on my mood so far?

it'll sound cheesy, maybe, but it's yoga.

"the purpose of Yoga is to connect the individual energy with the universal energy, or put another way, to connect the individual being to its source – the Supreme Being."

in the naming, appreciating, and strengthening of every muscle in my body i have been releasing so much that was kept stored and hidden in the recesses of my body. this discovery was not immediate - at first i was just following directions and copying the way the poses looked on other people, and am still known to do that on occasion. the more i stopped looking around myself, however, the more i found my focus shift inward and i am now able to tap into vast reserves of strength and intelligence and that i didn't even know i had.

it goes something like this:

you come to the mat completely clogged with thought and emotion debris. sleeping through the night has helped filter your subconscious to some degree but with every waking moment you are still collecting and absorbing new information, whether or not you realize it. you are thinking about a million other things all at once and it sometimes feels like you might drown at any moment. you center yourself on the mat, fully equipped with the intention to give your best to this time.

whether i'm doing it alone or in a class it usually starts the same - there is the awakening each part of the body, checking in with the spaces we hold inside ourselves, and then the flow begins, through yang-centric poses first and then yin, with plenty of room to rest in between. at the end it feels like you've gone on a journey within your body and you emerge completely filled with gratitude for your body.

☾

i've been noticing a profound difference in myself over the past few years. aging does happen slowly, imperceptibly, but it always happens suddenly, the shift into a new awareness of life and myself. an awareness that includes looking back at what i was.

i just got back from spain, visiting a friend there. i keep telling people, believing myself to be oh so clever, that traveling hasn't quite set me free from answer-seeking just yet; nothing achingly grandiose and hidden from me has been revealed