I am an Uncle now

My sister just had a baby. Today. I am an uncle.

My niece is cute. She has a very distinctive face. I bet she'll keep it her whole life.

Life is interesting. It's in an upswing, in one of those phases where the energy that had been missing so long comes back in a bursting flood. The energy and bliss make me crazed. It's not a balanced state at all, but it is very enjoyable, like the thrill of adrenaline. It is a feeling of accomplishment. I feel on top of the world. So far, whenever this has happend, I have assumed it would just keep going and now my life was finally picking up, or else I was dreading it ending. What I really need to be careful of is burning myself out. I have enough energy to run myself into the ground, and little enough care for my body that I would permit it.

Inertia is destroyed by energy, but energy is made more helpful and creative by balance. Otherwise it burns itself out, like a raging fire. Balance allows the energy to course through me, without catching me and carrying me along with it.

The lesson for today, an auspicious day for my new family member, is: listening to your inner voice and respecting it, is something the Universe dearly wants you to do. That's what I've been doing and it's why I'm feeling so well. No simple formula am I espousing. This is a balance, which I do not know the future of, that has been hard won, by continuously doing things to upset the balance, and thus learning what not to do, one mistake at a time. You cannot hope to get this by listening or reading and emulating. This experience is born purely by experience and practice. Though what brought me here was the intention to master this way of functioning. That is still my intention, only now it is strengthened, by my direct perception that nature smiles on me when I do it.

Happenings and wishes

things start to become clearer. The thread of my life that was dropped so that I could process my loss, is at the very beginning of getting picked up again. There will be more, always. For now, let it be noted: I'm on an upswing.

There is a block in my throat, energetically, emotionally. A block in my flow of expression. it needs to be opened. It's being opened. It's giving me a tremendous headache. That and the over-intense workout I just did.

headache.

today, you are my spiritual lesson.

the lesson is: when following other peoples orders to push harder, you can push yourself to your very limit. And you do, ignoring your own voice within that tells you when it's really appropriate to stop. And when you do that (ignore your inner voice), you suffer, your life goes out of balance. When you listen, your life comes into a harmony, synchronicity, and magicalness that is worthy of re-telling around a campfire.

goodnight.

p.s. It is feeling really nice, listening to myself. Which means: when I don't want to do something, I stop, when I want to do something, I do, when I don't know what I want to do, I wait till I do.

And whatever I think, is met with a passive acceptance.

I'm ending tonight with gratitude, because that is something I can always do, that feels right. Gratitude is interesting. Things are beautiful, and that is appreciated, and gratitude is somehow the aggressive form of appreciation, which is receptive. The universe is a gift to me, and my spontaneous gift back, is appreciation. Though it's not totally spontaneous. It requires a conscious decision, to put my awareness on it. Thus it becomes a really nice gift.

It's interesting how I feel like I don't want anything, but in actuality, there are lots of things I want. How does that work? It's like, the things I want are skin deep. Just entertainment. There's a tacit understanding with the universe that whatever happens, is ok. There are things which my heart desires, but they are superficial desires, and I can't take them very seriously. When I look back in my memory, for something especially amazing, to ask for again, if a genie popped up, I'd have a hard time. Three wishes, go:

trivial things:

I'd like to be able to fly, unaided, like super man.

I'd like a teacher, in the flesh, who matched with my learning style, and could help bring me to my highest potential. And was dedicated to doing so. Who I meet, and spend whatever time is necessary with them.

I'd like to be reincarnated whenever I die, and come back where I left off, evolution-wise, and with resources to support my goals of full development.

The first wish is purely for fun. The second is already fulfilled, in all important aspects, by what I call God. The meeting in flesh is for my own vanity and lack of faith. And I think it's likely that death will function like that for me.

You see why my desires are taken lightly then. The important one's are fulfilled, and the rest are just for shits and giggles. Sometimes they are fulfilled, and I shit and giggle. Sometimes not, and I've already forgotten. Or I'm rejected and I feel bad for a while. I feel bad in regular cycles anyways, so no real change there.

ok, lets try going to bed again.

First, laundry folding.

Beat me upside the head with a carrot and call me Nancy: an exploration into Motivation

I wrote a paper, back in the day, on Motivation. Because it was of great interest to me: it seems to be such a central part of everyone's lives. It's a glaring example of one of those things our education should really deeply cover, both theoretically and especially practically, but doesn't even touch on it, in it's frantic scrabbling to get kids to remember the dates of the Napoleonic wars for one week so they can pass the memorization test.

If you know how to effectively motivate yourself, you will be successful in any filed you go into. If you can transfer that skill to other people, you will be successful as a leader in any field you go into.

There are two, no, three main ways I see, for motivating people: the carrot, the stick (which I always found interesting, to picture, because I would see a white rabbit with a carrot dangling from a stick like a fishing pole, and when the carrot wasn't working, the very same stick used as the fishing pole for the carrot was turned into the beating stick, without even bothering to remove the carrot, thus creating a rather interesting symbology, as the rabbit was being beaten with the carrot flying around erratically on the end of it's string.) And the God Within.

Carrot is familiar to all of us: I want you to do A, so I say I'll give you B if you do A. If you want B enough, you'll do A. Tada; motivation success. Or else, self motivation: I want B. I need to do A to get B. If I want B enough, I'll do A.

Stick is also familiar: Do A or I'll beat you with B. Or self motivation: I'm afraid of B, so I'll do A to prevent it.

The God Within is my third category, and so may require a bit of explanation. The Root of the word "enthusiasm" means "the God within." And the motivation strategy goes like this: I want to do A, so I'm going to do A.

This comes from my eastern philosophy background, but is a very simple concept: it's the idea of enjoying the process, rather than just enjoying the result. When you are enthusiastic about doing something, it's because you genuinely like doing it. Maybe my stated goal is to make a Bow that I can practice archery with, but my primary goal may be simply the enjoyable process of creating the bow, cutting out the general shape, slowly scraping away growth rings, testing the flex, working around knots, enjoying the fresh air and the feel and smell of the wood, and the challenge of the task.

This can go along with carrots or sticks.

Now we come to the problem shooting part of this analysis. What happens when B is not enough motivation, either positive or negative, to make you do A?

I really want to learn how to get past that initial awkwardness barrier of striking up a conversation with strangers. And of getting through the initial stages of getting to know someone I'm interested in, and expressing interest. That's B, my desire, my goal. The stick side of the motivation is I feel like a heel when there's someone I want to talk to and I don't, because I'm shy. The Carrot side is I'm really curious about what having an intimate relationship is like.

However, neither of these motivations are enough to overcome my demotivating factor, which is that it scares the poop out of me to approach women. Perhaps if I felt truly horrible about myself for being shy like that, or desperately wanted a girlfriend, then it would be uncomfortable enough where I am, to change states.

This happened once in my life, when I was super depressed. The pain of my current situation was enough that I would try anything to try and get out of it. And my way out was meditation. I started meditating very regularly. Thus began my spiritual journey. This is very often how changes in people take place at first: people becoming sober, revolutions happening, etcetera. We humans don't like change, really don't like it, and so things have to get pretty awful for us to be forced to really change how we function.

This is unfortunate, because, looking at the change from the other side, it's a much better way of being, generally, and if we had changed sooner, we would have saved ourselves a lot of misery.

This is very well illustrated by the whole world today, with it's outdated and harmful systems of education, politics, energy, business. Energy is a simple one to look at for me. There are ecologically sustainable systems of living, that would give people a higher quality of life by far, and that would not only stop putting ecological diversity and the planets homeostasis systems in jeopardy, but would reverse the destructive trend we've created.

However, we are changing over in a very slow way, and, at least in large scale, only when the alternatives become unbearable. Cuba is a good example, for oil dependency. They got cut off from oil imports, so they had to change to more renewable systems of living. Which turned out to be great for them, once the changes were put into place.

Lets make this overly simple: what we have here is an extremely unequal evaluation of current happiness vs. future happiness.

If your current happiness, on a scale of 1-10, is a 3, because of your current way of living, and you know of another way of living, that would put your happiness at a 7, but you would have a temporary discomfort adjustment of -2 to happiness during the time you were changing, most people would not opt for the change. It's not logical, but that is the choice most people make.

(in reality it's much more complicated, but I'm simplifying to highlight a specific point.)

So, we want everyone to be able to switch to the better life, or at least be able to switch ourselves.

How do we overcome this "change discomfort" barrier?

Things that have done it for me in the past:

--Wait till the current way of living becomes unbearable (the current way of living for some reason drops to a 1). Works occasionally, but not under your control. No one, or very few, are going to intentionally make there lives miserable. That happening is just a gift from God. Not a technique you can decide to use.

--Find a way that doesn't cause as much change discomfort. This is sometimes possible. Often it involves taking a lot more time, energy and/or money (which is really the representation of both, in our modern society). Sometimes you get other people to hold your hand, show you the most efficient way, or, it it's an external thing, do it for you. Often it's just a matter of time and intention slowly undoing things. Your consciously working on yourself, but at an easy pace. If you have the patience, this can work. Sometimes though, there are issues that refuse to be easy, and either need a full frontal assault or else won't budge. Often the only way they get moved is when option one happens, and living with the issue becomes unbearable. This is what I call "tough love" ;)

--Learn how to enjoy the process. This is the God Within option. If you can learn the skill of enjoying the process of change, it's like negating or reducing the temporary -2 to happiness. This is a subsection of the other method, but it's important enough to get it's own paragraph. If you don't have money and you don't want to spend extra time, this is often the only feasible solution.

A few useful tidbits:

--Set attainable, specific goals. When your designing a way of self-motivating, you want to put all your focus on positive motivation. Live and our minds already give us way to much negative messages. When you set measurable and reasonable goals, it's encouraging and fun when you fulfill them. Sometimes we're fuzzy on weather we've made any progress at all, and it's nice to be able to look back and see clearly that we have. That's positive reinforcement, and that helps lower the -2 change penalty.

For some goals it's a bit more fuzzy, like spiritual enlightenment, because the end goal is really unknown, and even the path more than a few feet infront of you is unknown, and setting goals for spiritual growth is hilarious in it's futility: the ego always sets the goals, but it's not the ego that has control, in this game. However, you can still identify what your next step is, what your blocks are that you need to work on, and that allows you to look back and see that progress is happening.

--Look for a friend, teacher, coach, or group to work with. This lowers the happiness penalty, often even turning it into a happiness bonus. I can't stress enough how useful this is.

--Discover your passion. There's not enough time in life to do everything every person you thought was cool did. Also, you might not even enjoy the things that people you look up to enjoy. That's fine. You've only really got time to do one thing in this life, and that's be you. Some people can fudge this with sticks, fearing other peoples opinions or there own inadequacy. Sometimes for quite a while. Ultimately it will leave you feeling empty inside. This step is difficult as hell, in my opinion. So that means, it's difficult as hell for me. Your results may vary. This is all about respecting who you are enough to listen to what it is you want, rather than what you think you should want or be.

It's a lot longer of a journey than just picking up a book by some guy or gal who you think is swell and saying, "I'll have what she's having". But ultimately it's the only way you'll ever be happy with your life. Better to start now than realize you've never lived as you draw your last breath on your deathbed.

At first I thought this meant finding some "thing" that I "did". But as I continue to explore this quest, it seems more likely that the answer to this question is a way of living, alive to each moment and alive to what your heart is saying, right now, not thirty years ago on that hill when God told you what you're supposed to do with your life. Maybe that will happen, but it seems more common that comes after you've settled into being alive to your heart, each moment. It makes logical sense too: first, you learn how to listen and honor yourself. Then, you discover what you really like to do and what you're good at.

As a closing thought, I'd like to remind you that your life doesn't start when you get struck by lightning and realize your destiny is to fight crime as Skunk Man, but that it starts right now. That infact, what your divine job is, right now, is to be confused and searching. It's hard to see, in the fog of that job, but there is just as much beauty in the struggles you are facing now, seemingly alone and uncomprehending, as there will be when the fog has cleared and you move with the unerring accuracy of your heart.

Tantra pt. 2

upon further reflection, I think the solution to all these questions is simply to listen to my heart as the situation comes. No hard fast rules. Those are useful as training wheels, but the goal I am moving towards is to be able to hear and respect the voice of wisdom within me. No "sex is bad" or "sex is good" or anything else, for that matter. What is the appropriate response in the moment. That is the answer.

And that is a matter of sensitivity and working through all the issues that keeps us from being in constant contact with that inner voice, and doubting it or fearing it or not trusting it.

And that, I'm sure, is true Tantra.

Modern Day Tantra

I've just been looking at some modern tantric teachers, because I've got some sexual blocks and relationship blocks, and am looking for ways to deal with and heal these things.

It's a mixed bag. There is truth mixed in with untruth, which is always a dangerous combo. All I know is, my inner voice tells me to steer clear. Which is sad, for mr. happy.

Here is the basic dichotomy I face, dealing with modern tantrics:

Sex in general, as it's dealt with today, is generally a spiritual no-no. There is definitely spiritually awesome, God approved sex. And it's the best sex you'll ever have, far and away, because it's not just a physical thing, but a union of all levels of two people. But that's not too common.

Repression of sexuality, is also a spiritual no-no. And whereas meaningless sex is kind of a wast of time, sexual repression is a serious problem that can lead to deep imbalances and suffering.

I'm looking for the balance point, and I think it might not be halfway between the two ends of the sex spectrum, but up on the Y axis of me just being authentic with myself. I think people who say all sex is good and you should have as much of it as possible, are very unbalanced, but just as unbalanced are those that say sex is a bad bad thing and should never be done out of wedlock. That's retarded. I can't express how retarded that is.

"Marriage" as a legal or religious institution is a hollow shell of something real and organic that has been forgotten long ago. Fuck the law. I guess it's necessary, cus our relationships are so screwed up, people who marry each other end up often hating each other's guts and need police officers to make sure the money is divided up properly. I guess I need to give a bit of respect to the current systems, as "the worst system out there, except all the others." that is, it's pretty fucked up, but so are we, and that's why it's in place.

That said, the system is for the median of the population, minus the 20 years it takes for the law to change. But individuals should remember that as they grow and exceed the evolution of the median, they should not lower there spiritual IQ by following general consensus. I think there's something to be said for lifetime pair bonding. However, having a law constrain someone else to behave how you want them to, is stupid. If the only thing stopping your significant other from pursing sex with other people is a law, then you've got some basic problems with the relationship. You shouldn't need a law for that, in a functional relationship.

Now, I'm sure true Tantra can work for enlightenment, via sex. I don't think I've heard from a true tantric master though. And that means, mixed in with the truth of what is being taught, is egoic desires. Which is fine and business as usual, as long as they are honestly recognized as egoic desires, attachements, stuff that needs work, needs healing, needs light. But when you use your spirituality to say those issues are "ok", then you've just diverged from the path of truth, and taken a side trip down ego-penis lane. Which, hey, fine, if that's what you want to do, enjoy the trip.

But I don't want to divert from truth.

And frankly, it's not super appealing, at this point, because it is crystal clear to me, at this point in my growth, that there ain't anything in this world that's going to make me happy in that deep sense my heart longs for. Whether it's the craziest orgasm you can imagine, or being worshiped as a sexual god. Hey, shit, that would be fun, no doubt. But, like everything, it would get old. For some people, that takes a while, maybe years. For me, usually a few seconds is enough.

Now, I can enjoy things. But that is secondary to my inner state. Which is determined not by what I'm enjoying, but by what I'm believing. By the inner parts of me that are hurting, constantly. And no outer thing is going to make those inner parts change. It will at best feed them, for a while, or maybe make them find a different thing to feel bad about.

Look at people at the top of the world, physically, financially, etc, and you'll see a lot of unhappy people. maybe even more than average.

There's still a voice in me that says, "go have sex with hot women, then you'll be happy." The difference between now and five years ago is, I'm clear now, that this voice is mistaken.

What is it we are really looking for? What is it we are really afraid of?

You have to answer this question for yourself, but when I look for it, there is a deep, deep as time itself, yearning for something truly meaningful. For something full of love and gratitude and kindness. For something beautiful. And the fear is one of meaninglessness. Emptiness.

That is not something a new toy can give me, it's only something I can give me. It's like, the problem's not in the object seen, it's in the lens. I've got vaseline on my glasses, and I'm looking for some tasty food. I see sex, and that looks tasty, the way the vaseline warps it, but I try some and it's good, but not filling, and I look at other stuff and it looks really gross. When I wipe my glasses clean, I see that everything before me is part of a delicious feast, and I am full because everything within arms reach nourishes me.

This is the phrase: the wise are content with that which comes to them, unasked.

Simply, you are able to enjoy, appreciate, whatever comes to you, in life. And in that state, you can be established in perfect integrity with yourself, because there is nothing specific that you want so much you are willing to give up integrity to get it. Which means your life gets to feel fulfilling and meaningful and 'right'.

well, it's late and I've got a big day tomorrow.

love, to all you random voyeurs out there. And to my friends.

i

Journey through the cosmic colon

what do i want? I want something. Something. ?Who? who wants what?

I'm spinning my wheels. I'm just trying to ask a simple question, and get a simple answer: what do I want?

Apparently it's not such a simple question. or a simple answer, because the answer is you don't want anything. Don't want anything.

And I wonder why I don't do anything big, don't rock the boat. Of course not, if there's nothing I want to do, to have. I just do the normal things of life. Eat, sleep, jack off to porn, keep myself from getting bored with videos. Sometimes I can't even stand watching videos, and I just sit, doing nothing at all. Sometimes I journal, like this, looking for answers. Hoping that something will spill out accidentally, really, just happy to be moving my fingers, just happy to talk to space, to try and put words to this ever so slippery experience. I check gmail, Facebook, the blogs I'm subscribed to, in the hopes of being in contact with another human being. Other people take away the silence. They take away the aloneness, which breeds this nothingness.

For now, I'm trying to get more comfortable in my skin, in my brain, in my life. The reality I perceive works a certain way, and when I try to make it act a different way, it hurts, and it fails. I'm guessing that the only way to make my life work is to play by the rules. The rules are the perceptions I have of my existence, my memories of my experience, what works, what doesn't work.

I kinda want to go look at some porn now, rub one out so I can go to bed (if I don't, I'm wired for another two to three hours, just lying in bed with the lights off.) and forget all about this.

But I also kinda just want someone to talk to. I want someone I can really talk to though. This blog, believe it or not, is way more censored and toned down than my personal journal. That journal is totally free form, stream of consciousness, everything goes. Sometimes I get the text to voice feature of my computers wordpad program to read sections back to me. It's super entertaining. Especially considering what I've written. The ravings of a perverted madman, as dictated by a robot. perhaps I should give you a tast of it, for your curiosities sake. well, ok, I'll write it here, but I'll re-read it and see if it's actually safe for print:

wax on wax off. fuck me. egotistical bullshit.

I am nothing.

no.

not right at all: I ask the question, "who am i " or "who is it that acts."

fine. now I travel with that question, to the answer. It's like falling down a rabbit hole, but at the bottom of the whole, I fall through, and suddenly I'm in outer space. Vast, empty, black, surrounded in points of light. This is not nothing, but I don't know what it is. It is a big unknown. if it has qualities, they are not qualities that can be spoken. No words can describe it. Like a reverse Lovecraft monster: it is beyond words, yes, beyond comprehension, but in a good way. It is peaceful. It is destruction of all that I thought I was. Not real destruction that, just the kind of destruction you get when you say, destroy that woman over there with the beautiful blond hair, when you go to hit on her and it turns out it's a man in drag. That woman has been completely annihilated, as if she never existed. Because she never did, except as a mistaken concept you had. Just an idea with no corresponding physical counterpart.

So to, the idea that I am anything namable is gone when I ask, "who am I" because it takes me there, and also gone is the feeling of superiority, inferiority, or free will, or rather, separate will, when I ask the question, "who is the actor, the do-er?" And get shot out the same cosmic butthole into infinite space.

Into what I can only assume is God.

One thing I'm carful about right now, is I don't want to say I've arrived anywhere (common thread with me eh? It's because people who make themselves sound all great and stuff piss me off, and so I don't want to become one of them. I hate myself enough already)

I think that arrival should be concurrent with something I could label "bliss." God is good, right? I'm not interested in intelectual bullshit, even if it's perfectly reasoned. I want my heart to have a place to rest. I want joy. I'm not willing to settle for intelectual satisfaction.

I actually recall my old teacher saying something about that, in one of his myriad tapes. Something like, "the first stage of enlightenment, the mind is finally satisfied, it can rest, but then the heart takes over, and wants to be satisfied as well, and it doesn't get satisfied until every last thing is completely unified.

well, I guess that's not really related. What I'm talking about is not unification. it's just feeling good in my heart. I will assume that is what the experience of reality, fully experienced, feels like. Otherwise, whats the fucking point?

It's a simple enough equation, like one of those programming diagrams:

[are you satisfied?]

Y--> your done, stop trying to grow/get enlightened etc.

N--> keep trying-->back to question [are you satisfied?]

ok, I'm done. I either need a walk, a shag, or a sit and stare at the darkness while hurting emotionally. hell, why not all three? Life is full.

;)

until next time, fuck you San Francisco.

i o

.... ok, that was about halfway between my normal posts and my insane-o private journal. I can't seem to do the insane-o journal thing with people watching. Well, I guess I'll go do that a bit before the other three.

posting old drafts

[this is a rather old post that I noticed was never published, just saved in draft form. It's probably a year or two old. I'm trying to post them now. I don't really know why, perhaps the same selective anal retentiveness that makes me occasionally delete the old messages from my email inbox. perhaps I'm just looking for an excuse to avoid the quiet dark awareness of lying in bed not sleeping]

You know, I used to love shopping for gadgets and such, but now I hate it. I hate shopping. It's a f*&king wast of time and it gives me a headache and it feels futile. I guess the difference is I used to like shopping because I would have fantasies about how the stuff I was going to get would change my life. But it never did. It just sat there, looking at me with those doleful hound-dog eyes. Buying a camera will not make you a photographer, it will not make you start taking pictures more often, buying a drawing pad will not make you start drawing more, buying and instrument will not make you practice.

Which is why, nowadays, I much more prefer buying lessons. Because that will make you draw more, play more, practice more. However, that's still a step removed from where I'd like to be, which is doing these things, which I want to do, without having to pay someone to make me do them. It's still useful to be taught how to do these things, often, but to have a baby sitter... well, it's fine, except it ends up costing a lot, and you don't get as good results as you would if you were just well self-motivated. This is what I want to shop for, now-a-days.

But as with most genuinely useful things, you can't actually buy these. There is no shortcut. Which is fine. What's not fine is I can't even seem to find the long-cut. I can't seem to find any way at all to acquire these qualities. Perhaps because I don't really care about them, because, as I said earlier, I don't think anything in this world will be able to give me lasting happiness. Or meaning. Even a sterling character. Not that I can see any way to know for sure, since I haven't found a way to get a sterling character, yet. The problem is motivation: I'm not going to keep doing something if it's not worth my while to do it. When I put in the extra effort required to do what I think I should, it's never the fulfillment I was hoping for, so I'm disappointed. Or, I just flat out fail and feel awful about that. Or, it proves to be something that requires a lot of work, and I get tired/bored, and give up, eventually, when it turns out all the work necessary is really, really not fun.

This is all in my mind. Sometimes, I enjoy the process itself. It's just a matter of... how I think about it. If I'm doing it, trying to get some result, and that's why I'm doing it, I can't do it: all I end up with is disappointment, failure, boredom. Whereas things I enjoy doing, are great, until I realize those things are things I think I should be doing, and then I congratulate myself on doing what I'm supposed to, and then it becomes work, and I have to do it, and I start failing to achieve what I'm supposed to achieve, and I feel bad again, and there's no point in doing it any more, because it just brings me misery: reminding myself how I haven't been doing it and I should be doing it, or how I'm not improving enough to be what I think I should be.

Fucking shit, it sucks.