70th Post In My 70th Year: Reviewing

In my 70th year I am now posting my 70th entry and this is a good time for review and reflection

It all started four years ago with my first post in which I shared a dream. In that dream there was the ocean which changed from just being out there to threatening to engulf me and overwhelm me. In rereading it, i see it as a "sea-change" dream in which my unconscious, if you are comfortable with that word, was wanting to get my attention and to do that by getting up close and personal in a rough and tumble way. There was no specific content in it (other than the buoy and the man next to me) and I take that to mean that it was a general statement of change and that "it's" not wanting to wait any longer.

That post then went on about the process of reclaiming my life and the simple guideline I used to go about doing that which was captured in the dictum: "I will rush no more!"

After that first posting I moved about through a number of different topics. Looking back on them now, I see a pattern or a flow to them which on reflection is speaking to my "journey." I'm pleased to discern this pattern because I didn't want this blog to just become a random process of chats to myself and others.

I talked about consumerism, damage to the planet, oil addiction, big changes 'acomin, what-if scenarios, doomerism, a dream or two, mindfulness, shiftings and purpose. That's the top layer that, to me, manages to outline part of my journey over the past four years. Those of you who have been following this blog, and my comments on other blogs, know that it is not just a recitation of events, of the ilk that I did this and then I did that, etc. Imbedded in many of the postings is material which speaks to my narrative. That narration speaks from my life more recently, essentially from the point of taking that vow, of "I will rush no more!"

Staying with that "simple" guideline has had powerful effects in my life. It helped to recognize the treadmill, the mindless maintenance of habit patterns, the "fitting in," and many other ways that the "system at large" maintains itself through conditioning and expectations, real and implied. With those insights, which were not new to me, but they were fresh and had more depth this time around, I was aware that insight without appropriate and helpful action is not really all that valuable. It would lead to a "thought envelope" which in its separation from the whole doesn't really plump up the experience of the journey.

And just briefly, I am again reminded that anyone who directly defies the maintenance of the dominant culture puts themselves in harms way eventually. That choice may be a worthwhile one, but it's best to choose it while being in a context of being awake, aware and alive.

The transitional strategy which has been helpful has been to discontinue purchasing daily tickets to maintenance of old patterns if unproductive. That opens a portal for moving attention and energy to more wholesome and meaningful activities. In doing that it creates a different energy which has a different resonance and, it is in that resonance field, that new pathways are laid down within and without.

Therein lies the initial challenge. Once you withdraw energy from the previous pattern, you have to find something else for that energy. There are endless distractions and enticements in the world which are clammoring to be fed from your energy. But everyone of them will continue to foster something which is counterfeit. What keeps coming back is the importance of the understanding of the "within," the more authentic by virtue of direct experience and verification.
If I may, one of the goals is to move within and connect with original beginnings, our own song, and universal themes and not get caught in the unfinished business of personal history. That involves a courageous taking of personal inventory of thoughts, words, and deeds for the purpose of removing the knots, the blockages, the injustices, etc., which all impede growth and openness. The 12 step traditions all speak of taking, at the appropriate time, a fearless and searching moral inventory. Great wisdom there for those on the journey.

Anything short of that will eventually fall flat on its face. There is so much here in this process but this was to be a short review.

To complete this for today, the last several postings have largely centered around mindfulness, and purpose and shiftings. The guideline of the personal choice "I will rush no more!" remains, but there is also a quickening.

Two other things that I have noticed in reviewing the past postings. First, the number of postings per year has dramatically shifted in quantity. Year 1 = 20; year 2 = 30; year 3 = 12; year 4 = 7, and so far in year 5 = this will be number 1. This progression has been noted by other bloggers with their blogs, and is not surprising. Second, and this relates to #1, is that I have clearly made a decision to talk more personally, but yes I sure do get abstract, and am ever more clear that I am not interested in a rant of how messed up the world is, or posting what I think others will like, etc., but rather talking about these issues of growth, purpose, expression, journey, and personal mythology.

This will all also dovetail into a website which is currently being designed over the past several weeks, (and incubating for several months) and which will be called "Being Into The Journey."

Much more to come.

Isn't it interesting, the more I leave, the more I find myself coming back.

Pristine Pings

That's what I heard as I was watching the Boston Symphony's 4th of July concert on the esplanade. It happened during their annual and traditional presentation of Tchaikovsky's 1812 Overture (starting at 38 seconds), the end of which coincides with canon fire and the beginning of the fireworks display.

There was crescendo, frenzy, canon fire and there was build up. During the build up, the quickening, the ping from the triangle in the percussion section, could be heard. It was solitary, it was simple, it was just there, it helped to complete the rest of the world. It was expressing itself without fanfare and without attachment to how long it would last. It expressed itself without regard to whether anyone heard it or not. There was no self consciousness.

It's a great mystery, to me, how those notes come about when they come from a person. I've had moments when I have "spoken my truth" and on reflection they could be called pristine pings. Sometimes I remember them and sometimes I don't.

When I was out walking the other morning, a man came up to me and introduced himself and then thanked me for giving his son back to him. We talked back and forth for a while and then he said: "One thing always stood out during that conversation about my son. You said 'he was a good kid and he basically only needed a few wins' and that's how it turned out." I don't remember saying that, but he did. I guess that may be a ping that is expressed and has an impact. It took on a life of it's own.

I came across another ping when I read Ember's manifesto on her blog Kindred of the Quiet Way. She wrote on simplicity which she refers to as "Simplicity Testimony" The quote:

it's about choosing to live simply, according to one's own conscience & what feels manageable at the moment, stepping aside from consumer lifestyle to focus instead on what is non-competitive, natural & free. In choosing an occupation, asking ‘what did I come here to do?’ – and by all means travelling most speedily towards that place. It's about avoiding debt & high-maintenance, complex lifestyles that make it difficult to change course when life offers challenges & opportunities: choosing (in one's home, leisure activities, clothing, possessions & occupation) what is simple, plain, quiet, humble & modest, avoiding whatever brags or intimidates or makes others feel jealous or inadequate or ashamed. Understanding that we live in troubled times, it's about fashioning a life accordingly, ensuring that one is as free, as flexible, as prepared & as easy to satisfy as possible; so that when hardship & scarcity come to us, we already understand how to live frugally & simply & walk lightly, passing through turbulence with our light held steady.

That is pristine. That ping resonates in me. Maybe that's the purpose of a "ping," to offer those who would quiet down, those who are not rushing, those who are open to new and free information available in the environment, an opportunity to resonate. And with that resonance, they can take in new energy or reconfirm what they already have known, and then to take their opportunity to make their own notes.

Some Building Blocks

Purpose may be with us all the time but, if it is, it has proven to be, for me, frustratingly elusive.

But I have been able to assemble a few basic building blocks to help along the way.

1. Mindfulness and the frequent application of it throughout the day has to go into the foundation. It may actually be the mortar which helps the individual blocks to connect and "stiffen up" the process.

2. In the sitting practise I do in the morning I have been watching my thoughts come and go, meander, quicken, drop off, etc. I also watch how they make me feel, what moods they stir, what memories and associations cluster around them.

3. But more recently, I have been engaging in talking to myself. Yes, talking out loud. It shifts with time and recently I have called it a conversation. A conversation with myself. But to have a conversation there has to be another. So I have invited to these conversation others; other parts of myself - perhaps we could call them other selves.

At one point I invited my Guardian Angel to these conversations. The Guardian Angel in this sense (at least) is the representative / representation of that energy which acts as go-between between the visible world and the energetic world. The conduit, or the facilitator, or the bearer of messages between this packet of energy (moi) and the energy which moves through the universe, and through me. Perhaps the Guardian Angel is that which acts as the invisible hands which has guided me at pivotal points in my life by presenting options which weren't there previously.

It's like I create this space in which I'm just sitting there, aware, and carrying on a one way conversation. Maybe that's a kind of narrative in the making. I'll make a statement, a comment, or ask a question, or a series of questions. Emotion gets added to the process. And I sit back and watch what comes, what is presented.

I could call it a conversation with the other, the best friend. Interestingly it's with one at a time, not the "whole gang."

4. Over a period of time I have noticed that I have to go through a kind of developmental progression each time - and since I do my sitting practise in the morning - this has become a way of kickstarting my day.

After I get up, I'll have a cup of coffee and a small bite of something and then start "sitting." First comes just waking up. That's tricky because I feel awake already. The words get in the way. But there is a definite sense of "entering my body and entering the space around me." The sense of energy builds when this happens. Till then it's like I'm in a virtual world but then it transitions into a more real world beyond my body and my thoughts.

5. Sometimes the conversation follows. And I use "the conversation" to bring together what I have learned, what my values are, what I'm working on, what I want to learn and to express.

6. After that I have noticed that I have begun to listen for the first piece of information, the first nugget of the day, the first choice morsel of spirit. That then becomes a partial theme for the day. I ask questions about it. I wonder how "it plays." etc. I may share that with people during the day.

7. At the end of the day I do some reviewing and wonder if my day has amounted to something or if it was for naught. This review has become a benign whip which helps to motivate me to reenter my next day.

8. I suspect that "purpose" will be the focal point for my further activities during the day. I hope that it isn't a limiting belief in the sense that if I don't "find" it that there will be many more "for naught" days. When purpose clarifies then I will have a daily choice of whether to enter that sphere and act from within it.

The problem with "waiting for purpose" is that it can foster a habit of drifting, of not doing what can be done. I am now thinking that a better strategy is to act on what I/we know now and if we have knowledge which is important that it wrong to hold it back.

9. The expression from within and the connecting to without will be for the purpose of healing that which is within me and around me.

10. It comes back to me how this process of stepping into the world, engaging it, came about for me. Several months ago, during a particularly intense conversation, I was reminded of how when I was about 12 years old, I was complaining to my parents as we were driving somewhere not to my liking that "I didn't ask to be born!" and "this isn't living, it's just existing (as in killling time)." I think I was being a real prick, but I was also a screaming over how what was happening in me around me wasn't anywhere close to an authentic expression of who I was or wanted to be.

And in recalling that, I offered a prayer of thanksgiving to the universe for this existence and for this life and that I am choosing life and living and wanting to enter my space, the space around me and to make a difference. Voila - purpose.

Being and Doing

Except for the past three posts I have been inactive on this blog. I'd like to let you in on a little of where I have been during those intervening months.

It all started several months ago in the depths of Winter. I was really enjoying hunkering down and staying in the cave and close to the fire. I'd be doing this and that but mostly it was a time for going within, for delving, for conserving. It wasn't the time for projects.

Then when the winter ended I started my second year of work on my vegetable garden and enjoyed the planning, building the frames, building the raised beds, enhancing the soil, and finally planting the seeds. At the same time, however, I didn't feel the urge to start writing again. It's as if my body was moving forward and my mind was active, but my spirit was still taking its own sweet time coming out of winter's cocoon.

I was reflecting on my ongoing pattern of moving between periods of activity and inactivity. In the past it would be like feeling stuck to be followed by a burst of energy which would focus on one activity or another. Sometimes those times would be brief, sometimes prolonged. After the activity I would sometimes just drag myself home to collapse, as it were, and wonder where I had been and what I had done.

But this winter I reflected more thoughtfully on that pattern and came to describe it more as being followed by doing followed by being. You can see how mindfulness can be present in both sides of that coin, and when it is there, it enhances the entire process; it makes it more present and real. The activities were sometimes purposive in a goal directed way across time, oftentimes for many years at a stretch,sometimes just a latest flash in the pan.

In the past I would be upset with the not-doing part of the cycle. Now I'm more comfortable with experiencing it as being in a space where listening is more prominent. I used to want to be pulled towards something but now it doesn't seem as important; it will happen when it happens and in its own time. Of course during either end of the dance there are certain things which have to be done of a maintenance nature but the bigger pattern is with the flowing from poised within to the directing outwardly and then the return.

It is in this context that I started thinking (for the umpteenth time) about purpose. In mid-August I was again wondering / asking what was holding me back, what the blockage was, and out of the silence came an awareness - that I do not have a central unifying principle which could give me a focal point, something which would give me a way of looking at, comparing, exploring, analyzing, experiences, events, ideas, perceptions, etc.

On reflection I came to see that the "blind spot," "the incompletion" has been there all along, certainly during my entire adult life. I have taken on others perceptions, etc., but never my own "something unique to me" (at least in a visceral way of experiencing) manner. It might be described as what my "beat" is.

In spite of this, I have been aware of hard earned lessons over the decades. Each of these learnings has been vital for my overall growth and they have served as course corrections; pivotal in fact. As these things go, they mostly came out of my own pain which in turn was coming from a wrong minded perception of how the world was or how it was supposed to be. Heroes are flawed; They have their own agendas and your best interest is not central if it does not support their agenda; a sense of power which comes from someone else, or a group, is, or can be, fundamentally manipulative; I claim the right to make mistakes, but not repetitively; I will rush no more!

All of those learnings, and others, have helped to bring me back to a sense of self but they did not go to the central unifying principle. They have helped to prepare but they have not revealed that principle.

For example, The Good Life as espoused and written by the Nearing's led to exploration and discovery and as such has been an ongoing "project" - it could even shift into a lifetime project -but it is not the principle.

Let me say it again, the core statement of my life to date is that: I am lacking a central unifying principle.

At first this freightened me but then it excited me in the quest to open, to ask for, to decipher, to find, to become aware of that central theme. And along those lines, how have others discovered their purposes. Is it "given?" Is it discovered? Is it uncovered? Does it always happen?

Now when I think of my mantra "I will rush no more!" I see it as a tool, an attitude, a way of being and doing which also lays the foundation for freeing myself up.

To be continued.