So this morning I woke up really early feeling a little out of control, probably because last night I got really tired and mainly got tired of trying so hard to eat right and make my body perfect so I binged on ice cream and pie and cookies and now I have some stomach acidity and it woke me up with a really high heart rate and I tried to go back to bed but couldn’t and the sun was coming up so I was like “fuck it” and decided to get a start on the day.

And my horoscope told me that it would be a good day to process things on paper so here I am.

That might have looked like a lot to read, but it only took a few seconds, didn’t it?

Anyway, I’ve got some emotional baggage going on this morning and I luckily already read an article about it. It was entitled “How to remove attachment to past relationships.”

Whoa.

Does that sound like something you need? I know it’s something I need.

By the way, as I write this, Ze Frank is narrating it in my head which is why there has been almost no punctuation up to this point.

Anyway, I think that learning to let go of past relationships is really important and earlier this week I saw something about how seeing an ex on Facebook actually makes the detaching and healing process WORSE and take longer.

2 things: 1) When I say “letting go” of past relationships, in my experience, that doesn’t mean letting go of the relationships itself. We’re all big people and we can handle anything that comes our way. I think it means letting go of one’s attachments to the relationships, our expectations of it and beliefs about what it “should” be in order for us to be happy. As if what we have isn’t already good enough. Sometimes I have a hard time remembering that what I have is good enough and even to be grateful for the things that cause me pain because pain is growth, but you know. Growing. Learning. It’s a slower process than I’d like sometimes. And isn’t that me “shoulding” on myself for needing to get better? Better?

Anyway.

2) When I say “ex” I don’t mean someone you used to date. I think I mean someone who has affected you in a big way and, like I said, someone you have particular expectations or unfulfilled desires about. In my experience, those desires have nothing to do with the person and everything to do with me. This person became a channel for my neuroses, or my neuroses came out more with them, or whatever. I formed a great big attachment and told a great big story and now none of it is coming true and I’m like “shit.” Ta da.

Sound familiar?

What’s your story?

Also, I’m not resolving this because I simultaneously have and haven’t resolved this for me, so how can I resolve it for you? Also, I think I’ve put my best guesses at how this particular situation works, so we can go from there. 

Tonight I found myself mildly overwhelmed by the prospects of the future, the big, wide, expansive, vast, nearly infinite future of the life of my physical body. I pondered questions of worth and value, significance and, ultimately, purpose.

“What is my purpose?” I wondered. From what I hear, this is a hard question to answer. From an absolute point of view, I’m not sure there is a reason to be alive, a purpose, a meaning. I’m not sure that this physical dance of atoms and molecules is worth anything. And that isn’t a sad thing, just a fact seen when the rose-colored glasses are removed.

However, in pursuit of some solace, I felt I needed an answer,  so I lowered my consciousness to realm of subjective points of view. What is my subject purpose? To inspire people? No. To become a great this or that? Any direction I turned, the stench of failure loomed, as I am better at replaying my previous failures than successes, and failure of a cause is inevitable at some point in the future anyway.

Amidst it all was the sense of directionlessness. When nothing matters, then what matters? And indeed, in the world of observable fact, nothing matters. Things are only as important as the stories we tell ourselves about them.

Though it might not seem it, this very abyssal perspective is what brought me back to basics. Since I am not planning on killing myself today (or at least my physical body. We’ll talk more about the metaphor of suicide later), then what is there? Well, there are the basics: food, water, shelter. Interestingly, Maslow’s hierarchy of needs adds “sex” to the very foundation of the pyramid. I wonder about that. I’m not anti-sex. I’m very pro-sex. But is it a necessity for the body to keep on existing? I should think not.

Anyway, I was relieved because I realized what had been going on: my wild 24 year old mind had been looking at life like a forest, and I had to cut the whole thing down. Hundreds of acres to fell, and just me and an axe to do it. So went the metaphor in my mind’s eye. And it looked so big and daunting, I knew I could never do it all, so why try? Where to start?

But then I thought: just one tree. Just one tree. That’s all it takes to get started. And who knows about afterward? But for now, just one tree.

Not even one tree. One step towards the tree. Then another. Then another. Maybe. Just one swing of the axe, to feel the reverberation of cause and effect ripple through the steel into the wooden handle and up into my arms. Then another. This one felt different. The tree gave way slightly more, the wood was softer underneath.

Then experimentation. Swinging at an angle, different rhythms, using my hips, my back, my arms, my head, my butt. Where does it feel best to swing from?

And then, before it is known, “the doer has vanished wholeheartedly into the deed.” This is the state so many ancient wisdom teachings speak of. The above is a quote from the Tao Te Ching, as translated by Stephen Mitchell.

To summarize: just one step. Just basics. Glory can wait. It certainly isn’t guaranteed. Riches, success, fame, acclaim, changing the world, saving the world; these can all wait. My efforts may go unnoticed. Who is to say I have a right to the consequences of my actions, anyway? Who’s to say I’ll ever see my garden flower? But I till it, nonetheless, the beautify the Earth. 

Lately I've been trying to give myself more room to feel those feelings instead of just getting upset that I'm upset, angry that I'm angry. It helps me avoid the trap of feeling bad that I feel bad, thinking that I need to be perfect, or that perfect is somehow "out there" and isn't what's going on in me already. It's the same thinking that says "I'll be happy when..." Why wait? Be happy now. 

How? By saying yes to the present circumstances, both internal and external. If you're sad, say "OK, I'm sad, and that's where I am right now." Not forever, just for right now. Maybe the second you realize it, it starts to shift and go away. But you have to recognize it first. Denial is an ugly color on anyone, and you can't start to heal a situation until you accept that you're in it.

It can take time to realize you've fallen into a mental pit, and then to accept that it's OK. And that's OK, too. But as you practice giving yourself space, you develop compassion for yourself. As you develop compassion for yourself, you can develop it for others. When you're allowed to hurt, others are allowed to hurt. Then, together, we can walk hand in hand toward healing.   

I'm not sure I came to any conclusions about my feelings last night or had any of those questions answered, the question of "come as you are" vs. "be who you're 'supposed' to be." 

But I do know this: hearing over and over again all the qualities I had "wrong" in a particular self-help book I was reading got me so mad I was sweating. Then, in a moment of what felt like clarity, that broke and I re-watched a video by one of my favorites, Ze Frank, on "Supposedtobes." Check the bottom of the page for the video. I know I posted it already, but you can't hear the truth too many times.

The takeaway from Ze's video is that "some days are just fucked," and traps like "to think that feeling down is the same thing as moving backwards" and "feeling anxious that you're anxious" are just that: traps. They're ways of thinking that don't make things any better, they just make things harder because they imprison people in the perception that there is a right and a wrong, a good and a bad, when in reality that's just not true. But that's a discussion for a different day. 

Feelings come up that make us feel crumby (that's why I prefer to use "healthy" and "unhealthy" as barometers for feeling, rather than "good" and "bad"). It's not an existential or moral or mental crumbiness I'm talking about here; you can feel it in the body. Tension, restriction, nausea, and all of those things generate emotions that hurt, and emotions that hurt generate those things. It's a big spiral. Dig it?

But it's a spiral you can't get out of until you become aware that you're in it. I think that's what people mean when they talk about "consciousness" and "presence." It's just becoming aware, and becoming aware that you're aware. 


  

This is something I wrote last night while I was upset by my seeming lack of ability to change a situation (which was, of course, only true according to the confines of my mind):

“So I know that I’m supposed to never feel sad or bad or hurt or unhealthy in any way, that those feelings are just phantasms of the mind gone mad, trying to kill me with its sick and insidious ways of keeping the past alive and guarantee I’ll be saved “when,” but in the meanwhile, I feel crumby. And when I feel crumby, I feel crumby, and sometimes there’s nothing to do about that.

I hear reports from modern masters that the great ones never get sad, upset, hurt, unhealthy. Eckhart Tolle is always in balance.  Chuang-tzu played music and danced when his wife died because he knew there was nothing to be sad about. Eckhart even said that there comes a point when one’s job is to no longer just accept negative emotions when they arise, but stop producing them altogether.

Well I’m not there yet. Today, right now, I’m not there yet.

Or am I? Is this all a lie?

Is this the part where I start chanting “I am the greatest the world has to offer, this is my last rebirth, I will never be born again” AGAIN? Because I’ve tried that mantra. And guess what: I felt great.

And then I felt like shit.

So come on!

How do I deal with this?

How do you deal with this? With being told you’re never supposed to feel bad, that feeling bad is wrong and if it happens you’re doing it wrong?

FUCK”

This is probably due to a combination of factors. 1st, not exercising enough. It’s tough to process this big emotions that fill the body with so much energy when that energy is not getting released. 2nd, my mind set up certain rules that I had to play by in order to advance in any scenario, and it took someone else point that out to me for me to realize that it was all in my head, all arbitrary.

Why stick so hard to those arbitrary rules? Well, because it is comfortable. It’s nice to feel like you know, when just around the corner is unknowing and infinity.

I’ve been taken lately with a book called Daily Afflictions by Andrew Boyd. Each page is a chapter, each chapter is headed by a quote which seems to encapsulate or compliment the meat of the paragraph. The heading to the page entitled “The Interstate of Life” is a quote by Franz Kafka: “You are free and that is why you are lost.”

Does that ring true for anyone else? If life is an ocean, and living takes place on the sea, does the idea of staying out on the water, away from ports, islands, and security scare anyone else? Do you long for your chains to let you know where you stand and cannot move from?

Existentialism, right? 

So today I've been having a bit of an off day. Just one of these days where maybe you don't feel 100%, or you feel 100%, but things don't go 100%. Maybe things don't go at all. 
When I looked for an image to put with this post, I googled "off day" and only found images for "day off," instead. Not exactly what I had in mind, but it did get me thinking: maybe an off day is just a day off that you weren't expecting or didn't plan. 
The thing that's made me feel off today is the incessant feeling in the back of my head of needing to be somewhere, go somewhere, do something significant or that moves toward some vision of a higher goal. But I'm not sure any of that happened today. But when I went outside for the first time today, I stood under a bright blue sky with my cat and suddenly was struck by the incredible stillness of it all. "The world isn't going anywhere," I thought. "Why should I?" That's more a relative truth than absolute, but the sentiment stands. The world isn't in a rush. Plants don't stress to grow. Cats don't stress to... nap or whatever it is they do. The Earth isn't panicked about making its orbit on time, or figuring out how to orbit faster so it can get more years in before it's done. 
No. It just is. So maybe I didn't feel stillness. I just felt something much bigger than me moving much slower than me, and it slowed me down, too. 
I've attached to videos, both by Ze Frank, at the bottom to make more sense of this. 
But yeah. Off days. We all have them. Probably better to accept and acknowledge it upfront than try to turn a day into a "supposedtobe." 

This one is really for me. It's a collection of truisms, little statements with lots of power, titles, and other things which seem worth remembering. Now I'll have them in a convenient little place. 

Is this a time for feeling or a time for fixing?

Sometimes it's more helpful to give space than a solution.

Picking up where we left off...
Perhaps, in a moment of expansiveness, we book a one way flight to a far away country, or decide to devote our lives to a cause or religion. There's nothing wrong with that in itself, but it's also important to take into account that there will be a day when that ultra high turns into an ultra low, and life is, essentially, a marathon, not a sprint. Unless you want to die an early death, that is. The difference between a sober-minded decision and an manic decision is the emotional hangover you feel when the high goes away. 
Every high turns into a low. Every low turns into a high. The height to which you soar indicates the depth to which you'll fall. 
Many people advocate living for the highs.  Hunter S. Thompson writes: "Life should not be a journey to the grave with the intention of arriving safely in a pretty and well preserved body, but rather to skid in broadside in a cloud of smoke, thoroughly used up, totally worn out, and loudly proclaiming "Wow! What a Ride!”
The only thing Hunter left out of this quote is how much this way of living hurts. And it hurts. Like crazy. You're soaring one day, but once that's gone, not only is it gone, but you wish it was back, so you feel bad about feeling bad (see part 1).  And saying the highs make it worth it is like saying the good times in an abusive or dysfunctional relationship make it worth it. Would you tell a friend to think that way? Why, then, would you tell yourself to think that way?
The long story short is: as I grow up (slowly), I recognize more and more why the Buddha advocated "The Middle Way." It's not about denying the highs and lows when they come. They come naturally. One day, you might just wake up and feel like doo-doo. Or you wake up and feel like you could move a mountain. And that's all well and good, but don't get stuck anywhere. Don't try to perpetuate something which is ultimately a phase. Don't think you know what is "right" from "wrong," "good" from "bad." But if you give yourself permission to be, that's a start. Then, over time, the fits and starts of a panicked way of living will mellow out. It's not that you'll never feel good again. Rather, feeling high will be replaced by feeling at peace. It's the difference between feeling really good some of the time and really bad some of the time, or feeling good all of the time, no matter what. 

Some of you may have noticed yesterday's post was pretty bleak. I definitely had those feelings and I don't regret them at all. 
I realize, though, that in the midst of having them, I was making my world a whole lot worse by having negative feelings about those feelings. 
If you checked out the page http://www.metanoia.org/ which I posted yesterday, you might have seen a section which discussed shaming and suicide. It talks about the stigmas surrounding suicidal feelings and depression, about how people "shouldn't feel so bad," their "circumstances don't justify this," or whatever. 
The reality of it is, though, when you feel a certain way, you feel a certain way. That's not to say it won't change (it will), but it's important to remember that in the midst of having those feelings, it's really valuable to let yourself have them. 
This post is the necessary follow-up to yesterday's somewhat out of control post. The moral here is: when you are in moments of deep emotion, you don't have to act on it. You don't have to get to the other side. You don't (necessarily) need relief, and if you do, give it to yourself consciously. Brene Brown talks about the power of conscious numbing when the emotions are just too strong. It's like giving yourself a time out, saying "I'm overstimulated right now, so I'm going to go put myself in my room/ in front of the tv/ in the fridge until I feel like I can handle this more calmly (which, by the way, is the real purpose of the time out. Not punishment. Cool down time. More on that some day?) 
Anyway, this brings up another important point: not making decisions in a heightened emotional state goes both ways. In my experience, we live in a society which prizes the "good" feelings: happiness, joy, etc. However, I'm not sure we have many good fail-safes to be vigilant for mania, feeling so good that we lose touch with reality and act in ways out of accordance with a sober mind. If you want to know more, read on in Section 2... 

"In some sense, a person is her wounds. A sapling, planted beside a supportive stake that the gardener neglects to remove, will grow around the stake. The stake's presence will injure the growing tree; the tree will adapt by distorting its "natural" shape to accommodate the stake. But the mature tree will be the shape it has taken; it cannot be "cured" of the injury, the injury is an intrinsic aspect of its nature." (The Mystery of Analytical Work, p. 175)- Carl Jung

So lately I've been in a little bit of an emotional hot spot lately. I did some reading about it, especially on the neat website metanoia.org. There's a section on there devoted to trauma, specifically how heightened emotional events can be traumatic. 
I've always perceived trauma in relation to a very specific, isolated, physical event (abuse, war, etc.) Generally, something where the outward circumstances of everyday were different from, well, everyday life. The article talks about how trauma can occur anywhere, at any time, and has more to do with our emotional state than physical. For instance, a traumatic emotional event at home can leave someone feeling traumatized just because of their perception of something. 
I realize this is a question of blurred divisions between physical and emotional circumstance, but it's made me reframe my way of thinking about events in my life.
What are the traumas I've experienced that I didn't know were traumatic? What things left me in a weakened or sensitive state that, because I thought they were "normal," were never given the care and consideration they deserve? What old hurts am I still healing from because I never knew what they were or what they would do? 
There's lots of serious introspection here. I hope you do some, too. Maybe it will help you release the past once you've found where it's been stored up.