finally checking back in

[Nancy Wonders Dearing]

Simone, et al, what a journey I have been on...but taxes have been
submitted and my birthday is on the horizon, so it is time to return
to pleasure etc. For tonight I wanted to be sure I could post to the
this group. My next step is to answer some of Simone's wonderful
questions about surrender, but to do that I will need to go back and
read our travel log. I will be back in touch later in the week.

I want to share this single thought for tonight...I am only too aware
of my tendency to be in life in a subtle way that is a testament more
to my belief in suffering than in pleasure. I have noticed this month
that it seems smarter, brighter to believe that things are getting
worse (scarcity), that every time I register a fear..."how will I
manage the college debt of my children and oh, yeah, then there are
things like wedding..." I reveal my faith in trial and tribulation.
This all goes so deep in me. That Catholic God of my childhood that
so prefers struggle and the lonely heroic journey to connection and
ease and joy. Those things I know I feel are somehow less serious.

But in the middle of a dark night of the soul this weekend I could
almost see that part of me rise up and look at me and proud of how
noble I was. I could feel myself feel superior to humanity! Does
that make sense?! I was appalled...but it is true. I like to think I
am some superior to something, even apparently if it is only some
aspect of me. I am not one of those silly people who turns on the TV
as a way out of her path into existential aloneness. And I am now
superior the self I was years ago with a husband traveling, a young
child and a vague dissatisfaction with my life. Then I ignored it and
escaped into outings with friends, or literature or long phone calls
to sisters..

Early this month I realized I had been run from this__________I don't
know what to call it, existential aloneness is close but not quite
it...because that doesn't begin touch the endlessness that is somehow
held in this thing I keep avoiding...that is until now. Yes, Simone
do you hear the trumpets blare as the hero knight rides in to face
this beast...this existential aloneness, this ???? Do you see how I
am somehow now better than my former self? This is "hard" work. I
suffer. Therefore, I am good. I am not doing as I damn well
please....

So now what about that thing called Pleasure...? Exactly how will I
impress me or you or anyone else, certainly not God, if I look for an
easy way though this maze? In a ritual recently I looked for broken
ground to plant a bulb so I wouldn't have to struggle to dig and it
wouldn't have to struggle to grow. And we all have heard about the
nobility of sacrifice...

O....I need Whitman right now, or Neruda...I need someone who is
wildly in love with this place...so in love he or she is not
"trying"...for me the birth of pleasure will have everything to do
with the cessation of trying...and I'm not really sure what I just
said or mean...I do know the 'trying' is wearing me out...what is the
opposite of "trying" ?

Surrender...and we arrive at where we started...but see it as if for
the firsr time...more later...nance

[Nancy Wonders Dearing]

[Simone Roberts]

Hey Nance! It's good to hear from you again! And so clearly.  I'm glad the oppressive busy-ness is letting up. I treasure these posts of yours because as Theory Girl I tend to want to look at these questions with a wide lens, and you remind me that while I'm doing that, I should also be looking close to my own spot in the world. The "big picture" can be a way of avoiding our own pictures, can't it? I had an important thought about the shadow-self last week that I'll get to down the line in my response.  --- I'm asking a lot of questions here. They're all about clarification for me, nosing about to try to understand. Some of the questions are suggestions too, and those can be nixed without any bruising of my feelings. So, don't worry about that.

On 2/27/07, Nancy Wonders Dearing < Na...@courageouschange.com> wrote:

Simone, et al, what a journey I have been on...but taxes have been
submitted and my birthday is on the horizon, so it is time to return
to pleasure etc.  For tonight I wanted to be sure I could post to the
this group.  My next step is to answer some of Simone's wonderful
questions about surrender, but to do that I will need to go back and
read our travel log.  I will be back in touch later in the week.

Wow, your taxes are done already! Good on you! Happy soon birthday, too -- which day is it? I've never known.

I want to share this single thought for tonight...I am only too aware
of my tendency to be in life in a subtle way that is a testament more
to my belief in suffering than in pleasure.  I have noticed this month
that it seems smarter, brighter to believe that things are getting
worse (scarcity), that every time I register a fear..."how will I
manage the college debt of my children and oh, yeah, then there are
things like wedding..." I reveal my faith in trial and tribulation.
This all goes so deep in me.  That Catholic God of my childhood that
so prefers struggle and the lonely heroic journey to connection and
ease and joy.  Those things I know I feel are somehow less serious.

It's not just Catholicism. We're all taught that tragedy is noble. It's a pervasive cultural assumption going back to Athens.  Heck, by definition, tragedy only happens to nobles, or people ennobled by their actions. It's really hard to re-program. The first step is no easier than the rest: be kind with yourself. Margot Hemingway, of all people I never expected to hear this from, said something the other day on Oprah:  If I had a friend who was as judgmental, negative, and sabotaging as the voice in my head, I would drop that friend. So, I argued back at that voice, and built a better friend in my head. Why should I be a worse friend to myself  that my actual friends?" It's a really good question. It's one I'm working on myself.

But in the middle of a dark night of the soul this weekend I could
almost see that part of me rise up and look at me and proud of how
noble I was.  I could feel myself feel superior to humanity!  Does
that make sense?!  I was appalled...but it is true.  I like to think I
am some superior to something, even apparently if it is only some
aspect of me.  I am not one of those silly people who turns on the TV
as a way out of her path into existential aloneness.  And I am now
superior the self I was years ago with a husband traveling, a young
child and a vague dissatisfaction with my life.  Then I ignored it and
escaped into outings with friends, or literature or long phone calls
to sisters..

What's the difference, for you, between struggle and difficulty that's necessary, that comes from the world and situations that arise, and the kind of struggle and difficulty you impose on yourself? Overcoming does feel good, heroic. It should. The confrontation does result in strength. That's all fine, as far as I'm concerned. And so is celebrating it. The trick, I think, is that we have to also find the nobility in pleasures and joys. They have as many lessons for us as our struggles. As you show here. Once you did these pleasurable things as escapes. And now? You still do them. But what are they? How has your relation to them changed? Into one that means you're attending to these things, which is different from running from something else.

Early this month I realized I had been run from this__________I don't
know what to call it, existential aloneness is close but not quite
it...because that doesn't begin touch the endlessness that is somehow
held in this thing I keep avoiding...that is until now.  Yes, Simone
do you hear the trumpets blare as the hero knight rides in to face
this beast...this existential aloneness, this ????  Do you see how I
am somehow now better than my former self?  This is "hard" work.  I
suffer.  Therefore, I am good.  I am not doing as I damn well
please....

What do you damn well please? In that answer might be some clues. Is this aloneness your enemy? Why? Must you reject it? Or can you incorporate it so that it's one part of your experience, and not some constant, bothersome undercurrent? Sometime we're deeply alone, no matter how many people we are connected to or how intimately. It is, I think, just part of being human. It can be, sometimes, a place to rest. But, maybe you don't require that kind of rest as much as you require the connections. What would you prefer to it? What does the aloneness block?

So now what about that thing called Pleasure...?  Exactly how will I
impress me or you or anyone else, certainly not God, if I look for an
easy way though this maze?  In a ritual recently I looked for broken
ground to plant a bulb so I wouldn't have to struggle to dig and it
wouldn't have to struggle to grow.  And we all have heard about the
nobility of sacrifice...

I wonder about impressing and how it's connected to suffering for you. I like making an impression, I really do, and lots of what I do in life is meant to make an impression. But, some of it isn't ultimately about Me, but about what other people can do with what I make or offer. That's not always hard. And wouldn't me or anyone else or God want you to be enjoying what you're doing, tending to yourself? If you're always all tapped out from the struggle and sacrifice, what do you have to be generous with? Luckily, I wasn't raised Catholic. And my God, in so far as that's a personality-type-god (which is not all that much) does not want me to suffer more than necessary. That is, this world has tests in it, it just does, therefore I don't need to create more  of them for myself, at least not on purpose. What's in the maze? What's wrong with being kind to that bulb and looking for a place for it grow more easily, with cooperating with the earth itself in that way? Seems to me a very clever way of working with what's present instead of forcing something.

O....I need Whitman right now, or Neruda...I need someone who is
wildly in love with this place...so in love he or she is not
"trying"...for me the birth of pleasure will have everything to do
with the cessation of trying...and I'm not really sure what I just
said or mean...I do know the 'trying' is wearing me out...what is the
opposite of "trying"   ?

And do you think they did not have dark nights and struggles and fears and aloneness? Really? Do you think so? I doubt it myself. I think they didn't write about it much, I think they chose where to focus. Maybe the opposite of trying is working with what's present. What does trying mean here to you?  Is it really a matter of trying or not trying?

Surrender...and we arrive at where we started...but see it as if for
the firsr time...more later...nance

And surrender?  To or in what?  I suppose in a way what I mean by working with present circumstances is a surrender, it's a matter working with things as they are to get them different, rather than wishing to be starting from somewhere else, with some other circumstances.

A whole other tack to take here is this: What's the good in being noble in the  tragic way? At the ends of all those plays, our noble hero is dead. And His death is the final proof of his nobility and struggle. Ick-o-la. No thanks. And pleasure is not just comedic and frivolous. There's a whole lot about our souls and the world to learn in our pleasures. Besides, at the ends of comedies (which are usually about getting to a place of pleasure), everyone's still alive, and there's usually a wedding or a party, or both. Something gets united, the self with its own joy in our case here, and then there's a celebration. At the ends of tragedies there are funerals. What's so great about that? Oedipus, Antigone, Hamlet, Jesus. All dead. One resurrected, but that's a miracle that does not apply to regular mortals. Our resurrections are psychological, metaphorical, and they're supposed to get us to a heaven on earth -- which as Jesus told us, is Already Here, we just don't see it and let it in. I would rather live in a comedy that moved toward life than a tragedy that moves toward death. I would rather have tragedy happen sometimes, and move through its lessons, than have it be my whole context.

Ok, so, Shadows. Since I quit my old life and went into exile, I've learned a few things. Or am learning a few things, rather. My own existential aloneness, to borrow your phrase, is sometimes not my friend. I have always had a very alone place in my soul, and I've learned to like it, to think of it as a refuge. For me that works, sometimes. Or it used to work. It was my refuge because my early relationships with peers were, shall we say, painful. And going in was safe. But, that's not really going to work anymore, because I've noticed that when I'm alone, say in my room, I am not writing or thinking Great Thoughts, I'm making up stories in which I am with other people and things are friendly and warm and rosy. This usually involves staying up late and listening to a lot of music. For the last several years, until recently, my Out was drinking. I would drink and get out of the experience I'm having, even if it was good. It was a really not good kind of shield. I'm MUCH better about that in the last few years. But both of those behaviors are my shadow trying to clue me in that there's some part of me that I'm not feeding. I think it's the part that needs to be around good people, in healthy environments, in work that's not a (total) drain on me. Home here is pretty healthy, and my work is not a drain (it's not easy, but it's not life-sucking), and I have few distractions. So, I'm seeing that being as much of a "loner" as I was is no longer working. Of course, the funny part is that I'm pretty alone. A tourist, a bit in exile. Now, I chose that, and it's the trade for getting the writing done, and that's FINE. Still, the lesson needs attention. Building the conditions of my well-being, however slowly, is making that shadow less demanding and sabotaging.

Anyway, thoughts for the day. Hopefully others will start to find their way into this discussion. I imagine it will range from the personal to the philosophical with some regularity. Meantime, peace on you!

--
~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*
Namaste,
Love and Peace, or else --
Simone
sisa...@gmail.com
http://kalidharmashaktidharma.blogspot.com

Terror is only the beginning of beauty.

"Somewhere in the world there is a treasure that has no value to anyone
but you, and a secret that is meaningless to everyone except you, and a frontier that possesses a revelation only you know how to exploit. Go in search of those things. Somewhere in the world there is a person who could ask you the precise
question you need to hear in order to catalyze the next phase of your evolution. Do what's necessary to run into that person." ---- Rob Breszny

[Nancy Wonders Dearing]

Simone...today is the big day...my birthday is March 3.  3/3....I actually love the number three ...it is my favorite number...I am told it is the number of creativty...and I will respond a bit to your message here and then continue later...because I want to have my next year have everything to do with pleasure...especially the pleasure of this kind of conversation....and the pleasure of writing ....So I will try to do what you did embed my answers in yours...let’s see how that comes through.  I don’t expect to finish this today...but here goes

On 3/3/07 11:18 AM, "Simone Roberts" <sisa...@gmail.com> wrote:

Hey Nance! It's good to hear from you again! And so clearly.  I'm glad the oppressive busy-ness is letting up. I treasure these posts of yours because as Theory Girl I tend to want to look at these questions with a wide lens, and you remind me that while I'm doing that, I should also be looking close to my own spot in the world. The "big picture" can be a way of avoiding our own pictures, can't it? I had an important thought about the shadow-self last week that I'll get to down the line in my response.  --- I'm asking a lot of questions here. They're all about clarification for me, nosing about to try to understand. Some of the questions are suggestions too, and those can be nixed without any bruising of my feelings. So, don't worry about that.

On 2/27/07, Nancy Wonders Dearing < Na...@courageouschange.com <mailto:Na...@courageouschange.com> > wrote:

Simone, et al, what a journey I have been on...but taxes have been
submitted and my birthday is on the horizon, so it is time to return
to pleasure etc.  For tonight I wanted to be sure I could post to the
this group.  My next step is to answer some of Simone's wonderful
questions about surrender, but to do that I will need to go back and
read our travel log.  I will be back in touch later in the week.

Wow, your taxes are done already! Good on you! Happy soon birthday, too -- which day is it? I've never known.

I want to share this single thought for tonight...I am only too aware
of my tendency to be in life in a subtle way that is a testament more
to my belief in suffering than in pleasure.  I have noticed this month
that it seems smarter, brighter to believe that things are getting
worse (scarcity), that every time I register a fear..."how will I
manage the college debt of my children and oh, yeah, then there are
things like wedding..." I reveal my faith in trial and tribulation.
This all goes so deep in me.  That Catholic God of my childhood that
so prefers struggle and the lonely heroic journey to connection and
ease and joy.  Those things I know I feel are somehow less serious.

It's not just Catholicism. We're all taught that tragedy is noble. It's a pervasive cultural assumption going back to Athens.  Heck, by definition, tragedy only happens to nobles, or people ennobled by their actions.

We are aren’t we!

It's really hard to re-program. The first step is no easier than the rest: be kind with yourself. Margot Hemingway, of all people I never expected to hear this from, said something the other day on Oprah:  If I had a friend who was as judgmental, negative, and sabotaging as the voice in my head, I would drop that friend. So, I argued back at that voice, and built a better friend in my head. Why should I be a worse friend to myself  that my actual friends?" It's a really good question. It's one I'm working on myself.

But in the middle of a dark night of the soul this weekend I could
almost see that part of me rise up and look at me and proud of how
noble I was.  I could feel myself feel superior to humanity!  Does
that make sense?!  I was appalled...but it is true.  I like to think I
am some superior to something, even apparently if it is only some
aspect of me.  I am not one of those silly people who turns on the TV
as a way out of her path into existential aloneness.  And I am now
superior the self I was years ago with a husband traveling, a young
child and a vague dissatisfaction with my life.  Then I ignored it and
escaped into outings with friends, or literature or long phone calls
to sisters..

What's the difference, for you, between struggle and difficulty that's necessary, that comes from the world and situations that arise, and the kind of struggle and difficulty you impose on yourself? Overcoming does feel good, heroic. It should. The confrontation does result in strength. That's all fine, as far as I'm concerned. And so is celebrating it. I completely agree!

The trick, I think, is that we have to also find the nobility in pleasures and joys. Yes, the problem I am realizing in very subtle ways that I have only found nobility in the tragic in suffering...in things that are “hard”.  And of a very old part of me believes that this is how God see it too.  Now does my mature rational mind think that?  Of course not, I am simply noticing that often my “rational” mind is not in charge of what I am doing, feeling. They have as many lessons for us as our struggles. As you show here. Once you did these pleasurable things as escapes. And now? You still do them. But what are they? How has your relation to them changed? Into one that means you're attending to these things, which is different from running from something else. Years ago I would say my choice to reach for a glass of wine and the phone was a reactive or unconscious choice.  What I find now, is that when I ask myself ...do I want to do that, or simply settle into the solitariness I choose the later...and actually feel peaceful in the choice.  Do I still call someone, yes, but now it is more often because we haven’t talked in a while and its time to check in.  I schedule it at a time when I am not terribly busy ...the biggest difference is that once I finally chose this aloneness, this silence I am finding a particular kind of pleasure in it.  The point I was trying tomake in here, is that I realized that I chose to face the aloneness rather than to fill the space partly for HEROIC reasons...partly for pragmatic ones.  Heroic: my children will be proud of me, I will be proud of me (and it is true they are and I am)  Pragmatic:  I want to be free.  It’s hard to feel free when you are running away or avoiding something.

Here’s what else I would say about the difference between choosing to call a friend when I could be just as happy reading a book is that whatever I choose then really feels like pleasure.  When I “had “ to get on the phone to keep the loneliness away 20 years ago, I would have this nagging guilty feeling.  I knew some where inside I was running away and not facing something.  So I needed more from the conversations that I woul dnow.  Does this make sense?  Maybe that was hedonism...I’ve thought that maybe hedonism is a running away from something...like its the flip side of stoicism or aescetism...althought I must confess I do know aescetics who derive pleasure from fasting etc.   More later....nance

Nancy Wonders Dearing
Courageous Change Consultancy
Phone:  214-564-6226  Fax: 214-946-4181
Email:  Na...@courageouschange.com
“Do not think the Buddhas are other than you.”  Dogen

[Nancy Wonders Dearing]

Finishing yesterday’s post

What do you damn well please? I suppose if you look at much of my life, I really have been doing what I most wanted to do, often like my mother, I have found ways to deny that truth and convince myself what I was doing was “for” someone else.  I emotionally nurtured my children because I truly love doing it...it was something I was good at...but since it wasn’t okay to really love my life, to “not suffer” I couldn’t say “I am raising them the way I want to because it makes me happy.”  I said, “I am raising them the way is best for them and whatever personal cost to me.”   

So what do I damn well please?  What a great question for my new birthday year...In that answer might be some clues. Is this aloneness your enemy? Why? Must you reject it? Don’t get confused by “aloneness” it isn’t really the right word...its a marker...and of course I don’t reject aloneness...I have a history of abandonment beginning at birth with a fair amount of betrayal thrown in.  All you say here is true and I have had experience with all of it...and...it probably is true that I value connection, especially emotional connection more than many do.  I need a healthy dose of both in my life.  Emotional/spiritual connection at the level I am capable of is simply harder to come by in this world...or at least it is for me...and I think I have a capacity for it and love of it that is vast.  Or can you incorporate it so that it's one part of your experience, and not some constant, bothersome undercurrent? Sometime we're deeply alone, no matter how many people we are connected to or how intimately. It is, I think, just part of being human. It can be, sometimes, a place to rest. But, maybe you don't require that kind of rest as much as you require the connections. What would you prefer to it? What does the aloneness block?

So now what about that thing called Pleasure...?  Exactly how will I
impress me or you or anyone else, certainly not God, if I look for an
easy way though this maze?  In a ritual recently I looked for broken
ground to plant a bulb so I wouldn't have to struggle to dig and it
wouldn't have to struggle to grow.  And we all have heard about the
nobility of sacrifice...

I wonder about impressing and how it's connected to suffering for you. I like making an impression, I really do, and lots of what I do in life is meant to make an impression. But, some of it isn't ultimately about Me, but about what other people can do with what I make or offer. That's not always hard. And wouldn't me or anyone else or God want you to be enjoying what you're doing, tending to yourself? Simone, this is the point, in my very young psyche...or in the oldet part of my psyche God does not want me to be enjoying what I am dong or tending to myself.  Now, I rationally know that is foolish and it is not God...that girlhood God is far less loving than I am!  However, there is this deep pattern in my life...of valuing the tragic...Gilligan asks “why do we trust the tragic love story”  What a question...my simple answer is I was taught it would get me into heaven.  If you're always all tapped out from the struggle and sacrifice, what do you have to be generous with? Luckily, I wasn't raised Catholic. And my God, in so far as that's a personality-type-god (which is not all that much) does not want me to suffer more than necessary. That is, this world has tests in it, it just does, therefore I don't need to create more  of them for myself, at least not on purpose. What's in the maze? What's wrong with being kind to that bulb and looking for a place for it grow more easily, with cooperating with the earth itself in that way? Seems to me a very clever way of working with what's present instead of forcing something. And you are right and in that moment I was proud of me...I realized something was truly shifting in me that not only was that my choice but I was proud of the choice and new what it meant...that I was slowly beginning to trust life...to learn to allow...to let it be easy.  Simone there are very different voices in my pysche...the one that values the tragic over pleasure...suffering over joy...is simply much older and has much deeper nuerological patterns in my pysche and these don’t uproot themselves with new information...only with repeated new experiences...

O....I need Whitman right now, or Neruda...I need someone who is
wildly in love with this place...so in love he or she is not
"trying"...for me the birth of pleasure will have everything to do
with the cessation of trying...and I'm not really sure what I just
said or mean...I do know the 'trying' is wearing me out...what is the
opposite of "trying"   ?

And do you think they did not have dark nights and struggles and fears and aloneness? No...not at all...I’m sure Whitman had them and it gave him the voice he writes from...I said that because Whitman’s writing speaks to the intensity with which I love this world and dont’ want to miss it consumed with unnecessary suffering....Really? Do you think so? I doubt it myself. I think they didn't write about it much, I think they chose where to focus. Maybe the opposite of trying is working with what's present. What does trying mean here to you?  I think that sometimes the opposite of trying is acceptance...a deep acceptance of whatever life is bringing...often my trying it  a kind of reaching for or attempt to influence life in a particular direction...which I actually think is hugely important on this planet...I think earth is a place to create in...it may well be its primary purpose in terms of an experience...we are here to create...Is it really a matter of trying or not trying? Probably not...for me “trying” often turns into struggle...struggle seems to be opposite pleasure...or maybe it is about am I struggling against reality or against something or am I struggling for something...YES...that is a huge difference...when I am struggling against something I am fundamentally in fear...I don’t’ want this thing to happen...it will be bad or sad or whatever...but that is about avoidance...which in my body comes through as some kind of constriction...it comes from scarcity

Pleasure...Keats:  I am certain of nothing but the holiness of the heart’s affections and the Truth of the imagination.  Pleasure:  Italy....I must love the Italian people because they do so love pleasure and joy.  I will never forget the transformation in my children a decade ago going from France to Italy...I had the idea that the French were devoted to pleasure...but I did not find that to be true...maybe devoted to beauty...but not pleasure.  I wonder if you N was right ...maybe you have to have something of the irrational to experience pleasure at all.  I know that you can cross that line into hedonism pretty easily...or actually I know that is the fear with most of us, but we live in a society filled with addictions...of all kinds...and in some way aren’t they all a stay against an armoring against pleasure...really against life?

Surrender...and we arrive at where we started...but see it as if for
the firsr time...more later...nance

And surrender?  To or in what?  I suppose in a way what I mean by working with present circumstances is a surrender, it's a matter working with things as they are to get them different, rather than wishing to be starting from somewhere else, with some other circumstances. Agree or even working to accept them as they are and then waiting to see if you want to shift them...

A whole other tack to take here is this: What's the good in being noble in the  tragic way? At the ends of all those plays, our noble hero is dead. And His death is the final proof of his nobility and struggle. Ick-o-la. No thanks. And pleasure is not just comedic and frivolous. There's a whole lot about our souls and the world to learn in our pleasures. Besides, at the ends of comedies (which are usually about getting to a place of pleasure), everyone's still alive, and there's usually a wedding or a party, or both. Something gets united, the self with its own joy in our case here, and then there's a celebration. I adore this Simone!  Me, too!  At the ends of tragedies there are funerals. What's so great about that? Oedipus, Antigone, Hamlet, Jesus. All dead. One resurrected, but that's a miracle that does not apply to regular mortals. Our resurrections are psychological, metaphorical, and they're supposed to get us to a heaven on earth -- which as Jesus told us, is Already Here, we just don't see it and let it in. I would rather live in a comedy that moved toward life than a tragedy that moves toward death. I would rather have tragedy happen sometimes, and move through its lessons, than have it be my whole context. I think that in the face of uncertainty I expect the tragic....and while I continue to work to undo this old belief system in my being...I also know it is there...often the voice of ego...the rational voice warning me to ‘stay away from something’ that the world is dangerous and I could get hurt...and all that is true...AND...it is know way to really be alive.

Ok, so, Shadows. Since I quit my old life and went into exile, I've learned a few things. Or am learning a few things, rather. My own existential aloneness, to borrow your phrase, is sometimes not my friend. I have always had a very alone place in my soul, and I've learned to like it, to think of it as a refuge. For me that works, sometimes. Or it used to work. It was my refuge because my early relationships with peers were, shall we say, painful. And going in was safe. But, that's not really going to work anymore, because I've noticed that when I'm alone, say in my room, I am not writing or thinking Great Thoughts, I'm making up stories in which I am with other people and things are friendly and warm and rosy. This usually involves staying up late and listening to a lot of music. For the last several years, until recently, my Out was drinking. I would drink and get out of the experience I'm having, even if it was good. It was a really not good kind of shield. I'm MUCH better about that in the last few years. But both of those behaviors are my shadow trying to clue me in that there's some part of me that I'm not feeding. I think it's the part that needs to be around good people, in healthy environments, in work that's not a (total) drain on me. Home here is pretty healthy, and my work is not a drain (it's not easy, but it's not life-sucking), and I have few distractions. So, I'm seeing that being as much of a "loner" as I was is no longer working. Of course, the funny part is that I'm pretty alone. A tourist, a bit in exile. Now, I chose that, and it's the trade for getting the writing done, and that's FINE. Still, the lesson needs attention. Building the conditions of my well-being, however slowly, is making that shadow less demanding and sabotaging. I wonder about lessons in vulnerability which I find to be pleasurable...I don’t mean vulnerability that is weak...I mean the kind where you intentionally risk your true self knowing it may not be rec’d or understood...and knowing that you will accept that and be okay because at least you were the real you.  Often the growth for folks who have strong voices and clear vision is to be able to speak about loneliness or missing a tribe...finding your tribe in life is a huge thing.  I think my daughter has done that finally.  I tend to find my tribe in places everywhere...but they don’t necessarily congregate together...yet your images are so powerful...gatherings, people talking together, eating together, watching a sunset together...we need these times...they give our hearts peace...and the level you can enter an experience is very different when alone vs together...at least that is true for me...so maybe Simone everything is partial...and in the experience itself pleasure can be found from emphasizing what is distinct or particular about this and not focusing on what is missing or lacking...you know there is a way at times that I can love the very thing I am missing...does that make sense...it’s like when my daughter said...you’ll miss my messy room when I leave...and in that moment I could love both her and her messy room....the whyte poem  Faces at Braga (attached) says...if only we knew as the carver knew it was the FLAWS in the wood that led his searching chisel to the very core....”

So what within me and what within you do we each need to come to love...and what the hell is love...maybe it is just seeing things whole?!  I am thinking that more and more...finding the gift, the pearl locked inside my complaint...whether it is my existential aloneness...which even as write this I know that isn’t quite the right word for it...I think it has more to do with some kind of meaninglessness or emptiness...sometimes I wonder if I carry a grief, years and years of unshed tears that I feel will overwhelm me in the silence that I now am surrounded with...and at times it does...at times I cry and cry...and then move onto something else as if I couldn’t cry another tear...

being a human is such an exquisitely fragile and poignant experience.  But this aspect of life doesn’t fare well in modern media...so it disappears and maybe waits for us all in the shadows...our fragile self...our little girl, little boy self that longs to belong, to please mom and dad and teachers...but had just the opposite experience...or maybe did please them, but at the expense of his or her authenticity...

IN ending this...I wanted to speak about surrender...you asked many questions...I can revisit if you wish...but let me say that surrender to me is quite active, not passive.  It looks more like releasing armor than giving up...or more like letting go than giving in or up...maybe it is even a letting in...as when I let in a different viewpoint than my own.  I am a romantic at heart and always will be.  My personal dream of relationship is the marriage of agape and Eros, but I have no interest in agape alone.  Or Eros alone. What I object to from the days of knights and romantic quests was that there was only the burn...tantric like, but never consummation and ultimately tragic in that it was known that consummation was not possible...I love falling in love.  And I can find something to adore or fall in love with in almost any human being...I love that...it makes my life sweet indeed.  I prefer the light of dawn and dusk to noon or midnight.  
Surrender could be surrendering my idea of how things should be.  Or surrendering to the reality of things as they are and moving on....hope that helps give you a sense of what I mean...if not, ask more and I’ll respond...

 
Anyway, thoughts for the day. Hopefully others will start to find their way into this discussion. I imagine it will range from the personal to the philosophical with some regularity. Meantime, peace on you!  I too hope others find their way into this conversation...maybe it is time to ask for people to share how/where they currently find pleasure in their lives?...what that looks like and feels like?...how individual is it?  I think my dad actually may have found pleasure in discipline and duty.  Blessings on you Simone....

Nancy Wonders Dearing
Courageous Change Consultancy
Phone:  214-564-6226  Fax: 214-946-4181
Email:  Na...@courageouschange.com

“If you asked me what I came into this world to do, I will tell you, I came to live out loud”  Emile

[Simone Roberts]

Nancy and everyone --

First I was thinking on Nancy's post, and then I got hurt. I dislocated my shoulder, again. Like last year, I couldn't get it back in the socket myself. But all will be well. I've seen my dad's orthopedist, who listened to the story, and took an MRI (which was not at all scary for me) and said that the surgeon would be in touch with a date. Yes, it will be fixed. They expect the surgery will be laproscopic, but they won't really know until the MRIs are examined. Fine, good. We were debating who would go first: Dad with his knees, or me with my shoulder, and Sunday morning, putting on my robe answered that question. The best part is that when the surgery and therapy are all over, I am taking myself to a beach to swim in Mother Ocean because I've been afraid to do that for years with this silly shoulder.

What I learned is this: I often stress and worry about imaginary things, like my future, like phantoms of my past, like parts of myself that just need some TLC, and what I need to do is cut that out , keep working and being and pay my attention Here and Now, because I need the reserves necessary to deal with real pain and fear and stress when it shows up. Now, we shall see how long this lesson sticks. ;-) I, like all of us, often let a lesson drop when I feel better. You know?

Anyway, I was tired and off kilter for a couple of days, but I'm back. I have to work to do in other projects, but I'll be getting back to this post soon. Meanwhile, peace and harmony and all that.

Also, Nance, I've had some correspondence with some other members of this list on my own. Their absence is largely due to be busy with other stuff, or in some straights themselves. That will pass, and I think we should just continue on, and know that the others will along when they're able.

Si

And do you think they did not have dark nights and struggles and fears and aloneness? No...not at all...I'm sure Whitman had them and it gave him the voice he writes from...I said that because Whitman's writing speaks to the intensity with which I love this world and dont' want to miss it consumed with unnecessary suffering.... Really? Do you think so? I doubt it myself. I think they didn't write about it much, I think they chose where to focus. Maybe the opposite of trying is working with what's present. What does trying mean here to you?   I think that sometimes the opposite of trying is acceptance...a deep acceptance of whatever life is bringing...often my trying it  a kind of reaching for or attempt to influence life in a particular direction...which I actually think is hugely important on this planet...I think earth is a place to create in...it may well be its primary purpose in terms of an experience...we are here to create... Is it really a matter of trying or not trying? Probably not...for me "trying" often turns into struggle...struggle seems to be opposite pleasure...or maybe it is about am I struggling against reality or against something or am I struggling for something...YES...that is a huge difference...when I am struggling against something I am fundamentally in fear...I don't' want this thing to happen...it will be bad or sad or whatever...but that is about avoidance...which in my body comes through as some kind of constriction...it comes from scarcity

Pleasure...Keats:  I am certain of nothing but the holiness of the heart's affections and the Truth of the imagination.  Pleasure:  Italy....I must love the Italian people because they do so love pleasure and joy.  I will never forget the transformation in my children a decade ago going from France to Italy...I had the idea that the French were devoted to pleasure...but I did not find that to be true...maybe devoted to beauty...but not pleasure.  I wonder if you N was right ...maybe you have to have something of the irrational to experience pleasure at all.  I know that you can cross that line into hedonism pretty easily...or actually I know that is the fear with most of us, but we live in a society filled with addictions...of all kinds...and in some way aren't they all a stay against an armoring against pleasure...really against life?

Surrender...and we arrive at where we started...but see it as if for
the firsr time...more later...nance

And surrender?  To or in what?  I suppose in a way what I mean by working with present circumstances is a surrender, it's a matter working with things as they are to get them different, rather than wishing to be starting from somewhere else, with some other circumstances. Agree or even working to accept them as they are and then waiting to see if you want to shift them...

A whole other tack to take here is this: What's the good in being noble in the  tragic way? At the ends of all those plays, our noble hero is dead. And His death is the final proof of his nobility and struggle. Ick-o-la. No thanks. And pleasure is not just comedic and frivolous. There's a whole lot about our souls and the world to learn in our pleasures. Besides, at the ends of comedies (which are usually about getting to a place of pleasure), everyone's still alive, and there's usually a wedding or a party, or both. Something gets united, the self with its own joy in our case here, and then there's a celebration. I adore this Simone!  Me, too!  At the ends of tragedies there are funerals. What's so great about that? Oedipus, Antigone, Hamlet, Jesus. All dead. One resurrected, but that's a miracle that does not apply to regular mortals. Our resurrections are psychological, metaphorical, and they're supposed to get us to a heaven on earth -- which as Jesus told us, is Already Here, we just don't see it and let it in. I would rather live in a comedy that moved toward life than a tragedy that moves toward death. I would rather have tragedy happen sometimes, and move through its lessons, than have it be my whole context. I think that in the face of uncertainty I expect the tragic....and while I continue to work to undo this old belief system in my being...I also know it is there...often the voice of ego...the rational voice warning me to 'stay away from something' that the world is dangerous and I could get hurt...and all that is true...AND...it is know way to really be alive.

Ok, so, Shadows. Since I quit my old life and went into exile, I've learned a few things. Or am learning a few things, rather. My own existential aloneness, to borrow your phrase, is sometimes not my friend. I have always had a very alone place in my soul, and I've learned to like it, to think of it as a refuge. For me that works, sometimes. Or it used to work. It was my refuge because my early relationships with peers were, shall we say, painful. And going in was safe. But, that's not really going to work anymore, because I've noticed that when I'm alone, say in my room, I am not writing or thinking Great Thoughts, I'm making up stories in which I am with other people and things are friendly and warm and rosy. This usually involves staying up late and listening to a lot of music. For the last several years, until recently, my Out was drinking. I would drink and get out of the experience I'm having, even if it was good. It was a really not good kind of shield. I'm MUCH better about that in the last few years. But both of those behaviors are my shadow trying to clue me in that there's some part of me that I'm not feeding. I think it's the part that needs to be around good people, in healthy environments, in work that's not a (total) drain on me. Home here is pretty healthy, and my work is not a drain (it's not easy, but it's not life-sucking), and I have few distractions. So, I'm seeing that being as much of a "loner" as I was is no longer working. Of course, the funny part is that I'm pretty alone. A tourist, a bit in exile. Now, I chose that, and it's the trade for getting the writing done, and that's FINE. Still, the lesson needs attention. Building the conditions of my well-being, however slowly, is making that shadow less demanding and sabotaging. I wonder about lessons in vulnerability which I find to be pleasurable...I don't mean vulnerability that is weak...I mean the kind where you intentionally risk your true self knowing it may not be rec'd or understood...and knowing that you will accept that and be okay because at least you were the real you.  Often the growth for folks who have strong voices and clear vision is to be able to speak about loneliness or missing a tribe...finding your tribe in life is a huge thing.  I think my daughter has done that finally.  I tend to find my tribe in places everywhere...but they don't necessarily congregate together...yet your images are so powerful...gatherings, people talking together, eating together, watching a sunset together...we need these times...they give our hearts peace...and the level you can enter an experience is very different when alone vs together...at least that is true for me...so maybe Simone everything is partial...and in the experience itself pleasure can be found from emphasizing what is distinct or particular about this and not focusing on what is missing or lacking...you know there is a way at times that I can love the very thing I am missing...does that make sense...it's like when my daughter said...you'll miss my messy room when I leave...and in that moment I could love both her and her messy room....the whyte poem  Faces at Braga (attached) says... if only we knew as the carver knew it was the FLAWS in the wood that led his searching chisel to the very core...."

So what within me and what within you do we each need to come to love...and what the hell is love...maybe it is just seeing things whole?!  I am thinking that more and more...finding the gift, the pearl locked inside my complaint...whether it is my existential aloneness...which even as write this I know that isn't quite the right word for it...I think it has more to do with some kind of meaninglessness or emptiness...sometimes I wonder if I carry a grief, years and years of unshed tears that I feel will overwhelm me in the silence that I now am surrounded with...and at times it does...at times I cry and cry...and then move onto something else as if I couldn't cry another tear...

being a human is such an exquisitely fragile and poignant experience.  But this aspect of life doesn't fare well in modern media...so it disappears and maybe waits for us all in the shadows...our fragile self...our little girl, little boy self that longs to belong, to please mom and dad and teachers...but had just the opposite experience...or maybe did please them, but at the expense of his or her authenticity...

IN ending this...I wanted to speak about surrender...you asked many questions...I can revisit if you wish...but let me say that surrender to me is quite active, not passive.  It looks more like releasing armor than giving up...or more like letting go than giving in or up...maybe it is even a letting in...as when I let in a different viewpoint than my own.  I am a romantic at heart and always will be.  My personal dream of relationship is the marriage of agape and Eros, but I have no interest in agape alone.  Or Eros alone. What I object to from the days of knights and romantic quests was that there was only the burn...tantric like, but never consummation and ultimately tragic in that it was known that consummation was not possible...I love falling in love.  And I can find something to adore or fall in love with in almost any human being...I love that...it makes my life sweet indeed.  I prefer the light of dawn and dusk to noon or midnight.  
Surrender could be surrendering my idea of how things should be.  Or surrendering to the reality of things as they are and moving on....hope that helps give you a sense of what I mean...if not, ask more and I'll respond...

 
Anyway, thoughts for the day. Hopefully others will start to find their way into this discussion. I imagine it will range from the personal to the philosophical with some regularity. Meantime, peace on you!   I too hope others find their way into this conversation...maybe it is time to ask for people to share how/where they currently find pleasure in their lives?...what that looks like and feels like?...how individual is it?  I think my dad actually may have found pleasure in discipline and duty.  Blessings on you Simone....

Nancy Wonders Dearing
Courageous Change Consultancy
Phone:  214-564-6226  Fax: 214-946-4181
Email:  Na...@courageouschange.com
"If you asked me what I came into this world to do, I will tell you, I came to live out loud"  Emile

--
~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*
Terror is only the beginning of beauty,
Simone

sisa...@gmail.com
http://kalidharmashaktidharma.blogspot.com

[Margaret Howard]

Wow, dear, I am so sorry to hear about your painful shoulder. Can I cook something and bring it to you? Can I drop by with some vin? Oh, this conversation, upon which I've been eavesdropping, thinking of pain and pleasure and the existential void (which once almost sucked me in and now I can't even find it anymore -- was it 'real'?), here you are in it with, as you say, a concrete agony that demands your attention. This is a wonderful lesson. Thank you. Please let me know what I can do.

http://jasmineblossom.blogspot.com/

http://smithfamilyrecipes.blogspot.com/

Release a book into the wild!
http://bookcrossing.com/