What is this shame? What is this shame that I feel in my inadequacy in approaching my own finances? What is that sense of inadequacy made of? It used to be so clear cut. Just numbers that add up to another number at the bottom of a page. Money coming in, money going out.
I’ve been proud of how frugal I can be. I’ve been proud of how I have succeeded in making do in difficult times. My kids and I got through it when the business was doing poorly and . . .here comes the resentment. . . the resentment about how the money was spent so lavishly by some members of the family when I could barely buy clothes for the kids or food for all of us. . . I was the good wife. I have always been the good wife, the good daughter, the good friend. . . now I am just being an asshole in perpetuating my own neuroses. . . I have no one to blame anymore.
Why can’t I just look at those bills, make simple categories; OK, so what if you can’t pay them all. Then you find a solution. But this has been going on for so long. . . and I will have to claim my own part of the responsibility. Cleanse, cleanse, cleanse. . . your faultedness is OK. . but you have to look at it. Why is there shame in being poor? I guess it’s not shame in being poor, but for a long time, there has been pride in having the ability to make it against the odds. Now that it is all up to me, I am scared that I might not be able to do it. I am so scared that I don’t approach the implicit problems, the little decisions. . . why do they feel so huge? Why does each bill feel like such a judgment?
Dig in. . . dig in. . . as I dig into my bills I am digging into my own sense of lack. I am pulling at that tight ball that I have in my left kidney. . . I can feel the poison of the old lactic acid or whatever it is your muscles store when they have been tight for too long. . . old old brackish energy that has been holding back the tide of support, emotional or financial. . . don’t take care of me, my Lord, I am not worth it. I have been given more than my share for too long. I am just me. Why do I deserve this bounty? What about those people over there who can’t eat? Why do I deserve to live? Why do I deserve to be loved?
Gets complicated. It’s just a stack of bills, Suzie.
But this stack of bills says everything about what I have decided about my life. I am worth a person who lives in a house, buys electricity, buys oil, buys food, buys clothing, buys the extras like books and computers and internet access. Why am I worth all of that? Why am I worth the education that I was given? Why am I worth the family that I was given? How do I fit into those rows and columns of this little spreadsheet? What numbers apply to me?
I feel shorn by the categories. . . limited. . . the same way I feel limited by words, labels. . . but Suzie, this is just a part of the same lines and definitions of what is now in this life. It is just a game. Just a dance. Let it go. Open up that bill and compare the numbers. You don’t have to be limited by it. But you can’t hold onto it. Take it as a part of the flow, a part of the succession of moments that make up the flow. . . the dance. . . the rhythm of the song. . .
So what do I do? Stay present – be present – exist. Live. Allow. Allow. Allow. It’s OK, I must reassure myself. I must be gentle and compassionate with myself. Allow myself to blossom. Allow that intellect that does exist within me if I just allow it.
I remember the flow from so long ago. The confidence. It’s funny – I feel the block as I begin to focus – it feels like a physical/energetic block that stretches between my left temple and my intestine or maybe my pancreas on my left side. Some of my intellectual recovery will involve physical recovery. I know the direction I need to go to allow more flow. . . more and more. A trickle, then a stream, then a torrent. In some areas of my being I believe I have allowed the flow. I feel healthy. In other areas I have barely begun to allow. But it is OK. It can’t be about self denigration, about blame. It must be gentleness, compassion, love. Suzie, it is OK. Be faulted. Be exactly who you are. And then feel the warmth and support around you as you are. Allow that warmth and support. Allow it. Let it cradle you. Let yourself melt into your own tears. Release. Let it go. Let it go. Grieve. Grieve. You know it is OK. Give yourself the time you need to grieve. You don’t need a reason. You don’t need to explain. Let the world hold you now. Take the time you need. Have faith in Life. Allow. Allow. Allow.
You see how it is coming. You see it. You are allowing it. It is not perfect. You are not perfect – yet maybe it and you are perfect because it is. Is. Allow. Allow. Allow. Help me to let go. Let go . Let go. Let go. Let go. Allow. Allow. Allow. Allow. Allow. Allow – my thoughts quiet a little. Allow – calmer and calmer. Allow – I can hear the fan of the pellet stove and the sound pattern of the flame. Allow – I hear my own breath. Allow – I see the light outside – a morning light muted by the clouds and the snow coming down. It’s coming down. It is morning. It is snowing. I am inside writing and listening to the pellet stove which is trying to warm the room. I look up and see the pictures of my kids and my friends on the wall. I am so lucky. So blessed. It is almost Christmas. I am late in my preparations, as usual. But it is OK. It is good. It is not about lots of presents anyway.
Today is my day to write – to begin to unwind that which needs to come out – is it me – is it a blockage – is it something more? What does that mean, anyway? Let it go. Don’t delineate. Don’t define. Allow. Allow. Allow. Organize it later. Let it tumble. Let it emerge how it will. You don’t have to control it.
Love. I am so very blessed. I am afraid of it. I don’t know what I mean by it. Surrender. Complete surrender. It brings out my fear of hierarchy and abuse – resentment – fear of being hurt and hurting. Fear. Fear. But this is anything but fear. It is a giving. A giving of self. Surrender that does not diminish, but magnifies and multiplies. The energy is more, not less. We become one and yet we are each ourselves even more deeply than before. Reaching down down down to our roots until we find our common ground. Reaching up up up and opening our senses – all of our openings, physical and non physical – opening all orifices, all pores, all abilities, all senses. Opening to allow it all to enter and then, twirl us around into the next swirl – the next pattern, the next commutation, the next structure, and we cannot control and yet we are it. How is it that we are available for the new pattern that the river requires? Yet be in contact with the earth. . . are we connected to the Earth? Are we connected to each other? What does “each other” mean? How is this vision connected to me sitting here in front of the pellet stove watching the snow outside? Can I do both? Can I open open open open open open until I no longer exist? I am the movement. . . I am the river . . . and I continue my day as I sprinkle salt on the sidewalk in front of my house and wonder about all of the yard work that has yet to be done around the house. What is the relevance of this bill I have in front of me? If I don’t write that check for the electric company, maybe eventually they still will turn off my electricity even though the flow – the flow – allowing – allowing – the silence – the silence – the incredible lightness – it is all perfect. Even my electric bill is perfect. It seems that there is a connection between not paying my bill and the electricity being turned off. That is what I have learned. You hit a billiard ball with your stick and that ball causes another to move. Cause and effect. It sure seems to work. Causal mechanisms sure seem to exist. You do this, and that happens. You step out over the side of the cliff and you fall. I would like to fly. But maybe I am not ready to fly yet. My intellect tells me that I will fall. But what about Faith? If you have Faith you will Fly.
This seems like the material of delusion. But when you have a new experience, beyond the usual, how do you bring it into your old way of thinking? How do you integrate it into your world view? It comes to a point where you just can’t anymore. It is no longer a case of integrating new information into what you think of as reality. Your ideas about reality have to change. But during that period when your world view is changing there is a sense of the world falling apart. The world is falling apart. There is nothing to hold onto. Nothing is solid anymore. Then you begin to reconstruct. But it has to begin with silence. Silence. Silence. Then the world starts to come in again. The fire is still flickering/roaring. The snow is still falling. Dakota stands up and shakes, hoping that I may finish with what I am doing so we can go outside and walk together in the falling snow. The world still exists even though my standpoint has fallen apart on some levels.
It sounds like illness – this falling apart. But it is actually a supremely healthy response to a necessity for a change of direction. I hope that this same thing is happening to all of us on some level. The beginnings of a necessary shift that will save us if we let it. Allow. Allow. Allow.
This whole deal of “allowing” seems passive. There is an awfully lot of work that needs done in the world. What is this allowing thing, anyway? It’s true, I do get caught in reflective cycles which seem to keep coming back on themselves not going anywhere. But I have also spent a lot of energy on physically active pursuits which have seemingly dead ended with little positive result. Somehow I want to be in touch with a bigger picture so that the things that I choose to do result in helping me to get where I want to go. Like looking at the map before I begin my travels.
It ’s so easy to feel lost. The world can feel so big and lonely. So here I am. What do I want to do? I want to be helpful. How do I begin to be helpful? Well, this room could use picking up. My office is a mess. My business is not really going in the direction I want it to. I have not fully taken responsibility for it. I still consider it a cast off and I associate it with things that I don’t want to think about. But here it is. And it has been a great gift to me. This business has been used as an instrument for healing. Maybe if I look at it in a new way and put some positive energy into it, it may flourish.
I can’t go into it much here because it’s a part of my personal life that I don’t feel comfortable revealing here. Maybe someday I will. But in the meantime, maybe the specifics don’t matter much in this context. I bet most of us have something in our life that we cast aside as not worth going into. Sometimes those are the areas that really should be delved into.
So I begin with my office. Maybe the beginning of my creating a “save the world” campaign should begin with me picking up the mail off of my office floor. Maybe I should spend the day with my kids when I am done. Maybe I should go and visit my neighbors who had a recent tragedy. This is the material of my day. And it is the beginnings of my map.
And it doesn’t have to feel aimless. It is a part of the big picture of all of us, each of us going about our day, doing whatever our business is, doing the best we each can with our own lives, our own families, our own business. And we do interconnect. And we do affect each other. And if we have hope, those interconnections can feel positive. We can feel lifted when we go to the grocery store and smile at the person in front of us in line, or wave to the person who let us into traffic as we head home.
So what does this all have to do with global warming, potential war, terrorism, all of the frightening things going on in the world? What does this have to do with the financial crisis? Everything. We make up the material of our society. It may feel like there is no connection, but it is all just a matter of scale. Imagine the difference it would make if a significant percentage of all of us simply began to spend less time watching the television and instead visit neighbors with our kids, or just take a walk around our neighborhood to become aware of the people who live near us. I think that those first steps are the most important and form the base for the beginnings of empathy and understanding. War is just a lack of understanding on a larger scale. Terrorism is a desperate grab for power used by those who feel marginalized. Economics begin with our interrelationships and systems of helping each other through our lives.
I know this is simplistic. I know that when you get into the details of actually doing, it is not as easy as it sounds. But I think that many of us feel so disempowered by the scale of what needs to be done, that we do not even begin. Somehow we need to work together. Somehow we need to begin to change that which needs to change and we each need to begin with our own house, our own neighborhood, our own office.
So I pull the mail into a stack on my floor and pick up the top letter and open it. And the next, and the next. Tomorrow, I’ll do a few more. Maybe my friends will come over and help me. I bet they would have some great ideas. Maybe they need help with their stack. I would certainly be willing to help.
People are already solving carbon footprint problems, community problems and economy problems through grassroots organizations and businesses. Check it out! I got these videos from Green For All.
“Omar Freilla and members of the Green Worker Cooperatives talk about their work to saturate the South Bronx, with worker-owned green businesses.”
” Orrin Williams and the folks at Growing Home demonstrate how urban agriculture is reconnecting people to their communities and the earth, and revitalizing Chicago.”
” Aundre Collins talks about his work with Solar Richmond, and how it has shaped his life.”
Here is an excerpt from the web site for this organization explaining what the number 350 is all about.
“Where did this 350 number come from?
Dr. James Hansen, of NASA, the United States’ space agency, has been researching global warming longer than just about anyone else. He was the first to publicly testify before the U.S. Congress, in June of 1988, that global warming was real. He and his colleagues have used both real-world observation, computer simulation, and mountains of data about ancient climates to calculate what constitutes dangerous quantities of carbon in the atmosphere. The Bush Administration has tried to keep Hansen and his team from speaking publicly, but their analysis has been widely praised by other scientists, and by experts like Nobel Prize winner Al Gore. The full text of James Hansen’s paper about 350 can be found here.”
Several months ago I was running. I was walking my dog. We had just crossed the bridge and crossed over to the right side of the road towards the pond closest to the road. I was so happy. Dakota and I were running together and I felt so strong and so free and the happiness seemed to be fueling my run into flight. I was proud of my ability to keep up with my running dog. The air streamed back across my face and the rest of me and I felt sure that I could fly. In preparation for take off my body was beginning to lean forward and my legs were not keeping up with my head and shoulders which were leading me. I fell forward with great momentum and as my left hand let go of the leash I jammed my left thumb hard against the ground back towards my wrist.
It hurt, but not that much. I cried out a little and laughed too. I picked up the leash in the other hand and continued on my way around the pond to go and see my friend. My thumb swelled up some. I took care of it for a couple of days and then figured it would take care of itself. I stopped playing the guitar for a little while but then started up again. I could play, as long as I was gentle in my use of the hand. It did not continue to resolve itself. I let my friend who is a masseur at Kim’s Healing Center look at it and pull it back into place. It seemed to be a little out of joint. He did pull it back into place, but a couple of days later after playing guitar some more, it went back out of joint again.
I guess I don’t need to recount all of these details. The fact is, after almost three months, this thumb still has not healed the way I hoped. I have gotten advice and followed it. Part of what I have needed to do is to stop playing the guitar while it heals. I had gone for nearly two months without playing the guitar when two days ago I decided I just had to pick it up and since then I have been paying the price again.
It seems to me that my story is an allegory for me. I find that more and more I can look at my life and see patterns and I interpret meanings from those patterns.
In my wonderful happy run, I got ahead of myself. I leaned far forward with my head and even my heart and my feet left the ground. I thought that I could fly. I thought that if I believed with great intensity, the world would lift me with my vision. But in this case, it wasn’t really vision. It was heart and desire. But my feet apparently still have to stay on the ground if I am to avoid a fall.
I have let you all know a little bit about how a couple of years ago, maybe more at this point, I had held back on myself for so long that it felt like either I was going to let myself sink and die, or I was going to let go and allow. So I let go. I let go to a very large degree. I let go of so many boundaries and definitions that I had felt imprisoning me that it took me a while to catch my bearings. Actually, I think I am still catching my bearings. I love the freedom that I have felt. I love the vibrancy. I love expressing without fear. But I went from being in a curled up ball to curling back into as wide an embrace of reality as I could muster. My spine is not bent forward like an old woman. I have a tendency instead to lean back. I have a tendency to look upward all the time. Even when I meditate, my head tends to bend back and upward. It is like I want to understand the sky.
When I begin my qigong active exercises I remember the cues that Chunyi Lin gives about how to stand. One of the things that he says almost every time in every exercise or meditation is to tuck the chin downward just slightly to keep the whole spine straight. The strongest and most natural state for the spine is to be straight. The spine is the energy channel which is most basic. My spine is still not straight. I have gone from one extreme to the other.
I look up like I want to understand the sky. But it is more powerful, perhaps, to straighten my spine so that I can see what is directly in front of me. It is called having a level head. I guess that phrase has a literal meaning for me.
When I was little and I was riding in the car with my family, someone would see something and point to it outside of the car. I would look for it and often miss whatever was being pointed to before we had passed it. It became frustrating. I guess it was understandable. After all, I was the youngest. I might have been sitting lower in the car, or some other factor may have made it less likely for me to see whatever was going by. Over time, I think I gave up on trying.
As I grew up I began to rely upon other people’s points of view to see. I would go to other people to tell me what they thought, or I would go to a book to give me the truth of a thing. I had little confidence in my own vision. And I think the physical use of the eyes is just a more basic level of a use of the eyes that involves a higher use of the brain and spirit: vision, the ability to look forward and look with courage, foresight. . . and those are certainly related to discernment and wisdom.
It has been time for many reasons in my life for me to begin to use my own eyes to see. It is frightening. I don’t always want to see the truth. Just look at the entry I posted just a couple of days ago. Life can be very frightening. But I can choose to see, and then vision where I want to go and what I want to do, or I can ride along passively with the wave that I am already on.
Yesterday I was at a meeting with some of the people at the Alliance for Sustainable Communities. We were discussing the issue of mobilizing people towards change. One of the people said something then that really touched a chord for me. People aren’t going to go forward into a void. They need a vision of where they are going before they are going to leave an old paradigm, an old belief system about the way things need to be. Yes, it does look pretty bleak in our world today. The problems are so multifaceted and interconnected it seems like a straitjacket that we can’t get out of. But answers are blooming at the same time all around us. Why haven’t I even thought about that?
OK. The economy has some major flaws. There may come a time when we can’t rely upon the banks. Maybe the grocery stores may reach a point where they don’t have the ability to bring food to us from far away. Maybe many of us will be losing our jobs. Maybe gasoline may become too expensive. Maybe oil for heating our homes may become too expensive.
The political arena has had some real challenges for a long time. There has been so much corruption for so long, once you get into that system it seems that making changes becomes a continuous give and take of compromise where one hand is supposed to wash the other even though it should be so clear what is right and what is wrong.
The corporate world has been aiming at shareholder profits to the exclusion of everything else since that word “corporation” was first defined. We are seeing the results of that in the narrow focus on selling, selling selling and the ultimate use of the media to hypnotize our culture into buying buying and buying bigger and more.
We each have answers. If we can learn to work together, we can put those answers together into a cohesive whole. It is too multifaceted for any one of us. That is why the answer lies in working together. We can re-create our economy, from the bottom up if necessary. There already exist cooperative banks. There are organizations that are active here in the Lehigh Valley which bring together local businesses who can and do attempt to support each other. There is a group involved in trying to get local farmers together with those who would buy food from them here in the Valley, restaurants, the local food coop which is forming, and other organizations as well. There are people in this area involved in farming which is not so dependent upon the use of pesticides and fossil fuels in other forms. There are many organizations through which people are coming together to solve all of these problems and others. We just need to get over our fears and reach out. And add to the visioning.
There is hope. There really is. Thank you all for helping me to have the courage to see. Please feel free to let me know what you think the answers are.
We all may die. I’m not just talking about each of us as individuals. Our species may die. Our world may die. Many high level systems are now changing very quickly in our biosphere. The oceans are acidifying with the absorption of more CO2. Huge lakes have been forming on the Greenland ice sheets and then disappearing through cracks to the area under the ice. The polar ice caps are melting. At some point all of these changes will accelerate as feedback loops lend strength to all of the changes and we reach tipping points after which any human intervention will be fruitless.
So what do we do? I have friends, wonderful people who dedicate themselves with every ounce of their extra energy to trying to find an answer; trying to figure out how to engage the appropriate key parts of the decision making machine of our culture, made up of corporate, governmental and grassroots populace. Where do we focus? What is going to work? How do we save ourselves?
I think back to what Mairead Corrigan Mcguire said in her speech to the University of California. Follow the link back to my earlier entry to watch the YouTube video, if you want. Here is an excerpt from that speech which begins at about 6:10 in that clip:
” We look out in the world today and there are so many problems. . . . and do we prioritize? Do we say, yes there is global warming, we’ve got to do something about it. Do we say, yes, there’s dreadful poverty. We’ve got to do something about it. Or do we say, well there’s nuclear weapons, we’ve got to do something about it? Do we say it’s time for no more wars? Do we say that it’s time that we say no to violence, no to war, no to nuclear weapons, or do we prioritize? Or do we simply have another drink and get on and enjoy our lives? I think we mix both. I think life’s for enjoying yourself. It’s for celebrating. And perhaps we need more music, more dance, more beauty in the world today. And you know, if the University of California is teaching its finest minds and its beautiful people to make weapons that are dropped on our brothers and sisters around the world, that’s a tragedy. That’s an insult to our humanity. That’s throwing back in the face of God the gift of life. But if the University of California has smart men and women, they are intelligent enough because they got to the University of California in the first place, they are intelligent enough to ask, is what I am doing beautifying life, or is what I am doing destroying life. And they were given free will. And they must make the choice. Life is all about using your intelligence, your imagination and your creativity and making a choice. So can we make good choices? Or do we make bad choices?”
If we each individually attend to our own lives and make each decision which is in front of us at each present moment with this question in mind, maybe we can save ourselves. I have a ways to go. Not all of my choices have the result of beautifying life. But I will continue to be as honest as I can with myself with each step I take. Sometimes those steps seem so multifaceted and complicated. Sometimes I begin to lose hope. But if I can turn these steps into a dance and use my faith in conjunction with my intelligence maybe this dance will bring me to where I want to be.
Tonight is a birthday bash at the Wildflower celebrating both Bill’s and Michelle’s birthdays! Come on out to 316 South New Street in South Bethlehem, PA to join in the fun. Sign up for the open mike usually starts at 7:00, but this is a different deal tonight, so I guess the show itself may be central instead, starting probably at 8:00. I think I will go a little before that.
The Wildflower has had a lot to do with me feeling free to open up into all possibilities with my music. Both Bill and Michelle are instrumental in the openness at the Wildflower. There is a lot to celebrate here.
