The spaces betweeen the swing

Sometimes you notice it. Sometimes it is right there staring you in the face.  The contradiction of being, aka:duality. I just noticed that the last blog post I did touched on desire, and the one prior to it, which I only published at the same time due to it never being published years before when it was written, stated the exact opposite, letting go of desire.  So today I decided to write about the spaces between the swing from one extreme to another.  Those spaces are the places we find our happy medium, nothing too risky or daring, not stretching our boundaries or consciousness as the extremes tend to do.  These are the places we can actually live from, the places comfortable after return from either end of intensity.

So what is desire? I’ve been considering this greatly, as it has been quite present in my own consciousness lately.  For myself it is a deep gut feeling of wanting, as if it were a need almost, like a baby wanting comfort from it’s mother.  I have been considering what constitutes the line between a need and a desire.  Where do we know what category something falls into? We certainly need air, water, food, and in my opinion love and physical affection.  Do we need purpose? Do we need companionship, friendship, partnership? I sense in my own life the necessity of these things, and yet when it comes down to it, perhaps they are really desires as well. I find myself yearning for more, an expansion, a freedom to create the life of my dreams and much of it stems from desire.  The very feeling of desire is what drives me to pursue those and other things. The greater the desire, the stronger the passion that fuels my pursuit.  Passion feels like a burning, perhaps of the old, transforming past desire, achievement, personal attachments and the like to fuel new ones.  It is a difficult process to let go of what we once cherished as our own self, identity, ego, the effort put into the desires and their fulfillment. Although, a continual process of moving forward, while remaining watchful of the process, it’s alchemy, artistry.

Where does this wanting come from? Is it ego? Is it something deeper? How do I approach my desire? Like a friend, an enemy, a stranger, a sage, a fool? Do I embrace this feeling and let it consume me? This has been my tendency in life, trusting it to lead me in the direction of my cherished dreams, even if those dreams were unbeknownst to me at the time.  I will say the feeling of desiring vs non desiring as described in the recent post called “ The Unbearable Lightness of Being”, is one of two uncomfortable states, complete emptiness on both ends, one being a continuous vacuum, the other a stasis of spaciousness with no directionality.  How to find the comfortable space between?

Imagine you have a dimmer switch, the ability to tone down or tone up any feeling, including desire. It is a muscle, just like the others, needing exercise, stretching, and regular periods of use and rest to remain in optimal condition.  Finding that right combination for utilizing any emotional state, aware of the after effect each one has upon our consciousness, is what I am aiming for at this point.  I find myself tipping to extremes in order to feel more alive, more excited, just more in general.  Why is it we value more instead of less? Perhaps less is desirable in some situations, less crowded, less pollution, less clutter, less restriction.  I suppose it is simply a matter of opinion and subjectivity though.  For myself, I vacillate, as already displayed and described here.

The difficulty I have most recently been having is not so much with desire or lack of it.  It is the judgment of such desire and attempt to control it, contract it, deny it. Imagine a river flowing freely, with currents rising and falling with the influx and egress of rainfall, snow melt, tributaries adjoining, etc.  Now imagine a dam keeping that water from flowing downstream.  The amount of power available at the point of the dam swells, reaching a point where it may overflow, so an over flow, diversion, piping or some form of transport is arranged for the water.  Downstream, the environment changes, what was once lush and green, vibrant and verdant shrivels.  Rocks and desert remain, hot dry, burning, thirsting for the fulfillment of the life giving sweetness of the river’s bounty once more. I feel this way with the emotional pull of  desire and my attempts to control it. What would happen if I allow it, let it flow freely? I sometimes fear it would be a disaster, letting the dam break and
flooding the surrounding area, causing destruction and devastation.  Perhaps there is a way to start
letting it flow slowly once again, steadily increasing the flow as downstream regains it’s vibrancy, it’s ability to contain and receive the power steadily.

I’m tired of so much effort. I am going to allow myself to feel fully in each moment
A and do my best not to judge it or take it personally if anyone else does.  I imagine a place where I am free to feel and express the desire flowing through me, not analyzing them or dissecting them in any way shape or form.  To feel desire for something, someone, and be lit up by the fire consuming me forward into union with the object of my desire.  To feel desired in return and allow the boundaries to dissolve, reveling in the bliss of receiving and giving pleasure through losing control, allowing, crashing into, riding the wave of heightened awareness to it’s crest.  To stop choosing the safe and boring path, just satisfying enough to keep these emotions from spilling over the brim of my yearning heart.  To stop trying to satisfy everyone around me, being stable for their sake, although I certainly don’t wish to be unstable, simply not static.

Disappointment, Disillusionment, Disaster & Death

Death is but an illusion, then so is life.

When things don’t go the way you planned, the way you wanted, what do you do? Do you cry, rage, stomp about and complain? How do you deal with disappointment? It has been one of my most difficult emotions in life and a great teacher of how to not be so attached to outcomes, or the effort put forth towards such outcomes, I suppose.  I feel the sting of disappointment sharply, as if being given something so desired and having it ripped away, after just barely tasting it.  It is enough to know the sweetness of what actual fulfillment might feel like, look like, sound like and taste like, yet not in it’s entirety. It becomes a chase which is endless and infuriating, not worth the emotional strain and struggle to atain the cherished desire. This is how aerial arts began for me.

Today’s disillusionment deals with my desire to be desired, in some ways, although that one is a deeper subject we’ll get to another day.  Today it appears, the desire to have a passion fulfilled through career is at the top of my reasons for disdain. I feel sad and resist the urge to pity myself for my own reasonable knowledge of detachment and such, yet am human and have feelings, real ones that vacillate with the tides of joy and sorrow ever ebbing and flowing through life.  There is a sense of disempowerment in letting go of desire, one of freedom too, on the other side of wanting seems to be the very thing we simply are and have no need of wanting.  

I started my adult aerial dance series last week and it did not have the number of students I was hoping, not even close. I called some people who were interested & a couple said they could start in a couple weeks since they were both injured & needed time to heal.  Today I got a message that all of a sudden Kahilu Theater has no availability for my classes next week since the staff is going on retreat that day.  As we speak, I am getting messages from Kat about her adult aerial class and needing an assistant for aerial 3 in exchange for being in the adult aerial silks class. It is a small consolation, really allowing me to continue in my endeavor of aerial arts, yet not expanding or taking on the role I wished to. Which is ok I suppose, still just hurts in a way which I wish I were immune to. Don’t we all wish we were immune to these feelings?

How can we deal with dissapointment? How can we see a greater will is leading us towards our highest path, when it doesn’t look the way we expected it to? I find each emotional hole I dig, no matter how it comes about, is simply there to be filled to the brim with the abundance life offers almost immediately after the death of something expected and not fulfilled.  Sometimes allowing death is the hard part. Most people fear death, be it physical or psychological. Death is simply a transformation. Energy is never created or destroyed, it is simply transformed. So how do I transform the energy of disaster? How do I take my head out of my disappointed ass and allow my higher self to guide me? Why do I struggle so much in this process? I don’t wish to be egotistical and proud, I wish to be of service, to dream and fulfill the desire put in me. Why else would I have this desire? Why would I just be tortured to have a desire and no way to fulfill it? I am not that much of a masochist, despite being an aerialist. In my opinion, aerialists seem to have a penchant for enjoying pain more than the average person, although some may just tolerate it for the enjoyment on the other side of the coin.  

Perhaps that’s all this is, duality in motion. All things that go up must come down, gravity, right? I think I wish to defy gravity and fly, hence being an aerialist. Hey, what a cool idea for a show! Basing it on physics: gravity, centripetal force, aerodynamics, inertia.. fun! Perhaps the ideas that spring forth from disaster are more fertile since I do feel like a pile of compost right now. Let’s assume something incredible happens as a result of being willing to feel the death of something wished for.  An act of bravery, walking through to the other side of something not imagined, the unknown.  Letting space become, allowing rather than creating, letting life touch the fragile parts, embarrased for failing, nurturing them to see their part in being beautiful, whole and a vital piece of the process of success as well.  For without duality how would we feel, experience, and remember? Shifting towards ever more subtle realms of gradients, rather than extremes seems to be the goal. Finding the dimmer switch, so to speak, as my mom has said many times.  

This too shall pass, so remain hopeful and humble.  

The unberable lightness of being

I am feeling this incredible sense of letting go of desire, wanting anything to turn out a certain way & at the same time an incredible hope that things will move in a direction which would lead me to stability.  What is stability though? I am trying to figure this out and I end up reading verse 23 from the 37 practices of a Bodhisattva which Ruey just emailed out. This has me even more perplexed and yet it makes sense with all I am going through.  It is only through working through the fear of having nothing to rely on, though unstable as it may seem, that all becomes suffused with Spirit, the only thing reliable and stable  in Truth.  This is a very interesting experience to be having around this time of my Saturn return in Scorpio....Yes, it does and it will and I am sure it will prove to come in time as my consciousness arrives at the realizations through the experiences of letting go, letting go, simply living, loving and letting go. It seems impossible at times when my ego screams and shouts and demands it's way.

Some Effort Required

No mud, no lotus

So they say, as we all struggle through the “mud” of life to reach our full potential of blossoming beauty and enlightenment as the lotus is a metaphor for this process.  I feel like life could come with
a disclaimer, “some effort required. Actually a lot, or more than you could have ever realized.” And then there’s grace. It is the counterbalance to the effort, the wind beneath your wings, lifting and helping you soar, just when you thought you were too tired to keep beating your wings. Life has immeasurable moments of grace as well as effort in my opinion. I love both.

The last 9 years I have lived on the Big Island, secluded in the jungle, on farms and ranches, finding ways to grapple with my psychological, physical, emotional and spiritual health and fulfill my dreams.  It has been an amazing journey, renewal and affirmation of the love within me and surrounding me at all times, despite what challenges come my way.  I started this blog in 2011 with the intent to share some of the insights I was having along the way, and of course life got busy and I didn’t keep up with it. Sound familiar? This year, I am all about utilizing and completing the projects, resources and passions I have come in contact with, that I may make room for something even bigger to gestate and birth through this process. So here I am, writing my first entry in a while, hoping it will take root, be the continuance of a seed I planted 8 years ago.  I am commited to nurturing this through weekly if not daily writing.

In our deepest longing for love to desire us, we find our very longing is all consuming in it’s fulfillment of the very desire it seeks.  Everyone deserves love. Everyone. This is the foundation of Peace. How we get there is confusing at times, yet simple if we just breathe, trust and surrender.  I find myself tired and not sleeping, wishing for the life I am building, believing it is in me, just as these stories were in me all along too.

Many of the themes of my life have been about struggle and empowerment. I am proud of the person I have become through what has subjectively felt like an arduous path of emotional and spiritual tumultuousness.  I recently read a book my mother gave me called Finding our way through the dark by Demitri George. It is about the moon cycle we are born under and how it affects our psyche, our sense of emotional growth and patterns in a subtle yet powerful way. I realize now that being born under a crescent waxing moon explains so much more than I could have imagined. It has clarified for me a confusion around why I put in so much effort and struggle so hard at times.  If you want to come back to the lotus metaphor, think of a new moon like the seed being planted, the crescent is the enormous force it takes the seed to break through the shell and take hold into the earth.  From there, the following cycles of establishment/uprising, fulfillment/flowering, ripening/seeding, receding/composting, and reseeding/full circle come into play.  We each go through these 30 year cycles, generally unaware of their influence & impact.  In doing the finding our way through the dark workbook, I started to look back at the themes of my own life, and how they perfectly aligned with these natural cycles.  This gave me the idea to start writing again, to reflect upon these themes in my life and explore the stories, beliefs and worlds I’ve dreamed in these 35 years; to step back and see the tapestry I’ve woven and been woven into, surveying before the next major cycle shifts.

I have started writing a book about my life, the one subject I feel I know best.  It is fun and tough at times, revealing and embarrasing at others. It shows so much of my humaness, my fragility, faults and failings. It also shows triumphs, adventures, miracles, and synchronicities which to me make it a super juicy tale worth telling.  I invite you to read it as I post some of the excerpts here, in hopes it inspires you to examine your own life, see yourself as the director, star, or maybe someone just going along for the ride.  Have fun, don’t take anything too seriously, and remember to laugh at yourself, I most certainly need to do so more often, it’s good medicine!

Being in the moment, meditation & mantra

I have been experiencing more and more presence and awareness as I meditate daily in the morning. Sometimes when I arise from being in meditation I feel a sense of anxiety about the rest of the day and what is to come.  If this arises throughout the day I use the mantra I use in meditation to calm my mind and focus, which helps.  It has been easier and easier to feel the flow of the moment and let go of my mind and just relax and feel my heart and the Love I am.

Love it. Thanks a lot. I'm calming down and things are chill now. I'm with some really good people and figuring out my head trip about things I've been going through. Thanks for being here for me as a friend to talk with about cool ideas and help me get  my vision through... I am in a new reality of sorts and it is pretty trippy.  I can see how dreams really do affect our sense of self and reality and how we're all just dreaming pretty much all the time, although I watch my mind and the dreaming and the dreamer and the sense of wanting to control and direct and at the same time let go and experience yang/yin balance has been increased and balancing out in various ways.  I still really feel like I am going through a lot and would like to have time to integrate what is happening on the inside of me and surrounding me, and at the same time as I meditate it becomes less and less concerned with analyzing and more and more part of the dance which I am involved in with others. It's interesting...I am feeling as if studying yoga and thai massage with Coleenah would be great and finish up school.  I am stoked on the place I'm at and the experiences I've been having with K.. & friends. I really love the property I'm on and they have coffee that needs picking and they have work parties and we'd love to have you come and have music and fun even bring the crew and work on all sorts of cool projects together. There is lots of healing the land can go through in many places throughout the islands. I see this huge visio n of work parties like yogarden and getting festivals going in places with local community and friends and ohana. We are all so connected to each other and the earth. We need to start living a life that honors one another and the earth. This is what I have learned and come to in my time here on the Big I. All things are bound together. All things connect.What happens to the Earth happens to the children of the earth.  Man has not woven the wegb of Life. He is but one thread. Whatever he does to the web, he does to himself. WE are in the WAKE of dreams. Look up the book if you like... It might help.  Its sometimes so difficult to land somewhere and see things for what they are and actually want to commit to something to fulfill a dream or desire I might have had at some point or continue to just let it unfold, trusting that if I do commit and let go that it can be just as beautiful, if not more beautiful than I had ever dreamed of or planned. It requires so much faith and trust to really keep watchful discernment of what I take in and what I do not. 
It really does require more and more awareness to keep moving in the direction...as I realize how simple it is to gain awareness by simply meditating and contemplating and non-action balancing it with doing, being and creating within and without.  It's amazing what has been happening internally as I have been here at K.'s for the last 4 days.  I can't believe how much I've been able to just let go and relax and be present with the process of moving my whole life again. It seems rather abrupt, but I guess it was meant to be. I can hardly believe how much has happened in the last month, let alone the last year. I really haven't explained the process of healing I've been experiencing from the time I left Sacred Path till now.  It has been very helpful in my understanding of grounding and thought and direction.  I've been reading a lot of my journals and seeing how I got from the beginning of Sacred Path till now.  I see the same patterns and watch the pieces I've sewn together unfold and interact in their own organic way.  It seems perception has so much to do with how I feel about where I'm at and where I'm going.  dslldsfksldfjo3iwhef.ssf....so much to say and I really wish I could just share through experience somehow, seeing as how perception can be so subjective and based on the moment. Isn't that sort of what reality is about though? are we dreaming the dream or are we being the dream? That seems to be the underlying theme lately which surrounds my understanding of my own Saturn return in Scorpio.  As Saturn represents the grounding, limiting force within astrology, I find my own Saturn in Scorpio in the 7th house to be about coming into understanding of the depth of feeling and surrender that unites one in union with God/Self/Other and finds Union deep within and without.  A lot of it has to do with the depth of relationship I am in with myself, and others in my life. 
It really feels good to write.  There is so much that I have to do, people to connect and grow this movement of life I feel within and am excited to commit to sharing with others.  It is the constantly growing perspective of seeing the beauty of the world and everything in it and finding ways to Love better and brighter in each moment.  There's so much healing to be done and Love finds its way to bring it into the world and through my heart and hands.  =) Enough for now.  rambling and rolling with the words helps me connect the dots, I hope it connects you to me and helps you see what I'm up to. ..

Perceptions of fear

Realizing that I am going through fear and having the courage to face it has been essential in the last 7 years, let alone 7 days.  Finally understanding how much I've been feeding this fear through worry and hesitation and "processing" has been so incredibly self-indulgent.  I'm finally willing to accept that I may not have gotten the Love I wanted or deserved to have as a child/adolescent growing up, but ultimately it taught me to cultivate self Love as opposed to attaching myself to receiving it on the outside.  This is a very interesting containment process which I am grateful to have had the assistance of Sacred Path community, and my family and friends and lovers and everyone who has been a part of showing me how to cultivate this inner Love.  It is a dual process of experiencing it from the outside and reflecting it on the inside & vice versa.
Living in the place I am living now has taught me a lot about facing the deeper inner fears as well, fear of pain & suffering and death especially.  They say that Waipi'o has a portal to the underworld & I believe it from what I have been through here. In the 8+ months I have spent here I have experienced far more of facing my inner depths of uncertainty, illusion, separation, anger, disappointment, and chaos in high intensity than any other time period of my life.  As I see my Saturn return in Scorpio approaching, I sense this is the pinnacle of owning my own power.