Being vs Reacting

Hola Everybody,
Though I have known it at an intellectual level, the past election cycle has made me actually integrate the fact that there is no Left -- no progressive movement -- in the US. 

I just realized today that I have only a couple of more posts and I will have completed my commitment to posting at least one blog post per day for the whole of 2016. I don’t know if I’ll continue into 2017 -- at least not at the same pace.

Don’t say such changes cannot happen. A vast freedom could live inside you. A loaf of bread wrapped in a cloth for the table is just an object, but inside the human body, it becomes gladness for being alive!
 -- Rumi

I guess that if you wanted to get somewhere, an accurate map is a good place to start. It can make the difference between arriving at your destination with ease and becoming hopelessly lost. However, imagine, for a moment, that when you ask a friend who has just raved about a restaurant where it is, she says, “Just visualize the restaurant clearly. Post a sign on your refrigerator door that says, ‘I can easily and joyfully find any restaurant I want!’ That’s all you need to do.”

I’m sure most people would think such a statement silly -- and they would be correct. But what if my destination is “self-acceptance”? What if all I wanted was to reach a state of inner wholeness that I have never experienced before? As in the directions to the restaurant in the above example, I may have heard wonderful things about it, but I had never been there and don’t know how to get there. Perhaps many of us can relate having been told to, “Just do it. Just accept yourself.” That’s a lot like being told to “Just go to the restaurant,” without being given any directions.

Today, I am grateful for having that direction in my life, for the luxury of experiencing self-acceptance.

Better yet, what if you ask how to get to a restaurant and you’re told that before you can even begin to try to find this restaurant you need to spend several months, or even years, thinking about how bad your own cooking is. That before you can experience this restaurant you will need to explore the reasons why you aren’t happy with your own cooking and why you have this need to go to the restaurant in the first place. In addition, before you can go to this restaurant, you also have to understand how you became such a bad cook. I would say this is sillier than the previous example.

A common belief is that if we understand a problem well enough, it will simply disappear. Yet in my life I could have, at any given moment, articulated the intricate psycho-dynamics of, let’s say, a $300-a-day heroin habit and still not change.

Today I am grateful for the freedom from the tyranny of thinking and the over analyzing that was the prison of my life -- literally and figuratively -- before I became free.

My life is not about affirmations or positive thinking. Shit, I have tried many times to overcome my limitations by sheer will power or trying to act or feel different, telling myself repeatedly that I would be different. But I discovered that this approaching the issue from the outside in. It is tantamount to trying to rearrange the deck chairs on the Titanic. It’s a lot like taking pain medication for a broken bone: you might feel better for a little while, but if the bone isn’t set right, the pain will persist.

Today I am grateful for the many people who have helped me do the “inside job” of creating a lasting transformation.

Most of all, I am grateful for having an underlying sense of wholeness and well-being whether or not things are going well in my life in the moment. Even when things seem to be falling apart, I feel resourceful. I have had this experience numerous times and, little by little, it has become my default way of being. I am grateful for developing and maintaining an inner sense of self, well-being, and wholeness and perhaps a connection with something beyond myself, that sustains me in difficulty as well as in good times. I am grateful for the awareness that this inner sense of fullness and integrity, and a strong resourceful self is available to each of us, and is our own birthright.

Now, mind you, I ain’t all that well, and have times of when I become attached to sadness, frustration, despair, anger, and irritability -- that’s part of being human. But I am equally grateful that even in those times I can still have an underlying sense of joy as my ground of being. I possess an inner knowing that I have the resources to weather the storms, an unbeatable sense of pragmatic optimism that I will come out on the other side of my difficulties not only intact, but also wiser and stronger.

What more could I ask of my life?

All of us have personal limitations we have struggled to overcome. With some of these challenges, it seems that no matter what we do, they won’t go away. Most of us turn away from those parts of ourselves we don’t like. We try to repress feelings we don’t want to have. We try to “think positively” and push away negative thoughts. These approaches will never work -- they never seem to create natural, lasting change. Besides, at least half of life ain’t all that pretty and how can you expect good results if you’re busy denying a good chunk of reality?

I am here to say today that I am most grateful to be able to carry the message that the way to happiness is through our limitations.

My name is Eddie and I’m in recovery from civilization… 

Thanks for reading. If you enjoyed reading it as much as I enjoyed writing it, please consider helping me out by sharing it, liking me on Facebook, following me on Twitter, or even throwing me some money on GoFundMe HERE or via PayPal HERE so I can keep calling it like I see it.

Sunday Sermon [The Full Catastrophe]

Hola mi Gente,

My first day at my new gig is tomorrow. I’m still looking to rent a room or studio, if anyone knows… 

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The Full Catastrophe

Am I not a man? And is not a man stupid? I’m a man. So I married. Wife, children, house, everything. The full catastrophe.

 -- from Zorba the Greek

Those of you familiar with the author, Nikos Kazantzakis, are probably familiar with the above quote. Jon Kabat-Zinn, the founder of the Mindfulness Based Stress Reduction (MSBR) Clinic named his book on the subject of using mindfulness meditation as a way to address pain management, Full Catastrophe Living.

It’s an interesting proposition: using all of life -- the good, the bad, and the ugly -- as grist for the mill. I hear too many people talking about how they want to remove “negativity” from their lives. I question the notion to ignore/ remove at least 50% of your life. Actually, I’ve tried this and I’m here to tell you that living in a sensory deprivation environment (otherwise known as solitary confinement -- true story), is not all it’s geared to be.

I mean, I’m not saying we should go out of our way to create or engage “negativity,” but why turn away from it? Why not use it? I don’t know jack about gardening, but what I’ve learned from gardeners is that refusing to engage negativity is a lot like refusing to use manure, or compost to cultivate your garden. And what is negativity but some kind of shit anyway? Sadly, negativity is oftentimes some shit or some one you don’t like. And no matter how much you try to turn away from negativity, everywhere you go, there you are -- with all your own negative baggage. If you perceive it as merely negative, whatever it happens to be, then no amount of turning away will erase negativity because you are creating the perception of negativity in the first place.

Check this out: every situation, accurately perceived, becomes an opportunity to heal. That means negative situations too. No, it doesn’t mean life will be all pleasant and the sun will be shining all the fuckin time. What? Didn’t you get the memo?! If you want fair, go back to kindergarten. Sorry to break it down in such a cold manner. LOL Honestly, I see a lot of unrealistic expectations from the adults of the world. It seems many of us actually believe spending our lives running from unpleasant feelings and clinging pleasant ones is a viable life strategy.

It isn’t... 

People will disappoint you, the fates will conspire to fuck up your plans, your kids will sometimes never appreciate your sacrifices, and not all women will find me sexually attractive. Shit, Rosario Dawson doesn’t even know I exist.

I’m not saying I should deny my feelings. I am actually saying we all should do the opposite: feel your feelings completely. Feel the full catastrophe of your life. What happens to anger, sadness, fear, hate, and envy, lust when you stop trying to categorize / analyze them and just feel them? What happens when you invite the negative as well as the positive and embrace both as a mother would embrace both a “good” and “bad” child? I’ll tell you what happens: you become free as you are healed and made whole.

All healing is essentially letting go of fear. Playing the run-around game based on your likes and dislikes is in reality fear-based living. Try it one day: stay with the hurt without giving in the compulsion to attach a story to it. What we often do is we substitute neurosis for suffering and that just makes it all a lot more painful. Add stress to pain and you have suffering. Let me break that down:

pain + stress = suffering.

I think that’s also a good formula for neurosis.

Coming to wholeness is actually a release from the past. Now here’s where it gets a little tricky. People will rightfully point out that there is a process that leads to letting go, that leads to grief. The thing is this: how many times must you do the process before you start getting it without having to go through all the stages?

Suffering, my friends, is optional.

My name is Eddie and I’m in recovery from civilization…

You Complete Me...

¡Hola! Everybody...
I’m sorry, but while I’m happy that a woman finally won the Best director award (after 70+ years?!!), I have to admit that I didn’t get Hurt Locker. Hurt Locker was at best a good cable TV film. The sleeper of the year, IMO, was An Education . It got almost no play, but featured one of the best performances (a very young Carey Mulligan! ) I’ve seen in quite some time. Sandra Bullock for a film that barely rises above the sappy shit you see on the Lifetime Channel?!! ::blank stare::

Now, I know imma get slammed for being a racist (again), but let me get this straight: M’nique wins (and rightfully so) for playing one of the most vile mothers to ever grace the screen, and Bullock wins for playing a mother to a black child no one else wanted? Ohhhhh-kaaayyyyy....

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-=[ Wholeness ]=-

Something we were withholding made us weak
Until we found it was ourselves.
-- Robert Frost

We all know that corniest of lines, the “You complete me” line uttered by the Tom Cruise character in the film, Jerry Maguire. A friend likes to joke that Tom had her at the knock on the door and if he just wanted some poonani... LOL!

The sad thing is that there is some truth to the line and it gets lost in the melodrama. We all complete one another. Not in the co-dependent not-feeling-complete-unless-you’re-in a-relationship sense. That’s not really about completion, connection, or wholeness. We complete each other in the very real sense that we wired for connection. Without connection, we’re fragmented. While in a smaller way we are whole unto ourselves, as we grow and mature our definition of self encompasses more than our individual wants and needs. Eventually, your sense of self encompasses your family, your community, the earth -- eventually all of creation. This is not at the expense of your self, just that your self grows...

Wholeness is our natural state and it’s this impulse or instinct toward wholeness that is the essence of true healing. Healing involves removing the obstacles to this natural state and bringing ones self and world into alignment. Freed from these obstacles, our natural “instinct to heal” will guide us toward a state of wholeness.

Many different healers take different approaches to healing, but essentially the role of the healer as a guide for those who have fallen out of balance is pretty much a universal philosophy. Healing, most of all, is going beyond the individual mind, body, and spirit to heal family relationships and eventually even global relations.

Love,

Eddie