Flavors of Wisdom- What’s Yours?

Yesterday my friend brought me to do an important errand for getting my massage license in Texas. I’ve been putting it off for years and now I am stepping back up to the plate. We began talking about how to make money.

“My wish for you is that you just see what you’re worth. Your time, your knowledge, and your energy is worth a lot more than I think you think it is.” She said, or something close to that.

I realized as she spoke that she was right. I’ve studied massage, but also herbalism and reiki and alternative heading treatments. Before that I studied psychology and Buddhism. I traveled to India to learn from Tibetan monks and traveled around my own country in vans and hitching rides with truck drivers in the south. I’ve lived with old gem collectors, farmers, herbalists and beer brewers. I’ve delved into the minds of con artists and traveling artists, meditators and masters of running away.

I have a lot to draw from.

Recently I went through a break up that I saw coming before the other person did. I know how feelings tend to work, especially when other people come into the equation. What hurts is the feeling of calling it, knowing it, and being told it simply isn’t true. Until it is, and I feel taken off guard and lied to.

I see now the problem wasn’t that he lied, it was that I saw what was happening before he did. I just believed him over myself.

Maybe it’s my personality, maybe it’s growing up as a woman in this culture, maybe it’s a lot of things. But I definitely have a strong tendency to doubt myself and assume anything I offer is a meager second-rate version of what someone else would offer. My friend and her words to me make me want to spend a decent amount of energy paying attention to this.

I’m sure that for all of us, there are experiences that feed our view of the world in ways that give us extra insight. Sometimes we forget how these experiences actually enhance our “value” in every area of life we choose to engage with. Sometimes we doubt the plain and simple truth because we start thinking too much about how other people see it, and just like that, it’s as if all the time we spent on our passions and indulging our curiosity is wasted in a way because we aren’t listening to it.

But I would like to do a better job of listening to and respecting my own flavor of hard-earned wisdom, and respecting the same in others. I wonder how it will shift the daily flavor of my existence to do that.

How about you, do you feel like you have life experiences that add to the way you are able to assess situations now differently than some people you are close to?

Do you doubt yourself a lot, is that a problem?

Can you think of ways to be more aware of your gifts and share them with greater confidence so the world around you can benefit from your unique flavor of wisdom?

Spirituality & Victim-Blaming: Exploring Our Desire for Control

This morning I listened to a talk on Radical Forgiveness. I was enjoying some of what the author was saying, but this part pissed me right off:

“When I first started to do this work, I was working with people who have cancer. It’s well known that people who tend to get that are people who have a hard time processing their feelings. They tend to repress them, and they have a hard time forgiving.”

Now, maybe I’m just oblivious to all those studies that have linked cancer to repressed feelings. Last I knew, anyone could get cancer and certain things put you at more risk. And repressed feelings happen for a whole lot of people, welcome to society. Why the need to take a good idea of radical forgiveness and make it somehow relate to a disease that many people fear? Many teachings by famous authors seem to take this route of turning otherwise mindful and loving practices into magic tricks that can help you avoid certain fates. I think it comes down to a built in desire for control, which we can become more aware of. When we are more aware of it, we can notice that moment when we start blaming victims out of our own fear and shift that into actual compassion.

Drawing Correlations is Natural

People seem to be natural experts at coming up with ways of understanding the world and drawing correlations between one thing and another to avoid suffering and danger. If awesome things happen the two times I wear a necklace in one month, it becomes a lucky necklace. If I have a bad day, maybe it’s because of the food I ate. I draw connections all the time for myself to search for control.

The way that some spiritual circles draw these correlations and connect them to huge topics like cancer, accidents, or other forms of suffering has irked me for some time because even though the intention is not to place blame, it shows up like a shadow whenever someone needs to prove that their particular magic trick is working. They can have their idea for how to avoid suffering, point to someone else in a less desirable position and say “See? What I’m doing is clearly working because I’m not over there right now.”

The quest for control leads us to blame no matter how you cut it. If you are manifesting your dreams and they are all coming true, and your friend is having a horrible year of lost jobs and broken relationships, then logic would have it that your friend should simply make a Dream Board or whatever and start manifesting like you are. Because if you are in control of your good life, your friend is in control of hers as well.

Lack of Correlation & Control = Scary

It’s rather scary to think that sometimes, shit happens and it’s unfair and there is absolutely no way of preventing it or finding a pattern. It’s much nicer to feel like there’s some control and a solid reason.  You are born into devastating poverty? It’s probably past life karma, or else you just haven’t read the freaking Law of Attraction enough times. You have cancer? Maybe you should try letting go of your trauma or avoiding GMOs. You have depression? Just start thinking positively, you’re attracting too much negativity, man.

Of course we all want to be healthy as long as possible. Of course it’s nice to think that if we have it good right now, there’s a reason for that and we can somehow prolong it. Of course it’s fun to feel like we can attract what we want. But in the end, the body breaks down, no matter how much you manifest health and well being. That’s a natural part of life, and it’s the one thing that we know for certain. We can have compassion and love for others much more effectively if we aren’t in a state of blaming them or holding them responsible for their suffering just so that we can feel in control of ours.

Day to Day, not Life or Death

It’s okay for an idea to be a great idea without it also being a way to escape certain types of suffering or death itself. Learning to forgive is awesome, but it doesn’t guarantee you a life without cancer. When you say those two things are correlated, you are making people responsible for the condition they are in. Being aware of your thoughts and intentions is cool, but it doesn’t mean that you can avoid relationship issues and accidents. Pretending those things are correlated is putting the responsibility of disasters onto the people who suffer through them. For your end of the correlation to work, ugly stuff has to happen on the other side.

Personally, when I implement an idea into the day to day, it’s a lot less stressful or fear-based than when it feels like life or death. If an idea is presented to me and instigates that desire to find causality and correlation in order to avoid certain types of disasters, I would like to be more aware of the blame that inherently arises as soon as I think I have that alluring kind of control. Because without that sense of control, I do have a lot more compassion and vulnerability towards life in general.

How about you, do you think that what that guy said is as infuriating as I do?

Do you feel like you control and are responsible for the things that happen to you? Do you feel the same about others?

Did you take some time to gaze at the sky today?

 

Can Mindfulness Melt the Snowball of Numbness?

A couple of days ago, I meditated for almost five minutes. I used to do 20 minutes every other day as a bare minimum. I realized that after sitting, my mind was so much more in perspective.

I think that I’m a person who has a lot of thoughts. Maybe not more than most people, but more than some. My mind knows how to race and when I start to take every single thought seriously and try to weigh them against each other, I feel almost like I’m drowning. It leads me to making parts of songs and parts of blog posts pretty frantically, without actually finishing or loving any of them. Maybe there is no room for the stillness and experience of love when the world is racing so fast.

The sitting practice helps me to remember in a very experiential way that each thought is simply a thought, and that I can let some of them go without any horrible ramifications. It also seems that the farther I get away from that practice, the less I engage with other mindfulness activities like Yoga or even just basic stretching. I start getting addicted to the madness and afraid of the silence and stillness that I pretty much forget is even there.

It makes me wonder about addictions in general. The more frantic my mind gets, the more I start turning to alcohol and coffee and cigarettes to find some sense of comfort and ground. Of course, all of these things provide the exact opposite in most cases. But that doesn’t stop the craving for them when my mind is in such a state.  Partly because the thought “I should go get beer” is harder to see in perspective when I haven’t been engaging in my sitting practice.

Another thing that happens, which is pretty embarrassing to type, is that my mind tells me that the chaos and substances will help me to be more creative. Of course, I start writing more often sometimes when I’m in that state, but it’s not usually writing that I end up being proud of or using for any real project. It seems to be a rationalization built out of an addiction to numbing behavior, and as long as I can call it that to its face every once in awhile, it’s rather easy to get out of.

I wonder how many other people experience the swing in the way that I do, where it seems like the farther away I get from health and groundedness, the more I begin to seek out that chaos instead of things that bring me back. It’s quite interesting.

I hope you are well and I hope that getting back into my practice will leave me with more semi-useful things to blog about rather than the zillions of half-finished posts that you never get to see 🙂

Do you have numbing behaviors that seem to snowball into each other?

Are you just always able to be healthy and happy and motivated to be good to yourself?

 

 

 

Becoming an Expert of Not Being an Expert

In the past many months, I almost forgot I was working on a book. It was still there, popping into my thoughts every so often; but not as something I was excited about. It came up as an example of how I never finish anything and stay as a constant beginner in anything I do. But last week, I decided to actually take another look at it.

It’s interesting to me that part of why I put off working on the book or even opening the file is because I feel ashamed. I feel ashamed that I never finished it, that I don’t seem to stick with anything for very long and always change my mind. Different things will set my creativity on fire at different times and I have a hard time once it gets down to really building skills. I’d rather dabble. Is there anything wrong with this?

Benefits and Downsides of Dabbling

Today I’m in a good mood, so I see it all through that lens. I am noticing that as I work on songs today and contemplate the book, the two types of writing feed into each other. It’s enjoyable to work on one and then the other, and go back and forth as I please. I feel like maybe both forms of writing are turning out better for it.

It is now officially impossible for me to say “Here’s this craft I’ve been working on diligently for fifteen years.”  I have played guitar, made jewelry, and written for at least that long. But none of those things became a regular practice that I truly devoted attention and energy to. I would forget about some of them for years at a time, except writing in my journal. Chances are that I’ll forget about one of them soon again, as other things spark up my interest.

Acknowledging Patterns

I realize that next week, I may feel very hard on myself for not having a well-practiced art form. I’ll tell myself that the reason everything I do is so mediocre is that I don’t put enough energy into it, and then I’ll probably zone out on Facebook and numb out that feeling.  Why is it so easy to enjoy the dabbling right now? One answer could be hormones. Another could be the focus of where I perceive value to be coming from.

If I’m thinking about how I should be making a living from my jewelry or writing, it’s easy to get mad at myself for not putting more devoted effort into those things over the years. “If you had worked at writing since high school, you’d be better at it now.” 

But if I’m thinking about having fun and living a life that I find enjoyable and fulfilling, then the dabbling seems fine because it has led to just that. Nobody else gets to determine whether I enjoy doing something, they just get to determine if I get their positive feedback or not.

Who Gets to Decide You’re Doing it Wrong?

Maybe part of the key is to remember where value lies. It is always up to us to live according to our values and to feel worthy, but when we start making comparisons or judging our value through the eyes of real or imaginary others, it feels like it is up to them.

“You aren’t making money with your art, therefore, it’s not valuable” can come up for me and other artists. That can be true of to you “value” means “making money by selling art”.  But if “value” means that you are engaged with the process of creating it or with the final result, that’s a whole different thing. Maybe your money has to come from elsewhere, or maybe you have to make certain things that are valuable to the world so that they will pay you for them if that’s what matters most to you.

The bottom line is- I can safely say that I have fun dabbling, even if it doesn’t lead to me becoming an expert who blows other people’s minds with my skills.  Maybe I am my own type of expert.

I hope that I can remember this the next time my anger and frustration towards myself kicks in. As I look back at recent rough days, I realize that the self-critical feeling is always based on the eyes of others and not my own. Whether it’s about dabbling in general or about a specific story or song, when I feel like I suck it is always feeling like I suck in the eyes of others or the world. Not in my own eyes. When I feel the air on my skin and the breath in my lungs, I am never dissatisfied with that experience. When I pump out a song or story or post to try and get positive feedback without enjoying the process or actually feeling the creativity, it usually backfires because the whole action was based on other people telling me I’m worthy instead of feeling worthy and engaged in the moment.

How about you, do these things ever come up in this way for you and your writing?

Do you feel like you always look through your own eyes at your work, or through the eyes of others, or through a mixture of both?

Did you feel the wind on your face today and enjoy it for a few seconds?

 

 

 

Cleanliness and Creativity: Nourishing Your Future Creative Flame

This is a concrete tube that I sit in during my lunch break. I love it. It’s the perfect shape to let my feet and back rest while I listen to music and eat my lunch.

At my new job, one of the things I’m learning to do is to keep the register area meticulously clean. At first it was almost impossible to be paying attention to the customers and merchandise, while also hand-writing receipts and using the confusing cash register and credit card machine and also keeping that area neat.

Now, even with a half a moment between customers, the stapler is in the right spot and the wrapping paper is tucked away. As it turns out, this has some pretty cool implications for enjoying life and creativity.

It began with my kitchen. Anyone with a kitchen knows that it is a haven for projection and sublimation. It is a place full of tools and sustenance and bliss. Or chaos, confusion, and chores. Often times, all of the above. It has bravely stepped up to be the object of arguments between lovers, and has selfishly taken up more than half of many communal house meetings.

I began to be diligent in my kitchen. I noticed that to be able to clean dishes right away, I had to have space on the dish rack. Every time I noticed dry dishes, I put them away. It seems simple enough; but if you are like me and do not yet have a solid grasp on this one slice of adulthood, you understand that I was basically achieving superhero rank.

But there’s more. I noticed that I began to naturally apply this to other areas of the house. I put clothes directly in the hamper instead of letting some collect behind the closet door first. I removed anything from the coffee table that didn’t live there, promptly and effectively. I called people right when I thought about doing it, and checked my email and bank balance without putting it off for ten minutes to check Facebook.

Life is pretty cool this way, I gotta say. And I think that it’s more than just having a clean house and effective systems.

Cleanliness and Creativity

I read a quote recently about how when you feel the fire and the urge to write, you should do it while the flame is hot. A lot of us know that to be true. The problem is, you never quite see it coming.

Maybe you have a week of uninspired days, and then you suddenly are filled to the brim with ideas. You want to write them, draw them, sing them, whatever them. But there are dishes to be done before you can make a pot of almighty coffee and the area in which you want to work is not workable, you have to clean it. That gets in the way. By the time the space is possible to work in, the flame might be out.

But by being diligent with the day to day, you are taking care of that future self, that future chance. Unless you have your environment made into a welcoming atmosphere for whatever arises, you are basically leaving today’s trash for tomorrow’s self. That’s not generally useful, and it’s also not respectful. If you have a guest coming over, you clean. But you are going to be a person tomorrow that you don’t even know yet today, perhaps a person with a huge creative burst. Don’t you want to have things wonderfully ideal for that version of you?

Living Now Instead of Playing Catch Up

I’m wondering if one way for me to enjoy life more is to stop playing as much catch up. To be fully able to be present where I am without having to take care of yesterday’s issues beforehand. Being able to just exist in a home is a blessing, being able to cook effectively and sit and enjoy the space is a great gift. In the past, some of us were given that gift by guardians who payed rent or a mortgage, or older siblings who cleaned up the kitchen. But now it’s not going to happen without our own awareness and attentiveness to our space and what makes us thrive.

Maybe your ideal art studio is a full blown mess. But it’s a certain type of mess, I would imagine. A mess of art supplies that can be worked with. A mess that lets you be your creative self, rather than a mess that gets in the way of that.

Just imagine that your favorite musician, artist, writer, or researcher called and told you they were coming over tomorrow and really hoped they could get some work done at your place. How would you set up your space for them? Don’t you deserve at least that?

Preciousness of Time

Another factor in this for me is the preciousness of time. Suddenly, free time to enjoy my space is much smaller than it used to be. It makes me extra motivated to keep it as wonderful as I can so that when I wake up on my day off, after a quick vacuum and a pot of coffee, I am ready to enjoy myself and the day without having to spend an hour cleaning up what I mindlessly left behind.

Plus, if I do feel creative or an urge to just relax, I can do so. I don’t have to let those gosh darn dishes get in the way of that.

How about you, do you set up your space so that your creativity has a space to thrive when it arises?

Do you think there are things you could do that would make your space more welcoming to your creative bursts?

Do you think keeping a clean kitchen is super easy? What are your methods for doing so?