The New Year 2011 THOUGHTS WHILE DE-CLUTTERING & PURGING

The New Year 2011 THOUGHTS WHILE DE-CLUTTERING & PURGING
(and taking a trip back through life sorting out what to keep and not keep)...

If I had only…

Forgotten future greatness
And looked at the green things
And appreciated the simple beauty
And reached out to those around me
And smelled the fresh clean air
And noticed the subtle changes in the season
As leaves begin to fall to the ground signaling the coming months of cold
And ignored the forms and the self-styled obligations
And heard the rain on the roof
And put my arms around others more

…and it’s not too late

I may die before morning.
But there is no way I could feel cheated if I didn’t have another day.
I didn’t deserve today for one minute, God knows.

Now it’s morning. I have been given another day;
Another day to hear and read and write and smell and walk and love.

I am alive for another day.
I think of those who aren’t.

What did I do to deserve birth? It was a gift. I am ME-that is a miracle.
My prayer is: I will be what I will be and I will do what I will do no more no less.
I am convinced that this residual anxiety running through my life is the tension between what I “should be” and what “I am”. Living as others need to see me versus living.

Anxiety does not come from thinking about the future.
It is the tension between the desire to control what I will “be” in my mind.
I “will be what I will be”- where is the anxiety in that? Anxiety is the realization that I might not reach that particular rung on the “opinion-ladder”.
I can not “make my mark” for all time---those concepts are mutually exclusive.
“Lasting effect” is a self-contradictory term. Meaning does not exist in the future and neither do I. Living in the moment is sacred. Nothing will have meaning “ultimately”. No toy can constitute a well lived life. Nothing will even mean tomorrow what it did today. Meaning changes with the context. MY meaningfulness is in the here and now.

It is enough that I am of value to someone today.

Why do human beings judge their day by how much they’ve accomplished?
When I can get to where I can enjoy just lying on the rug picking up lint balls…
I will then no longer be too ambitious. I am holding this kitten in my arms so he can sleep, and what more is there at this precise moment? The way we should live is to have no way. Our only habit should be to have none.

“What do I want to do in life?” “What is my purpose?” My assumption is that I have a reason for living, that my life has a direction. But, just maybe we are not moving in one direction any more than history is. The assumption that I am headed towards something greater makes me want to justify my past actions and plan out (thus eliminating) the future.

The reason I don’t want to wait in line, do the mundane tasks etc. is that in the back of my mind I have come to believe I have a destiny to achieve and that therefore any mundane. Task is a waste of my time because it does not contribute to the “important work” I have to do in order to achieve this greatness which is anothers concept… not my own.

We as humans permit others “ideas” of greatness to permeate our being.

When God revealed himself to Moses, he said it was: I AM THAT I AM.

There is much to be learned in this. I am constitutes the now.
Today I don’t want to live for, I want to live.If I work toward an end, meantime I am imprisoned to a “process”. The rainbow is more beautiful than the pot at the end of it, because the rainbow is now. The pot never turns out to be what I expected anyway.

There is a part of me that wants to write, a part that wants to theorize, a part that wants to paint, a part that wants to teach, a part that wants to go at a slower pace, a part that wishes to run fast… To force myself into a single role, to decide to be just one thing in life, would kill off large parts of me. Rather, I recognize that I live now and only now, and I will do what I want to do this moment and not what I decided was best for me yesterday.

Perfectionism is slow death. If everything were to turn out like I would want it to, just like I would plan for it to, then I would never “experience” anything new; my life would be an endless repetition of stale successes. When I make a mistake, I experience something unexpected.

The past is over and the future is not yet---my desires must therefore be in and for the present. I am all that I am in the present…not some future precognition. A mistake is a declaration of the way I am, a jolt to the way I intend, when I have listened to my mistakes I have grown. Probably the biggest crime we commit against each other as humans is this daily show of “normality”. I have countless
little conversations with a variety of people, and the impression I get is that most individuals don’t have problems. The comment “Don’t mind her”, she’s got a problem” illustrates this universal attitude toward personal difficulty. The implication is that having a problem is a strange and avoidable weakness.

When I come in repeated contact with this daily facade of normality I begin to assume that I too deserve such a life, and I get annoyed with the present and look upon my difficulties as unjust tragedies. And because I assume that there is something unnatural about my having a problem, I attempt to present a problem-free appearance too…when all any of us need is a kind receptive ear, and a how can we work on this together.

There are no absolutes for something so relative as human life. Both my body and my emotions were given to me and it is as futile for me to condemn myself for feeling scared, insecure, selfish as it is for me to get mad at myself for the size of my feet. I am not responsible for my feelings, but what I do with them. It is equally as useless for me to be disgruntled about having had the thought I just had as it is for me to criticize myself for something I did yesterday. It is a new day, Okay, that is what I thought yesterday, now this is what I’m thinking.

Fear is static that prevent me from hearing my intuition. Anxiety, fear, etc. is a fleeing from something. There is something over there in the corner of my mind, some thought, some “image” that I don’t want to look at, that I want to run away from. Fear is often an indication I am avoiding myself.

There may be a natural, healthy kind of fear, but the fear I don’t like and I no longer wish to obey is the fear of displeasing other people. It is most often a fear of not doing what I (too quickly) assume others expect. I feel smaller, weaker, and less a person after I have acted out of this kind of fear. I want to be aware of what others “expect” but not be despotized by it. If I reflexively choose the opposite of what they “expect” I am still being controlled. What I want is to act of love and respect for myself.

There is no such thing as “best” in a world of “individuals” The superior and blessed moment are when I feel equal.

I talk because I feel, and I talk to you because I want you to know how I feel.

And my negative criticism informs you: You hurt my feelings a minute ago.

My love for my (ex)lover seems to typify what so many lovers go through. At first we are only seeing each others virtues. Now we seem to only see each others faults. If we make it through this latter stage then maybe we will see each other and truly be friends.

I don’t’ want you to just listen to my words; I want you to feel what they mean.

I don’t want to hold you to your words. Deep emotions are often expressed in irrational words.

I want you to be able to say anything…even what you don’t mean.

For communication to have meaning, it must have life. It must transcend “you and me” and become truly “us” (oneness). If I truly communicate, I see in you a life that is not me and I ‘partake” of it. And you see and “partake” of me In a small way we then grow out of our old selves and become something new. To have this kind of “sharing” neither can enter into a conversation clutching ourselves. We must enter it with loose boundaries. I give myself to the “relationship”, and be “willing” to be what grows out of it.

“All I want is to be loved” Wanting to be loved, to be lovable, is not really a desire for how I want to be, but a deeper look presents the truth in this …but how I want “others” to be. Want is not expressing need. Need can make one feel “vulnerable”…

I need your heart and your eyes and your ears and your touch and your words. I need you to see me and hear me and feel me and speak to me and love me.

Now by finally giving what I wanted, I realize that I now have what I thought I lacked before.

Perceptions are dirty. Ideas are clean. They soar in the serene supernatural. I can take them out and put them on paper in words and then they fit in a letter or a book, they lead me down the narrow way. And in the morning they are there.

Ideas are straight, perceptions are wayward. But the world is round, and a messy mortal is your friend.


Come walk with me in the mud…well ~~as soon as the snow melts.