Pema and Johnny Cash and the IRS whats a name anyway

Good Morning Relatives 

well I decided to do a little meditation last night before bed so I soaked in a hot bath of korean sea salt and epsom salt and rosemary and eucalyptis    nice   then I read a bit in Pema Chodrons book the places that scare you  only reading from a held back meditative place which by that point was quite easy 

it allowed me to observe and see something that I had not previously  which is always interesting isn't it   

Pema is big on meditation and on labeling her source of effort as bodhichitta  which is a nice effort  and all but there is way too much emphasis on levels and achievement  if we are then we are and why not 
I say go for it Pema and let yourself be an original and all encompassing source already  don't hold yourself back out of some sort of respect for those who have and those who can't or won't  its not worth it  so forget the bodhichitta or becoming a bodhisattva   be Pema  she is grand don't settle for  the prelim stage of enlightenment 

   anyhow that note aside I was enjoying the reading and not reading at the same time as the intense saltyness drew myself out of myself and allowed me to be me in a whole different way   that is when something that Pema said or rather she wrote on the page that I was reading caught my ah ha moment 

it is the idea that intensity let loose in side of me (usually in the dream time)  triggers such deep and intense breathtaking feeling that before I know it in an attempt to get away from myself   from that fire that is destroying me inside which I don't remember inviting in the door by the way  I end up leaping onto a story board and running down the road riding what is often a very dead horse till the emotion or the fuel burns out of me or burns me up and hopefully in the midst of all that conflagration if I can hold on and not harm myself  then I can phone a friend (though it seems no one gets up early any more do they at least not in my time zone) and if they answer and I havnt set myself or the house on fire I can ask them to help me please  help me while I burn to death in my own cauldron of fear that has somehow caught on fire in the night and is out of control inside my very own self   thank life for old childhood friends who do answer the phone and who know what a horrible and unremovable thing it was to have to live through my sister shooting herself and dying before I was done loving her or needing her to love me back   thank life for friends who can just say I understand and I am holding you even from thousands of miles away steadfast and long enough and strong enough that I can die and be reborn again into my own reality  thank life for the truly loving and selfless friend of mine

Pema said to let go of the story and have the intensity of the emotion and while having it sort of like the bath and the book and meditation all at once adding up to a fourth dimension  let it flow and yet don't be consumed by it but take a look at it while I am in it   that was an interesting thing that I as it so happens was doing while reading and soaking so the idea was already present (kind of like Pema being Pema without the boddi butting in)

so I thought about that  

then she said that when we hold ourselves to a story or a action or non action while we are having this eruption of fuel if we are fearful which is the point of the book to learn not to be fearful then we are simply using the fuel and the fire (the story we are telling our selves) to avoid the underlying fear and so in a way we are harming ourselves   which may not be overt but is definitely accumulative like steps on the treadmill or four or six too many m&m's or one more chip or one less hug eh?

so my project this week is to recognize when I am telling me a story and stop and take a face on look at the underlying fear    I may not change avoiding going to the gym on sunday because the guy who mans the desk not only watches in the cameras everything I am doing but comments to me about what he thinks of me when I come by the desk which I must  so what is the underlying fear?  a creepy dude watching me makes me feel awful and I don't want to feel powerless and exposed  so what is the story I tell me? that if I go to the gym I will be victimized   brrrr ugh yuck yuck yuck   since it is not socially acceptable to whack his head off  either I go and ask for his schedule so that I can go when he is not there  or I don't go at all  and or I tell his super visor what he did and does  and I recognized that I was avoiding going because I could feel myself holding myself back from going,  I could feel the part of me that wants to go work out and wants to not keep eating or reading or sitting for hours on end but I would ignore it. I would push it aside. I would push me aside and not listen to me.  thus the emotional cauldron fills with fire while I am looking away pretending that I am doing what I want to do when what I want to do is not what I am doing. Capisce?

all this from Pema  imagine that   anyhow  I don't feel less creeped out or less vulnerable knowing what is behind the story of why I am not going and allowing myself to add one more day of blobness to my already unwelcome days of blobness due to my injuries  but what I feel is that I am honest and clear and not carrying an extra layer of nasty crap just so that I don't have to think about facing the creepy dude at the gym because lets face it  what girl knows how to deal with her fear of creepy dudes?  I really don't understand how those girls who go about exposed do that knowing that there are creepy people out there oggling  them  not that I think I am ogable these days Im not but it makes it more creepy that someone would watch someone who is as out of shape as me urgh brrrr yuck  anyhow  I know as women we are supposed to take back the night and all of that but really it is exhausting having to deal with creepy people and in a small town there seems to be even more of them per capita than in the big city  creepy! ok enough of that

so I went to bed thinking about how to use Pema's looking glass today which is now and I was happy about it  a way to explore and reauthenticate my life  may not change what I do but really who wants to be a self induced zombie?  so i went to bed and thought about a friend of mine who is being reviewed by the IRS (by the way it seems despite the propaganda that they have cut back on staff and the audits are less than 1% that everyone is being audited except the rich and famous or the republicans or the Koch brothers) any how I was sending her a good night best of luck thought because I knew she was up late organizing old tax crap  and I woke up at one in the morning with this poem :

Lay down your burden as well as your hed
Let us sleep together the sleep of the ded

For the ded think not on things that are fled
Or let things go round and round in their hed

Like poems or loves that cannot be hed
For the ded be not afraid of ser dred

Nor do they toss and take to their bed
Memories of lives that have long since fled

Narrie do Thoughts of food, wine or bed
Cross their sleep nor worried their hed

Sleep ye now with neither harm nor dred
The sweet sweet sleep that comforts the ded


ta da!  nice eh  so I texted it to her in the early morning

then I finally fell asleep  and woke somewhere in Scotland with a bunch of old women who were trying to get their act together for a lament  but none of them were quite through the barrier that was holding them back  so I stood up and began to meditate out loud the song that Johnny Cash and Fiona Apple sang as a duet on one of his last albums  Bridge over Troubled Water   only they jumped right in on the first cue and took it off like a sunday school rhyme  which was all wrong  so I had to make them stop and begin again  and over and over they bungled it with their fast pony sunday school mantra carry me away down the river singing
I could feel that they weren't feeling the song  just singsonging it and that felt to me like so much less than what I could feel and wanted to bring to them  and to the ded

I kept telling them NO NO NO  it is a lament  a LAMENT you feel it and that is what makes the words come out that is what makes the song  only they weren't getting it  that it is FEELING that brings the song  and if we FEEL then the song shows up on our lips and we don't get lost down the river of denial

so Pema I feel ya

best mb

fortune cookie

Good Morning Relatives 

I've been working on the kung fu panda handbook  it is coming along   I also am trying to reconnect, to remake and perhaps rewire my brain as I go   when I fell back in 2012 I really smacked my brain and it had to take a break.  then, just when I thought I was breaking out of that healing cusp I fell again in feb last year and reinsured my shoulder and I am sure smacked my brain again though not quite as hard, and have had some setbacks due to that fall on the ice last year 

now every dark has its light if we can find the matches or where we put our glasses to find those matches and then locate the candle to find our way back into normal life   Im still working on finding my glasses for those of you who are interested  

I have chronic pain in my left brachial plexus  by chronic I mean it is ever-present in varying stages of attention controlling awareness  which is exhausting actually  who would have thought my days would become exhausting?  the brachial plexus which you can look up if you are curious and my shoulder were something that I really took for granted most of my life, as to what that plexus affects  the effect it has on me is that I get tired, I have very little ability to function for very long at all during the day and if I work on writing it can be the end of me for the remainder of the day  because of the nerve and muscle pain it triggers or exacerbates in my left neck, shoulder, arm, hand 

to top that all off I have been working on my brain  trying to restore and recapture what I think of as myself in that capacity  I cannot tell you how horrible it was to find that parts of it were inaccessible to me after the traumas I had   not good bad in fact   so I have been trying to fix that and it causes me to have headaches  odd dry pain that is not quite finger point able but present  very not good   but I trust the process actually and understand that with nerve injuries going back through the pain to find the way back to no pain but functional is the way it works or is supposed to work  

I am someone who gains comfort and peace and extreme well being from snow  from the silence and the cold and the beauty of its perfection and its smell and texture  on and on  everything about snow makes me happy  so my brain decided to interpret my wanting to have my brain back as me going skiing in new snow in an amazing place with amazing drops and twists and turns  what is funny is that there was the old me skiing with me and the new me following  that is until I got to the place where the old way led into a deep well worn actually scorched (imagine scorched snow) very deep track that looked way over skied so I made the decision to hop up on my skis and take myself down a different track  leaving my old self to find its way in its past on its own 

thus the headaches eh?  so new snow new tracks new schussing  kind of scary eh?  no not for me  who knows what I will find the the vast reservoirs of my giant snow brain as I make my way across its landscape  at least I am home at last 

anyhow  I got stuck while working on the panda and had to wait a bit while the pieces found their way to the top and I could put them together.  I realize that not all of what is put together for me is immediately recognizable for you  but that is the nice thing about having your own blog  it is yours as is mine so it makes sense to me which if you read it and you are welcome to it it may or may not make sense to you  se-la-ve 

anyhow I was thinking about how like my shoulder before it made itself so ever presently present to me through loss, I was thinking about how Po's skill as a kung fu master is over looked. Not recognized until he becomes recognizable by learning the standardized forms    what is it that Master OOgway sees when he sees Po? what is it that Po is before he is trained? what is it that makes him Him?  Him of course  like my shoulder. it is the unseen the behind the camera that makes the film  it is the life that is brought to the action that makes the action valuable  not the action itself  so I thought I would share a little of what I wrote this morning  

good luck star troopers,  have fun with your life 

How do we teach that kung fu is everything, everywhere, all the time? That we are its’ essence. We are kung fu always even as we are always language, emotion, give and take, curiosity, and that which must attempt. We are always all of these things. Even if we have not mastered our Effort so that like a horse charging under fire we are able to hold our purpose, our intent and our motion channelled through a form that is particular in its path. WE are that. 

Why do I understand this? Because it is everywhere, every moment that I am. Because I am it, and if I am here it is here. If I am moving it is moving. I am the ball of clay it makes itself from. Therefore in me is all that it is or can be. As I make my way through my life, through the things that I choose to use to shape me or that my own push pull with life molds me into or out of, it still remains that all that is possible, came from me.  How cool is that. 

How do we teach ourselves to return to the understanding that we are masters?  That we are born fully capable of all that we want to be. It is an simple matter of believing we already are extraordinary rather than thinking that we have to achieve something or the other in order to be extraordinary. The only permission we need is our own. 

We are all already all that we can be.  Without me there is no kung fu, I am kung fu, I just may not be disciplined yet, or fully trained. But I am what creates kung fu. Without me kung fu is nothing. I am the everything that kung fu needs so that it can exist. Kung fu comes to my table to eat not, the other way around.  It is very important that we take this tiger by the right tale so that it doesn't eat us alive. 

How do we reverse the mirror in which our lives are viewed so that the vast hidden reservoir of our ability is not misfiled in our psyche and shelved as insignificant the moment we walk out of the door of our yoga class, our tai-chi practice, our church study group, or our compassion as a second language study group?

When we push who we are to the back of our minds and forget that we are who we are all the time we become as dry and dusty as a discarded book lost on a forgotten library shelf. When I look back at my life, or at the system of lives around me I see that we are and have been living our lives as if we need some sort of special permission, degree or certificate of competency in order to own them. In order to simply enjoy them. I see so much loss through the loss of all our magnificence because we have come to believe that without what is without whatever that is or may be we are nothing. Worse than nothing, most of us believe we are less than.  Brrrr-ugh, yuck yuck yuck.

When Mr Ping teaches Po that in order to make something special you just have to believe that it is special, he is also saying the opposite. That in order to make something insignificant you just have to believe that it is not special. Our lives, our system of enslavement which is bowing down the heads of our society almost to the breaking point was not created by picking the right or wrong system with which to align ourselves. It was created by thinking that we needed a system at all in order for us to have value, to have purpose, to blossom or make the most of ourselves, or to come to the conclusion that life after going to so much trouble and particular magnificence in creating us would discard us as if we did not matter after all. 

Life is not impersonal. It is not meaningless. It is amazingly, extraordinarily, extravagantly magnificent. And each of us. Each living thing has it wholly in our own hands from the moment we are born until the moment we lay down our little clay suits and move on to the next glorious adventure. We have forgotten that without the magnificent gerbil, the wheel is irrelevant.  When we become salves to the wheel that cannot because of its very nature encompass all of the extraordinary ordinariness of our own simple selves we have lost sight of the original gift of the wheel. 

How do we teach ourselves and thus each other that we already own and in fact embody a tremendous vast incalculable opportunity and competency that is so singularly amazing that there is only one of each of us ever created? How is it that the tools that were created to sharpen our wit, dulled our sense of awareness? Why is it that when I was sent to school and driven to church that the very essence of my own value, my own extraordinary capability was denied, discounted, eliminated from the equation of a successful me as if it was never a divine gift of life fully delivered the moment I was born?

Rather than receive me as the overflowing well that I am, I was taught, brainwashed into thinking that without the permission of that which is without I was less than the meanest thing, even to the point of non existence. I am not the only one who was taught and has used the mirror to destroy myself before it ever occurred to me to see in that mirror looking back at me the infinite capacity that I AM. When education, or persuasion of any kind depends on the premise that without its’ approval, without its’ mastery I am less it is a false teacher. 

Any skill, any discipline, any idea pursued to its infinite application is in fact itself dependent on the presence of the student. Without the student there is no discipline. The student brings to the practice the infinite possibility of learning, adaptation, assimilation, incredulity, curiosity, resilience, application, repetition, opposition, and eventually the ability to discard and move beyond the static realm of the classroom.  Between the small number of practical and personal extraordinary gifts that each student brings to any class, practice, or study of any form of applied learning are the infinite nuances that each student carries within him or herself. Each of us has the seed of infinite possibility bursting open deep inside of us, and reaching and growing towards the light of our own experience in a way that no master will ever experience or have the pleasure of its extraordinary essence of life. 

How do I teach myself? How do I teach all of us to turn the mirror around and instead of seeing what is lacking through some small thimble of controlled negative dialogue, teach myself and others to see what it is, who it is that I bring to the equation just be being present. Just by showing up. Hmm? How do we accomplish this extraordinary reversal of fortune and restore ourselves to our own lives?

Personally for me it is all right here in the Kung Fu Panda. Thank you very much DreamWorks Animation. I just have to believe that I already have the eyes to see it, that I already have the ability to be whatever it is that I see or understand. Then I simply have to get up and get on with it. With me.  No need to be God, or have a degree, or be able to write a masterpiece, do 183 asanas perfectly, or even go on a successful blind date. I just have to get up and be me. Every moment of every day trusting that I am already capable of finding my Way, enjoying what I choose to take on as a discipline or discard as not my cup of tea; as long as I do not leave me behind as I make my way through my own day, my own present presence I will be more than ok. I will be more than enough. I will be, I am my own dragon warrior. 

I'd rather eat bean buns

Good morning Relatives

its super cold today   yet the sky is so present in the crispness  I was able to see the evening and the morning star both in the past twelve hours   so clear and present
I'm working on the writing of the Kung Fu panda interpretation? the teachings that I see in it  and in doing so of course I am getting a great education

its funny how once we clean our glasses the world does have a different focus doesn't it? and it is also funny how what we are working on in ourselves is so immediately relevant to what is next
I received an email from a good acquaintance and it had a link in it to a pod cast by two well respected folks that was titled "The Inner Life of Rebellion"

you know how it is that in the first five minutes that you spend with someone you find out not only how they treat themselves but how as a result of how violent or not they are willing to be to themselves reflexively how violent they are willing to be with you   or you can replace violence with any other adjective or verb as you like  but the first five minutes like a title to a talk are very telling

out of respect for the elder that sent me the link I am looking at this talk

so before I even listened to the pod cast  I reflected on the title
which may seem abrupt to some but the title of something is in fact a big summary of the core of the media

so  I hope you enjoy

First reflection     I am not rebelling    I am restoring myself to my inner focus while staying fully engaged and present in my life 

the wheel that turns me is not outside but within and it turns on this planet and through me and the water that passes through me with each breath and each word and each thought   there is no violence in me nor will I allow the movement of violence to go through me as if I am here to be its filter 

rather I begin and end with neither the idea of a closed system or the thought that it has to have a ruling party 

when we step into the arena of either- or, we have already lost and become prey to the illusion of control

the use of the word rebelling is to assume an antagonistic stance or demeanor   a power play   it assumes that I must either attack or defend something that at best can hold my attention only long enough for me to be destroyed by it 

remember the panda does not chew on the fist of his foe    

remember the only foe the panda faces is the one inside of himself   himself 

rebelling means that there is acquiescence to the idea, the concept that there is a power source outside of me that has right to lay claim to me  

which is false 

chewing on that fist will only distract and deplete me and put my foe in charge of my Effort 

if I take the idea that I must be or am rebellion into my mouth and chew on it, then I have already conceded that I am not available to me. This is chewing on the fist of the illusion of control and giving my center over to that which is not real

I would rather eat bean buns

thank you for the conversation 

best 

mary 

Winter wonder land

Good morning Relatives

Its windy here in Pipestone   the wind is literally howling down the chimney  its quite something to stand out on the snow while the dogs have their morning constitutional and have the wind clean off every wisp of the past  

of course its quite cold out  but somehow it feels really refreshing first thing in the morning    I always think of Ben Franklin and his daily air baths   today the moon is still up  not full any longer already waning as the world comes between herself and her light  so where does that light shine when it is not shining on us ?

I'm waiting on the tea to brew   to take the dogs back out in the morning just for a bit   they are really good dogs  especially this time of year when we have runs of days when it is too cold to be out more than one or two minutes   and inside they spend only a small portion of the day off and on playing then its in their crates to meditate while I am either at the doctor, the library or resting   they are learning to be still when they are not in their crates  which is nice

there are some things that go on in my life that I never write about in the winter  there are some things that go on in my life that I never write about at all.

one thing that my injuries brought into my life is the experience of being connected in a way that I was not previously   previously I think my heart and my mind and my body and my effort were all disconnected  like worker bees that belonged to the same colony  then my Dantian woke up and took over which is amazing and wonderful but very different   it means that the parts of me that worked so diligently separately now tax one another leaving me as a whole rather depleted  I am only just learning not to deplete my self  nor to channel or flush all that I have into one effort as if the balance in my life did not matter or was infinitely recoverable  perhaps it is but when one thing drains me to the point of circling the drain there is something I am not paying attention to about why I am allowing that or seeking it? perhaps

I do know that I have no more tolerance for trauma  and what is funny is that i have discovered that I actually have no responsibility to tolerate trauma   another thing from my primary education discarded   yea  maybe I can take that vacation now and actually go and enjoy the beach

winter sounds are different than summer sounds  especially winter sounds in town  

here the snow plows begin their work at 4am  so if there are going to be owls visiting and I have any chance of hearing them in the night it has to be before the plows begin

I prefer the sounds of the woods  of the water running of the leaves on the trees or the mammals moving about   or the wind  like today   the wind is flexing its muscles against any and all that stand in its way

the other night I went out to get wood from the lean-to and discovered that the pheasant that I had watched walk around the yard while I was writing that day had decided to roost in the rafters of the shed  the explosion of pheasant and dog that was my companion in that tiny space in the dark was so amazing  so much surprise and fear and force coming from the pheasant   so much alert protectiveness from the dog  and me standing still listening holding the wood simply making sure I didn't do anything that would cause me to fall

thats it isn't it  what the winter can be about  learning to stand still and not fall  learning not to leap out in fear, or protectiveness, or service, or what ever    learning to not take hold of the fist of the illusion of control  learning to stop seeking for some kind of input that will entertain me or distract me but rather to find the part in me like when the wind meets my skin in the morning that part of me that perceives it as excellent to be able to find that part in me no matter what is happening with the wind or the moon or the body I wear

I have reached the end of something inside of me this year     the end of debating how to or why or what or which

my writing will change because of it    but the thing is that I think Ive had enough of those kinds of conversations  I would like to go forward to just playing I think   to enjoying what I have learned and fought hard with myself and others to become  I think its enough struggling for me

I've never been much of one for drivel  or talking about stuff that is simply the repeat of someone else trauma or disappointment  or listening to someone trash their family their boss or their whoever  it is just a waste of now to dredge up and vomit all over me and then I have to go and clean off  and start over  

what good is it to think or perpetrate that that kind of standing around and letting oneself be assaulted by someone else's displeasure at their own life or their frustration built on a high emotion rather than a frustration at actually really trying to work something out and not yet making the corner so they keep slamming into the wall of their own blind spot  

we all have blind spots   and we ram into them or use them to run someone else over

until the day comes where we think oh  you know Im tired of that   and we stop   and we stand still until we understand what to do next which sometimes takes a very long winter to find

now i think its time for me to learn how to have the moment as it self  without dragging conversation about the past into it  or allowing someone to fill my moment with their waste products   I think its time to actually learn what is worth having a conversation about  and may be if there is nothing to chat about to be perfectly ok with no sound  no harmony no music blaring all the time  no tv no story running  no plans about the future or assessment of whatever

maybe the sound between myself and others can be discovered and enjoyed without what I used to fill it with  I don't know Ill have to find someone who can understand that without me teaching it to them and then they will have to choose it like I did. they will have to choose it because of them and what comes from it not because of me

have a good day relatives tomorrow it won't exist
mb