Yesterday I wanted to write about paying attention to those around us who in our lives, including ourselves, are addicted. I am speaking not really of alcohol or drugs, but of other addictions. Addiction feels to me like being addicted to a vibration. Being focused on wanting to, or being convinced that I need to feel the energy or power of some action or force. Like getting to the end of a week, Friday Night! and what do I do? I can feel the cells inside of me running around a like an current looking for !!!!!????? What? for what. For the Friday night experience. what ever that is. or has become. It was there inside of me trying to make me go and spend more money, go and find someone to rev me up, or something. anything but just stopping and being quiet. Anything but me and more of just me. LOL funny huh? I remember in the Kung Fu Panda when Po said that even when Master Shifu threw a brick at his head it was better than one more day of just being me. I know how The Panda feels when he says that. When I was not connected to the fact that I WAS and AM my LIFE then I wasn't very careful with it and thus with others lives. Some losses of connection were subtle and took time to realize, some I was naive about how they were really translating into cause and effect, some of my actions were based on little girl fantasies I was still hoping would come true, some I was just plain greedy and wrong. Some of my actions were insensitive or egoist. It all created for me; I created for me a life I had to escape no matter what. A life I couldn't keep and didn't want to keep. Anything but me. Once I realized really truly that if I spent my day in a way that I could keep, after a very short while, I had a life that was not disposable. What a great great learning that was!! very cool
but until I committed and followed through with a daily life in which I could feel me. Until I was satisfied everyday with how that ME could look me in the mirror. I spent alot of time and money and energy running from me, into everything that our society said would make me happy or valuable to myself and others. Some how last Friday night on my way home from hauling the daily trash, the sounds of the local football game reminded me both of when I was young and not so complexly messy, and also perhaps of when my addictions to stimulus outside of me began.
I remember living a half a block from a high school football field. The sounds and the lights and the people all gathering together to struggle, to enjoy, to root, to drink and eat sugar, grease, and snaks. The colors, the band, the smells, the crack of the helmets hitting, the crowd lofting the energy up and down, the whistles bringing us back to focus, the seconds ticking away......... driving us on and on towards the goal of victory! and finally the last points on the scoreboard, leaving us either elated or looking forward to better times next week. I remember being awed by all of it. I remember that it was my first exposure to so many things. I remember being naively susceptible to its vibration. I don't think my parents were aware of the effect it could have on me. I certainly wasn't. It seems harmless enough. A Friday Night High School game. But to me it was a training ground for being in the right place at the right time on the right team, with the right people, smelling, eating, helping make a great event. I felt like I really belonged in the world when I was at a game. Sounds familiar doesn't it? That subtle training that teaching through sound, smell, color, energetic patterns, time restraints, competition, camaraderie, and work, struggle, reward, effort given victory received. I was trained very well at an early age by a football stadium to seek out and covet acceptance, victory, repetition of smells and tastes, to work hard for the team so that I was a winner. It was subtle but the way my mind translated it resulted in a person only too willing to be satisfied by something other than me. Something outside of my hands, my breath. Something that the crowd, the social game could give. It didn't even matter to me that I might lose occasionally. Occasional loss just made us stronger, more determined to practice harder. It never occurred to me until I was in my 50's to look at what I was giving up.
I lost the sense of the end of a day, which is so nice to quiet down and put to bed. To see the stars come out quietly. Night after night the stars show up. Meanwhile every night that follows day, the moon rises silently to illuminate and reflect her relationship with the sun. I lost the soft sounds of the night. The soft reflection of the days efforts come to rest.
Last Friday night when I heard the footballers here in Pipestone over at the high school it was irritating. LOL It was interrupting my need for rest and quiet reflection. My preparation for the prayers I would make for the Cheyenne now that night had come.
I am grateful for my childhood. For the amazing accomplishment of our species to have created "Friday Night Football!" but I also thought how did that get so out of control? I know that I am not the only being in this world that is sensitive to that combination of vibratory events and sensory enticements that lured me out of MY LIFE into one that was so easily distracted and manipulated. I really want us to individually look at where we lost our ability to also enjoy silence and a nice hot bubble bath that soaks away the dirt of the day. The quiet house and night sky, the soft breeze cleaning away the dirt from the cracks in the boards. The feel of clean skin on worn old flannel sheets. And the breath, the deep clean clear breath that my lungs still can bring in and out at the end of the day. The carrying away of any toxins, exhausts, negative cling ons, and the restoration or filling of my cells with clear clean oxygen and rest.
We have to get up and get this back into our day. Back into our night Relatives. We have to stand for individual centeredness. Not centered ON the individual but IN that ONE. We have to get this back. Take back our day so we can truly take back our night.
This is what I was relieved and grateful to find at the end of my day Relatives. That is perhaps what is lost when we all are reluctant on Friday night to let go of seeking one more text, one more email check, one more excitement. Anything but just me going to bed at night with me.
Saturday I woke up thinking about how I see all of us creating that push during the daylight. How we push at ourselves and each other and allow marketers to push us with what food to eat, bling for our Harley's, the rumble of a thunder road exhaust, the newest car, the drive to get up and get on with making more money so we can get to the end of the day and spend it, how cool it is to smoke, how smart we all are with the right phone, how family fun means leaving home and spending more and more money on experiences that are only available somewhere else for a price. I saw an ad on the internet for a family multi media plan. Even the dog was attracted to the circle of light from the sky, the ring of technological entrapment for a family all sharing the same access to one loop of energy and techno wizardry. What struck me was that they were all standing with their backs to each other. They were all so physically separated. None of them were any longer connected as a group. It was a bit creapy. I am sure that all of you by now have seen a bus load of kids or kids at a park tweeting and texting each other even side by side still no eye contact, no holding hands, no laughing in each others presence. Just turned on, booted up, and hooked in. wow talk about mainline addiction. The war on drugs is pointless compared to the loss of human connection between texts. No wonder the kids at Lame Deer are in trouble. And they are not the only once. What exactly are we blanketing The Night Sky with as our intention for this world? This addiction we create in our lives daily, with our choices and our commitments to money we must spend, and thus must earn to support that spending; IS I believe is what is creating the darkness that descends not just over the Cheyenne at Lame Deer at night, but all of us. We are building days that rob us in the night. I don't think technology is bad, its how we use it. Its our focus or intention in our thought. What are we tuned in to? I believe that the Yoga masters and the Spiritual Ancestors would tell us that actually technology is a great mirror for us to see ourselves so clearly in. We are not our bodies or our phones or our texts we are Beings of eternal life and light using these things to experience this time and place. Our ability to turn off a gadget. To disconnect. is a great accomplishment in enabling us to quickly teach ourselves and our relatives that we can break our attachment to what is out side of us and just as easy look up and see each other and thus ourselves.
I have struggled with understanding in myself the vibration of energy that wants to attach me to 10,000 things. It is this vibration that I think in our world, is hyped, marketed and enhanced to train us to seek that steady level of input into our bodies and minds. Here in Pipestone there are no movies, very few restaurants, not much drive by. LOL it has not taken long for This Place to help me locate and shed more of my anti-focus addictions. The alternative is to be really edgy or unhappy here. So I have to decide who do I want to be? an Inside Mary or an Outside Mary? The only way to know that answer is to look inside myself and see. To really look and see what is driving Mary. How close the difference between still and moving. Between right and wrong. Between old and new. kept and abandoned. How small the space between comfortable and uncomfortable. And Why is that? What really is driving me and do I want to continue to be lost? Really. Is it all that satisfying? has it been? No, not for this girl.
I want us to think of this as we make our prayers for the Cheyenne. As we deepen and explore the ways to pray every night that follows day for protection and peace for the children, young people, adults, uncles and aunties, and elders. How can we pray night after night if we don't deepen also? so let us think about how hard it is to resist the constant push to by new clothes, to drive new cars, to have the biggest and smartest tv and phone. To visit with someone anyone. Look around your house at the stuff that you have. I did. What can you take to the used book shop. What can you donate to goodwill. Can you have a giveaway, or even a bonfire? Can you let go of attachment to things and replace it with attachment to yourself and your earth right there in your yard. To the water and the night sky? can you do it? So much money has gone into what when I was little was called"keeping up with the Jones". Now I think the Jones are the retailers and the corporations who have us "jonesing" for the next high. Its like the world has become a great casino. If we put our money and our focus into this clothing, or that person, or this decorating style, or that shiny new truck, or watch this movie, have that hair style, the perfect backpack, or the next smartest phone we will be happy? satisfied? Smart? thin? in the best group of friends???? what is that little nagging fear inside of me that drives the profiteers and leaves me still empty still unable to know and feel love? How am I feeding that emptiness that is loose in the night sky and floats over the Cheyenne at night? I pray relatives that this blog and this home here in Pipestone becomes for you a Center a Center where you know we, I love you, trust you, accept you, honor you, respect you and are waiting for you to come and visit. Here I hold the fire and hold the intention that you and I are ONE and we are TOGETHER and we are LOVE. Here each and every day that follows night and each and every night that follows day.
Some days here, rather than automatically go and look for food, or run to the post office, or check my email, or clean up one more mess, or come over and get on the internet, I specifically slow myself down, or stop and pay attention to what undercurrent is driving me inside. What is pushing me? Is it ME or is it fear of me? If waiting to eat will help me actually review and select food that is good for me and my body and this project then I wait to eat until I am clear and sure. I sometimes stop and check in with the earth or the wind or the smell of the day to see if I am comfortable with them. If I feel that they and I are One. That's when I have the ability to feel YOU Relatives at the end of the day. That's when I know its a keeper.
Why bother? Why think like that? What is the harm in fast food eaten fast? What is the harm in cheap convenient gasoline? How small does my life have to get before I can feel it? Who was the Mary that was driving all over Dallas Fort Worth working 14 hour days, traveling to ceremony, selling her house to buy a bigger house with more land, juggling work practice, prayer practice, life practice, grandmothers, income, outgo??? Wasn't it nice to have all those restaurants around me cooking and cleaning up for me? Wasn't it nice to just work a little harder and be able to whip in and buy more gas for my new and pretty FJ cruiser? Wasn't I being a great person of service to the veterinary community? a good neighbor a good friend? I was running and running and doing and using the system to maintain what I finally saw was a great gerbil wheel that was going down like the Titanic! I knew that I needed to connect my spirit work life with my daily life and I thought that I was connecting it ! I thought I was mixing it all together really well. But I felt like I was sitting on a volcano. It was getting harder and harder to feel any satisfaction in my work and harder and harder to not hear the Spirits constantly telling me to stop, stop, stop. I didn't want to stop. I didn't want to fail at my practice. I didn't want to let go of the wheel. I was afraid of what really was there if I let go. I was afraid to be the Being That I AM. So I was going to die trying to be good to my commitments and like a good responsible member of my profession, my neighborhood, my human family just keep on running on the next promise that if I kept going it would all turn around.
Exhausting isn't it. I think became like a fuse that burns hot and cool and bright and strong then goes out. Over and over. I finally saw in that x-ray on my back that there really was a big hole in me. That I was creating it. If it continued it would be cancerous. How could it not be? How could I take that place of emptiness and remake it into a strong vibrant life giving reconnected system that would support the beauty of my body, my life, my creation of this day and thus our world? How?
It didn't take looking very far to see that I was like so many many others in our society. Our creation of our life that we live to support the life that we burn up like puffs of prayer paper every day was less and less free, less and less home, less and less satisfied. We weren't winning any more. We weren't really even happy any more. I was leaving so much ash at the end of every burst of experience that I couldn't breath or escape the dust. And I wasn't creating any sustainability. I was doing good things but I wasn't deeply planting anything for the harvest. I was leaving an emptiness that was driving me to go out and find the next "thing" that was available to try to fill the emptiness?!. No wonder I got rear ended. No wonder the Spirits said it would be painful. I had to stop what I was doing, go back through it to turn it inside out and find the lesson. and also get out of it intact so that I could create the give away. It is my commitment as a pipe-darrier to find what in my experience would be changeable, growable. What would nurture me and thus you? What would clear the night vibration for the Cheyenne? It is part of my commitment to help us find our way home. It's a tough commitment. Sometimes really really painful and expensive. But the Spirits said I would be ok.
Its now Sunday Morning Relatives this blog took several days but I think it is important not just to tell a story and dreams but to review to understand and to say outloud so that we go deeper
we have to deepen we have to let go of the things that keep us from committing to our love for ourselves and for each other
all my best to you
love and light shadow and song
mary
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