the Gordion knot

Good Morning Relatives

how are you today?  I am super grateful for you today of all days   it is my birthday today at least it is the day that my little growing clay and flesh and memory catching molecular mobile emotional physically, sensually, and ethereally feeling container finally came out of my mom's oven.   super cool huh !

I asked the Spirits for rain for my birthday and as the sun was setting yesterday the clouds moved in they were amazing  and in the east-south east we had a continuous lightning storm for an hour  then it rained   what a wonderful gift !  afterwards me and the kitty went outside and went walking in the air

it was a peaceful night with deep sleeping and immediate wakefulness

this morning everything is resting  the plants the trees the grass the tomatoes are all enjoying their drink and the energetic shot of lightning in the night  

it has been an amazing year   when has it not been!?

one of the best gifts that I have been given this year is that of the finally found the core of my carried anxiety inside my own gut and the gentle and open handed release of it in my life  

stress  anxiety guardedness expectation fear   fear  is what was at the core of it  fear  and all the things it brings

whew!!! brrrrr   just writing about it makes my gut want to clench  makes my ears a bit ringy and the muscles in my throat at the base of my neck and behind my jaw tighten

so I breathe  I laugh and don't turn away from it  I accept that it is an option and I gently do not choose it but I don't hide or turn away or deny I hold and I breathe and I don't let my mind wander down the path of what if?  what about or any other story that was made up to tell inside or outside of me that maintains defensiveness fear anger or any sort of tightness in my body   my beautiful birthday suit

many years I have been accomplished social strong steady and many many good things and many active productive things  but always since i was small and first or second or may fiftieth time hit or screamed at or grabbed or had my things destroyed or my dog shot or whatever it was that those around me who had no skill  no discipline no strength to hold back their own fear  their own self miscommunication their own cracking go of their day  they did not spend time learning practicing persevering to search for the state of fearlessness the state of kindness the state of peace between themselves and what they effect   I dont know if they couldn't get to the edge of their fear or if they didn't try.  or if they tried and feeling they failed sunk back into the depths of action and inaction that kills through anxiety and fear  cant you just feel it ?

I dont know  all I know is that I did not grow up in a world or amongst people who had the skill to not create fear in their wake    I grew up amongst people who had come to understand somewhere along the way that fear and pain and aggression and the demand for perfection whether through the bribery of praise and reward or threat of violence would give them a sense of control   and control  power was important to them   and continues to be important to them  to those for whom it is more important to keep that grip on life

its that grip that has had a hold of my gut since I was small    that grip    and it had so many layers  so many many pieces to its unravelling  so long it has had a hold of me

an old friend of mine and I visited this week and she said that she never knew that I suffered from that all these years.  she said I was so confidant so not what she thought a person who had fear embedded inside them would be  she said she never knew    and I suppose that is true I never told her or anyone else really what I have been working on for so long   it is nice to know that I have continued to go forward to function to work and do all I can and play when I can even though I was unresolved in all that needed to be undone or unmade in me

I am glad I kept going  despite not being perfect or perfected  

I remember collecting that grip of fear  I remember not having it   I remember encountering again and again things that made me fearful  things that were intended by others to harm or degrade or control or smear or laugh at or undermine or simply to make use of and then discard  things that to me were and are violent  

the world and many who are in it are violent     and it has taken me most of the 54 years this time of being here to work out how to accept that I will encounter violence without predicting its presence  

to accept that there are many who use violence in one form or another and that those people are or can be at one and the same time people whom I care about  people who I want to laugh with to hold or embrace with the openness and clarity and kindness and trust that human beings are capable of    yet they have this violence this harmfulness  

and I am afraid of violence  

so it took a long time for me to come to the bottom of the grip of fear in my belly   one of my other old friends when i tried to visit with her about it made a snide remark about me finally taking a dump  violence again  violence  why ?  why choose to be snide or to harm ?  does it really satisfy? or only heap on the head of the one who releases it more and more stones more and more hardness?

finding the underlying ability to not have fear or hold it I had to decide what to hold instead  what to hold?  what would you hold?  what is the most enduring thing about me?   it is wonder and kindness  it is seeing beauty and I know what that feels like   I know it so well and it was in me an original thought an original impetus  so it is underneath the violence the fear the grip   and has been all along   I just had to get to to  to reach it  to touch it and connect

and then i had to honestly and clearly hold on to it  maintain it in motion  in sound in movement in physical mobility  

and that has taken more practice   more practice  in figuring out how to do it while in motion or while hearing sound or fending off judgement

I remember my father teaching me that in the bible are the words train up a child in the way it should go and when it is old it will not depart from it   but what if I do want to depart from what I was trained in relatives?  what if how we trained our children or each other was not good for us or them?  what if that training was flawed or full of ignorance or greed or fear?   how do I redo all the cells and the cellular memories I carry?  how do I replace my skill set ?

by one and then one more and then one again and yet again one and one and one choice

I have a friend who is an archeologist   she works primarily on a dig that is between Turkey and Iran on a project that has at its center the story of the Gordion Knot   for those who are not familiar with the story it is worth reading   I believe that when Alexander the Great cut the knot instead of learning the skill of untangling or accepting it he like pandora released into the world or mankind womankind the temptation or lure of cheating of power and result that is the temptation of the temporal world rather than the cycle of the eternal and its living balance in this place in which we live  it is to me like releasing a virus into and amongst human beings   a virus that plagues us and our children one of which I am and was    I think that like the choice that was made by the two humans in the story of the white buffalo calf woman  one of indulging selfish intent one of holding back and allowing the presence of more than what is temporal to exist.  each of us has in our life over and over again that choice  the choice of alexander to learn the skill of the knot or to cut it   one is the illusion of power and one is true power  which relatives is which?  which is the one that you want or value or choose?  it is that knot that I have carried around in me most of my life   at my core  in my belly  and now finally on my 54th birthday I see not that I will undo it or release it but that I will live with it and through it without hodling or cutting or needing it to be straight and perfect and undone  

pretty cool huh?

the Buddhists I think said that being still in a peaceful place is not being still   being still in the hurricane is being still    I am not sure who said that if you think you are enlightened go and be with your family LOL  these and other things I have kept as thoughts guides teachers to help me suss out the center of this knot of fear and pain that has gripped me for so very long and because it was there and I had to move around it and carried it it colored  it tainted what I did what I thought what I said how I was even if I had the ability to keep it out of my doing it was by definition of having to be avoided ever present

how to be without fear  how to hold kindness in the midst of pain how to accept sound and movement but not be lost ?   how to peel away that shell of fear inside my belly  to accept but not live in or recreate it's pain or allow it to reseed itself in me  

I had to distance myself from people so that I could learn to be connected to them without ingesting who they choose to be   I had to accept the presence of the dark or negative in order to understand and make a conscious choice about the light or the positive I had to come to understand that denial doesnt make something not exist  I had to understand that it takes discipline  work effort to stand in the middle to stand in the choice of kindness surrounded by fear  I had to come to understand that even if someone intends or reaches out or ?? to harm me that I will not be harmed no matter what it is that they do

and why is that?  how is that possible?  how is it possible to love someone and not waver in that even when they are striking at me to control to manage to reduce?  how do you love someone when they insist on keeping between you and them something painful something horrible something deadly?

well   it's tough isn't it relatives?   to stand still and to move all at the same time   to love and  be loved without being dependent on action or thought or word or any other thing which is temporal   can love be untouchable  can it be a Thing that is indestructible?  is it a human thing?  is it something that was created like my birthday suit was created?  was it born can it die?  can love be affected by the temporal?

because what I am talking about is love  it is the presence of love  the strength of love  the evanescence of love the thing that is at the core of the spark of life is forward motion inertia cohesiveness presence reproduction growth enduring energetics that have the ability to recycle reuse reorder repurpose

no matter what is done said built torn down given taken away shared withheld promised threatened or acted or inacted on  

somehow after all this time I stopped pretending I was born on a different planet amongst different kind of beings and should have would have could have had the perfect childhood or life that did not include negativity  somehow I came to the full face acceptance that I currently reside in a body that can feel pain wether emotional physical or mental and that pain is part of the deck of cards that gets handed out here

somehow I accept that my body  my emotion my presence in this present is intertwined with a suit that is full of attachment  bathed in emotion  soaked in the sensitivity   I just have to remember who I AM  and in doing so who I AM NOT   and make sure that I stand in the NOT not the KNOT

LOL

I dont know if my body will ever get over its past or if I will ever have non violence in the life that moves around me  I would like that  not in a mindless way like falling into and floating on the water of a hot summer days jaunt to the lake or the pool  but in the way that a clear cool clean glass of water is drunk without looking back and so enjoyed as it splashes into the body and streaks to the cells that are delighted by its presence

there is work in this post for you relatives   there is effort and illusion and laughter   it is my birthday  the day I stepped out into this world physically encased in what has turned out to be a great challenge

be kind relatives  if kindness is valuable to you  do not lay it down for a second  for any reason  and if in a moment or two you find you do not know yet how to be kind  stand still  be silent  dont run or create just to move or say or do  just hold    and stay separate or back or whatever it takes to keep yourself intact do not be carried away by the thought or impetus of anything or any wind or any desire that may tug at you or push at you from within or without

hold

stand until you for sure know dont worry about the knot  it will take care of itself  just remember that while everything else is moving around and through you  your are also moving you are also all things and there is no reason to be one thing or another with or without because the knot exists there is balance  because there is balance you dont have to grasp or work   you may need to learn some new skills  LOL but at the core of the knot of what is not is what is   be there


love
mb