mislabeled packages and surgical principles

Good Morning Relatives

well relatives  where to begin

as usual life has been extraordinary

sometimes I get a little tired of myself  and my ignorance    sometimes I get tired of my refusal to listen to that little voice that tells me things are heading south

rather than get off on a pity party or self castigation I need to figure out how to let go of something that I participated in that I wish  yes I wish that I had learned not to when i was in grade school or junior high or even high school or university

where were the teachers of human engagement?

I was in the bank visiting with one of the executives  a woman who needed to ask me some questions to open an account

I gave her my sort of standard answer  "if you are old enough to ask then you are old enough to hear the answer"
which is always immediately interpreted as too private too risqué and a dangerous attitude to have around children

but it is about children that that idea or premise was created in me
I was a curious child  always and still asking why and wanting to know

so I learned that my questions to some were perceived as questioning authority questioning intelligence and reasoning and questioning the plan  what ever it may be

I also unfortunately learned the habit of giving over the truth of an answer to the one I questioned  as if any and all whom I could ask were bound by some sort of magical universal law that they had to tell the truth if my question and especially if my question was on the mark and very clear about what I thought was wrong or going on with a situation   so  the teachers of human engagement right here right in that place where I taught myself to give up authority to another could have taught me that Mary not all people will answer honestly or without guile or without even crazy magical 180 degree perspectives where they truly think they are not only right in taking your money and your life but that you are somehow indebted to them and supposed to hand it over.   anyhow it was a long time in me till that naive innocent idea and habit of oh you will tell me the truth if I ask the right question was replaced with a more common sense approach.

sometimes questions were welcomed sometimes very definitely not welcome  sometimes that was simply timing  like in the middle of surgery when the surgeon needs to focus on a bleeder  or when a child has wandered into the street and a car is coming  

anyhow   at the bank the banker gave me the eyebrows raised not sure I want to ask answer and I said to her that it was about kids and about our responsibility towards kids that I had that attitude

if a question is pushing at their mind then they will seek the answer  if they trust a person to ask or in a situation the force of curiosity bubbles up like fermenting kimchi and just can't wait any longer to burst out their mouth  then that is the time to accept and make the most out of that curiosity

which means it is an opportunity to teach a skill rather than give an answer
answers can be given in a way that encourages a young person or a person of any age to think to continue bubbling  to learn to feel out a situation and trust their instincts  uncover a deceit or hidden agenda  to check the footing up ahead to make sure it will hold  or to uncover the wonder of life's beautiful tapestry because their question has lead to an awareness of life outside of just them and their navel

questions bring into question the skill of the one who is asked  it brings into question their agenda with that human being who just put them on the spot  it brings into question their own maturity and interest in creating a sustainable equally shareable peaceful planet and relation or something less so

questions also can be pointed sticks that are used to keep the focus on the stick holder and keep others from gaining a good footing

so deflecting a question is sometimes the best answer

at the bank the exec and I had a short conversation about how it was more important to teach a kid that a life partner should be respectful, have a good work ethic, be able to communicate fairly well, and be open to learning and seeking trust and new ideas that help work through things without violence or deceit   rather than just the answer of are they the right gender? are they in love with me? are they a certain religion or the right color?  do they have a nice car or a big house?  do you see what I mean?
it was encouraging to me that the banker did and that she liked that idea

inside of me there is a me that questions even me.  that part of me has always been there and at times I have listened to me let me rule my mouth and activities and at times I have completely and totally shoved that part of me aside and gone on with what I was doing.

unfortunately for me relatives I am in my fifties and still have (or rather had not until this last recent few weeks) not committed to listening to my own questions about who and what I was involved in   and that disregard of me was costly and frankly has always been costly

so what is the answer when I have not listened to my own questions?
the answer is to begin immediately to do so.  and to not look back on what was not or could have been

so some of the skills I am taking as rules of thumb which is different than an answer  because rules of thumb are like surgical principles  they help to a point but when you open up a patient and find that the inside does not match the outside there is no sense in ignoring what is really going on just because the package was mislabeled    otherwise someone is going to die    which might happen anyway

people mislabel who they are    what their intention is    and what they are willing to do to get what they want

a con is someone who wants you/me to make up a story about what being involved with them will mean or will bring you/me and then they invest just enough money in that story that I/you are hooked in with guilt, responsibility, ego and etc  and you/I will do almost anything to uphold our side of the agreement or bargain even when they are not bound by any sense of such themselves

believe me when you/ I are in the presence or engagement of a con our inner questioning self will pop its head up and ask us to stop    that is where it is vitally important that I/you do not go to the con for an answer to our question   that is where all bets are off already about honesty integrity and your/my personal safety

any agreement is already broken
a new agreement with a person or persons who did not keep the first one is equally if not exponentially false
they will rely on your/my own integrity to give them another opportunity to con you/me
what they want is something from you/me they will rely on you/me to reset the situation as if the past was not real or valid in the moment and as if they suddenly and magically have come to their senses and will treat you with respect or kindness and fairness   trust me it is not going to happen  it is just the next chapter in the story and they are betting on the fact that your / my desire to return to normal will create in us the next series of activities where they will get something from you/me and once again leave you/me feeling increasingly horrible however that may manifest itself and trust me at some point they will be counting on you/me to be violent in our protests or reaction to their deceit so that when the social norm turns its blind eye to the events that have finally erupted the person holding the violence will be you / me  the person who appears to be crazy and who will be out of control will be you/me and they will have a ready made story for the public that will put them in the victim role and you/me in the role of perpetrator  (its a given)

do not think that continuing to engage with them at all will bring you/me closer to the exit or closer to a good ending of what is already a lost cause   all is already lost   do not forget that all is already lost and any thing you/I do with them any further will cost you/me even more

I/you have been conned and I/you participated in that as was the design from the beginning It will happen and does happen  and what comes out of it is a painful heart a guilt that is hard to expel

so go out and cry   go for a swim   soak in the lake  or stand in the shower or under a waterfall  go and let the water rinse out of you all that you let down in yourself   all the fear that was present and the rage that wanted to strike out and harm those or that one who is still out there harming themselves and others because believe me their encounter with you/me did not change them in a way that will make them stop conning  it will only make them better at it

so let it go  and let your/my own part of that out  let the emotion out and let it go

don't be enraged  don't strike out   don't cause more harm to your/myself  because you/I fell for a trap that was well practiced and well designed   part of it was you/me not listening to you/me

just rinse it out and listen from now on  listen not from a place that is still controlled by that negativity but from a place of trust  NOT trust in the one who is questioned to be honest  remember the grain of salt  well keep it handy   but trust in you  trust in your little voice and in the small things that others want to pooh pooh or disregard or act as if they weren't even real     trust you

step over to the idea and place of trust  turn your perspective into one that stands clear and true and hand in hand with the trust you have in your own inner question

what am I going to do for me and thus for you relatives  I am going to trust me  to build  to laugh and strengthen and turn the mirror of yep there is crazy here and it is not me dude back on those who can least tolerate it  

I am going to revel in my ability to stand my ground for me and have a good relation with others  and enjoy them and opportunities that come along even if the enjoyment I get out of it is turning it down because a rat is a rat and will never be a loyal dog   eh?   so if you smell a rat  there is one about

if you/ I are old enough to ask  we are old enough to know the answer  and when the insides of an idea or a plan or a commitment don't match the outsides and your guts tell you you are over your head  walk away  stop and say no
it is the kindest thing to do no matter what money or investment is lost at that point

live with yourself in peace  live with myself in peace

best to you relatives
mb

Horcruxes of the Heart

Good Morning Relatives

well that was an interesting night  

Do you think that people forgive each other?    Do you think that love perseveres?

I think that in the movie Alice in Wonderland it was pretty amazing that the caterpillar and Alice transformed at the same rate  that they got to say goodbye, good luck and who knows after that  and that with all the other crap going on around and to them they still heard each other

I was all set when I went to sleep last night to talk about getting back up on the horse without donning the night in shining armor in todays blog  

you know the keeping going thing  
it comes up because the old think that pushed me to keep going doesn't push me now so of course if the push was only about that way of thinking then all going would cease wouldn't it?  but its not about that

in the last blog I wrote that I had always thought the buddhas peacefulness was stationary  even though I had like others read the quote "inner peace, stillness to a monk is being peaceful/still in the middle of a hurricane" my mind in the stage it was in transformed that quote into meaning that I had to be stationary in a hurricane to be peaceful which in turn meant I had to exist in a hurricane and that I had to be unmoved by its trauma drama its force which either meant being impermeable or totally permeable but unaffected by it

I still thought peace was about being stationary and its not

peacefulness is quite fluid  it is quite permeable and impermeable, it is unattached but completely ingrained. A touchable untouchable that like water, fits, fills, and becomes any shape into which it is poured and is able to move through all stages or places without in any way losing its clarity its ability to return to its self   it is peaceful,  water,  constantly in motion, in transition but always simply   water

so if it was part of me my clarity to keep going then I would with out of course lugging all that heavy armor with me and constantly apologizing for it being broken  and not quite shiny for the moment

I read a quote yesterday by Yukioshi Takamura: "A true pacifist is able to kill or maim in the blink of an eye, but at the moment of impending destruction of the enemy she/he choses nonviolence."

yes that is me   but it wasn't me when I was younger or when I was in transition  we step on things don't we?  we crush innocent lives or pull up unrecognized flowers and discard them thinking they are weeds we trample ourselves and each other as we find our way to ourselves   when we are running from our deamons, the closer we are to our fear and the farther we are from our eventual skilled selves, the more carnage we create as we try and get to safety.    somewhere along the line, if we are who we are made to be (thank life), the ones who are the eventual pacifists of our generation,  then we unfold into the mature expression of the thought "first do no harm",  and we stop cutting the head off anything that moves or any shadow that threatens and we stop running, and we learn to let it go  to let the fear dissipate and we eventually put our swords away because we truly no longer need them

do you think that we have the courage then to go ahead and live a life that is without violence altogether?  was our impetus only to learn to lay down the sword  or was it to get to the life that is lived beyond the reaches of the fears that grounded us or at least would have liked to ground us? it does seem that death likes a good pile up or at least the Red Queen does.

 like the caterpillar in Alice and Wonderland  asking Alice if she is Alice   the caterpillar making the transition   Alice making the transition  I wonder how many heads got cut off before Alice let go of her subservience to fear  before she realized that the end wasn't when the jabberwocky was dead and the red queen disposed, that was just the beginning,  shedding the armor letting go of the sword and stepping into a life that culminates all that was done and won without taking the violence with her, that was her butterfly. that was who her young self took her to wonderland to find.

what is a butterfly anyway?  its a living breathing tattoo  its a pollinator for the future  it is itself at last

its harder than you think to imagine not flying even when one has never done it and ones whole life has been spent crawling along from branch to branch contemplating the navel of the leaf that is being consumed headed towards a destination that has never been revealed  and ultimately needing skills that are nothing like the ones you spent a majority of your life using. except perhaps eating that always comes in handy

some would think that after the outer shell is shed  the cocoon finally finished that the being inside who emerges might never decide to fly   never decide to take the next adventure  because taking wing isn't a flight of fancy  it is an unknown  a terror  a new vulnerability  or is it a freedom that was all along the seed that pushed that life through all of its serviceable, necessary, but in a looking back sort of way painfully ugly stages?

so how do we take flight once our white coats are left behind?

i think it is important to not jump ahead   the butterfly has to dry its wings  it has to toughen up a bit, like the winter hardening of a young trees heart, before it can take flight.

I think those of us who have just stepped, crawled, or fallen out of our cocoons need to remember that we have to toughen up a bit

Last night in the dreamtime someone came back to me from the past  from the beginning middle of my martial arts training of the heart past  from the innocent part  both of us innocent, in love, and immediately lost in the woods of dependency, fear, expectation, and immature inability to find our way out of a wet paper bag let alone the places we would need to go if we were going to be able to have a successful relationship with our selves or each other or anyone for that matter.  what a disaster of timing and inexperience that was.  and bad skill.  and a really really shitty time to be in a homophobic society and be two girls in love who had no clue how to be their strong selves and be together. it was a disaster.  but not a mistake
it wasn't a mistake
we were not wrong
our hearts were not untrue
we just were baby heads
but we were both really really tough strong totally sword wielding baby heads and we did not yet have a sensei we knew and trusted

so in the dream time we showed up again     and now today if I am to take flight I need to find her and speak to her  and lucky for me she has also grown up (because I did find her on the "net" and read that like me she found her way  her calling and her work )  and I want to see if its possible to find that place where we both can or at least I can because who am i to say that she has not already, take that old vulnerable part of me away from its shell   say I am sorry,  hear that she is sorry and finally dry that fragile knowing young heart and let it take wing, let it find its own life

thus restoring the little bit of soul that is caught in a horcrux from the past rather than destroying it

frightening isn't it? the thought of facing the fear that is released when something like a horcrux is created and then when it is released to have the ability to transform it rather than kill it  well that was what happened in the dreamtime  now I just have to see if it can be done in the light of day

I am afraid to talk to her  because I don't know if she is a pacifist?  or someone who will still see me as the Jabberwocky from long ago and want to cut off my head  dude how amazing to run into that in the dream time and so it is that I know that the only head I need to cut off still from long ago is that of my own fear, I need to transform my own fear  and like the buddha in the hurricane be peace

crazy how fear is   crazy how we can feel the pain of the past so present and crazy how after all these years I still can see her anger when I refused to simply become the husband that would take care of her, I remember the gun she pointed at my chest the day I left her to her fears  and although i knew it then, that I was not at fault for what was happening to us to her to me, I could not figure it out beyond leaving,  nor could I fix it,  nor could I let her or me give in and end each others lives just because the disintegrating illusion that we had both of us in our own way needed had to be discarded, it had to die if we were ever going to have a happy ending
never mind having it together,  we just both had to get out of there alive and I didn't stop to make sure she did, get out alive. I just cut, and ran that day when all her pain and all my pain and all our immaturity was rising up like a force that was inevitable

so I left  I walked up to her and took the gun away from her and I left  and I never looked back  and now in my dreamtime she is in front of me and my dreams are asking me to open that horcrux and heal it.  dude  what was I eating yesterday ?

so do you think that people forgive each other? do you think that love perseveres? that it matures?  do you think that in the end it cuts the head off of the expectation and the memory, rather than the head of the one who shows up after all this time and says hey? look at you  I always knew you were in there, me too, way to go, and yes I am sorry, truly sorry for the pain that old immature child heart felt as it was breaking, but I am not sorry that you lived, that I lived and that I love you so long ago or that you loved me.

so relatives best dry my wings  
best bring on the buddha

its going to be a hell of  a flight

love love love in motion peace
mb

thank you Neville Longbottom

Good Morning Relatives     

I've been thinking that some of you might be thinking or wondering what it is like to be  to live in the me that I wrote about in the last blog.

well its peaceful    LOL    I am peaceful at last    and I think because i am finally peaceful I am healing  which is really nice to feel and to enjoy and to wander around in like an old new house that is familiar to me while being ever refreshingly simply new and unstruck by my past   

I recently signed back up for Facebook so that I could visit with some friends who I wanted to  I decided that like going to the grocery store and buying what was good for me rather than boycotting purchasing food as a way to change the store I would reconnect    anyhow I follow Dr Clarissa Pinkola Estes link on Facebook   I like her work her mind her way  and I figure if she faces I can too     she is also an editor / writer for The Moderate Voice,  and she wrote a response to the people who used Maya Angelo's funeral as an opportunity to voice their hatred for themselves  to see if anyone would grab on to their hatred and make it more real by doing so   

so since Dumbledore says it takes more courage to stand up to your friends than to your enemies I wrote her a response on her website   

I thought I would share it with you   

I know the font is tiny  but I can't fix that  and rather than worry about it I trust you can adjust your viewer   or you can visit her Facebook page  



 Dearest Dr E thank you for being out loud you. I came from a family that was (in my own words) kool-aid drinking fundamentalist hate crime committing straight white human beings. as the black sheep of that family I was the opposed mirror that they used to engorge the flames that drove them eventually to more than one attempt to kill me by my mother and sisters. my response that day was to see above all their pain and to hold on to the chair I was sitting in while they beat me in the face and broke my bones all I could think of was they are in pain and I will not raise any cell or even thought in me against them they stand in a world I do not see. I am not more or less than they only different it took me every day of my life to arrive in today a place in which there is no attachment in me not only to the opposing force I grew up in but also no attachment to its existence no attachment in me of the force the seed that was planted in me by them to hate me as me and I say that because in my own goading of me to work to become to persist in my life I was running ahead of a willingness in me to judge a willingness to judge that was subtle and was killing me as surely as if they were still there in my day crushing me as the snake they perceive under the heal of the righteousness they behold in their own eyes I let go of that judgement in me of me I used the subtle knife to cut that tie without cutting or destroying my love for them or me it is a funny thing to say that we love even hold out love to those who rail against us because if we in any part of who we are even our breath hold on to judgement of them we are judging ourselves and if so then we hate them and we hate ourselves even in that tiny place that only we know or can find beneath tears of hearts ripped and broken so thoroughly that we do not think going there that we will ever ever survive the pain that we have wrapped around our disappointed expectation that they will love us that we are lovable Maya Angelo was very much a great public edifice of all that is good and strong and worthwhile to those of us on this side of the mirror so how unthinkable it is that anyone would deface her Dr E I love you and yet not only is it thinkable to me that these people exist but I do not hold against them there is no response from me that can affect them in any other way except to elicit pain because what I see in them is pain beyond belief they are they get to be no matter what no matter what they get to be I am I am me without any resistance to them because I am intent on the love and gentleness and joy that I exist that I am that I am me and I made it all the way to here Maya's body is dead her physical effort spoken word hand work done for now and I am so glad they hold her as close to them as they do for they cannot define her nor can they change her into their hellishness I am glad they hold so beautiful and strong a mirror up to themselves she can take it of all who are here now she can take it and when I see those pictures that are on that sight I see the love in her looking at them and not judging them don't judge them dear dr e don't judge yourself I love you you are beautiful you are a good girl thank you for being you i understand how hard it has been i understand how painful it is to look out and see more of what was so painful as you were and still are making your way to the beautiful garden of yourself do not be concerned with the weeds or those who try the muddy the water the water knows who it is in its heart and everyday in all its transformations the water always holds close its clarity


thanks for being you   I will keep on being me    its nice after all this time to just enjoy me and not feel the drive to keep pushing or to keep on   or to not be failing somehow   when I watched the pictures of the buddha sitting I never realized that peacefulness is fluid  lol   

I wanted to let you know that in finally learning to be kind to me truly and to enjoy me without judgement I actually feel like taking care of me and my world  and its without judgement  its about trust  
I'm not quitting  and maybe I will write about that tomorrow  why that comes up  but today I think this is enough  

love 
mb