Sunday night dose of reality

Tags

buffer, catalysing, Depression, dream-like consciousness, get out of Dodge, Guru, karmas, Money, obligations, past life karmas, PTSD, Reality, Society of Beggars, The Matrix, thousand shredded pieces, uphill shit-fight, Waking up, Yoga

Try not to be alarmed by the failure to see a clear picture...

Ahhh, more turns of the wheel are completed! Hear them? Clink-clack-clink-clack as the cycle repeats and once again, wherein patterns I thought I’d shed reappear and remind me it’s not over yet… not yet, don’t drop that mallet and chisel until every line is smooth and true.

<existential rant>

I tried a little more honesty with my sister today as she prepared her family to leave the country for a month, only weeks ahead of when I myself, was meant to be going away. My parents are already out of the country themselves.

This, at a time where my life… well, it’s still in a thousand shredded pieces around my feet. My sister’s only words were to “think positively”, which caused me to laugh derisively. What do you think I’ve been doing all these years? Thinking positively doesn’t always work…

There’s this thing you’re meant to do see, when people are leaving on a trip. Be happy and excited for them – and I am. But, my entire family is not in the country at a time when hey, if they were gonna be supportive in any way, right now would be really great. I still have that fantasy to some degree, that one day they will actually be there for me when I need them the most.

And so I couldn’t be all just hey, how wonderful it is that you’re going away! Which wasn’t fun for either of us, but at least it was honest.

Am I feeling sorry for myself? Desperate? Incredibly unsure as I once again face a gaping void of complete and utter un-surety? Perhaps, yeah. But I think there’s more to it than that.

The honesty I tried to share with my sister is really about coming to terms with what I’ve done with my time here since returning to my home town. It’s true, none of it has really worked out the way I wanted, expected or imagined. But then, does anything, ever?

Actually, all of this reminds me of something a good friend of mine told me once: when he got his very first motorbike as a teenager, he took it to pieces in order to learn how to put it back together. That resonates with my experience of life… it had to come apart in every possible way because of my intense curiosity about how we ‘work’ as human beings.

It’s been like that since I was very young, and has only intensified over the years, especially once I met my Guru (and y’know, those kind of teachers are renowned for catalysing your karmas!). Having a Guru is not for the faint of heart!

So it’s all stuff I’ve asked for, sort of. Well, what I asked for and very specifically took vows to do, was a commitment to waking up from the dream-like consciousness that we humans generally function in. That’s how we manage to get by in this funny old existence… while we yearn for unity with everything around us and at the same time, mostly feel completely separate and isolated. But there’s another game we can play, if we’re willing!

Being a yogi and also, being a yoga teacher… does NOT mean that I’m automatically an angelic and together person. I’m not better than anyone else. I haven’t dealt with all of my stuff (and if you think you have, you’re probably lying to yourself!). In fact, the very work of being a yogi involves getting uncomfortably intimate with the truth.

A sister yogi and I were recently discussing life lessons, and she suggested that perhaps they present themselves in an appropriate way for our personality display. Like… for the fiery types that she and I both are, we can not be reached with lessons unless they too, are fiery. To really learn and grow, we need to be jolted and shocked out of our complacency in a way that makes sense to us.

Most people don’t want any part of such lessons and so they buffer and buffer… reality has to knock really loudly to be heard. Most of the time, the call goes unanswered, because it is truly painful to even begin the process of really waking up.

Think of everything that happens in The Matrix when humans are plucked out of the CPU of human minds created by the machines – there’s nothing particularly comfortable about it (that movie in fact, is quite accurate in explaining some of the enlightenment process, to a point anyway), and one of the characters (Cypher) even wants to “forget” the truths he learned:

You know, I know this steak doesn’t exist. I know that when I put it in my mouth, the Matrix is telling my brain that it is juicy and delicious. After nine years, you know what I realize? Ignorance is bliss.
~Cypher, The Matrix

And so… I ask myself if it’s possible that I could’ve learned what I needed to learn about anger, sadness, desire, grace, compassion, love, trust, listening to my intuition and a whole bunch more… another way? Maybe. But then again, maybe not. And if that’s the case, it’s impossible to feel unhappy about it. And yet… here I am, still facing so much uncertainty. Still feeling like it’s a complete uphill shit-fight to develop a more stable structure for my life.

Or, maybe I’m just not meant to have that kind of stability and this fight isn’t going to get me anywhere?

It’s hard to say without further guidance. And the annoying thing about my intuitive gift is that it doesn’t work on command, and it also doesn’t give me the big picture very often.

So here I am, still feeling like I’m “stuck” in Melbourne. In almost six years, I’ve managed to recover from PTSD without medication, I mostly have a handle on my depression tendencies and I’ve gained yoga teacher qualifications. None of this is what I came back here for…

The reason I did come back is because it seemed like the right thing to do. Because I was fulfilling a long-held pact between my sister and I… and if you buy into past life karmas in anyway, then I’ll add this: the pact was not just of this life-time. Anyway, that’s arbitrary for those who are dismissive of such things.

Since my return, I’ve put my family’s needs and demands before my own, and generally that has not been returned in kind. Especially when I was doing everything in my power to cultivate an air of normalcy over my completely abnormal state of mind. Apparently I did a really good job of that.

Because when asked point blank – What did you think when you saw me shaking and bruised and distraught and unable to sleep? Why didn’t anybody consider that perhaps getting assaulted wasn’t something you could get over in a single week or even a month? Why didn’t anyone in my family ring me? Call to see if I was okay? Check if I was eating? Encourage me to get help? – the answer was that they didn’t see.

This is despite both my mother and my sister accompanying me to court on two separate occasions and witnessing how I could barely speak about what happened. How my entire body shook in fear. They wondered why I didn’t invite anyone over to my place, but didn’t bother to find out why. They noticed that my behaviour changed, but didn’t question it except to think that something was “wrong” with me. Something that was my own problem, and nothing they could help me with. They didn’t even try. I don’t blame them as such, because I get that they have so much going on in their own lives that they simply couldn’t see. Or didn’t want to.

However, I now feel like I’ve fulfilled whatever obligations I had to my family in returning home. I have a very strong urge to get out of Dodge, and yet I don’t know where I’m meant to be instead. Also, I have a bit of an issue with money in that I don’t seem to be able to get a job… and a job = money = the ability to do whatever I need to do…

So yes, I am frustrated. And I wish it was me heading overseas. And I feel very humble at the same time, which is perhaps a contradiction. But it’s true.

I feel the need to spread my wings but it seems I’ve forgotten how to fly…

</existential rant>

Now returning you to your regular viewing…

~Svasti

P.S. What I really wanted to do was to find y’all a copy of one of my new favourite songs online. BUT the band is so new that they’ve only got one or two songs on You Tube so far, and not the one I wanted to share. The band is an Aussie one, called Society of Beggars. You can check ’em out on MySpace!

**UPDATE** I got an email from someone in the Society of Beggars camp via Facebook, and they sent me this link where you can download the entire album! 😉

P.P.S. This is another one of those posts where I seriously had to think hard about whether I should publish it at all. But heck, this kind of honesty is what my blog was founded on… And y’know, real life isn’t neat and tidy with story lines that always wrap with “happily ever after”.

Refuge

Tags

Beauty, Depression, Exercise, Nature is healing, Personal earthquake, Port Philip Bay, Refuge, Regeneration, Richter scale, Sailing, Waking up, Yoga

Took three days and a minor personal earthquake to leave the house, finally. Okay, maybe it wasn’t so minor. Perhaps a five on the Richter scale, not that I’d know, given I’m no expert on measuring disturbances of the earth, or the mind, for that matter.

And what did I do? Nothing incidental of course. Not just going to my local coffee shop again, or to the movies. Too easy to zone out with such activities, and continue my non-participation in life, under the guise of actually being ‘out there’.

So, having prepped my bike with a new (and actually useful) bike computer and extra tail lights, I took off for a long ride. Been missing out on that a bit.

Since the bike became my substitute car, I’ve been quite utilitarian with my cycling and decided it was a good day to break that habit. Still, it took me til at least three in the afternoon to make it out the door.

Another quirky factoid about this writer – tends to take me absolutely ages to discover stuff that’s been right under my nose all along. How I’ve never been on some of the stunningly beautiful bike trails I rode yesterday (right beside the sunnily autumnal and picturesque Port Philip Bay), I’ll never know.

Maybe because some of them are quite new. Wasn’t til the homeward-bound leg, I recognised a place I’d spent a lot of time as a kid… the yacht club where my dad sailed, and where, for a time as a child I sailed sabots. That beach looked so different now! So much… smaller, and the boardwalk with the cycle path never used to be there, clearly… and they’ve shored up part of the beach with more rocks, and there’s some wetland preservation going on. Geez, the yacht club looks tiny! The little bit of flat water (thanks to the L-shaped pier), where I used to sail… those boats we sailed must’ve been tiny, too!

But this was the return journey and by then, I’d woken up a little, or a lot.

I’d already begun to notice in practice (not theory), something I know, or knew but forgot (more likely). That, for me at least, yoga isn’t enough. Sure, it works on my body and mind on many levels, but I need the fire of intensely rigorous movement to bring me back to life.

Something about the way it informs the body. Sends off instructions that explain yes, this is why we are alive, and this is what we do. When I’m riding or running, I know what I need, because actually, I’m out of the way and instead it’s Presence and Self calling the shots (a much wider view than my day to day ideas).

Ah… relief… and understanding. That even if this life can’t be anything other than the tiniest of bleeps on the landscape of time, there is a way of going about it that feels more right than not. By right I mean of course, something that makes sense to me personally, on a fundamental level…

The photo above (taken on my mobile phone) is the halfway point, where I turned around to head back home. But not before I’d stopped for things I’ve not allowed myself much of in recent times… enjoyment… sitting in the afternoon sun for no other reason than just because…

Right near where I’d stopped, was a young guy with his eyes closed and firmly positioned iPod earphones… in a wheelchair, one of his arms all bandaged up. Someone I guess, had helped him get to where he was, but they weren’t around, and he was alone and basking in the sun, perhaps asleep.

And this silent injured man told me many things. That while we may be broken (physically or mentally) we can regenerate. If nothing else works, then rely on the sun, rely on nature… take refuge in those things around you that don’t and can’t cause you any pain.

For instead, there’s beauty (thank you Jaliya, for your wonderful words), and in that beauty is some kind of fundamental state of love, offering healing with every inhale and exhale… a re-focusing of one’s energy to an upward, ever expanding spiral instead of the other one, onerously down and less-than.

I’m not out of the darkness yet, but I think I’ve found a kind of pathway… seems maybe to be leading somewhere I’d like to go… and I’ll go further next time!

~Svasti

Hormonal warfare

Tags

Anxiety, Desire, Eye contact, Happiness, Hormones, Intimacy, Positive, Red wine, Senses, Sensual, Sex, Spring, Tapas, Waking up

I’m like a little seed, dusty and dry but full of potential. A seed that’s been sitting in the garden shed in the dark for a very long time. Waiting. With no reason to think there was a way out from that unnatural yet safe place I’ve sheltered in, weathering the storm of recovery.

Perhaps the change of season has something to do with it?

For rather suddenly I feel exceptionally alive! It’s Spring, not yet Summer. But the weather is becoming reliably warmer and more beautiful. There’s a flavour to the air. A warm caress on the breeze. Cascading blossoms of every colour to take in with the eyes and nose.

It’s almost like I’ve never used my senses to engage with the world before. Not properly. Not like this. I can feel every hair follicle on my head. No situation is without intense sensory involvement.

Could it be… could I be… finding some happiness? Possibly really waking up after this seemingly endless numb-out?

There are difficulties still, but they take center stage less and less.

However there’s one issue that currently looms larger than any other.

Sex. Intimacy. Or the lack thereof. I posted about this topic a few months back.

Once again comes into view. The first trigger was the boy who’s recently been paying me some attention in a coy kind of way.

That situation created a lot of anxiety for me. I didn’t know how to respond at all. Especially if someone’s not being up front. I can barely hold a decent conversation with the guy, as sweet as he is. I guess that means it’s simply not right anyway. Surely if it was, it would be much easier. That doesn’t stop the anxiety running ten to the dozen though!

And I’ve just begun to realise how often I go out of my way to avoid eye contact with men I don’t know.

In that respect it was tough starting my new job, in which I have to deal with new people every day at the moment. New clients to talk to regularly. Some of them are men. It’s been a swift learning curve though, so I’m grateful for that.

And yet… gawd, there are periods each day where I’m totally and completely overwhelmed by my desire to be, erm, getting it on!!

I have the hormones of a teenager.

Except for one very minor blip, there’s been nothing on the radar at all in the last three years. So I’m apparently stuck in this way a little… because I can’t wilfully lift out of this issue with the same effort I’ve applied in almost every other area of my recovery.

I’m afraid of getting what I want, and I want it badly… but I also don’t know how to get there. And if I do get there, I’m not sure if I’ll feel safe and secure.

Amusingly, I think all that sexual energy is being sublimated into other areas of my life. I nearly lost it completely over dinner with friends on Friday night. Granted, we were eating some of the most delicious tapas I’ve had in years. I was also drinking some pretty spectacular red wine… it was very intense and sensual.

I’m just grateful for the mercies of meditation practice that help redistribute the rest of that energy!

~Svasti