Another sleep

 

I went to bed at like 2:30AM

this morning I had another dream, kind of hard to shake because of the feeling, not necessarily because I remember all the details. 

There was a hotel room. Pretty sure that's what it was. Initially there were other people there, and suddenly M's identical sister was stopping by, and she seemed like she needed something. I didn't get the weird vibe I got from her in person, it was more like my clients, I know they have emerging personality disorder traits, but underneath there is a person, and that person also has needs, regardless of the odd ways they usually get them fulfilled. No,  she was present. Personable. Rational. The way M was on her good days. So I felt an almost delight at getting to introduce her to people. Getting to share the positives I know about her, the accolades without the mistrust. And then we were alone. And the need was still there. So we talked. And then, even though there wasn't any thoughts of this going anywhere, the need turned even more physically intimate. And I wanted to satisfy, to satiate, but I felt it would be a violation. And I felt myself dissociating from my body, allowing her to touch and feel, while my mind was elsewhere, and she recognized it, and asked. Is this because of M? and I said yes, not because I didn't want good things for her, but because my heart was not willing to do the things she needed. And she understood, despite her hands still plying at my flesh, like a cat pawing, stretching, kneading. But eventually she pulled away. Still grateful for my company. And we talked about what had happened, and she said it had all gone wrong, and it wasn't her fault, and for some reason I believed her this time (like I did with M), despite my thoughts racing to all the ways it couldn't possibly true... but it didn't matter because, she'd lost the things she thought she needed and now was saying, at least, that she was ready to repair. To take responsibility. To move forward. And the connection felt nice. A moment to say even amongst all the bullshit, there was something meaningful at some point. 

I woke up wanting to live in my dreams. 

I went to work. It was good, not entirely satisfying. 

On my way home I wondered what this dream was about. Maybe a bit of intuition?  (I did have a kid turn the corner at least temporarily today). 

Rarely have I had purely positive thoughts about M's sister. In part because M never really trusted her -like for much of her life. I remember the last convo I had with them together, and looking at her sister uncomprehendingly, wondering who these people are... In a lot of ways her sister is just more openly demonstrative of the toxic side. I was staring at her because she was questioning why on earth I would ever want to have coffee and get to know their younger sister. As if trying to connect or understand or be attuned to anyone else was automatically a bad thing. It wasn't a personal thing even though she was trying to get me and M to turn on her sister, it was the underlying insinuation, caring about people isn't worthwhile. Those narcissistic traits just fully on display... but in the moment and from then on afterward, when ever I remember that conversation, I just see it as a spoken bond between these twins about how they use people. "Why on earth would you ever want a real connection?" was she saying it to me or trying to cast doubt for her sister? To turn her away...  ~you see he is weak, he cares, and it will mean hurt. 

jtxdfghf

 A student introduced me to the musician Mitski today (maybe with the support of another therapist), and everything I have heard so far is brilliant. Some very different sounding albums here, live performances are fun:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=22nLs0Omn-8

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MS3Ul2sEXZc&list=LL&index=1

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tEIaBUuXDkc

summer blues

 

Not sure what it is lately, maybe some grief related to losing students, and turnover amongst staff. Maybe not having any gurus pull me from the crowd (ha). Maybe the lack of a crush. Maybe the fact that the world is on fire and the sky has been darkened every day by Canadian wildfires, but billionaires are going for joy rides like nothing is up. 

It feels a little like winter depression, like struggling to wake up, desire to hide or crawl into bed, difficulty getting motivated. I am not depressed really, just everything is a touch harder and little thoughts creep in that aren't very pleasant. 

I was supposed to go to Rachel's birthday party movie, the sky was clearer, but I went home and ate some food and decided I had enough time for a nap... and well, you know how that goes. But did I really want to go to the party? no. Was I figuring out how not to go? maybe. I was consciously putting in the effort to try to get hyped up... but...

I had a nightmare that finally woke me up  (about 4 hours later). I was in a car, speeding to get to a destination... it felt like it was something related to work, but might just have been an obligation. I was speeding down a road I hadn't been on. A sharp turn. Suddenly my car slid out, and I felt like I was not in the car anymore... like I could see it from all angles, including from high above. My car slid and tumbled and launched up a small embankment on someone's lawn landing upside down on someone's house, smashed into one of the rooms, so that the front of the car was facing the ground and suspended like that by the fallen debris. 

I was not in the car anymore. I was seeing it from many angles. Then I was on the ground approaching the house, and I could see an old elderly man (relief, oh they aren't hurt), and then a live-in nurse (Oh, they are taken care of), and then an elderly lady cry-wailing in the background (Oh my God, I hurt someone). There were a flurry of thoughts and emotions, fear of hurting others, fear of going to jail, fear of the unknown. I was crying and trying to remember what to do. I knew I needed to call 911, but it was like, they were already calling and again I could experience it from all angles. I could see them dialing the number. I could hear their discussion with the dispatch describing me crying. I was still outside their house looking in, and felt ashamed that I wasn't doing the right thing. I was trying to call 911 to report myself, but instead found myself listening to their description and nodding along. The old man and the nurse were talking, the old man didn't seem alarmed at his (presumable) wife's despair, the nurse wondered if she were having a heart attack and he basically shrugged it off. Her tone sounded like she was looking for someone to blame for all the discomforts, even though she was being evenhanded. I took comfort from the man's assumption that there wasn't anything else to do, even if she was having a heart attack, no reason to be alarmed, just keep following through. 

They finished the call, and I found myself trying to make my own. Still outside. Some part of me felt homeless, felt lost. I tried to look inside the car. Tried to find something to comfort me. A hoodie or something so that I could cover myself up as I waited for them to take me away. 

When I woke up I spent a considerable amount of time wondering why I had a cell phone in my hand, and whether that would be the thing that damned me. I do have a really hard time lately not checking stuff on my phone when I am driving. I don't know why. I usually wait till red lights, but sometimes I find myself looking at something while I am on the highway. Probably this is troublesome. 

I also spent a lot of time wondering whether I was ejected from the car, or pulled out (perhaps angelic intervention), or simply bailed out like I used to from the tire swing when it was going too fast. Seeing it from all angles, I wondered whether I hit my head, whether I had wounds I wasn't attending to. Whether they would think I was drunk. 

Speeding into obligations, suddenly cut loose, the collision of things I can and cannot control, the responsibility regardless, the desire to hide, the fear of being misunderstood, the curiosity of wondering why I know the things I do -without anyway to explain to the passerby. The way others respond, calm, accepting, wailing, pointing the finger at those who should take accountability. 

I found myself on a rather cruel joke yesterday. Rachel and I had talked about being single earlier in the week, Sat? (I don't know days anymore). But there was this amusing thought to me that maybe we are just waiting for the apocalypse and that is when we would find our people. And then the joke became something along the lines of "Don't worry single people, there will be some widow/widower that needs your support after their partner dies in a natural disaster." and "Hey people desperate to have children that don't have any, just you wait, some amazing parent is gonna sacrifice themselves for the sake of their children, and then what? Well, you will swoop in to half ass foster those children!" Life will make sense, tragedy will make sense of your present solitude. And its funny and kind of cruel, but its true right?  Life makes of itself, regardless of your perception of it being right/wrong, it just is... and we get to choose what we do with it. "Single people! don't kill yourself now, wait for your devastated future partner to appear."  And some part of me is like.... hmmm if all of us single wealthy people stopped using up resources and killed ourselves instead, would it save the world for those children and families? but then I was like... yeah but, come on... I mean were not THAT kind of altruistic.  Bo Burnham's song "comedy" in which he says "maybe I (white people) should just shut the fuck up... I'm bored... I don't want to do that..." 

My Dad asked me (over Red Lobster, living large in the retirement age), what I was planning on doing for social life this fall.  I had nothing. It was like I had been thinking about it, and came up with nothing, and then just assumed life would figure itself out, but once he asked, I just felt stupid. Like... "yeah, Dad, I am a failure at life. I have no plan other than work. I am basically giving up on other parts of life because I can't figure out how to do them."

amongst the crowd

 

This morning I woke up with drama on my mind. I was answered by a Teal Swan video that described perfectly the drama I was replaying, and the question I asked myself... and continue to ask, how to break this cycle?

I woke up late and struggled to get the day started. So coffee was more of a necessity than something to savor. I read a little autobiography of a yogi, and tried to picture the colors of southern India as the author described them. 

Then I walked to Pride at Loring Park, and tried to find the right mantra to put me in a space of appreciation. Eventually I sat under a tree and listened to the music as performers danced, and I people watched the crowds, wondering if I would see anyone I knew. I saw one person from Augsburg and had a brief convo that couldn't have been more than a minute. My mind replayed some of the drama, but it changed as I appreciated, said prayers for people, gave thanks. 

I questioned why my mind kept going back to the same old... and remembered that I haven't had a crush in a long time. There is simply no one new for my mind to obsess over. 

I enjoy people watching alone. But at a certain point I had a few questions of why am I always alone amongst crowds when people should be together? Why am I not experiencing things amongst people I care about... Why don't I reach out? Why am I not excited to see the people in my life? Why do I sit amongst a crowd, and try to convince myself of my fit, rather than just be with people...

I sat in gratitude with hints of drama. I appreciated, danced, took in the sights... After several hours I was starving so I left, probably got a little sun burnt. I don't take care of myself too well. 

July, named for Caesar or so they say

 

"I will bet my life on this scene."

This morning Alan Watts reminded me that risk, a little gamble, is the act of faith, of love, it is what makes life worth living. You have to give something away, you have to act and let go, and in that you find life. Frusciante called it the will to death or the act of creation, and I think he may have heard the same lecture by Watts. Watts relays that without risk, we become stagnant, lose our freedom, lose life. Living a life of faith means taking risks. The will to death, is not death, it is life. Trying to stay alive, defying death, not taking risks, is actual death. 

"The game of life is superb... it is to be trusted." "if you don't have faith in it, it will not work."

It's funny because this is a reality that we don't usually hear...  the necessity of the gamble, it is not usually put that way. That faith in the game is what makes the game worth living, and not having faith, trusting in the game, not gambling - is what causes death or the withdrawing from life. 

His lecture also discusses the difficulty in trusting in law... in the bureaucracy of communities that put their faith in mistrust. 

I was reading a lot today, how many lifetimes until conscious reunion with g-d? Would adopting Kriya Yoga advance this? Would I even want that? 

I find myself wavering on many things. Opportunities here and there. Faith in the path, and that the path will unfold when it is time. Moments of doubt, of bitterness. Desire and envy. I have little things I need to do, but I long for things that give me spark. 

I spent the weekend primarily with family. Enjoyed it, but didn't feel connected much of the time. Like sitting in a room, playing a role, but not feeling known, or at least not special. A room full of family, a division, a piece of love and connection to each. It was good. But it didn't drive me anywhere. I mean, Grant and my Mom drove me places. But it didn't make me feel further down the path. Being up north reminds me of the dreams I had of raising a family and bringing them there. All the little things. Grief really. And the question of, if I don't have a family of my own to pass forward in time, will I continue to want to be part of this experience?  The niece and nephew are wonderful, but a piece, a division. 

I have found myself asking my parents about their faith, about their states of being, and realizing that they haven't experienced the same things... that for them, the quiet peaceful moment of being present is what they looked for, and what kept them going.  And I am their child, so of course I will make all the same mistakes as they, and also learn all the lessons from them to move past them... but I am afraid to say it. To stand on my own. I don't know what I am moving in to. I don't want to make mistakes... but Watts tells me to gamble more. 

Maybe I should take that high ropes course, conquer my fear of heights. Maybe I should go to India. Maybe I should buy a house. Maybe I should ask out the next passing beauty. Who knows. 

I saw friends before and after the weekend. Pete and Jessica. Their lives are moving forward with children and partners, new jobs and locations. We caught up, but I am not caught up... if that makes sense. 

In the book there is this idea that when you give your life to g-d, your family enlarges, you are responsible for more souls but may feel less connected to each personally. I keep going back to that feeling of ecstasy I had a week ago. How when I saw people I could see their beauty but did't feel more connected to one than the next thing. A soul is a soul. Light is light. I found it all beautiful and sorrowful, and mesmerizing. Each thing was not a thing. I keep wondering if I felt separate to it, or just recognized myself within it and not attached to my ego. I remember feeling good about myself, and really dismissive in a validating way of my humanness. Like it was all so silly. 

The pieces come together spiritually, and then I find myself discarding them for easy pleasures, sex and candy, and still wanting something personal to hold and say this is mine, for me, forever. 

I want to travel and take pictures. I want to have stuff but with someone else. I want to invest my life in something that feels worthwhile. 

There is this funny exchange in the book where one of the gurus is being given his mission to share Kriya Yoga with the world, but his master who is an avatar of g-d, shares a golden palace with him first. He says this is the last bit of your karma you need to work off, you wanted this, so you must have it before you can renounce the old... and so he is initiated in this palace of gold and jewels... which is perfectly real and also completely illusionary. and the commentary basically says anything we ever think creates new karma that has to be answered, for better or worse, not just our actions but an untrained imagination, an overthinking mind, a heart that desires, will continue to dole out karma that keeps us locked in the Maya.... and of course it does. 

Of course there is cause and effect within the illusion, and of course it leads to our understanding... we learn, we grow, we make new choices, we develop boundaries... we learn to prioritize and shift our values towards the things that matter and spend less time dramatizing and dithering with that which doesn't matter... 

Why was I born this way? previous karma. Why will I struggle with these same things? Karma. Why will I spend more lifetimes this way, the karma I am contributing. Is it all natural and ok? Yes... 

I find myself thinking about how this belief system is the closest to my understanding of g-d, and then I also think about how I believe the same when I read mystics from other traditions... its all the same, just different metaphors and symbols for the same. The divine unity of being. 

So why am I so afraid that I am doing things wrong? That I am left out? That I am undeserving? That I am called to do something beyond my capabilities? none of it is true, and none of it matters. 

A rather funny way of demonstrating the consistency of mike's karmic/dharmic mental spirals: "yoga" -written 15 yrs ago.