Seeking the Essence of Relationships

This morning I ruminated about relationships, all kinds, questioning what’s real and what’s not. Mother and child. Under supporting circumstances, they “bond” in a way which at least has the effect of keeping the child alive. It’s reasonable, perhaps obvious, to agree with biologists that the bond is adaptive, evolutionary. Yet I was looking at what we, in variations, overlay on that bond, say culturally. “You should respect your mother and honor your father!” And the overlays particularly around attachment. The roles we (child and parent) create between us. I thought of a time when I was twelve, on hallucinogens, when I had had to extract from my mind what my mother was as she came to get me when someone had called her to say I was tripping my balls off. That may sound like I was crazy. Yet in some respects, I might have been sane for the first time. “Oh, that’s right!” I pondered. “A mother is something there to hassle you, give you a hard time.” I had for the first time stepped out of the relationship we had constructed and examined her, albeit cherry-picking a very limited conclusion. (That is, this mother had been and continued to be so much more.)

I imagine this momentary perspective bears resemblance to a Buddhist perspective and thought to write a book about “discovering” a Buddhist perspective, that is, before knowing Buddhism.

Anyway, I moved on to relationships with pets. Here the projection of story and roles is more obvious. “Come here my little feather muffin!” Okay, I do say stuff like that my parakeet. “Is daddy getting a little beak (which he nibbles my nose with) this morning?” Okay, I must get out more.

Anyway, I then wondered what the real essence of our relationship is. Whatever he is throwing my way, I imagine I can trust. That is, I don’t imagine he has a language to create story around us. “Oh, look at this asshole. He leaves me all day, then thinks I’m going to indulge his pathetic sound effects? Ain’t happening, bitch!” So again, I look at what he does bring. This morning, he made this warbling sound more than usual and that usual means beak is coming. I can’t be sure because we’ve only had a physical relationship for the past month or so, though we’ve cohabitated for seven years. I’m not sure what the nibbling means. I imagine it to be affection. I imagine he gets some need met doing it. (Yes, whether or not I’m projecting, so do I.) And if this is true, then needs and meeting them are core to our relationship, and relationships, upon which so many of us then superimpose other stuff, constructs, that are not real. Osho took it so far as to say, the term “relationship” is static, dead, not real and can only live as a concept. That is, life being a stream of moments, we can only relate.

So I’m then driving to work, still thinking about my bird, about what to do for him, whether to get another one, as his “partner” passed a year ago and I have to leave him on his own if I’m to go to work or spend time with humans. Two birds, small sparrows (on a treeless street), fly onto the hood and roof of my car. Not believing myself to be St. John of Assisi (though sometimes I’d like to be), I had to wonder, given the context, if I had finally gone garden-variety schizophrenic. Then a passing driver said, “There are birds on your car.” I concluded that my hallucinatory system is just not that sophisticated. I pulled over, but when I opened the door and looked, both birds – and, with it, some psychic / spiritual opening / had disappeared.

What I think about upon awakening

I’m watching my birdies speak with each other – sometimes, actually, it sounds like they’re speaking at each other. They will touch or interlock beaks. Or one will pursue and mock-peck the other, then alternate, down this long pipe-perch I provided – kind of reminds me of Punch and Judy. If I’m really hard-up for meaning (and self-amusement), I’ll narrate, “And so goes the eternal battle for good and evil” (to which I imagine they’re thinking, “I wonder what he-who-feeds-us is thinking?” Maybe I’ll get out of the house today.

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A woman I was e-dating asked me what I think about when I wake up. As I had responded to her other queries, as I could relate to and answer them, I thought I could let this one go. When she asked again, several emails later, reminding me I hadn’t answered, I felt on the hook like I was in a job interview and perhaps in the annoyance I’ve blotted out how I answered. I imagine I still had no answer so fabricated a reasonable one rather than admitting I had no answer and seeming vacuous or even dim-witted. And I do recall being concerned for myself as to why I had no answer and that indeed I might be those very things I feared she might conclude me to be.

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This morning I realize what I think about – providing I’m not leaping out of the bed to start my day, which I tend to do during the week both because I leave myself limited time to get ready for work and because I fear that if I dally at the hour I may get a morning seizure, (something which brightening the lights and getting up quickly seems to avert). This morning I reflected on my dreams. In the last snippet, a Frenchman was speaking to me and I had a hard time understanding him as I don’t speak French (yet) but was trying. But anyway, enough about him. So when I give myself the luxury of a slow awakening, I recall my dreams, starting with the last segment and, as I’m making my way to the bathroom, I’m following the thread to the previous segment. I’m not very good at interpreting the symbols (though I have an ex-girlfriend who is spot-on) so I limit myself to what I was feeling during the dream, my general state of being, as I take these to be what’s going on for me, period.

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It feels good to realize this, to finally have an answer for that woman (having completed one more question on that long-expired job application), an answer for me, and to know I’m not so vacuous as I once feared. (No, I never actually believed I was dim-witted.)

My History with T and EarthStory

In the fall of 2000, a woman in my primal therapy group named T talked about a gathering in the woods somewhere in Massachusetts. Thirty or so people camping and doing diverse activities including sweatlodges. Though she recommended, even implored, the rest of us to try it, neither the event – nor her for that matter – registered on my radar screen. When T also expressed in group that she was looking for a boyfriend, I cringed and wanted to be invisible to her. Funny because she expressed no interest in me though I was concerned that my presenting issue of being in a sexless relationship made me fair game, and I wouldn’t know how to deal with her if she came on to me (as I had such weak boundaries). No way, I thought. She’s eight years older than me. That’s nuts! She had a similar haircut to my girlfriend M though T was a few inches taller, ganglier, making her look like a stretched out M. At some point when I felt safe enough I approached T about her movement workshops as I knew I needed some physical activity. This led to going out for tea where I became enchanted with the way she described weaving pagan-like stories into her movement exercises. I pulled her into a post-group meet for tea as she always darted home after group. At tea, everyone including her decided to meet at the beach the following day. I was excited about this though I wouldn’t acknowledge why. When I got there, I couldn’t find anyone which threw me into a tailspin around my abandonment issues. I projected all my stuff on the organizer as if she alone were responsible. I felt a bit better when T said in group that she wished I had made it.

I soon began going to T’s movement workshops and walking her to the train station afterward. We buddied for each other, meaning we took turns holding space for one another in order to therapeutically process stuff. (That’s okay in this therapy and besides we were destined to go for training as therapists. In fact, I already had started training.) Once when hugging her goodbye, my body let me know it liked her. Uh oh. Sure enough, a week or so afterward, she told me she liked me and wanted to get physical. I told her no. I have a girlfriend. Yeah but you’re not having sex. True, but as long as she’s my girlfriend …. I was hiding. I had stopped dealing with the lack of passion in my relationship and sex had become an abstraction to me. Nor was I willing to acknowledge, let alone negotiate, my desire for T. I did know I enjoyed spending Sunday evenings at her apartment where we buddied or did some arts and crafts. I felt nurtured there, empowered even. But desire? Intimacy?

Summer of 2001 T pitched EarthStory again, appealing to my purported desire to grow, though in truth I was resisting growth. I looked at the brochure, at the guys with long-hair running around the field half-dressed and wrote it off as a bunch of hippy wannabes.

9/11 drew me and M closer though I continued visiting T. My not wanting to leave M or at least sleep with T caused conflict and we nearly stopped seeing each other. Come January, my boundaries softened and we became affectionate, holding each other after buddy sessions. One evening Marley’s Song of Freedom came on my car radio calling – no, demanding -- my passion to find its freedom. I grabbed T and kissed her passionately.

Soon after, while shopping with M for bedding, I hesitated to buy something. M thought I struggled with the price when in reality I sensed there was another reason which I couldn’t fully admit to myself: M would not be around much longer. One evening, I said something jokingly in an English accent to M and, looking at me funny, asked me if something was going on with me and T. (T is English.) She was intuitive that way. I lied, telling her don’t be ridiculous. T is eight years older, yadda yadda. Then I recanted. I was due to visit T that evening but told M that nothing would happen, that I always kept my clothes on. Famous last words. She implored me not to go, that she had a bad feeling about this. She even offered sex. Too little too late. I went.

I had a typically great evening at T’s and was about to leave. Looks like I would be keeping it in my pants. But then there was this little tantalizing exchange between us which I’ll keep to myself. Oh well. You can guess the rest.

I returned home terrified as M’s behavior was unpredictable. I showered and came to bed but couldn’t sleep. Sure enough, at some point I sensed, and confirmed, M looming over me, sniffing along my body like a lioness examining its prey. That morning she caught my sheepish glance as I stepped out of the bathroom and she knew. She packed her stuff and her friend came and got her. This was March 2002. From that point, T and I became partners.

As summer approached, T pitched EarthStory. I had already been on her ride for several months, meeting her different tribes, participating in sharing circles and the like. Okay, I said. I would try EarthStory for a long weekend which is about as long as I’d ever gone camping. For you? Yes, I’ll do it for you. But if I don’t like it, I’m out of there.

To complicate things, I kicked a camouflaged cup of tea on my multicolored carpet (that T put there) and severely burned my foot. I was on crutches and now I was going camping? I would’ve said no but for the thought of rotting in my apartment alone or at my job while T was enjoying the woods. Also, an EarthStorian named Lorrie encouraged me to come, saying I would be handled, even wheel-barreled around. I couldn’t resist that kind of attention. I’m there.

In actuality, when I got to EarthStory, I resisted any babying though I soaked in the general attention I received from Lorrie, T, and others. Something in me was opening commensurate with this very open space. T nicknamed me Jimbala and everyone began calling me that. The name has stuck. My tribal name, especially with this tribe, is Jimbala.

During the day, people offered these miniworkshops in everything from reiki to gender diversity. Heck, I decided to hold one in voice toning. Two people showed up, Bill and Lorrie. Hey, it was a start. And by the end, I felt like I had given them something. I even helped build a sweatlodge – and went in! Evenings were spent around a fire, listening or playing music, telling stories, playing word games. One night we even had a talent show. Though we had someone actually cook the meals (which were vegan) everyone pitched in to prep the meals, keep the place clean and the gathering running. Like a pumping heart, I filled with love and returned it. I remember sitting against a haystack with my arms around two young men calling them my brothers. I experienced a continuous stream of crushes (though I chose not to pursue them as my relationship with T was understood to be monogamous). Yes I stayed the entire week.

That was EarthStory 2002. I’ve gone every summer since. I would expect the ride would get old. Some who don’t attend regularly say it’s become predictable. EarthStory began nineteen years ago as a grassroots deep ecology gathering of environmental activists. There was no designated paid cook or prescheduled week of events and some of the activities were seemingly edgier than the current ones. It has become gentler, safer, with people bringing children (though they’re usually kept away from the emotionally charged activities and nude swimming) and not all activities are deep-ecology based.

T and I broke up in 2005 though we continued attending EarthStory and maintaining our friendship. Community glue, including EarthStory’s, has been helpful to our friendship. At the same time, pursuing (or at least indulging) crushes in our mutual communities, however, has been, at least for me, dodgier. She can get jealous. I can get more jealous. Well, as they say, AFGO (i.e. Another F___ing Growth Opportunity), right? Over time, however, it’s feeling like less of an issue. Though I know I still get jealous – hey lots of situations beyond her make me jealous – my love for her, her well-being, and wanting her to get everything she desires has come to exceed my jealousy. (As we haven’t broached the topic of late, I won’t speak for her.)

In light of the critics, I began reevaluating EarthStory in 2007. I had just returned from a sex-positive event called New Culture Summer Camp and became involved with a sex-positive intentional community called OneTaste. EarthStory still seemed to have sex in the closet. Sure two people would sometimes exit into the woods in the evening and emerge together in the morning and you knew they hooked up. But I rarely saw public displays of affection beyond hugs. I.e. no making out. I even held a miniworkshop in the lodge, away from everyone, on sexuality but there weren’t many participants. So my judgments started, that sex / sexuality was taboo and needed to remain hidden. (The same held true for conflict. People seemed to avoid it.)

When EarthStory 2008 was imminent, I considered not going. In fact, I had a slew of other things on my plate, OneTaste, tantra workshops, Zegg Forum training. Yet EarthStory over the years had given me so much. It was still very much important to T and though we hadn’t been a couple for several years now, I valued the love for EarthStory we had in common. Also, there was some concern about adequate enrollment. I certainly wanted to contribute to ensure its survival: even if I were to deem it old hat or limited for me, it could be miraculous for a new attendee. I decided to come.

I remember arriving, stepping out of the car and smelling the trees and knowing that for that reason alone, I was in the right place. While I don’t remember many particulars beyond a string of crushes – and a very hot kiss in someone’s tent during a thunderstorm – I do remember having both good and necessary experiences that in some way mirrored who I had become. Though I couldn’t articulate how, in some way it continued to serve me despite its predictability. I would attend it again the following year and hope to understand more.

EarthStory 2009. There were some shifts. The offerings were pretty much the same. The facilitation for both the camp and workshops however seemed smoother, less heavy-handed. Participants were more willing to use the resources I arranged – including mediation, emotional release processes, and clearings – to resolve and release stuff. Yes my crushes continued. I even pursued a few, attempting to connect a little deeper with these people than I typically would. In fact, I attempted to connect deeper with others as well. Several personal revelations, unique to this EarthStory, arose. For one, I am quick to assume and slow to evaluate. However, I was blessed with having many of my assumptions be followed with countering experiences that dispelled my assumptions and eventually I came to realize this m.o. of mine. (Looking forward, my work here then is to resist assumptions and proactively replace assumptions with investigation.) I had another revelation about the nature of my physical attraction but am keeping that one to myself at least until I understand it better. I also had a revelation which addresses why I would continue coming to EarthStory. Yes the schedule and events are, for me, predictable. However, because I am constantly transforming (as a result of all I’m involved with year-round) how I respond to, what I bring to, and what I get from the events – and the spaces between the events -- is anything but predictable. That is, the events are the same though my experience is not.

All Over the Place

I’m not as usual in a coffee-house writing this though I’m coffee’d up. I’m low on time, as I expect to meetup with a few friends at a talk given on documentary filmmaking. I’m reluctant to go because I pretty much know it will hook me and then there’s a whole new medium that I’ll have to open up my life to make room for. No, it’s not for me a lark. I have a masters in videography which I had gotten for the sole intention on getting rich producing how-to videos. Stuff happened and I dropped all of that but I’ve picked up my life quite a bit since and could not resume videography, whether to exploit the market or drop into something more soulful like a documentary. The talk tonight is actually an intro to their two-week boot camp in Mississippi. Egad, Mississippi? They also have a four-weeker in South Africa. Hmmm, suddenly Mississippi sounds safe and cozy.

So I just have a little time to write this and want to leverage having “a little time” as a discipline for some of my writing that can get quite convoluted, especially as a convoluted experience when I attempt to edit the hell out of it. Not here though. Only the straight, unexpurgated (is that the right word) stuff. Okay, I changed “shit” to “stuff” once. I didn’t want to come of gratuitously potty-mouth.

I was headed back from brunch at Prince St. Great little bistro. Adorable servers. I was feeling my energy coursing through me partly from the coffee and partly from the morning orgasmic mediation practice. My body was missing something. The weights. I longed to leg press 810 lbs, the heaviest weights we can put on there. And growling to invoke Iron John from the bottom of the lake who would otherwise pull down with him dogs and soldiers who would otherwise try to tame him. In fact, I similar thought of wishing I had the ability of tissue regeneration because I wanted to step into a fight club so I could punch someone and feel their punches. Strange, usually when I’m itching for a fight, it’s because I’m angry and I want someone to mess with me so I can feel justified in beating them to a pulp. In that fantasy, I’m not wanting to feel any pain and am assuming I may catch a few blows but that they will go unnoticed during the adrenaline rush. And my goal is to be victorious. Here, though, it’s not. Here I just want the sensation of hitting someone and being hit. In fact, a blow-by-blow might work better.

Not sure what that’s about. That fantasy doesn’t come to often, fortunately, so I can let it pass and not feel compelled to manifest it. I imagine it’s my equivalent of cutting, wanting to feel strong sensations in my body. Why painful ones, I’m not sure why.

I guess this entire posting is scattered ideas so here’s some more. Of late, I’ve had evenings here at OneTaste where I feel connected and energized with others. I noticed it returning to work one morning. The previous day at work was particularly unnerving as I seemed more at risk of losing my job. I was left fearful and worn. Yet when I got home, I surrendered to the activities which that night was our InGroup where we play communication games. Afterward I settled into the afterglow with the residents during the InGroup debrief. At least some of us were high as kites. When I got to work the next day, I carried this state with me. Sure, losing my job could really suck, etc. Yet I chose to stay in the present where I was my connected, flirtatious self. Yes I do believe I need to take steps to anticipate the future. But I don’t need to react as if it’s already arrived.

sample post to test facebook feed

sample post to test facebook feed

Emptiness - Part II

Sunday 6/21/09

Yesterday, I touched my emptiness mindfully. That was in a coffeehouse relatively void of intelligent life and connection I imagine I would value. Today I sit in a polar opposite coffeehouse, albeit transient, the caffeine working and my body and mind rev. So there’s potential here. Hope of excitement, of meeting someone that will make the day a score as opposed to the day just being a score all by itself simply because I’m alive. I may be too hyper to drop down into the emptiness. Yet fortunately, from yesterday’s blogging, I’m aware of it. So okay, it’s not so much an inability but an unwillingness to drop down in the emptiness, into whatever state that is when I’m not ingesting something with my senses or fabricating a fantasy in order to fill me. If I then pull back on the gluttony of my senses and thoughts, I see that the “hope” of wholeness still lives – as nervous caffeinated energy coursing through my body. Interesting how its sensations are an exaggeration of what my other gluttonies bring about, how it changes my set-points, so that when the caffeine leaves, especially when it leaves quickly, I crash: even the other gluttonies may not work.

What’s left for me to do? A surrender to it as I said yesterday. Sometimes falling asleep with someone feels like that. Like I must compel myself to slow down, stop doing, stop and just melt into someone else and sleep.

And what if I’m not sleepy? Well that’s where I have less experience. I think I blogged, or should have blogged, about finding that at times, recently, when I slowed down I found myself more fully connected with myself and surroundings. The gestures and movements of others seemed exaggerated and momentary acknowledgments with others seemed suspended in slow-motion. On the one hand, this might seem like another gluttony – of the senses – but there’s a difference. It’s not a reaching for things to shove into my system. It’s simply connecting more fully to what is. It may be a most natural state in the absence of a multitasking, high-speed life in general, and me for my own neurotic reasons avoiding being present in particular.

Given my connectedness in this state, I wonder if it was something I never previously experienced. If that’s the case, I may have some work in therapy to learn why I didn’t just emerge into what was my, anyone’s, birthright. If I ever had experienced it, then I want to know what led me astray. For one, did I get pulled into another state which held me hostage thereafter? Or was it something that occurred in that state that compelled me to leave the state. Imagine that. Something that made being fully connected to experience not a good thing.

Anyway, yes, having an inquiring mind I want to know these things yet at this stage of my journey I will not wait for answers to come in their own time. That is, they will come in their own time and that’s okay. Yet I will be doing other work, meanwhile. And that is to – as I said in earlier blogging, slow down. And now what I add to that is: slow down, even if it means spending time in emptiness, even if it means revisiting something that once made slowing down and being present not okay.

Emptiness - Part I

Saturday 6/20/09

As said in an earlier posting, I hesitate posting personal pieces when I don’t deem them to have potential value to others, for reasons I won’t reiterate. Now a step further in my reluctance, I transcribed a longhand piece which, upon re-reading, seems disjointed in places and missing some thought completions. Yet I dare not clean it up as, experience has shown, I’ll sanitize and intellectualize the hell out of it which then removes it from the experience I was having when I was writing it. In the future, I imagine I’ll endeavor to be clearer as I write, knowing I may post it and wanting the user, or even myself three months hence, to get me. So here goes:

I haven’t done much when I’m home, including improving – fixing – or cleaning up the place, let alone anything on my to-do list. And rarely writing. I feel tired a lot. I look at the cleanse programs like Mark’s and want to do them but don’t feel motivated to get started or build the structure to maintain it.

My first reaction is to want to jazz myself up on something, to get excited and hopeful, to imagine I’m going to extricate myself from this malaise and accomplish great things and be happy. What if, instead, I just stayed with the feeling, surrendering to it?

Hmmm. As I sit with it, I realize it’s this state that I escape from, mostly with television, sometimes with the doing of other people’s agenda – e.g. my job – it’s the state of me, me without manufactured hoopla, a sense of emptiness. Now it also has a tiredness which feels like I’m sinking.

I’m feeling so weak and hopeless that I only feel little sparks when new girls walk in here. I see the illusory agenda of my attraction fairly quickly and hence let go.

Yes I do need the colon cleanse, just as I need my exercise – as it’s fundamental to my health. Yet I must not link my hopes to it. Sure I’ll look a little better and feel better, maybe less tired, less cloudy. I imagine, in that case, that I’ll feel a calm, more even-keeled emptiness – all things being equal.

The emptiness requires its own attention. On the one hand, nothing is required: it can just be. For a while anyway. If only to retrain myself to stop running from it, cramming it with sweets, television, lust bursts, and fantasies of the future – and staying up late.

It’s like I was left with it a long time ago and just wouldn’t abide by it, so I would fill it – mostly with crap – at every turn. And when I couldn’t avoid it, I would project it onto a circumstance – e.g. someone “abandoning” me.

As I imagine myself staying with this state, it’s almost a relief – nothing to do, nowhere to go, nobody to please or impress. As I catch someone looking at me, I have no desire to judge them or shift my composure, which is what I usually do. To quote Popeye, “I am that I am and that’s all that I am.”

So there is a centeredness, a groundedness, in this state. I want to take stock in that. They are powers. Yet I also wonder what can enter, fill it even, because I would find the adhedonic aspect intolerable eventually.

But maybe this emptiness is where I would reach if I consciously, intentionally, emptied my vessel, emptying which is generally done in practices in order to let good stuff in, in order to be filled.

So then I need the roadmap. That is, how do I intentionally empty, then, when it feels right, fill.

It’s the filling myself with junk, the running that has been my fundamental dishonesty, my fraudulence all these years. M got that one right when she said I seek sensation wherever I can get it. I only wish she held me with compassion, rather than dumping me for it. I won’t posit her as more evolved than me. She had her stuff. Yet I don’t want to user her hypocrisy – of her dismissing me because I was flawed when she was also flawed – to discount her wisdom, her parting gift.

It was her framing and her abandonment that has helped me to finally see how desperate to fill myself, to not be in the emptiness, I’ve been. I’ve twisted, turned, pleading to her representation in my head as to why she ruined a potentially perfect union, when my confusion has been in expecting someone else can keep me sustained in a perfect state, a fullness.

Short of grace and enlightenment, I now realize I will not experience permanent nourishing fullness and perhaps – I’m trying to take in – nor do I need to. I would though like to believe I can learn to be accepting of my emptiness when it comes, to greet it, to love it even, and then learn to see and invite in the nourishing things that might fill it.