Acknowledgement

Last night, I couldn’t find my bottle of arginine (a food supplement used to, among other things, enhance muscle growth) in the back room refrigerator. In my community, we are moving the residence upstairs and I figured it was either moved or thrown out. I suspected the latter, and this triggered a judgment, particularly as I had my name written all over the bottle, including “I’m not considered important enough for whoever threw it out to have bothered to ask me if I still wanted it.” Yet I was large enough to contain this judgment rather than it containing me. That is, I knew there were other possibilities. So I emailed C & M who I heard cleaned out that refrigerator. In the end, both acknowledged that their throwing it out was a distinct possibility. They have even offered to pay for it which I told them I would consider. Though I’m still left with a question or two, as my judgments are tenacious and seem to want, like live entities, validation to feed them so they can exist (wow, that’s a scary new concept for me), I was surprisingly moved by their responses and realized the other side of the coin is that I want acknowledgment. In their apologies I got that they cared and that, to them, in this moment, in this interaction, I mattered.

As I’m writing this, it occurs to me that my work here, henceforth, is for me to acknowledge myself. I suspect from the level of feelings this situation evoked, I imagine I don’t do this enough. I came across this picture of a dog today. My connections with certain dogs run deep. I remember telling someone, just yesterday, who had said, “We hate out there what we hate in ourselves” that the corollary must be that we love out there what we love in ourselves. Well this for me, for one, pertains to certain dogs. And in this picture, I immediately recognize that part of me that wants acknowledgment. And while I’m not sure how to give that to myself, I’ve come up with a way to find closure on the arginine thing. When I meet with them, if after clearing up a few details, if I continue with the notion that it wasn’t irresponsible, that it wasn’t personal in that it could have been anyone’s arginine, I won’t ask them to pay full cost (around $30) as I’d deem it to be an honest and reasonable mistake. Rather, I want them to take me to Pinkberry on Spring street and buy me a frozen yogurt. I want them to surprise me with the toppings. Then I will feel complete.

Blogging Reluctance

I haven’t blogged in awhile, not making time to write longhand or by computer. I prefer longhand but using the computer eliminates the time-consuming, and thus impractical, transcription step. Someone suggested scanning, and that would be ideal except that my handwriting is atrocious. I have, though, been researching how I might write more often by computer. My laptop is too freaking heavy to carry on a regular basis. I’m considering a netbook as they’re around 3 pounds. Per my research, I may be able to obtain an iPhone OS upgrade in July along with an external keyboard. (I find blogging anything lengthy using the iPhone virtual keyboard too unwieldy.)

More significantly, I struggle with psychological obstacles. I’ve second-guessed what portions of my writing I thought appropriate since my blog is accessible to everyone. Yet when I examine that term, I realize that nothing is inherently (in)appropriate, that what I include is based on why I’m writing the blog.

“Appropriate”, then, has been a catch-all for content including what I would be comfortable revealing. And behind my wish to be comfortable is to avoid becoming embarrassed or shamed in revealing things. (I’ve even had embarrassment around writing a blog when I listen to inner committee members that declare it self-indulgent and declare self-indulgence to be a bad thing.)

Since I’m journaling to document threads of my explorations (into community, tantra, enlightenment, etc) and since blogging is sharing this journal with you, I’m hoping that being transparent beyond my normal comfort level will spill over into normal discourse and I’ll lower my shield more often.

“Appropriate” has also been a catch-all for content that I imagine others would find informative or entertaining. Looking behind that accommodation, that concession, I see my strategy to keep you around and for you to think highly of me. When I look behind that strategy, I see my need to feel okay, loved, and to know that I matter.

I realize this strategy is self-defeating. If I do whatever it takes to keep you around, entertaining you with all the wit and charm of my persona, particularly when my real desire is to be seen by you, I’ve remained unseen and thus alone. This applies to blogging as well as to normal discourse with you.

Yet I find avoiding this strategy tricky, in part because I tend to go unconscious early and often. I know my need to be old and insatiable (the tip-off being that I would devise a strategy around it where I hide my real self), and I’m not sure what to do about this need except continue finding ways to process it, though it remains intact despite twelve years of therapy. Meanwhile I’m putting my attention on recognizing and meeting my current desires for, say, community and intimacy, where I imagine current, satiable needs live.

I realize I’m going to be messy. If I stay firm in being who I am and you tell me I suck or, worse, that I’m boring (and thus don’t matter) my old need will likely get triggered. So my challenge is to be myself no matter what. And though I might die for a moment when you say those things to me, I’ll take stock in the fact that this death, at least, is temporary. On the other hand, I also have to navigate your praise. When you say that I’m good because of such and such and I buy into that, it’s a slippery slope for me to continue being that way to feed my addiction and keep eliciting your up-strokes. (I’ve found it easier to navigate comments from those who haven’t actually yet read the blog but want to acknowledge me for writing one as part of my journey.)

Test post from iphone. Tonight I withheld.

Enlightenment Lite

Having started a blog, I’m seeing challenges with maintaining it. For one, I do most writing long-hand in coffee houses. I would find it grueling transcribing it to a computer. Also, any delays in uploading to the blog my writing, done long-hand or on computer, presents an issue. My mood shifts unpredictably and frequently, making what I had written feel, for me, outdated, moot. However, trusting that the saving grace is that I will eventually cycle back to sentiments expressed previously, I’ll at least transfer most computer-written pieces and excerpts from the most significant hand-written pieces.

As an example, here’s an excerpt of something I wrote this past Friday, addressed to members of my residential community:



Last night was incredible for me. And it wasn’t like I can point to any person, place, or thing that was any big deal or held key responsibility though I can probably point to frames involving each of you (like this Asian woman bending, raising and lowering Christina’s legs. Uh, Christina, where was that going anyway)? If anything I simply showed up. I’m not sure why or how so much last night and I don’t need to know the magic of why I felt so alive. ("Why" is my left brain trying to bottle the recipe.)

I even had a dream last night that Isaac arranged something for us in some kind of workshop, something with a stack of containers and as I looked at each one, I opened up in bliss incredibly.

Sometimes I know I am choosing death as when I walk and it’s slightly cold out and I hate it and don’t want to go on or do anything. Then sometimes, like this morning I’m choosing life as when I’m walking to the train this morning, tears in my eyes because I’m so full, and I’m wearing my teashirt and it’s cold and I just smile at the cold and say “I love you too.”



Adding this anecdote, I realize my blog has another subject thread: enlightenment. That seems so enormous to take on and I hear the shitty committee in my head chuckling at me as I dare pull such a term down from mount Olympus into my meager bloggie and that, at best I might use a term like nirvana, as in, “Ok, Jim, so you had an experience that felt a little something sorta kinda like nirvana. But lay low on that enlightenment thing. As soon as you think you can live there, the universe will most definitely prove to you otherwise. And with pathetically such little effort. Perhaps someone will give you a dirty look and you will predictably jump to judgment, mumbling ‘asswipe!’ or some other such unkindness under your breath.”

Yet enlightenment is the term that came to me on the train after that brisk morning walk Friday. Slowed down, I looked at the other passengers with a warm curiosity rather than numbness or inner drama projected. In a workshop some months ago, the facilitator explained that purpose is not what we do but who we are. Participants were asked to come up with four words that describing one’s purpose. One of mine was “transformation”. (Actually, someone else suggested it and, as I was having trouble coming up with the last word -- or had no need of one -- and that it reminded me of the magician’s quadrant in Jungian masculine psychology, I took it on.) Yet whenever I mentioned transformation as part of my purpose, I did so half-convinced. It wasn’t quite landing. Yet, as it had direction built into it, I thought it best not to discard it. So, while on the train, in this egoless, vulnerable, altered state, child-like really, I receive this term enlightenment and recognize an invitation to replace “transformation” with “enlightenment”. I breathe and, thinking about my rapid-cycling moods, decide it best to hold off adopting the term and, instead, set an intention to return to this place.

Initial Thoughts

Initially my blog was to only be about community as it has remained for me a prevalent thought for reasons not clear. I first became conscious of it in 2002 when a girlfriend took me to several gatherings which, though temporary, I sensed constitute community. She and I began a conversation of joining the ideal community, one of our design perhaps. Though we've gone our separate ways romantically, and I've actually moved into a community, the conversation continues. As I indeed write about community, I'll weave in more details of my journey though for now, tonight, just about my bedtime, I want to provide the broad strokes, the intention of this blog.

I will supplement my thoughts and discoveries about community with interviews from others. While this gives you a broader perspective than mine, I primarily do this to discover what matters to me in part through the reflection of others. Also, I'll invite you to comment, at will, by responding to this blog. I might provide other venues for you, as well, just as soon as they occur to me and I assimilate this fantastic and free technology!

I imagine that, even if I tried to focus on community, I would need to discuss other topics in order to add richness and context and my truth into the subject. On the other hand, I expect I want to talk about other stuff anyway, for its own sake. I realize and am concerned that this is a marketing no-no in that I won't, say, hold the attention of people who come to my blog out of interest for community if I start talking about other stuff. And if my writings seems to lack a consistent thread, then who would want to continue reading. Yet as I imagine myself writing whatever I feel like, in whatever style I like, I feel a tingling inside my chest which tells me this is what I want to and would most enjoy doing which for me trumps trying to hold onto a particular imagined audience. Also, should my codependency gets the better of me, I can always split the blog in two.

I do expect I will also discuss my exploration of men's work, shamanism, tantra, sexuality, and a few other things not coming to mind now, because it's late, exploring them for their own sake and as weaves into the community thread. As I would like anyone to benefit from this blog and to preserve some mystery in these topics, I may be a bit reserved with the details in discussing these things.

While I'm not pressing for your opinions and ideas this early, I still welcome them.