divorce blues and the wake up call

In divorce,
each person almost always feels cheated
of a dream.

And the dream was to be really loved,
loved on their good days
and loved on their bad days.

The trick is,
it's hard to love people on their bad days,
and so that's probably what the divorce is about:
more bad days than good days.

Not enough love.
Not enough appreciation
Not enough fun.

And all that was probably true,
and then the divorcee is all alone
and wishing they'd been treated better.

Oh, well.

Here's a couple of interesting shifts on all that:

One, the past is passed. Gone. Over.
The X is never going to whisk you
back in time
and act perfect the way you wish they'd been.

Two,
they are over whatever place they are
wishing you'd given more love.

Three,
getting someone new
aka "moving along"
while a good aspirin for the pain,
since sex always makes us feel better
about life,
and helps us pretend that
"now we are really loved:,
but "moving along"
without having
"done the work"
is the path to a life of no growth
in our ability to love.

Because this is what we have to do with
the X'
sooner or later:
Love them for their inability to love us enough.

The work of Byron Katie
is the quickest and easiest way to get there.

And just for starters realize this:
if they could have loved more,
they would have.
It's fun to love.
Inability to love is painful.
Their inability to love more is
their pain.
Hope that they get over that pain.

And second, realize: hey,
if I can't love myself every second of
every day,
how could have they.

So, that's the start:
realize they were in pain.

Two, realize you're in pain,
since you don't know how to be a full
time unconditional lover of yourself.

And then, "move on."

Not necessarily to another person,
but the a world brightly aglow
because you are in love with every moment.

Good.

Options = freedom, the crunch times in relationship

As I write this,
and as you read this,
we are either mindful
or not.

Aware can be all sorts of things,
but it seems to need to be at least in part
grounded in the physical reality,
like our breathing, or our arms and legs,
or light coming in our eyes right now.

The good old here and now.

and if we aren't mindful,
then we are on some sort of automatic,
which even Thich Nhat Hahn admitted was hard when writing.

And he's not in relationship.

So, we meet someone.
And they are groovy
and they think we are groovy
and sex is good
and we like a bunch of things in common,
so whoopie,
life is solved.

Feels like that for awhile,
except that once we start to spend enough time
together,
someone is going to fall away from the "perfect" projection
and fall back into normal jerky selfish scared angry whatever.

You know, the stuff happens.

So one person has stress and reacts,
and then the options are:

one or both people realize things are off and become mindful

neither become mindful which means you
by definition
are on automatic (which sounds nicer than mindless,
but that is the opposite of mindful isn't it)

Anyway two people on automatic have to fall
back on what their parents taught mainly
and then any other training
or habits they've developed/ gotten away with
over the years

So we have the couple:
stress
people fallen into not so great patterns
and various automatic responses.

Which means: if you and your partner had perfect unconditionally loving
parents,
who dealt with stress with love and listening and humor,
then you can fall back on some pretty high grade
automatic behavior

without such parents,
things more or less have to disintegrate

or the couple has to get more and more busy
and distant
and businesslike
to stay out of the trouble zone

or the "trouble" can be held inside
and gnashed away at as
it eats somebody's guts out
(and chances are the inner gnashing
if used by one or both,
was a pattern they picked up)

So:
without the mindfulness
to feel what we are feeling
as in us
and the mindfulness to stay
present to the other
and to our words as we "deal"
with a situation,
we are bound to either avoid
or conflict

and what to do about all this?

one is to agree,
in calmer moments,
what the default agreed upon
pattern will be when conflict happens:

say, doing the work of Byron Katie

or listening to each other without interruption
of five minutes at a time

or stopping the talk and touching for awhile

or arguing in gibberish

or non violent communication

or taking a walk and calming down

or writing up gratitude lists

or prefacing each statement with:
I know anything that bothers you
is in me too

or.


well, the world is full of things to do besides the usual painful ones

it's kind of amazing
we take so little advantage of them

oh, well.

See: My Joy of Divorce website, five month course page
if you are by chance interested in a group from yourself
or your friends that could lead out of a LOT of suffering

The Joy of 9/11

By the time you finish this little ramble
at least 3000 people will have died on this
beautiful planet from idiotic reasons:

Car crashes,
stupid wars,
starvation because the rich stole the food that was supposed to go to the poor
starvation because the world bank shoved the country into monoculture and the people forgot or weren't allowed to grow their own food
drugs that doctors gave doing the person in
lover's quarrels where the gun is the answer
drug war idiocy

and so on

This human race does dumb things
with its big brain
that gets used to make weapons
and to justify the most common human
fallacy:
The Me Right, You wrong fallacy

And throughout today,
many will be busy saying
the terrorists were wrong
or that George Bush was wrong
or that the whole economic mess of the country is wrong

and you know what:
everyone who wants to be right,
is
and yet,
are they happy?

So let's dance around and wonder:
are we terrorizing ourselves with the idea
that 9/11 shouldn't have happened

are we terrorizing ourselves with the wish
that in this country at least
crazy men with the idea that they can solve
anything by killing a bunch of people all at
once ( Hiroshima anyone? firebombing of Dresden and Tokyo)
should happen

people want to be right
the most idiotic form of this is to go
out and figure that you are so right
you get to kill off a bunch of the Wrong crowd

crazy

and then,
if we want to erase this idiocy
from the world
or from happening in "our" country,
who are we, but mental expungers of the
the Wrong folk
so we wipe the "bad/ dumb/ wrong THEM" out
with our judgment

me right, you wrong
ah, such sweet poison

such a common way to waste our lives

and the unfailing way to be unhappy:
You, the past, should have been different

me right, the past should have been my picture,
you, reality, the past as it was, is WRong

la, la

lots of luck

so, if you don't agree with me,
be happy,
but don't be right,
be amused, confused,
curious:

how could he possibly think that way?

what would it be like if I tried that out for awhile?

And if you can't entertain an "alien" viewpoint,
why get so mad at the terrorists,
who clearly lacked humor and the good graces
to see that not everyone agreed with them

they are just like us
with the extreme of getting to really wipe out
what they don't like
including themselves

imagine how much self hatred goes into terrorism,
forget all the hogwash about 40 virgins in heaven,
these dopes all knew they were going to die,
and that they were destroying themselves

nothing but good old lack of love
for self
others
and the whole big mess
can lead to such drastic acts

and then again as the ramble rumbles
down,
and the 3000 mentioned above are all
dead
and here we are still

what's that about?

it's our moment
this gol dern moment is
our life

how much love and joy
and tolerance of the "wrong" people,
and love for the "wrong" people
can we conjure up

IN THIS MOMENT,
CAUSE IT'S THE ONLY ONE

ciao
for
NOW

Chris, 9-11-2011
whoppie, here we are,
you and I
alive

Slow down, in the emotional world, too/ divorce advice good 4 us all

In a time of divorce
or separation
or breakup,
the temptations are two:

to simply lie down, pull the covers over one's head
and
"give up:

and
to add a bunch of extra activities,
learn Spanish,
take dance lessons,
keep busy every single night

Ah, yes.
Well, in a way, both are useful if they
shift us out of the rut
we were in,
AND they are only useful
to our true discovery of ourselves
and our inner transformation,
IF
we take part in them as mindful actions.

So, if we go dancing:
pay attention to all the movements, thoughts and feelings
while showering and dressing to go
while getting in and driving the car
or getting on and riding the bike
while waiting for someone to dance with
while getting instructions
while either "getting" the instructions, as in knowing what to do, or not

In other words,
if we are desperate for approval,
and that's what our relationship seemed
to be satisfying,
and wasn't really,
and then we go off to dance,
and are desperate for approval there,
even if we find someone who seems to be the one
who will give that approval

it won't work

unless we are content within and
able to give ourselves approval up and down the line,
good days and bad,
in sickness and in health
in poverty and in wealth
in good mood and bad

then we aren't ready to pretend that someone
else is going to do that for us

they aren't

So, maybe only do one or two new things.
And take them as experiments to be mindful
the entire time.
And don't try to meet anyone.
And watch, and be lovingly humorous about
our wish, need, demand, craving for outside attention
and
approval
and
affection
and
"love"

Why don't we take this breakdown time
and a breather
a breathe in
and breathe out
time,
time to discover who we are,
who we would be without the approval, or disapproval
of any person
or set of people

Okay, and what of the head under the covers
path.

Slow down on that, too.

Can we go to the bed, slowly, and sense our entire body.
Can we feel ourselves on the bed,
can we feel the covers,
can we sense where our arms and legs and spine are
in space
can we follow our breathing

can we get so relaxed and "into" our body on the
bed under the covers
that we can start to watch our thoughts
as a very entertaining show

and if the thoughts are coming too
fast
or are
too mean,
can we slow them down?

how.
by getting a journal and writing them down.
slowly.
carefully.

One "Should"
and one "shouldn't"
at a time.

All misery has a should or shouldn't or a should have or a shouldn't have attached.

Can we slow down, by writing, and then looking at what we have written with our
eyes and heart and brain,
and say: Oh, that's what I believe.

Soon, with the shoulds and shouldn't written down
the transformation can deepen.

But just to get away from hiding from the thoughts
behind our misery
into writing them down
and recognizing them
is to move so much closer to mindfulness
as to almost constitute,
then and there,
the new life we want for ourselves.

Good.

Carlos Casteneda after 30 years, whoopie

Back in the days,
if you read Carlos Casteneda
you got hooked

magic
mystery
deserts
Indians
sorcerers

whoopie

in was like Harry Potter and
it was supposed to be real

and who knows
some probably was

he's got some great stuff,
reading through Journey to Ixtlan
about treating the world as a mystery
as an unknown

that we don't need to buy into everyone
else's description of Reality

and you read the first part of Awareness through Movement
and basically, Moshe is saying:
the society wants you to be a cog,
that's it's purpose

and hey, person: what's your purpose

and what's the best tool to escape the mold,
the mask as he calls it,
and discover the life you really want for
yourself?

awareness.

and what's the best step to awareness?
movement that creates new patterns
and increases complexity
and demands
and rewards attetention

and will attention lead to awareness?

well, it is awareness while being used,
and it can turn on our "awaring" ability
as at first a gift
and then later a necessity:

life is so dull and same same same
without awareness

and even my fingers
now
on the keyboard

I can get the job
or sense the tips touching and my spine holding
up my head
and my eyes looking at the black shapes
appearing on the screen

needless to say,
awareness like that can contribute to
wanting to leave the restricted world
of the computer,
but awareness like that sharpens me
wakens me
back into life

and so all Carlos' adventures
real
or not,
was I following my breathing while
reading them

was I real
as i thrilled to his learning to be more real

sometimes

it's a great day
to live in reality

have a great time

here's the book again.

I have so far made 10cents from people buying Amazon books
off the blogs,
so it's obviously a flourishing source of income

Awareness Through Movement














PS my book for sale to the right,
if you click to the demo chapters you'll see choices
of four prices
the bottom price is just for another week

great day
play in the fields of awareness
do things wrong
see who you are
if you forget who you are

be your own sorcerer

good

What are Brains for?

You know that seems like a silly question,

or an obvious one?

And in our day and age,
an insulting phrase is floating around:
"it's a no-brainer"

As if a human could stand,
let alone breathe,
let alone make an easy/ what the talker or writer thinks is obvious
decision.

And brains can get us in trouble:
they are very good at comparing;

So and so has a bigger car?
You should have been nicer to me (comparing reality to our picture
of how reality "should" be,
is ,
alas,
one of the great ways to suffer in this world)

It's hotter outside than inside,
or vice versa.

Brain's notice.

They also are kind of lazy, sometimes.
If you know how to open a door,
we "just do it,"
we don't really feel our fingers on the door,
or "play around with/ experiment with" several ways
to open the door.

When is the last time we used the other hand
to open a door?

When is the last time we slowed the rate of turning
as we opened the door?

When is the last time we noticed how our feet were placed
or how our breathing felt
when we opened the door?

And this is just one of the many things
that we could,
for all we know,
improve,
or at least become more awake and aware and playful
about.

What others?
Saying hello.
Looking around on the computer.
Rummaging around in the kitchen.
Walking to our car.
Getting in our car.
Driving our car.
Getting out of our car.

Me, not having a car,
like to point out how auto-matic
people tend to get around their auto mobiles,
but put a mobile phone in my hand,
and I go automatic, too.

Except when we don't.

Brains love to learn.

They love to notice differences,
and learning could be said to be
the noticing of differences that make a difference.

So brains love to learn.

In good Feldenkrais and Anat Baniel Method lessons,
our brains are given, via movement, opportunities to
tune into options and possibilities that were there
before the lesson.

We learn that we are less restricted than we thought.
We learn how big and amazing our possibilities are.
We learn how to move easier and more gracefully
and farther from the clutches of pain.
More pleasure.

This is all learning that takes place in the brain,
by new pathways and options being opened.

Brains love to learn.
Brains love to stay to same.

This clues us into the challenge and opportunity of living an
amazing life.

How are we going to use our brains?


For a change.