No news is good news

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I've been quiet here lately mostly because I'e had my head down - plowing forward with so much work. But, I know well the perils of avoiding introspection, and in this new day and age, sometimes online journaling is introspection. Discuss.

Things have been going startlingly well. We've had a massive financial uptick, engendered by tireless work on my part and the resonance of the classical Chinese message. That always helps - money helps. At least in my case.

I have been drinking. I drink a bit with family dinner, wine mostly. I've had a couple times where I stepped outside the strictest of my boundaries to have a glass of wine otherwise with my wife. That feels ok, and I've been super aware of the potential for it NOT to be ok. Somehow, I feel like a part of a demon has been slain. We'll see how it goes.

Other than that, I've laid off the hawking dream a bit. Why? Because it's a HUGE investment of time and money and I want to make sure my businesses and family are solid first. It's still very much on the radar, but instead of doing the Eric Grey classic go from novice to "expert" in 60 days or less come hell or high water, I'm going to take the meandering path.

I'm reading books, reaching out to local hawkers, and I'm going to see about volunteering at the Audubon Society hospital or something similar. It makes me regret not taking advantage of the Raptor Center in Eugene when I had a chance. Oh well.

The summer is finally starting to get rolling, though it's going to be a BUSY one for me work-wise. Still, I'll find time for concerts and movies in the park, BBQs, picnics, lots of long walks and hikes in the Gorge.

Life feels so full & so perfect, I've simply nothing to complain about. God, that feels so good.

Reminders

This is, in my mind, the biggest danger zone in a transformation. The first few days, I'm always a tornado of activity. I'm writing, I'm journaling, I'm seeking new practices, I'm aware of my thoughts and behavior, I'm still feeling the burn of whatever event led me to the transformation in the first place.

After a week or so - the urgency decreases. The toxicity or self-loathing or worry dissipates. I start to feel like I'm not so bad off after all. I skip a day of writing, or of practice, or I let a little slip in diet, in drinking, in whatever. I shrug it off and hold up my fine progress as obvious evidence that everything's ok.

But this is always, always the beginning of the end. One slip so, so easily leads to another. Then either a positive or negative reaction leading to an assumption that the original goal wasn't so important in the first place. Recalibration inevitably takes place, and always takes place in the downward direction. Want less stress? Lower your standards - right? No.

Not this time. This time, as the danger zone approaches, I redouble my efforts. I look back over my original notes and journal entries. I return to this blog. I focus on my body. I meditate. I keep going to yoga come hell or high water. I look to my list of encouragements and rewards. I try to remember the pain of realization, and recognize that one can only break so many commitments to one's self before trust is fully lost.

I also recognize the deep, dangerous lie in the commonly bandied about phrase, "Everything in moderation, including moderation." While I understand the positive intent behind some utterances of this phrase, I think more often than not it's permission to underachieve.

As I said on Twitter, I cannot think of a single occasion in my life where moderation was the WRONG call. The less hedonistic call? Sure. The call that puts a little distance between me and my wild and crazy friends? Yep. The call that hurts a little in its self denial? Definitely.

But each and every time, I emerge on the other side a little happier, a little more aware of myself, a little calmer, a little healthier. And that's so, so worth it to me.

Groove

I don't know if I like the word "flow" sometimes. I prefer the word "groove." I'm in my groove, right now. Mostly because I've been so active. On Saturday, took a 9 mile hike with my family, drinking in the smell of the forest. On Sunday, I worked in the yard almost all day - really digging into some projects.

The key is that I didn't feel incredible during all of these times. I wasn't in that state of high inspiration during all of my activity. Sometimes, I was just moving along. Sometimes, I was grooving. So, keeping really active is an important piece of this puzzle.

I've been doing a lot of research into falconry, similar to how I did long ago when I first became interested in it. I let it go, I think, because I felt like it was pointless. I also wasn't aware that there was such a thriving community still around. I imagined I might be the only person interested. The research is getting me really excited. Everything I read just inflames my passions even more. Most of my rewards for avoiding alcohol are going to be falconry (or outdoors) related - because you need GEAR for this thing. :) Just yesterday I was figuring out where to build my mew in the backyard. Really exciting stuff - groove worthy.

Let another week begin!

Thunder

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It's been nearly a week without drinking, and I'm getting even keeled. I think that has less to do with not drinking and more to do with the mindfulness practice I've been engaging in.

Yoga, meditation, and also just noticing.

Things are still a little topsy turvy, to be frank. Relationships are always a little bit strained when change is on the loose. The thunderstorm we're having right now is teaching me that change can be like that.

I go to this yoga studio called the Bhaktishop in SE Portland. It's a great place, with kind and open hearted teachers. What I really love about it, though, is the devotional practice. There's lots of chanting, there's time for meditation, the whole space just bleeds out beauty, poise, practice. Neither too serious nor too "sporty" nor too random. Everything fits together, and yet there is room for disorder and newness.

So, it bends me, and I bend. And in that bending, everything gets softer. I don't want to shout at my dog. I smile at people as they walk on my lawn. I don't panic when the words don't come on the blank screen. I eat a cookie and don't stress it. I laugh.

And I can feel my body healing. I can feel the telomeres rewinding. I can feel my hormone levels normalize. I feel harmonious qi flow reestablish itself in my back, along the shoulders. My sleep comes into alignment. No pain.

And so, as I expand into this unfolding awareness, I notice how things are falling together. I get even more excited about the falconry deal. It no longer seems scary or unlikely that those parts of my life that I no longer need actually could be transformed.

The important thing, now, is to maintain it.

To that end, I have a few tools in my belt. One is a timer on my phone that rings a little bell at completely random times during the day. It puts a little message up that reminds me to be mindful. Sounds totally stupid, and totally, totally works. Snapped me out of a few errant thought paths, for sure.

I have yoga, of course. And I have a spoken and felt commitment to continue that practice, one way or another. Without excuses, but with gentleness.

I have the awareness that if I continue on with this level of stress and lack of awareness, the things that stress does to the body will happen to me. My arteries will become clogged. The harmony of my organs will become disrupted. Ticking time bombs will lie throughout me, waiting, waiting.

I have wonderful work and a very patient family.

I have friends, one friend in particular, who is traveling a similar path and who needs my help as much as I need his. We prop eachother up when needed.

I've never had those supports before, or have never noticed them. I have no doubt it's still one day at a time. But those days feel less like work towards some distant future, and more like relaxing into what is already, and maybe has always been, right there. Easier.

No expectation for rapid cure

One difficult thing in transforming a major pattern is impatience. I want to be over this now. I want my mind to be clear, free of thoughts of this. I want it to be behind me. I don't want to have conversations with people about it anymore. I don't want to even remember that I had to think about it.

But, you know, it's only been a few days. Thoughts are going to be there. Conversations are going to happen. I expect that I will probably have negative emotions, obsessive thoughts, and so on for at least another three months or so. That's my estimate based on past experience and what I've read online.

After that point, of course, the danger really begins. Because once the intensity of the thing wears off, it's all to easy to believe that it's ok to do this or that. To forget why you detached in the first place. To get lazy, overly secure.

So, while this constant mentation & worry & strife is pretty irritating, I'm going to accept it for what it is. I'm going to realize that it's the enemy I know, and that after it passes, an enemy I don't know will rise in its place.

Maybe a little combative - but this morning? That's how it feels. I'm ready to fight.

My ultimate reward

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All my life I have felt a deep connection to birds of prey. It has populated my dreams, many random encounters and some small amount of obsession. As a reward for myself I am beginning the process of learning how to become a falconer.

It may seem a strange passion to some, but it has been with me long enough that there's no good reason to avoid it.

The hardest thing

The hardest thing, I think, in making a deep transformation - particularly when any level of addiction is involved - is to see yourself as something, somebody else.  When something has been a part of your cultural context for a long time, it becomes inseparable from your memories of your life and your self concept.  Thinking about that thing being gone is almost MORE inexplicable than thinking of yourself without a significant other, a parent, a child.  It's like thinking of your face without your nose.  

This is true even if whatever you are seeking to transform has negative impact on the rest of your life.  Even profoundly negative impact.

Small mountain pine tree 1
Image Credit : Jan Willem 

You have to strip all of that way.  You have to leave behind regret, pain, sorrow, self loathing, worry, fear, the judgments of others, judgments of self, concepts of God, the good and the bad of those moments that made up your SELF WITH the behavior to be transformed.

I have to strip away all of the joy & pain of being a person who drinks often, and plenty.  And so on with other behaviors.  I have to lay myself bare.  I have to be willing to be bored, boring, naked, silent.  Still.  A lone pine on a windswept mountain with no knowledge of what comes next.  When memories, good or bad, come up - they must pass through my mind as things with no more weight than a single atom.  A cloud dissolving without substance.  The emotional trails they leave in the sky of my mind will dissipate.

And I will still remain.

It's important to move forward

Today is a hard day. It's a day when I have a serious choice to make. I can continue my life from before, in which my every success is marred by a personal failure. Or, I can open a new chapter. A chapter without fear, remorse, toxic damage, self-deception and the rest.

This new chapter is more than negation. Indeed, the negation is probably the least significant part. This new chapter is an open embrace. A call to the ancients, and to my own ancestors, and to the whole universe that I'm ready for something more. That I am no longer content to distract myself. That I want to see where this human consciousness thing can go.

I've tried to start this chapter more times than I can count. But, we all know that there is a time and place for everything, and maybe this chapter's time just hadn't yet come. Until now.

My life up until now has been governed by a rotating cast of principles, assertions & suppositions. It has consisted in large part of my knowing what needs to be done, and shirking the responsibility. Not in my work life, of course, things are going well enough there, but in the ways that really count. In my innermost spaces.

So, it's time to make a stand. To say out loud that I demand my life line up with a stable set of principles. Not everyone believes that is important, and that's fine. I've let their arguments govern my life for too long. I'm not content to do that anymore. It's that old adage that if you don't stand for something, you'll fall for anything. No more.

Five principles govern me now - or rather I govern myself by them. Five principles that form the foundation of my religion, that act as the measuring stick for all of what I am and do from here on out.

1. Integrity - to keep my agreements (most of all to myself), to do right by the planet, people, etc

2. Purity - to take as sacred my body and mind and to only let things enter it that seem to be nourishing

3. Wonder - to make a special effort to view the world from a place of awe, humility and excitement, to notice the details yet not have to analyze them

4. Industry - to create things in the world, to make the world a better place than i found it, to not let my hands and heart become idle

5. Peace - to cultivate a deep sense of calm, focus and clarity, to never engage in activities that disturb my heart and mind

The first step in all of this is to almost entirely eliminate drinking, as it tends to be the most destructive force in my life. I am giving myself small "outs" that have to do with connection with family. My focus will be on this for the next six months, but as part of that focus, I will be studying and seeking to fully understand these principles - perhaps refining them. They form my support network and paint a picture of the person I am to become.

Up until now I have been a mostly happy, mostly successful person who has been wildly lucky to have such wonderful people around and such fantastic opportunities available. By the end of this process, I expect to be the same, but be utterly happy and as successful as I want to be. At this point, I am truly my greatest obstacle. I cannot let that continue.

Posterous theme by Cory Watilo