Less Free

We are less free the more freedom we seem to have. We can equate time and options with freedom and the more of either we have the more free we may think ourselves, though the need to fill the time and respond to the options intrudes rather than liberates.

No Destination

Without a destination we have already arrived. With no place to be we are already where we need to be.

Writing to Control

Steve was talking of a particular pathology and noted they write in order to gain a semblance of control. I do not have the pathology he was speaking of, but maybe the rest was true -- we write as a way of appearing in control, which is not terrible as long as we know at best we have an appearance.

Destinations

When there is no destination you need only be where you are. It is sometimes easier to have a destination. That way, if the moment becomes uncomfortable we can rush over to the new location.

Rehearsing

If we rehearse, we undo.

Sharing Experiences

The less we bring (the less rehearsed or determined we are to offer something specific) the more can we take from the experience since it enables the other person to share. Expertise intrudes upon the process.

The Value of Education

The value of education is not in the questions it answers, but in those it raises.

Hearts or Minds

Whether we keep things in our hearts or in our minds is probably important.

Trust at Stake

Failures of trust occur only when there are significant things at stake. It is easy to trust where the outcome has not personal significance. It is easy to trust when those closest to us are not at risk.

Flying School

All I remember from flying school is Bruce saying, "fly the airplane." That's when anything happens -- when you are looking for a place to land, trying to restart the engine or putting out a fire, you continue to fly. Life is not so very different.

Up to Date

I have no interest in being up to date. I do not want to dress in current fashion, take an interest in popular culture, listen to music less than thirty years old, have conversations with most born after the Kennedy years (except some children). I do not want to hear new ideas that are not new at all or see art that strikes me as foolish. No pictures needed to be rated 'R' are of interest, and most are rated 'PG.' Nor will I wear my hair as today's people do. I want no stylists as long as I can find a barber. I do not want to live or work in anything made mostly of concrete, or where the windows will not open. I am not willing to spend half as much for a car as I did for my home, but  otherwise (with a few additional conditions) I am generally tolerant of the day.

Secret

They came running to hear the secret and were annoyed to learn there was none.

Powerlessness

As we acknowledge our powerlessness, we are grabbing for control.

Starring Role

He plays what he thinks is a starring role when in truth it is nothing of the sort. As long as he does not know it is a spear carriers' part he can play it quite well. Not all truths make us free.

Believing in Love

Even knowing it is not so we can believe we are so loved as we wish we were.

A Moment

I was convincing myself that I am not really as sad as I so often seem. I was trying to recall and revivify moments without fear or sadness, and that did not even stand in their shadow. I recalled several and am sure there were others, but one stood apart as a complete moment. It had lasted only the briefest time and was so unspectacular that no one watching would even have noticed, but it is enough and remains so even after so many years.

Doing Away With

What we can do away with, rather than what we might acquire, is the aim.

Mistaken Needs

People are saying "have to have" and "need to do" about some very silly things.

Holding Tightly

Holding tightly may be more indicative of insecurity than of possession.

A Step Beyond Life

The dying to self is not what we do in order to come alive to or as someone else. As the dying to self of death, there is a willingness to set aside the assurance and predictability of the self in favor of the collective awareness of contemplation. It is not dying in the sense of losing or abandoning, and it has none of the despair the living associate with death. It is instead a hope-filled step beyond life as it is, and a settling out of being. It is what makes death transition, but not into a different existence, but instead to a transformation of what we would cling to had we less faith. There is no need to cling to life since that would be embracing incompleteness in fear of fulfillment.

Setting Aside the Self

The more we can set aside the more likely are we to approach what is essential, and the more personal elements we surrender the more can we recognize the universal, realizing that surrender of self to it is not a sacrifice after all; but to do so requires a capacity for trust that may seem beyond us. It is hard to accept but it is only more of the paradox: as we have less need to be self, the more can we find the presence of the universal where the selfness had formerly been.

Beyond Yours and Mine

Unless they can go beyond "yours" and "mine," there will be no "ours."

Too Much

When you do too much, you do nothing.

My Madness

I am used to visiting in wellness where things are resolved or capable of resolution but I then return to the madness of my own world pretending (though not calling it such) that the madness makes more sense, when all it is, is familiar.

More Faithful to Fear

I have been more protective of the moment, more intent upon not disrupting it, and so have been less faithful to the future, keeping it instead at a distance and postponing its becoming present time. Betsy thinks, and rightly so, there is no need to wait and worry about its impact (which in the fantasy is always negative and so needing more to be deferred). She think things are done by doing them, that they then have an opportunity to work out and be adjusted to. They can then prove themselves undeserving of all that fear.

I believe she is right and that she has been, but I am more faithful still to the fear. Hope and trust are not as available as I might wish. I am faithful also to the sadness, perhaps because it has been so long with me. It is no longer what I sometimes have, having become over time who I am. While good things happen I do not trust them, as I do not trust moments of happiness. They are not as familiar or as reliable as the darkness has become.

That has, I think, always been with me. It is confirmed, rather than created, in sadnesses that now occur. In the darkness there is familiarity, but it is the satisfaction death might offer with its finality. There is no ready inclination to go beyond it and making it such a final or absolute state (one of essence rather than what sometimes occurs) has limited consideration of more hopeful options.

I have been again dragged to a point where I can accept goodness  and begin trying to trust. It is no one else's choice and until I do I stand in the way of others who may go around me, but only with difficulty. I wish sometimes they would go around my sadness and go on seeking what I do not see, but I would miss them too. I want them to be free, but not so free that they leave me. I want to them to take me along, but to also leave me where I am. I wish they could thrive, but I expect it to show also how low I have fallen. I would like to say, "Go away, and go with the happiness that belongs in your hearts. Go, and don't look back, but I want them where I can still see them too."

I would be as pleased if I could avoid this choice and could settle into this partial life that is more familiar, but this is not as simply done as it had been and I know I can no longer put the choice outside myself. I either trust or allow another aspect to die. I wish I were less fearful but to be so I would have to act in a courageous way. I would have to do what I can to encourage hope and trust growing in lives other than my own, but that is the easier part. It is me who is the reluctant disciple of trust. I can show other people where freedom lies and I can even look out in that direction, but going there, doing rather than just thinking about it, is unfamiliar ground.

To say I am stuck, to say I feel trapped sometimes in this darkness, to find reasons to support doing nothing (or nothing just yet) is to avoid rather than postpone wellness and the prospect of being happy. I know that as I know other facts. How I acquired this debt to pain and how I determine sadness was so essential I am not sure, but even though they have been present or hovering as far back as I can remember, I still have choices.

I would be O.K. to go beyond the resolve, to think of life as more an answer than dying might seem, but it does call for more action than thought, for doing rather than deciding to do, and instead of writing it asks that I stand up and try hoping and trusting no matter how risky they seem. What is actually at risk is not so great compared to what instead might be attained. Stop waiting to be free.

Complete Life

Life may become more extensive but it is at any point already complete.

Exposing the Problem

What you saw on television was the exposing of the problem, not its resolution.

Opposite of Intensity

Spirituality is a difficult concept because it is the opposite of intensity.

Planning to Remember

I was planning to remember something. It seemed that important. I instead forgot, which suggests how really important it was.

Let Life Happen

Life would be easier were we less afraid and were we less inclined to pretend control over it. If we could let it happen rather than trying so hard to make it happen, it would be more easily lived.

No Promises

He blames life for not keeping its promises, when perhaps it made none.

The Asking of Prayer

The more specific our request the less likely is it to be realized, which is why asking that God's will be done is the essential prayer of asking.

Chasing Squirrels

When I chase the squirrels the birds fly away, so what was gained.

One Drink at a Time

Focusing on drinking rather than on each drink makes the condition too big. When we instead consider each occurrence a distinct choice, it is manageable.

Remorse Not Change

They act as though remorse, rather than change, completed the cycle.

Rituals

We have, in addition to social and religious rituals, conversational ones. We say what we had said and anticipate the response we have always received. What is communicated is less certain, but it is the ritual that counts, the ceremonial way in which the words are presented.

Unready

When it is time to make changes we will even then be unready. If we wait until ready we will do nothing but still we prepare. We let the preparation pretend also to be the action.

Guses and Woodrows

We would like to think ourselves a bunch of Guses, but we are Woodrows beneath the surface.

Preserving God's Mystery

When going out to God's presence, he covered his face. Seeing would lessen it and take from this experience the subjective that was so essential to it.

Endurance

Shackleton had thought that by endurance we conquered, but that may be true only of some Arctic lands, and then only to the extent the land will permit it. It was the ice and snow that determined who might have to endure what, and the extent of what might for a moment be conquered. In the end, endurance as a virtue or trait may be one of the least valuable. Given a choice, we might better cultivate others.

Lost Ideas

I come across reference to books I have read, books I read to uncover such wondrous ideas, but I do not now remember what they might have revealed.

Treating Myself

Am I good at what I do because I am, in treating the clients, recognizing myself? I think sometimes this is so. The difference is that they change.

Sacrifice

People who, like the Duke of Windsor and others who turn up in magazines, those who have made great sacrifices (even when their actions have only borrowed that name) must be sure to keep what they have done "of value," and so they repeat -- or permit the repetition -- of their story even when it is more old than valued. It is a defining even this sacrifice, and so it must always have been a wonderful trade. It has always to be worth what might instead have been.

Applause may be dismissive

Monuments

They have erected an additional monument.  It is in recognition of those who served in more recent wars. It is unfortunate there is no monument honoring those whose service was in the Peace Corps or VISTA. Maybe our town has not generated enough Corps people or Volunteers to warrant such a monument, which is in itself very sad.