Gene's Journal

Relentless

2018-11-06T10:39:00.001-08:00

When I was in high school, I read a fiction book about a boy in the future who won a trip to a space station. It was written with total realism, and it described the boy's experience with weightlessness during his time there. My mind captured the feel of weightlessness so vividly, that when I put the book down, I noticed, for the first time, this bizarre pull of my body towards the mattress I was laying on. For a second, I was puzzled why I was not floating free, but rather was being pulled into the mattress so relentlessly that the mattress actually was depressed where my body was pushed against it.

Then I realized that the bed itself was also strangely being pulled to the floor, seemingly stuck to it, rather than floating off, as if a giant magnet was continuously trying to pull the bed through to the floor below. Having lived for a few hours in a world where there was no such thing as "down", and now suddenly experiencing this strange pull of my body towards what seemed like a totally arbitrary side of the room, the somatic feel of gravity was deeply impressed on me. I spent the day marveling at the heaviness I now felt, and how I could not push off into the air but was relentlessly drawn back to the earth.

I woke up last night from a bad dream where an evil spirit was hovering outside of the car I was in. I felt that same sense of relentlessness. The spirit wanted to get to me - it was angry, malicious, and focused on causing me pain and destruction. Only the car window stopped it, like the floor stopping the bed from falling through. The sense of a will bent on my destruction was very vivid, as was my helplessness and unpreparedness in dealing with such an entity.

This kind of nightmare I have lived with, almost daily, since high school. It seems significant to me that the book that came to mind when I woke was also from that same period, and also the time that a troubled older boy lived with us who was often relentlessly focused on causing my misery. I remember being impressed that the more pain I felt, the more gleeful he became from his power over me. That sense of gleeful power over someone sunk deep into my soul.

Some people, when they have experienced abuse, go on to abuse others. Others go to the other side and become champions against the kind of abuse they experienced. I took a third path. I associated power with abuse, and never wanting to be abusive, I chose to avoid being powerful.

Thus, some of my life has been a battle between wanting power and being afraid of power. This is still playing out in my life today.

A Renewed Attempt

2018-11-06T10:39:00.000-08:00

Okay, one more time, I'm starting an attempt to be more regular with my journaling. That means being less concerned with what others will think, and more concerned with accurately recording my experience and thoughts. It is also an attempt to prevent my writer's block from kicking in whenever I try to organize my thoughts into a coherent whole, and rather to put down the raw data of what it is like to be me, with less attempt to explain myself and more attempt to capture the daily surprise of being me.

So this may be more boring than a finished piece of writing (there's my worry about how this will impress others), but hopefully more real and honest. It may be relentlessly self-focused, but then what journal is not?

Laughter

2017-11-11T09:10:00.002-08:00

There is a kind of laughter that comes only to those who have plumbed the depths of despair, who have done their grief work, and who have learned to live a new way.  Looking back clear of the resentment and bitterness, sometimes one can see the absurdity in the creatures we are, and love ourselves in our absurdity.  

That laughter can only be had when one is no longer holding on to the past, no longer saying, "It should have been otherwise".  It is very different than the laughter of embarrassment when someone too easily exposes their pain, or the laughter that tells us our pain is silly and unworthy of being taken seriously.  It is the laughter of the deep experience of knowing ourselves fully and loving ourselves despite what we know.

There is no rushing grief.  If a person is still angry/bargaining/despairing, you will not convince them to "look on the bright side".  The pain must out, or we will carry it forever.  But once it is out, if it is fully out, then joy is once again truly possible.

Swearing off my murderous desire

2017-11-10T09:50:00.000-08:00

I have decided to swear off my murderous desires

I no longer want to kill my ego

My ego is not my enemy, not something to be isolated, rejected, destroyed

My ego is a child playing in the sunshine, believing he is the center of the world

Spinning in the wild wind, while the universe spins around him

And what he sees and experiences seems to be all that exists

My ego is full of pride, of love for himself - and since when is self-love a bad thing? Is not he a miracle to be celebrated?

However, like any other child of mine, I need to keep an eye on my ego, making sure he doesn't run into the street or take a knife out of the kitchen drawer to play with

He does not know everything

And he can wreak havoc if I do not watch carefully

Yet I am glad to have him - he is a wonderful and permanent part of me that I can love, as well as care for and guide

So that he can find his place of comfort and belonging in my life

And we can live together in peace

Musings over impermanence

2017-10-13T16:08:00.000-07:00

This morning, I woke up to amazement. I found myself in my own bedroom after spending 8 hours wandering around in my dreams to all sorts of strange places; somehow I still wound up at the exact same place where I fell asleep!

I come downstairs, and Heidi is sitting on the couch, laptop in her lap, just like yesterday. There's this strange continuity of existence that somehow I didn't expect this morning. The possibilities seemed so endless at night, when anything could happen, that it did not seem likely that I would wake up in a world remarkably similar to the one I left.

Furthermore, I realized I am still me (whatever that is)! In a world of impermanence, what explanation is there for being approximately the same person that I was yesterday? Why did I not return as a frog, or an ocean wave?

Part of me is disappointed - of all the people and things I could have been, I am once again constrained to be me. Part of me is comforted - I know what to do in this world, and in this body. I'm used to being me. I will have the same friends and relationships that I had yesterday, and I have the same activities to look forward to or dread.

Most of the time, life seems to move incrementally. Watching the minute hand, I can barely perceive motion. Yet when I am not watching, the hands on the clock can jump suddenly to totally unexpected positions, and I may have to rush out the door.

Can I draw a conclusion from this without cementing my reality into the non-present? Probably not. Conclusions kill. Can I escape my sameness, my continuity? I can always escape into the present moment, and leave behind the apparent reality of my past and future. It seems to be only the present moment that is continually new.

Need to know

2017-09-22T16:13:00.000-07:00

I don't need to know if you're non-binary, or you're transitioning, or what people you prefer to sleep with, or what pronoun you want to be called by. I want to know if you can connect with me, and tell me about your uniqueness, and hear about mine.

I don't need to know if you're progressive or conservative or libertarian. I want to know if you can set aside your beliefs long enough to hear and honestly consider another point of view.

I don't want to know if you're discriminated against, or if you are blamed for being privileged. I want to know if you are willing to set aside your hurts and anger long enough to meet me in that place beyond right and wrong.

I don't really care to know about your rights, and how they've been violated. And I don't care to know about the power and rights you've been granted. I want to know if you can step beyond your rights and walk in another person's shoes.

I don't need to know your religion, or whose god you worship, or what practices you follow. I want to know if you believe in kindness and honesty.

I don't need to know how rich you are, or how poor you are. I want to know if you can acknowledge your position in life without guilt or blame and still connect to your fellow human.

I don't care what protests you have been to, or how many times you have written your congressman. I want to know if you can see past the stories our minds create, that keep us separate and angry, and reach out to the heart in each human.

I don't want to know what sins you have committed, or how sorry you are. I want to know if you have learned to forgive yourself for everything, if you have learned to live with your faults, and if you have learned to extend mercy to those around you.

I don't want to know what boundaries you have drawn, and why you shut others out of your life. I want to know if you can connect with me, if you can be honest about your fears and weakness and shame. I want to know if you can let yourself be seen by another.

(inspired by Oriah Mountain Dreamer's "Invitation")

Adamancy and Empathy

2017-07-05T08:35:00.001-07:00

When a person becomes opinionated, they tend to lose empathy for the concerns of the opposing viewpoint. It is as if in their mind, they have decided their concerns are important enough that they can ignore the concerns of the other side. Thus, pro-choicers are concerned about government interference in our private lives more than the theoretical personhood of a fetus, and pro-lifers are more concerned with respect for human life than the vague threat of government outlawing actions based on personal conviction.

It seems clear to me that both concerns are valid, and that both sides will acknowledge that both concerns are valid - but in our rush for power, we deem it necessary to ignore one concern in favor of the other. We see adamancy and simplistic slogans as the path to victory - that without being a hard-liner, we will not be perceived as strong, and therefore will not win. This is a philosophy based on winning (and forcing a vast number of people to lose and be deprived of what they want), rather than cooperation and understanding.

Unfortunately, we have a president today focused on winning rather than on cooperation, on a certain subset winning rather than everyone winning, so the problem is exacerbated. However, I think that is a symptom rather than the problem. Long before the election, we showed the signs of moving towards more towards conflict and war than towards understanding and compromise.

What is the cause of this? Is there not a ton of evidence against the efficacy of conflict? Is there truly a greater tendency towards polarization and intolerance today than earlier, or has it always been this way?

Spiritual Beliefs

2017-06-21T10:50:00.000-07:00

A good friend recently told me some of her philosophy about spiritual beliefs. Basically, she believes that spiritual beliefs are not true or false, they are not even attempts to accurately describe reality - they are about influencing our lives for the better - that "pretending" (my word) something is true causes us to live differently, and if that difference is a good thing, that makes the belief useful, not true.

So if I take on the popular belief that we chose the life we were going to live before we were born, and chose to forget that knowledge, so we could learn the lessons of life - well, that belief has certain effects on how we live our lives, and in particular how we handle traumas or disasters - we no longer see ourselves as victims; it is the choice we made to go through things like this. I personally cannot accept this belief as true, and it angers me to think someone would believe I chose the abuse I went through as a child, but I can see the positive change in attitude that can be wrought by looking at life through this lens, and that could certainly be useful.

What a relief not to have to decide if a belief is literally true or not! Instead, I can look at how I can imagine the world in a way that enhances how I want to live life.

Letting Go of Being in Control

2017-06-21T09:00:00.000-07:00

Flying back from my annual trip to the Free Spirit Gathering on the East Coast, I had an insight. At one point, we were making a descent towards the airport, and I was going through my usual anxiety fantasy of spinning and crashing out of control. Suddenly, it came to me - when I stepped into that plane, I had effectively committed my entire life and well-being for the next three hours to this piece of machinery, and the people who controlled it. The moment we took off, my fate was completely and irrevocably determined, and there was absolutely nothing I could do now to change it. It was pretty silly now to tense up as if I could stop a crash from taking place. Whatever was going to happen was going to happen, and I had made an unconscious decision three hours before to let it happen, even if it meant a fiery crash.

My stomach eased up as I watched my fate play out, and we landed without incident. I thought to myself, if I had been fully conscious, I could have been aware that I was sealing my fate the moment I stepped onto that plane, and perhaps I wouldn't have suffered the anxiety of thinking I was still in control.

And then my mind went one step further. In a sense, our fate is sealed the moment we are born. True, there are many moments throughout life where I can make choices that have real consequences, but when I stepped onto this earth for the first time, I was going to have to live a human life with all of its glories and tragedies, for an unspecified period of time, whether I liked it or not. Most of my life has been without my choice or consent, and in that sense, my fate is sealed. It is absurd to pretend I'm in control beyond the small amount of life I can actually affect.

I can relax.

Abandoning the label Liberal

2017-06-11T10:57:00.000-07:00

I think I am going to abandon the label "liberal". There are too many things going on under that name that are totally against my values, just as much of what I find on the conservative side is against my values. We are seeing the rise of an "alt-left" movement, militant, violent, and authoritarian, trying to dictate how everyone else should be.

I believe in treating all people with kindness, and that is how I want to be treated. I am anti-one-side-ist. I want all people to respect each other's needs, and be able to listen to each other and walk a mile in their shoes before we judge.

This is not naive idealism. "Oneness" is hard work, very hard work. It is difficult to put your own cherished beliefs aside long enough to understand why someone believes things that you find abhorrent. And once you find common ground in your beliefs, it is still very difficult to find a solution that we can all live with. But what alternative is there, other than suppressing the freedom of all you disagree with, so that you can have power to make the world the way you want? How many good meaning folk have started out to better the world, and wound up being the problem instead of the solution?

I passionately believe this can be done. Any successful relationship has gone through the phases of disagreeing, trying to change the other side, seeing them as wrong and you as right, having to look inside and recognize your own shadow, and learning how to reconcile and compromise so you can build a life of love together. The same must be done politically between warring factions. Society is made up of individuals, and ultimately we have to deal with our shadow side if we want healing in our nation and in the world.

Portland Protests

2017-06-06T11:01:00.000-07:00

On my mind this morning are the protests here in Portland that took place on Sunday. People shouting slogans back and forth at each other, taunting, teasing, insulting, bullying.

I felt incredibly sad watching them, opposite sides of a street, bullhorns blaring, police keeping the crowds apart. Like children, taking sides, pretending their team is somehow superior. There was absolutely no possibility of heart-connection, of the two sides developing an understanding and a warmth between them. I do not doubt each side left with a deeper conviction of how right they are.

It is so obvious to me that gun control, or immigration, or Trump, or Russia, is not the issue. The issue, huge and bleeding right in front of us, is our inability to hear each other. We ignore the legitimate fears and needs of the other side, because our side is too filled with our own fears and angers to have the capacity to notice any concerns but our own. Our minds are poorly designed when it comes to seeing clearly that we are all in the same boat, that we rise or fall together, and that we as a whole must be understood and cared for, rather than splitting off some part of us and condemning it.

The crowds egg each other on, building up the beastly energy to the point where we totally lose our ability to see the humanity across the street from us, and they become stupid, ignorant, or worse, immoral, evil, to be shunned or destroyed. They are a part of us! We destroy a part of ourselves when we destroy an opposing side, and we will be a one-sided cripple if we succeed. We need both sides, or else critical elements will be lost and we will be blind to certain dangers the other side saw clearly.

Trump is not the problem. Society is not the problem. "They" are not the problem - not the real problem. The problem is the disowned parts of ourselves that we project outwards onto others, and then try to pummel, mock, berate, or eliminate. We are so numb that we do not feel the pain of the side we are destroying - the desperateness, the sense of injustice, the sense of not being cared about in the side we are choosing to reject. It is as if one part of our body has become numb to us, and the other part is trying to burn it off.

The trick is to deal with the deep pain that comes from becoming conscious of how we treat the other side, without then turning around and berating ourselves for the cruelty we have inflicted. That only splits off another part of ourselves for us to berate, and we repeat the abuse. The trick is bravely feeling the pain that comes with consciousness - to stop being numb to the hurts and fears of those we have ignored, and to step into compassion. Yes, there are real world issues to be decided on, and they are not simple - but no healthy solutions will be found if built by this brutal part of us that is focused on self-protection rather than compassion.

True solutions can only come from an integrated society that has compassion for all of its people. Any solution that only satisfies a portion of the people will forever deal with the portion that is not sufficiently heard and considered. They will rise again, as we have seen, because our insistence to get our needs met is paramount to our existence. It is the stuff of life that causes us to be here.

Separation, as it has been said time and time again, is illusion - interconnectedness is the reality. Our illusions only perpetuate our pain and our destructiveness. Interconnectedness is not easy or simple - we need to get our "big boy pants" on, and do the hard work of connecting with others - of learning compassion and empathy while not losing our own vision and truth. We need each other. And it's not easy opening to someone who seems so opposite to us. It takes a lot of looking past the outward appearance to the heart underneath.

Blind Spots

2017-03-14T11:17:00.000-07:00

Blind Spots

It amazes me

that some of the wisest people I know

have blind spots

blatantly obvious to others

and when I claim to know better

because I see their blindness

I am humbled to remember

that I share the same fate

depth

does not imply

perfection

Feeling Full

2017-03-14T11:10:00.000-07:00

My life feels pretty full today - good relationship, good friends, lovers, music, dance, hot tub, gatherings of good people in my home. But there's room for more, so, life, don't stop now - I ain't done with you yet!

Someday

2017-03-14T11:09:00.000-07:00

Someday

Someday I may toss you carelessly aside

like wilted flowers

or the wind, to my dismay, may whisk you away unexpectedly

like a thought not yet completed

but for now, Life, you are in my grasp

and I will not let go.

A Woman Wants Me

2017-03-09T11:29:00.000-08:00

A Woman Wants Me

I am on fire today

because a woman wants me

Ridiculous! Absurd! That my self-esteem

should be so dependent upon someone desiring me

simply because they have different body parts than I do

Yet that's the way it is

I am a man

And there are women attracted to me

because my body and my passions

have enough difference from theirs

to create mystery, draw desire

I am male

And despite all the things I could be ashamed of

because of the gender to which I belong

Today I stand tall and proud

For who I am and the energy residing in my body

fills me with life, and makes me bold

My mother's disappointment

when she first looked down on me

caused her to miss the opportunity

to get to know a boy deeply, in his boyhood

growing to be a man

Not like the men she knew

but someone that could understand a woman's heart

as well as his own

someone who could be powerful

yet compassionate

Today I stand in my maleness

erect, tall, proud

yet remembering the softness

from whence I came

Human Sexual Selection

2016-07-06T21:52:00.000-07:00

We select our sexual partners based on gender, age, and beauty. This selection process necessarily causes some, who are deemed more desirable, to have an abundance of sexual and bonding opportunities in their life, and others to have little or no opportunity to get their needs met. It divides us into the "haves" and the "have-nots".

Beyond beauty and age, there are also social skills - the ability of people to maneuver in the nuanced world of social cues and clues, and to be able to express feelings easily and accurately, to be emotionally intelligent, to be socially skilled. Men on the Asperger's spectrum (and there are four times as many men than women with Asperger's) have greatly reduced chances of finding a sexual or a bonding partner. Social and emotional skills are critical to many women; and men without them will not be favored.

I have, personally, puzzled over this imbalance for years, and as I get older, I notice an ever shrinking number of women who are attracted and available to me. I am rapidly falling into the category of the sexually undesirable, simply because of age.

I am going to address this problem in heterosexual terms. I applaud and am proud that we are addressing the needs of the LGBTQ community - that needed to be done. However, the 98% of humans who think in binary terms and prefer the opposite gender should also have their needs more clearly addressed.

The different experiences of men and women should be noted clearly. Very few men will say they have all the sex they want in their lives. Many, many women have all the sex they want - many women are seeking more emotional connection than sex, or they already have satisfying sexual relationships, or they have lost sexual desire. This creates a deep imbalance between the genders. If you look at those who show up at any event with sexual overtones, and who use the online dating, porn, and prostitution industries, as well as those who engage in sexual acts of violence, it is overwhelmingly men.

Often society is blamed for this imbalance. It is said that assigned and assumed gender roles play a huge part in the sexual problems of modern society. While there is truth to that, I do not believe that the imbalance between the genders is primarily a societal problem. Society merely encodes the values that are already present in individuals - it is the collection of individual preferences that creates the problem. Evolution has built the desire for sex into fertile creatures. Older men are still fertile, and older women are not, resulting in many women losing their libido after menopause. Thus, older men have a desire for younger women. As much as we would like to have someone to blame, the fact is that we are becoming trapped by our own sexual natures into a dilemma for which there are no easy answers.

Straight men cannot be asked to get their sexual needs met by other men, any more than gays can be "cured" of their homosexuality. Sexual preferences seem to be pretty much hardwired in us and not very subject to choice. Men *can* learn to get some of their emotional and touch needs met from other men, and I believe it is crucial that we do that. Male bonding is greatly needed, and may relieve some of the loneliness that men feel. But saying that heterosexual men should meet their own sexual needs as a gender is not respectful of their nature, any more than asking women to ignore their feelings and be responsible to meet men's sexual needs.

In traditional societies, it has been the obligation of the wife to satisfy the sexual needs of the husband, regardless of her own level of desire. That may have eased some of the problem. However, our culture today has considered women’s rights and thus, it is no longer legal to hold women responsible for the sexual needs of men, and men can no longer legally use the institute of marriage to demand sex of their wives. And yet, the desire for sex is a need inherent in men; not one created by women. While obligatory sex may have been a societal solution at one time, it is no longer viable in today's society.

I suspect some men would be less likely to be violent if they had a satisfying outlet for their sexual needs. Do not misunderstand - the responsibility for men's behavior is *always* on themselves, not on women or society; we are always responsible for the harm we do to others, regardless of the strength of our desire. However, if we, as a society, could find some better way of meeting men's sexual needs, it could reduce some of the violence we see today. If we want to have a happier society, we have to meet the needs of *all* people within it, to the best degree we can.

I do not see any easy answers to this dilemma. However, a few things could help:

- Men can learn to meet their emotional needs, and even touch needs, from each other, through men's groups and male friendships. That can relieve some of the isolation and loneliness that men without female companionship experience. Men have significantly more difficulty being close to their own gender than women, but that can be overcome.

- Prostitution could be legalized. If women are being asked to do something as intimate as sex with someone they are not attracted to, there should be compensation for those willing. In fact, there should be deep honoring, not scorn, for the women who choose this profession, because they are addressing a deep and crucial need in our society. To want women to be sexually available, and then scorn them for being so, is the height of hypocrisy.

- Men can focus on learning relationship skills and increasing emotional intelligence and sensitivity, and thus provide more of what women want from men in return for a sexual relationship.

Human needs are important, and we owe it to ourselves to build a society that meets as many of our needs as possible.

Choosing not to get even

2014-02-07T13:32:00.001-08:00

Should I be angry at someone who has unfair and cruel judgment towards me? The anger is natural, a response of my animalistic PSNS kicking in, ready to fight my perceived enemy because my needs are threatened. My need is for acceptance as I am, but my judgment of them betrays the fact that I don't wish to apply the same standards towards them that I want for myself.

They have a right to their feelings, their opinions, their stories, and their freedom of speech. My anger, which is about my needs not getting met, does not justify my judgment of them. Do they also not deserve the right to be accepted as their are in their judgmentalness? And if I do not accept them as they are, what justification do I have to believe they are wrong for not accepting me as I am?

We tend to respond to our own pain and anger with judgment, negative intent, or rejection of the person we are angry at. This response is natural but not necessarily valid. It is true that when we feel threatened or our needs are not met, we tend to feel angry, and we tend to respond to our own anger with a desire to fight or flee - a very natural response from our animal nature. However, that association can be broken - we do not have to yield to the desire to fight or flee in order to have our anger. When we recognize our anger as simply a feeling, no judgment or action need to go with it.

Just because you caused me pain does not mean you are a bad person; yet, this is an assumption we often make. This assumption comes from this logic: If it were not for your words or actions, I would not be in pain; therefore, you are at fault for causing me pain. And if you caused me pain, you must be a bad person. And if you are bad, you are not like me (because I see myself as good), and therefore worthy of my judgment and rejection, and I am justified in causing you pain in return.

There are many logical problems with this line of reason; but first, realize that this line of reasoning does not come from our rational minds; rather, it is built into our DNA from when we were animals. Animals attack or run from other animals they perceive as "bad" - i.e., somehow harmful to them. The genetic encoding for this logic comes from tens of millions of years of experience and natural selection. Thus we come to this logic from a completely natural source. We are not "bad" for having this logic, only ignorant and unaware.

The beauty of the human mind is that we can detect and act contrary to our genetic programming. We can choose to act based on our beliefs, morality, and lessons we have learned. We can have complex understandings that cause us to draw new conclusions on how we want to behave.

Deciphering our genetic coding, understanding it, and changing it to better suit our needs as complex human beings is the glory of being human, and gives us well-deserved pride for reaching a higher moral standard than what we were born with. Our genetic encoding served us well as animals; but now we are grown past that point and need to choose how we want to live in this world - because we are able to choose.

Unconditional Love can't be done in a weekend

2014-02-07T13:20:00.003-08:00

Recently I received an advertisement for an evening workshop, and among the many things promised was "unconditional love". Now, I know what they are talking about - I have done many workshops, and came away feeling like these people were my deepest friends, and the love and sincerity was deeply moving. The closeness that can occur from a well-run workshop is truly amazing. And as we all crave unconditional love, the evening sounded very tempting.

However, ultimately, I believe this is just a quick fix for our true need. I've realized over the past few years that "unconditional love" does not happen in an evening or over a weekend, but rather over years and years of being together and sharing lives. The wonderful highs we receive during a weekend workshop are great, but that is all they are - a high. It is possible that we meet someone at a workshop and start a wonderful long-term relationship that involves unconditional love, but that is an exception, not the rule.

I can no longer accept the phrase "unconditional love" for anything so short-term. Nostalgic memories of an experience together do not count. To have an intimate relationship with anyone requires, in my mind, spending significant and regular time together, involved in topics and activities that deeply matter to both people. Meeting a loving person at a party or workshop is just a teaser, and in my experience has rarely led to something that actually satisfies my deep longings for connection and intimacy. I'm not speaking here of physical intimacy, but rather intimacy of the soul, when two hearts have gotten to know each other so much that a sense of deep connection develops, and you are part of each others' lives. And how can you be part of someone's life without spending significant one-on-one time with them?

Today, this is the crux of friendship to me - spending significant one-on-one time with someone. Without that, I will never know if I am truly valued.

Deep Friendships

2014-02-01T09:10:00.000-08:00

Over the years, I've developed many friendships that are important to me. And yet, I have found myself lonely. I started looking at the friendships I had, asking why I was lonely when I had so many friends.

I noticed some characteristics - first, I only saw these friends at events or parties. I never got together with them one-on-one. And while they were very warm, and glad to see me, and gave me hugs and wanted to know how I was doing, an insecurity grew in me - did they want to know me enough to be willing to spend time alone with me?

I have a wonderful relationship with a partner. We live together. We spend a lot of time one-on-one. There is tremendous depth in our relationship, partially because of the alone time we spend together. I realized that if I wanted more depth in my other friendships, we would need to spend significant alone time together, really getting to know each other.

But there were several problem with that. It was awkward. I doubted anyone really liked me enough to want to spend hours, just the two of us, talking. In fact, I didn't want to spend significant time alone with many of my friends - why would I expect them to want to spend time alone with me?

I started looking over my friends, asking myself, who would I really like to develop a deeper relationship with? I picked out a few that I felt would enhance my life significantly if I could spend time with them. Several problems came up. First, most of my friends were too busy - the first free date they had would typically be a month away. I could not imagine having a deep friendship with someone I saw once a month at max. Second, people were suspicious - if it was a woman, a sexual agenda was often assumed. If it was a man, they would look at me strangely and ask, why do you want to be alone with me?

I finally decided I wanted to pick a guy, as sexual attraction with a woman brought in too many confusing factors, and creating the kind of friendship I wanted was difficult enough as it was. After a lot of thought, I picked a guy whom I had met several times at different events. I knew very little about him or his life, but I sensed that he was a kind person with a deep heart, and he was not afraid of closeness with men.

So I approached him and basically proposed to him - I said I wanted to develop a deep non-sexual friendship with a guy, even though I did not have a good idea what that would look like. How close can two men get? I thought of stories of brothers who would die for each other, or a father and grown son who spent warm times together. Obviously it was possible, but could someone just create it?

He was quite surprised - he had had an impression of me as someone who already had plenty of friends, and had it all together, and puzzled over why I would want to spend time with him - but in the end he accepted my proposal, and we began to explore what it meant to be real friends. It was not easy. I had to start looking inside for what I wanted from him, what I expected, what I was willing to give, how much time I was willing to give, how deep I was willing to go with emotional closeness. I had no answers to those questions when we started, and I had to keep searching inside as we got together and talked for what was working and what was not working.

I was so used to a close relationship including sexual attraction that I was kind of lost with what to do with a guy. But we soon found some deep subjects we had in common, and started by telling each other of our problems and supporting each other in dealing with it.

The subject, ironically, was sex - sex with our partners. We were both having issues in our relationships, and I found a lot of comfort in being able to detail exactly what was happening and what was not happening, and how I felt about it. I felt very safe with him, exposing tender feelings, because of the way he handled them. We could speak graphically about sexual details, as well as deeply and honestly about our troubled feelings and worries and frustrations.

I've discovered what works for me in developing deep friendships - one-on-one vulnerable, uninhibited conversation.

Love and Loneliness

2013-12-25T12:38:00.001-08:00

I found myself today sitting staring at an empty inbox, waiting for an email to come in - not any particular email from any particular person; just any email that would touch and move me and make me feel connected.

I've come some ways from the realization a couple of years ago that I needed more relationships of depth in my life. I am slowly learning what this deep sense of loneliness is all about, and instead of trying to find someone to blame, I am seeking to get to know this need and what it really means.

Part of my longing, I am sure, comes out of a deeper realization of the connection I did not have as a child, and I am aware of the danger of a "frozen need" - a need born in a time of scarcity that can never be satisfied because of the pain that lingers. But awareness of my past is helping me mourn and let go of what I did not have, and now ask, as an aware adult, what do I really need at this stage of my life? What is the true need today, above and beyond the memories of a lonely childhood?

We strive, at least I do, to answer the ultimate question: Am I okay - meaning, am I lovable? Am I worthy of love? Do I have a place in this universe where I belong, where I fit in a way that feels intuitively natural? Can I finally cease the eternal self-doubt and questioning that dogs every step? Can I finally relax? No simple affirmation can silence this question - it takes more than words.

Many say we must learn to love ourselves, and ultimately meet our own needs for love and acceptance. And there is truth to that. However, the way we learn to love ourselves is to first be loved by another. This was supposed to happen in childhood, so by the time we walked out those doors, we had a well-established habit of deeply knowing and caring for ourselves. For some of us, that never happened. And the kind of love available to us as adults will never replace the unconditional and all-encompassing love a mother can give.

Perhaps a deeper question, then, is: can we fully receive the love that is there for us today? Despite the flawed and inconsistent nature of others' love for us, can we see beyond the illusion of betrayal and abandonment to some form of love that will always be present?

We must learn from the limited love others can give us, how to love ourselves - not an impossible task, but certainly more challenging. We must recognize each failure of love as a reflection not on us, but on the limits of human ability, and then extrapolate from those imperfect experiences to a larger experience where we are completely loved, and therefore completely lovable.

New Age Fallacy #4: "Believe it is true, and it is"

2013-03-26T15:23:00.000-07:00

Another common new age philosophy is the belief that believing something to be true can actually make it true. Like so many other beliefs, there is a precious spiritual principle embedded in ambiguous language which can lead to tremendous suffering.

Let's first look at the spiritual truth that is here. There are many situations where our perception of the world is largely formed by beliefs and stories we have about it, and about ourselves, and assumptions about what is possible and what is not. Changing our perception of the world can change our experience of it.

At one point in my life I believed that people were basically cruel and out to hurt others. The result was I approached strangers defended and cautious, causing them to be suspicious of me or defensive themselves. The result was the creation of the illusion that the world was exactly as I suspected it was - people were not friendly, people didn't like me, and the world was not a very nice place. I was completely unaware that my own presuppositions were creating the experiences that justified my view of the world.

When my belief about the world changed, the world changed along with it. Once I believed in and expected a friendlier world, suddenly, people felt my energy and responded accordingly. So when I believed the world was kinder, lo and behold, it was! Of course, what really happened was my shift in attitude not only allowed me to see the kindness that had always been there; it also altered how people responded to me. My belief did indeed change the world around me.

However, the statement "Believe it is true, and it is" can also be horribly misleading, and cause untold misery if the spiritual principle underneath it is not understood. A good friend of mine has been trying but unable to clear clutter from her house for years. I have heard her countless times say, "Today I am going to do it! Today it will be easy, there will be no problems, and I will make progress with ease!" She is attempting to set her own attitude in the hopes that the statement will magically come true. Of course, it never happens, and each time she gets discouraged and beats up on herself, because she believes she "should" have been able to do it. That is what this philosophy claims, and she naively believes that if she makes the declaration and believes it, it will happen. How horrible to be encouraged to believe that it will be that easy, only to fail again and again. This shows no respect for the psychological complexity of the feelings that keep her blocked, nor the need to explore and understand them before the mystery will be unlocked and she will be freed.

What is the problem here? In our attempt to empower people, we encourage them to believe they can do things that they are actually unable to. The resulting failure only leads to self-condemnation. The fact is, *sometimes* it is a matter of will and perspective, and sometimes it is not. Sometimes the thing that prevents us from success is mysterious and doesn't yield to simple analysis. The world is not made up of our perception of it. The world exists and acts independently of our will, our consciousness, and our desires.

It's a dance. Reality as we experience it is a mixture of the objective world and our interpretations of it. And in any given situation, it takes wisdom to know which partner needs to move or whether both need to move. So, yes, by all means, see if you are imposing a reality on the world that doesn't need to be there, but if the world answers back "This is the way it is," then yield to it and find your place in the scheme of things.

Enshrining the Free

2013-03-24T11:26:00.000-07:00

There are some songs that capture my heart by the freedom and innocence they express. "By My Side" from Godspell is one of those. The odd wandering harmony coming in and out, the words that paint vague images, and yet the passion it expresses, all enthrall me.

Recently, a friend and I decided to practice this song with the eventual goal of performing it somewhere. The irony struck me today how carefully I studied each note to be sure I had it just as it was on the recording. I know perfectly well that recordings capture but one iteration of many, and often those iterations are all different, following the mood of the singer on that day - yet we were treating the recording as gospel, not to be messed with, not to be varied at all, lest we lose its inherent sense of freedom. Thus we locked ourselves into the slavery of doing it exactly right, following a predetermined script, not allowing ourselves one iota of flexibility to do it differently than this random recording of a living moving thing. In our practice, we systematically eliminated every possible experience of personal freedom in order to enshrine the recording's freedom to preserve this thing of beauty for others.

In the National Museum of the American Indian, I remember staring at a small handmade boat, crude, primitive, beautiful, up on a stand, surrounded by a modern unbreakable plexiglass case, small engraved signs explaining its origins and construction. The protective materials, the efforts at preservation, the signs, the space, showed our great honor for this primitive boat. And I imagined the builder of the boat coming to the museum and looking incredulously at the fuss made over his primitive craft and the efforts to preserve it. Why, if his boat had been crushed, he would simply have made another one - why the big fuss over his humble construction of one of probably many experiments to be able to cross the river? Why would thousands of people stare at his small craft with awe and longing for a simpler day? The enshrining of his small act of creation betrays something missing in our lives. Yet again, we worship something that was commonplace to its creator.

The stuffed hawk over the fireplace is artfully set to look like a spontaneous moment in mid-flight. Just like the boat and the song, just like many religions worshiping a prophet or a miracle, they all express a free spirit, now captured in a dormant place, gathering dust. Are we content to live with that impractical longing? If we were as free as the things we worship, would we spend time collecting stuffed hawks or going to museums?

Accessing the Subtle

2013-03-23T16:34:00.000-07:00

The world is filled with subtleties. By a subtlety, I mean something that is difficult to detect; something that requires patience, quietness, concentration, focus, and time. Noticing subtle differences between plants or a subtle change in the weather are things that the casual observer will miss, as well as someone highly focused on a goal to be accomplished. Accessing the subtle requires the absence of a specific goal; the only goal being to see what is there. The mind must be open so as not to miss what we did not expect.

Just like the physical world, our mind is filled with subtle knowing - what we often call wisdom. Our mind accumulates millions of tiny experiences each day, and they get stored somewhere, seemingly inaccessible. Yet, when we stop to sense those subtle feelings and experiences, we discover that a knowing arises. This knowing may create some conclusion we hadn't thought of until that moment. Through quieting ourselves, focusing, and remaining open, we can gain access to knowledge that the busy mind may never have known.

We have different ways of focusing. One such way is a masculine focus that concentrates on one thing, obliterating all else - we focus on accomplishing the goal, and we deliberately ignore all irrelevant information so that we are not distracted from our goal. This is unarguably a powerful and necessary kind of focus whose achievements serve us well. However, accessing the subtle requires a more feminine kind of focus - one that is still intense but diffused, aware of everything, setting nothing aside as irrelevant, yet allowing nothing to take center stage. This kind of focus keeps listening for something that we can't anticipate. We don't know the goal until we have found it.

The characteristics we need in order to access the subtle are lack of anxiety, lack of urgency, calmness, a focusing over a wide range, a noticing of nuances, a willingness to hold any discovery lightly, and a continual watching and listening. We scan over a situation and take in a lot of stimuli.

We then begin digging inside for feelings that are relevant. As the awareness of our feelings increase, we may discover a need to articulate the feelings. We need to articulate, not necessarily to another, but at least to ourselves. That forces our knowledge into a rational form that we can solidly grasp. As long as it remains feeling, it is difficult to do anything with it; but when we can put it into a rational form, a sentence, then we can work with it.

Inquiry is a way of opening yourself and settling yourself to start to acquire subtle information about a given subject. A question seeks an answer; an inquiry is content with the question. What color is your shirt? Red. The answer is gotten, the question satisfied, and we can go on with our business. An inquiry, however, is a call to gather subtle information. It is like a suggestion, almost a hypnotic suggestion, to enter a different state of mind, a different relationship with the field of inquiry. That relationship is less about analyzing and more about observing, noticing, and learning.

The deepest questions of life cannot be answered by analysis; they are rather accessed through deep inquiry into the subtle.

The Intellect

2012-12-17T13:15:00.000-08:00

The intellect is not to be used as an escape from dealing with real life, nor to be shunned as a block to spirituality, but to be embraced as a critical tool to bring us into a deeper understanding of the world.

The Greatest Commandmant

2012-12-17T10:37:00.001-08:00

As a child growing up in a fundamentalist Christian household, I would sometimes try to piece together all the morality and rules I had been taught into one principle that could provide a foundation that would hopefully make sense of all the other "should's" and "shouldn'ts". As an adult, having long abandoned my childhood religion, that quest has remained - a desire to find and express a basic foundation upon which to build and orient my life.

Occasionally, I have gone back to look at what my religion had claimed to be the greatest commandment - to love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, soul, mind, and strength - but could no longer relate to the concepts there - commandment, Lord, God.

Independently, one day, I happened upon the concept of "loving life", and it struck a deep chord within me as the answer to my quest, the original motivation for all that we consider valuable. My mind went back to the concept of "loving God", and I started to wonder if what was meant by "God" in that verse might have been closer to what I meant when I used the word "life". "Loving life" is more universally understandable, and does not have the pitfalls that the word "god" creates. I decided to freely retranslate the rest of those verses, specifically Mark 12:19-21, and came out with this:

"The highest principle of all is this: Be mindful, all you living energies, that all of life is connected. And allow the love of life to fill all your heart, all your soul, all your mind, and all your body. And the second principle is really the same thing: know that loving others is the same as loving yourself."

I think there is a disservice we do to all sacred texts: we assume they have some mystery that is not already inside of us. We assume that we are missing something, we are incomplete, and we have to search outside of ourselves to find wholeness, rather than searching deeper within ourselves and our direct experience of life. If we assume that all scripture is saying something that is universal and not new, something we already know and have access to, it gives us a greater freedom to take that internal core knowing as the true representation of the universal principles that religions have struggled to express.