This morning has a longer message. Please let’s not condemn each other with ideas about brevity as an indicator of meaning. As if a shorter, more quippier post has more value and clarity than another. I used to write taglines for work and still do sometimes. Some times a word, few words, no words, or a lot is necessary…It personally drives me wild to observe some people with more free time creating more rules for themselves. Social media as whatever people deem it to be has no universal “is” quality. If you’re not satisfied by your experience with something or somewhere, you have the ability to add to it whatever you like, or not, or whatever…you know 😀 Ok, so my post of posts for until the next one seems relevant:
At many junctions in life, people have often said to me, but what if something bad happens to you? As long as I can experience my life and my family and friends, the difficult things that happen make life not only weatherable but permissible to continue walking forward. The idea that each person can be totally responsible and independent of themselves is an idea-more of an ideal-that makes not much sense to me. As I have also witnessed friends who have encountered great challenges, I have seen the sharp edges of these experiences softened by the efforts of people, so hard times can become integrated and moved through. Sometimes things go differently than they seemed they would. And that always reminds me I can learn to pay more attention-be more present, less in my head and more present with observing what’s happening and making discernments from there. That I can keep learning to observe with greater clarity and bring that observation alongside my personal values to see if there is enough overlap to continue pursuing a vision-a vision that’s always been there but was under all kinds of layers from personal experience and information from the environment. There is an idea I’ve encountered where people say each of us has one purpose or thing we enjoy doing most. I don’t know if it’s true…but with all the multi-label professions running around (you know the action/doing/other thing I do/what I want to do so I put it in the mix “/ / / / ” …you get the idea. aka a human being that has a health diversity of interests?) Ideas and concepts are not inherently anything, for even words that I use to write with are ideas and concepts. To label an idea as good, bad, right, wrong, evil or pure-this labelling function has served many ends. The ends which they serve along a spectrum of human and world narratives. Things like-the way forward or better or evolving is do DO THIS, BE THAT, CHOOSE THIS. This is one thing I wish people would really knock it off and I am prone to doing myself-as I personally enjoy harmony, beauty, benevolence and peace more than obstinance, dischord, and idealised futuristic projections…the last of those, the future projection having imposed some of the greatest threats on my daily happiness.
The second anyone thinks there’s a magical solution to “world problems” we have ourselves a “new problem.” A Jamaican man said to me, there is no problem-only situation. And that made me laugh, as this man who many people in the country I was originating from thought oh the poor Jamaicans, or oh the dumb tourists. Because this man was articulating the very contract and relation we had to each other at that moment, as people, and as people from different nations and different situations. And so I started to learn about the nature of problems and the bizarre ways people go about thinking they can solve something creating more havoc than the initial perceptions of the problem. People love to share their expert opinions-and perhaps often why I reach out to share, then drop it back and don’t…but here I am sharing my not so expert opinion here -some words that have clung to me and some that I also want to shake off.
We all become recycled at the end of our term. And so what are you going to do with the fact that, as far as you know, you are alive? What kind of ideas do you subscribe to? And are they functional or useful in creating what you want to experience with this life? And when you encounter a dead end, do you find another route, push forward or give up? The opportunities for choice never cease, and challenges tend to never cease. Nothing I have found attempted to be avoid can be avoided. It’s like the problem/situation sort of shift in thinking. You may not know a priori what may come. One thing I continually observe-more people than not have tremendous amounts of compassion to offer, have benevolent intentions. There are some who are out for their own purpose and those alone-but I encounter those folk with greater infrequency. Someone wise and probably dead said something about questioning those who use fear as a motive. Doesn’t mean have no fear! For many times I would have perhaps experienced less suffering for having more well considered footing-but then, there’s a trap in that. Trying to do something to prevent suffering tends to lead to another kind of suffering.
The human mind tends to work in this simple kind of way-where what you focus on tends to grow. Not because the mind causes it to grow, more simply that the focus forms an object of preoccupation. Such an object can obliterate the present reality from perception. And so the mind itself must be learned to be balanced with active attention to the experience of the body. Too much mind, disarms the body. Too little mind, the body acts for its own volition. To free yourself from objects, expand a preoccupation into a field of contexts, the subjective stance obliterates itself in the real. The subject, the context, everything becomes available to be understood as a discernment of the flow of life. This flow, the real of existence, perceptible-imaginable and unimaginable. And to live life as it were art-what would you compose? From the mind or from the heart? The media and conceptual art, advertising, focus on composing from the contents of minds. Conceptual art, politics, much of existence “in the out there” formed from the mind. The temporality an utter temporary. The heart has a more lasting quality. Something from the heart comes through existence and tends to stick. While trauma and stress has a sticky quality to it-things of the heart have this stick to the flow of life.
Some have gone as far as to say the world is a reflection of yourself. I have no idea if such platitudes have anything to do with reality. I don’t know; I tend to totally disagree, and after having wrangled my mind too many hours-I don’t think it’s worth thinking about anymore. All I do know is that when I make myself available, to help, to do something, I feel good. When I can share love with family and friends, I feel good. And when I spend time alone, I feel good. This kind of feeling good stuff is great. And the times when I don’t feel good-and I want to feel different, I have asked and received many responses that result in a no or a yes…but eventually I come back to feeling good again. And by good, I mean generative, in balance, standing in an acceptance. And this kind of quality, of harmony, is something that seems like people all want to experience. And so that kind of want seems to show itself clearly as a world full of a lot of people that want to create some kind of harmony. Yet, if a band goes up and plays every instrument at the same time…we have a type of harmony that can be more difficult to appreciate.
The days people live free from the believes and ideals in the realm of the mind and stick more closely with reality, observation and work towards personal values within the heart instead of the media stream of constructed value, promise days where people live and deal with all the qualities of life, suffering, joy, sorrow, bliss, pain (add whatever sensation descriptor for a feeling experience you can here). For this kind of “what can I get” self focus has been the main source of TRAP in my own life. Getting out of this kind of idea of “getting” for the idea of self, by focusing on what I can give, learn and create….is a daily practice. Some days I fail. Some days I work.
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