what i believe

my beliefs are a synthesis of all religious/spiritual ideologies encountered through the course of my life.


i was born into a roman catholic family, and raised on christian principles; these shaped and guided my morals until i became independent and left home to become part of the larger cultural family.


drug and alcohol use became part of my life in my mid teens, and i attribute this to a variety of factors, one of which is the obvious, being made the sex partner of an older brother. [i had already been using before i was raped several times while in the navy, once by a stranger a knifepoint off base.] alcohol and drug use became a staple in my life, but love was the elusive drug that i could never get enough of. during this time, i began to explore eastern philosophies, but felt tremendous guilt over it, because in my christian upbringing, those who engaged in such practices were considered heathens.


after the service, i found a semblance of that love i sought in the context of the evangelical charismatic community that i became involved in. it made sense to segue into this type of faith expression, since roman catholic experience did not connect me with the experience of the living god.


i tried to live according to 'the bible' but my shame and struggles with the influences of the past just increased.


my dependence on substances escalated, and eventually disenfranchised myself from that evangelical community, since, even though i had made the tragic mistake of getting married, i was gay, and at the time thought biblical ideologies as enforced by straight heterosexual men would 'fix' me if i only tried hard enough.


as the bottom fell out of the marriage, i entered aa and died to the image of god i had come to believe in, and embraced the concept of a higher power, someone beyond myself who would shape and form me in the manner in which i was intended to be.


after that, i continued to include my practices and studies of eastern traditions, yet still maintain the christ principle as the foundation of my belief. i have learned to embrace my own spirit and those of other sentient beings as loved and valued for the fact that they have been created and brought forth into being. my belief does not include a punitive god, nor does it exclude anyone from the ranks of the 'saved'. all are loved by virtue of their being.


my current practice is non-dualism with a christian foundation. however, while i believe that all religions have valuable contributions to make, none of them contains 'the truth' to the exclusion of others. i don't believe i need to be 'saved' except from anything other than my self, but rather, enlightened, which has been for me a process of becoming dispossessed of the attachments of self, and its tendency to self-contract as it develops in the context of its evolution in time and space.


the world in my view IS the appearance of god arising in the form of creation and all ideas generated by people cannot possibly articulate the non-conceptual being that god is prior to language and thought.


today i see myself merely as being being being. and to the extent that i invest in dualist notions of separation and division, i will suffer. i cannot escape suffering, and the way to deal with suffering has been modeled by christ, who, in my understanding, embraced it as the path to freedom from the attachment to dualistic notions, such as those that i constructed throughout my lifetime. in the sense that i have died to those, i have taken up my cross, and been born again into a new relationship with the living being who is ever present as my life. his presence manifest among us says to us:


'why stand staring at what has gone before? don't get lost in things of the past. i, says he will begin something new, it's beginning already....haven't you heard?'


my practice is simple: in every encounter of every thought and every feeling that arises, i ask: who am i? who is the person behind the senses translating its experience into thought and feeling identification? how am i continuing to regenerate the invested notion of 'me' from moment to moment? how is the 'me' who i have come to believe myself to be, living in such a manner as to build bridges that transcend the human tendency to divide up the infinite whole into parts.


when i live from that perspective, i remain in the moment, and, as close as is humanly possible, to being all i am created to be.


that's 'me' in a nutshell!

Chronically Disgruntled: Legacy of Abuse

seems another aspect of this dis-ease has revealed itself in my process of recovery.

i like many survivors have had my share obsessive compulsive behaviors:
food
drugs
alcohol
nicotine
caffeine
relationships [no i didn't forget to mention sex, that's never been an issue for me, but rather the need to be validated, however that has played out on the stage of my sexuality]
workaholism
shame
anger
*[__________________]* fill in the blank
just to name a few of the more obvious ones. i am grateful that i have addressed each one of these and have put them to bed.

last january after 23 years of recovery from drug and alcohol abuse i made a decision to reintroduce it back into my life. this decision was not made in the context of any type of turmoil or tension emotionally, psychologically or otherwise. the decision was made in a challenge to unlock that door. so much energy was being poured into keeping that door shut locked, bolted, nailed etc. i felt in order to truly move beyond the 'ism' of OCD in the realm of alcohol that i needed to look deep into its eyes as a stronger and better equipped person. there was initially a period where i wrestled with the best way to include it back into my life in terms of quantity, but nearly a year later i am gratified that this formerly OC behavior is a thing of the past. how do i know this is true? because these things have ceased to become issues, and my relationship to them has returned to what it was prior to them becoming issues, as if they did not exist. the stressors that created conditions for their apprearance have dissolved

now, all those things listed above are the topside expression, the visible manifestation, of the deeper infestation.

did the disease OCB just go away? no way baby!

what i have come face to face with is the recognition of the disease at its factory level deep in the far reaches of the labyrinth of egoity.

as i look at my own self-history past the apparency of the visible manifestations of the disease, glaring at me now are the other faces of this disease:
self as chronic point of reference
chronic dissatisfaction
chronic search for affirmation

i could not have recognized the fact that i had been living my life, making all my decisions within the context of these, had i not addressed the most recent one, shame. yes, in a shame cycle these would have merely further indicted me, and caused me to keep focusing on, and dancing with the disease in its physical manifestations.

a lot of times there is a sense that what i say here lacks resonance of the community at large, but i realize too that this is another form of 'me-ism' that has kept me inside my own bubble all these years. we are all in different places and stages in life, and i fully get that i am outside the middle track of survivors who are at this point trying to reconcile the warring forces that need to be reconciled in the early stages of life. i myself am currently dealing with fundamental questions that one wold most likely not deal with in life stages where the ego is still fascinated by life's potentials and alternatives.

at any rate, here i find myself, confronted as the result of a self-history shaped and formed by an ongoing, lived and carried moment to moment, self-idea compulsively hunting for verification and validation; caught in rituals of self-contraction which loop back and forth between reactivity to rejection and retaliation.

there is my fundamental OCD:

the ritual of rejection and retaliation. an obsessive compulsive thought principle dominating my life and formerly manifesting itself in physical behaviors. and the sorriest saddest part of this legacy is the ultimate surrender that is inherent in the notion that his ritual/dance has so dominated my life all these many years, that i have forgotten who to be and how to live outside of its tether.

like my abuser, i cannot say no to it, because that would presume that other options were available, and in truth, for me, there were none then.

and the biggest knock on the noggin is that there existed a 'me' PRIOR TO the aforementioned one who arose to use these defense mechanisms for surviving. the never ending onion.

..........hmmmmm, back to pondering my freedom

habitual thoughts - groundhog day

habitual thoughts eventually translate into habitual behavior.

one of the topics that came up on a cyber forum i frequent raised the question concerning a member's tendency to see days as being 'good' or 'bad', and lamenting the fact that invariable, there appeared to be a pattern of one following the other in a sort of repetitive cycle.

here follows my response:

perhaps you may want to consider how the mind has a tendency to carry thoughts forward.

for instance, there was a time, when you did not have this recurring idea that

'I seem to inevitably have a bad day after a good one'

when did that idea being to take shape?

'I've noticed happening for a long time'

it seems that at some point, most likely without really making a decision to do so, that your mind established a reasoning process that resulted in this conclusion, that a history of good day/bad day was becoming apparent as a pattern in you life.

once this was established as a condition, it eventually became a self-fulfilling prophecy, as you began to live out of the presumption of it being the case.

you are now invested in this belief that your emotional life has an 'on/off' cycle and so you begin to live as if this were true. in doing so, you disempower yourself to change the way you react, and actually have created an script which cues you to react in such manner automatically.

once the pesky mind confirms a perceived pattern, determining it to be the case, there is no longer a need to continue to gather evidence to make this case. since it has already been decided, it will now not need any further active involvement from you, and you become a mere pawn on the stage of your own mind.

how return to the state prior to your investment in this self-thought? from my experience, the key is to inhibit the cycle, rather than reinforce it; keep in mind this conclusion is not proven fact, and it is merely an assumption you have made about the situation.

so once inhibited, then you must be willing to stand in the feelings that arose which caused you to want to escape into a rationalization of them.

there are no good days or bad days, there are just days and we label them favorably or not, according to how they advance or impede us in a self-determined goal.

december 5th of the year you were three years old, do you recall having either a good day or a bad day? i would say no, not because you don't remember, but really because you had not yet developed a system for assigning value to the criteria that would contribute to determining a positive or negative assessment of the quality of your day.

so here we find ourself situated in today's december 5th of the year 2008, after spending years of making decisions and reinforcing them in terms of what is 'good' [chocolate, days without dark clouds] or 'bad' [tripe, days with dark clouds]

the key is to not despair and take heart that you still have the ability to change what seems to have become a life principle.

like many other survivors, i have done the scrupulosity dance most my life, and truthfully, i don't know if that is in effect a result of the cause of having been sexually abused or not; the fact remains that i have a tendency to do this, and if i want my life to be as efficacious as possible, i have to learn how to detach from those emotional gut reactions that arise in the course of my interactions with the events of the day. otherwise the feelings go to my head, and take on a life of their own, at which point, i am but living the script written by me, and portraying the character that i cast myself to play.

the god question....

someone on a forum i frequent was asking about the 'feeling' of closeness to god, and that just caused some thoughts to rise:

if i had to label myself spiritually, i would say i am a christian non-dualist. however, i don't subscribe to the traditional western ideas about jesus as moral teacher, but rather as one who came into being to preach against the dualisms of the culture at the time, as they contributed to forming the values reflected in hebrew [moral code, ie right and wrong, do's and don'ts] and greek culture [early philosophers ideas about ethics and phenomenon of opposites].

then as christianity developed its ideas out of the current philosophies and theologies of the day, christ's intended teaching missed it's mark. but that's ok, because that's the way it was 'supposed to be'. nothing has gone wrong in any way. some people think that christology has been defamed, but it has not, rather it is continuing to develop as the universe unfolds. BUT not in the way that churches believe it 'should'.

on the other hand, that which grows out my experience of eastern philosophy and theology, the non-dual aspect of my understanding, has more to do with the idea that beyond and prior to the concept of god, there exists formless presence of awareness that essentially cannot change. the world appears in all of its dualistic phenomena, but we have mistaken that for 'the real', and that is where suffering begins.

from a very early age, one is taught to identify with, to assign labels and meaning inherited through the social dna of the family [ and by extension cultural] system. as the 'i' continues to develop and emerge, it tries to make sense with what it notices is appearing through its perception scope on the front of the face, in the tactile, in the vibrations of air waves against eardrums, and so forth. its ongoing growth process involves synthesizing all of the data consumed by the senses from moment to moment, and inculcating into the functionality of the human mechanism.

now religion comes along and makes rules by which the mechanism must abide, and politics creates laws for protection, and philosophy tells it how to think about itself, but there lies the rub. humans rarely take time to self-reflect, simply because the western culture is a culture that encourages the fulfillment and elevation of self as its supreme acquisitive characteristic. if we were taught to reflect more frequently on the efficacy of self development then gaining wealth, popularity, titles would lose their value and thus their hold on us to form us into the misshapen subjects that we tend to become over time.

so we go along believing, steeled from youth for the battle to acquiesce, that we will someday achieve all that we have been trained to hope for and to desire, forgetting along the way to identify our deepest needs, in favor of our wants.

it's no wonder the further along this path that we trod, that we become more and more disenfranchised from the sense of 'the real'. we have buried ourselves in our acquisitions, material and sensual, and placed those as a wall between us and god.

and god is one, without a 2nd, but we live primarily identifying with ourselves, our egoity, as though we are separate, but we are not. and all the things we desire come to possess us in the sense that we cannot live without them.

yes, we cannot live without god either, but if we take our cues from the cultural matrix, then all we need do is make god into a picture in our heads and nod to it every now and again, making that the primary relationship with god, replacing it with the true joy and bliss that could be known if we would learn to dispossess ourselves of the stranglehold of egoity.

in summary, thoughts and feelings are all products of an ego that has entrenched notions which have spawned want and desire. to the extent that those are not fulfilled there will be frustration and grief.

but a very smart man said this about the god question:

'As long as there is enthusiasm for seeking amid life's alternatives, these questions remain superficial. But when death becomes real, or when deep disillusionment with the possibilities of experience overtakes the being, then one can no longer avoid the confrontation with fundamental questions. At such moments, the heart is open, inconsolable by ordinary means. Then there is a ripeness, an urgency for Truth, Reality, and Real God.'

in other words, until nothing else is of prime importance, not even one's own physical life, then the things that have come to possess us will continue to deter-mine the arc of life's choices.

the beauty of it all, is that all through life, god is always there, as god is now for you in this questioning, beckoning us to, calling us deeper and deeper into relationship.

to the extent that we yield, incrementally, such as you are seeking to do now, life becomes a series of moments unfolding to reveal the truth of our true nature, that being that we are not separate now, nor have we ever truly been, no will we ever be.

someone else said that the purest prayer is to ask the question: 'who am i?'.

in closing i share another prayer that arose in me during my time in the monastery. this prayer is based on the deepest human needs; desire, hunger, and thirst, the three things needed to 'live'.

god alone

may my only desire be for god
my only hunger for christ
my only thirst for the spirit
of god alone

pesky retirement

i am just beginning to taste the drudgery of excessive leisure time. chances are any of us who make it to the point of 'retirement from', must needs have a plan for 'retirement to' to take its place.

even tho i am not fully retired, my job only requires about 15-20 hours each week of physical presence on the job. now, to be sure, i invest more as i am so inclined in developing creative aspects of it, but my input beyond the required time is self-determined. if i am feeling creative on a particular day, i may decide to spend time expanding on my usual investment. it pretty much goes with what i am in the mood for. i kinda like that. it does not have me rolling in dough, but i made a decision when i relocated back to my hometown pittsburgh, that would not get involved in work that would put my life in overdrive. if i wanted to, i could build up a clientele of private students which would completely diminish the level of flex time i currently have, eliminating the pleasure and leisure for reflecting on the role of the sexual abuse in my life, and how it had led me to construct myself ostensibly.

i think that having all this headspace is what many people will have to deal with in retirement.

what is retirement? most of my life i had thought of it as a time where i would just cruise around the world sipping martini's and gazing into grand canyons. but then as i got older and the reality of economic issues came to the fore, i soon realized that retirement would more or less be a pretty vacant lot.

and in my current semi-retired state, as i choose not to be overly preoccupied with activity that would distract and further disenfranchise me from my coming to terms with my inner world, i am getting hit real hard with the brickbat of the past, and being forced to disengage from obsessive compulsive behaviors and processes which kept me from developing greater knowledge of my own life motivations.

often times, that means resisting the the tendency to flee the indicting oracle of the moment, and allow myself to just bask in the glory of the untainted blistering here and now.

often times, i have to impede the fear of the future as it casts its shadow over everything. then i simply return to the knowledge that there will come a time, if i am kept alive, that my physical and mental disintegration will bring me to a moment when i will no choice but to face all the truths i wish to flee from today.

so, i ask, if not now, when?

and in the meantime, i am looking for things to do that will work in harmony with my desire to stay connected to the eternal vacancy of now. engage in a craft. reinforce my self-discipline as i advance thru the degrees of karate. try to balance eating well with treating myself to not so healthy delectables. commit some of my free time to the work of an organization that gives service to others.

retirement will be a chapter i hope to be ready for. and i hope others who enter this domain continue to share their experiences and show the rest of us how ease-fully it can be done.

excessive apology

in light of the conjoining in my brain of the two recently emerging topics of both excessive apologizing and shame, i felt a sudden attraction to this thread.


so taking a little desk chair excursion i visited a couple of cyber lands.


first stop, etymology dictionary which gives this info about the word 'sorry':


O.E. sarig "distressed, full of sorrow," from W.Gmc. *sairig-, from *sairaz "pain" (physical and mental); related to sar (see sore). Meaning "wretched, worthless, poor" first recorded c.1250. Spelling shift from -a- to -o- by influence of sorrow. Apologetic sense (short for I'm sorry) is attested from 1834; phrase sorry about that popularized 1960s by U.S. TV show "Get Smart."


second stop, to the definition of 'sorry' itself:


1. Feeling or expressing sympathy, pity, or regret: I'm sorry I'm late.
2. Worthless or inferior; paltry: a sorry excuse.
3. Causing sorrow, grief, or misfortune; grievous: a sorry development.


then it was suggested: 'see sore', so i saw 'sore':


1. Painful to the touch; tender.
2. Feeling physical pain; hurting: sore all over.
3. Causing misery, sorrow, or distress; grievous: in sore need. 4. Causing embarrassment or irritation: a sore subject.
5. Full of distress; sorrowful.
6. Informal Angry; offended.


what i realized is that when we speak about 'sorry' the reference is more to the 'is-ness' than the 'does-ness' of apology, or rather, perhaps appall-ogy.


appall:


1. To depress or discourage with fear; to impress with fear in such a manner that the mind shrinks, or loses its firmness; to overcome with sudden terror or horror; to dismay; as, the sight appalled the stoutest heart.


i think the 'appall' part comes from toxic shame [as opposed to healthy shame]. the state of being that living breathing apology [n] for daring to present myself in public in the first place. then, at times when my presence collides or intersects with that of another in a moment or place in temporal space, all of my toxic shame buttons get pushed by the 'man behind the curtain' who works tirelessly to ensure that no one be harmed by the leperous 'me'. like in younger times when the social practice was that lepers had to call out to warn people of their approach.


'i am coming, look out, don't get 'me' on you! run for your life, your 'chi'. don't be sullied by my presence!'


yes for me, obsessive appall-ogy underscores the subconscious notion that i am worthless and don't deserve to cause any type of feeling mechanism to activate in you. you should not have to react to me. you should not have to be impeded in your line of travel by the vehicle of 'me'. your right to occupy that physical space, to breath that air, is so much greater than mine. in fact all of your rights come first. mine are secondary, because mine don't count. i should remain the silent invisible nothingness that i was groomed to be in a family system that used me as a scapegoat for it's own toxic shame. its own sense of restraint for ever causing offence to anyone.


toxic shame assumes all people are unequivocally offensible, and that i am unworthy of any type of loving consideration. that i am not a man among equals.


i bury myself in moral platitudes and create a belief system that if i follow all of those things that would keep me from winning the disapproval of other, then i will be safe.


you see, it's so important to avoid the disapproval of other, and that is the 'sorry' truth of the toxic shame bound person, is that we don't merely seek others' approval, but rather must avoid their disapproval at all costs, because deep down, we sense that we would never be worthy of it, and so the solution of course then is to hide, to isolate from the very possibility of affronting someone with my useless self. to create a life where one would never have to engage in any type of personal relationship, because we are not worthy of it! every breath taken, and every move made becomes a strategic investment in the cause for avoiding offense of others' sensibilities.


in that sense life becomes a silent apology that no one ever hears.


i must stop for a bit and process these feelings that have come up before they turn themselves into thoughts and file and galvanize themselves in the steel trap of my mind.


thanks for the platform.


have a day, good peeple, see you in the next thread.....


ron


ps. the tendency to grandiosity is overcompensation, an attempt to prove and hide from myself the sad fear that all of the above is not true, and is merely the flip side of the toxic shame coin; i know because i have lived there, too. peace...

ostensibly yours: a sequence in haiku

why have i emerged

a puppet bird formed and wrapt

in fleshly prison

+

forging agency

from former imagining

a dream in a dream

+

bid the puppet sing

to dance and scrape and bow

for sheer delighting

+

sprout wings, mount the skies

then fall to the ground a heap

of broken carnage

+

graceful gravity

joins forces with secret reich's

of phantom powers

+

to dare and to damn

an unproven destiny

commingling death

+

ostensibly yours

succomb to fair blue maya

matrix, womb and tomb

things that make you go 'mmmmm'

in light of ted haggard's recent revelation that he was sexually abused at age 7, i wanted to post this. he does not get a free pass from me regardless of the circumstances. his parenthetical institution, the evangelical culture of deceit, hate and manipulation thru fear, has spawned an evil monster. the havoc he has wreaked on the gay community because of his bigoted rhetoric is reprehensible.....but this video helps make up for it!  take that ted!!!!!

The Things I Can and Cannot Change Part II

this stuff has sat in my craw this weekend. and i came to the realization that the use of the computer and tv is not an issue in itself.

it's only when it is used obsessively or compulsively.

well, i've thought about it and talked about it with others, and realize that it's not the issue i am making it out to be.

i seem to have this tendency to make issues out of everything! these tapes play relentlessly! i have a couple beers and it's.... 'OMFG! i'm alcoholic! i should be using this time constructively and here i am just drinking the hours away'. or i spend time on the computer [usually while doing other things that pertain to work] and it's 'i'm addicted to the internet! oh no! i gotta control this situation or it might control me!!!'

meanwhile when i step back, i realize that i have a very good balance between work and leisure activites. it just so happens that surfing the net is just filler. sure, i need to examine the choices and often times need to exercis other options when bored. but even realizing that gives me the power to do so!

my own need for drama and the tendency to keep stoking the fires of the inner voices that continually cause me to judge and berate myself as useless, flawed and headed for 'hell in a handbasket', seem to be stuck to my shoe like gum.

the fact is, i have a very well balanced life, and sure, it would more than likely benefit me to spend less engaging in on-screen activities, but i have to stop judging these things as inherently 'evil'.

after all, technology is a gift! is has given many people a means of employing their natural given talents. it is helping expand our economy [but that does not necessarily follow that we have been good stewards of it]....i'm just saying, i gotta stop demonizing.

and it has to begin with me.

now THAT, i CAN change.

well, that helps......

if you read yesterday's entry look here on the catholic news service website to see vatican's repudiation of the fiasco.

the hypocracy of it all! probirth, not prolife, there is a difference, 'church'

the unmitigated gall of this self-righteous creepzoid!


after this church has aborted living people spiritually, psychically, emotionally and physically thru the abortion of war and by perp priest shoving their cocks up the asses and down the throats of innocent young victims, all the while the church turns a blind ear to their plight.


i think jesus just threw up in my mouth


email 'father': JayScottNewman@me.com

The Things I Cannot Change

i've noticed recently that all through my recovery i've heard and read much about 'boundaries', 'boundary issues', 'lack of boundaries', 'in/appropriate boundaries' etc.

but lately, i've been thinking more about limitations, not so much in the sense that they are related to boundaries, but in the sense that they are not related to boundaries. that the idea itself has a different shade of meaning for me.

not to seem sacraligious to the guys and gals who worship at the feet of st. bill w, [ah c'mon it's joke...poke-poke] but i guess if i rewrote the serenity prayer, it might say:

grant me the serenity to accept my limitations,
the courage to create boundaries,
and the wisdom to know the difference.

what i mean is mostly acceptance of the limitations of myself, and those of others. i'm speaking less specifically of acceptance, and moreso pointing to the notion that the idea of limitations can be further unpacked.

in light of the most recent realizations i've had stemming from the pondering of shame, questions have come up for me about how i managed to miss recognizing the value of understanding my own limitations.

for instance, having constructed a life out of the substance of having being born and bred in the odeur of toxic shame, it occurs to me, that i missed noticing my own limitation because i bought into the solution that i could be anything that i wanted to be if i wanted it bad enough.

with that thought as primary motivation, i proceeded to to invest tons of money time and psychic energy into constructing a person that, miles down the road of recovery, was a person i truly was not created to be.

in other words, i did not have the form and substance in my psychic dna to become that end result that i targeted for myself.

sure, i created boundaries for myself, and honored those of others, but i failed to recognize that the world of possibility was not infinite. being so overfocused on my own goals, i missed a lot of opportunity along the way to smell the roses of empathy and compassion, since i had turned all of my life into an opportunity for proving that i was just 'as good as the next guy'.

unfortunately, i had quantity all mixed up with quality, and uniqueness confused with specialness.

well i am at a crossroads now that enough light has escaped inward to reveal this little nugget of truth, and i find myself wondering in my new recovery era of honoring limitations, learning at any given moment to be satisfied with my allotted portion: where do i go from here?

i certainly don't think i have solved the riddle of my limitations, and i don't think that that could happen as long as i get up every morning and immediately go into robotic mode.

robotic mode for me is waking up, turning on the computer getting a cuppa joe and hanging out on the web. this is beginning to feel like a trap, a limitation of sorts, but one that i have the power to remove.

i wonder if i have the courage.......

as i was thinking about all of this, i thought it would be interesting to make a commitment to spend a day, say a 24 hour period, not engaging in any type of computer or tv activity.

is that a scary thought or what?

if i did that, i would have to do something else instead, or not do anything else instead.

i don't know how to live outside my routine. i mean i know i could but i fear trying.

obamanation! thank you god!

It's not all hunky dory in the Promised Land, but then again.....

after spending year after year trying to get to the bottom of my subconscious agenda, i have finally arrived at a point where there has been a great deal of enlightenment regarding my motivations, and the sense of 'me' that had been contrived over the years.


now that the day of reckinong has come and gone, i find myself, not with the peace that i imagined would be found, but with an underlying anxiety, that seems to stem from the fact that i no long feel driven by any type of motivation at all.


this feels so foreign, and so scary to me. it feels as if there IS no me anymore.


and the days hours and minutes are excruciatingly painful to appear in, because i have no prior experience of living so fully present. i want to run away from the screaming silence, but my prophetic song 'dark canyon' echo's it truth: my green eyes seeking better places, saw before them empty spaces when i arrived'. nothing entices me or fills me anymore. i am empty.


i used to preoccupy myself with so many agendas: concern about food, self-medicating activities and behaviors, self-actualization, opinion, morality....you name it, i learned to use anything i could to keep the motion of self in fast forward trajectory, living on any other plane than that of the here and now.


now i am just 'here'. in the middle of a desert.


yet, lo and behold, i find...... i am not alone.


more later......but for now, back to pondering

just getting the word out

ok now you know where i stand....big surprise, huh?

People Kick Part II

i have been thinking about this, and becoming more and more annoyed that something has a hold on me which i cannot seem to shuck off. this tendency to fall into paralysis mode, as if i was the subject of everyone else's preoccupation.

where is the disconnect? why did i go that way instead of the opposite, which would have meant that others would be the focus of my concern. it feels as if i got stuck in some narcissistic loop at some point in my life, and have not been able to break free.

then i measure myself by others stature; i look at all those people who went on to construct lives that seem to be centered on remedial solutions for the issues that are of concern to the general population; lives that are lived to sate the suffering of others, rather than prove their own self worth.

i feel, once again, that i have not connected with the heart of existence, and have been left on the sidelines, watching from the wings the marvelous human drama in which all the others are active participants, all the while jerking off in the shadows.

i, i, i, i, i.

that seems to be my life. and i am sick of 'i' driving.

i guess at this point it does not matter so much if this is a result of having been abused, the fact remains, that it is what it is.

this week i have had an incredible urge to cast off the world of technology and cyberspace, and reconnect with the substance and clay of the material world. the air and water and the glass and the rock of living. to get the hell out of the mirror of self, and seek value in living outside the box of computer and tv, and any other external 'thing' that i use to continually reinforce the current version of myself.

then, i ask, 'who' is the me that needs to do this, and what pupose would it serve? just to lead me to another version of who 'i' is? all control tactics.

or maybe not, maybe it would be an attempt to experience the authentic me that i compromised years ago prior to labeling persons places and things, assigning them specific significance.

i think i am beginning to dismount my high horse these days, and following my desire to find a place in the anonymity of the masses. i guess that would really be noplace, and that is really a scary thought to this 'ron', the one whose self-worth had tied up all his life in the desire to be separate and unique.

I'm On a People Kick (Not as in "kick people")

you may have noticed, i've been doing a lot of thinking lately about my relationship to people, and wondering why i am stuck there as opposed to engaging in relationships with people.

since i took classes and joined my church participating beyond mere attendance by helping to greet, tearing down afterwards, helping with the social........ and on and on.....same record, different side stuck focusing on my relationships 'to' people.

as i type this, i recall the scripture story of martha and mary, and how martha was always busy, busy busy, buzzing around like annoying bee, while mary just hung around, much to martha's dismay.

i am beginning to realize what a 'martha' my social character is. why do i always have to be working in some role, giving service. why can't i just fall in with the rest of the crowd and just 'chill'.

i am terrified to enter a room of people, because in spite of the presence of others, i feel as if i am the subject their attention, and it burns my spirit. and i also feel the opposite: that i am invisible. at the same time, both of these?

how did i ever get polarized between these two opposite end poles. i feel frozen in between, smack dab in the middle of the magnetic pull.

i remember this in kindergarten, being frozen and almost unable to move. i remember in elementary school being in the classroom terrified that the teacher would call on me and draw attention to my presence in the room. i could not get past my fear to answer questions correctly. in the school yard, same thing: everyone grouped together and played their games, while i stood on the sidelines.

my job is perfectly suited to my disposition: i am a music director, and as such, i am rarely 'on the team' and always the leader. if i am not in control of public situations, acting in some role, i am paralyzed.

this has been all my life, and i tried to deny it by hiding behind my service.

does anyone else feel alone in a crowded room? is this from abuse, or just a character trait? it feels awfully wrong.

NO! Sarah Palin!!!!

from the human rights campaign:

thoughts on trust

regarding trust, it think that is a characteristic that people have to varying degrees as part of their repertoire of personal properties. like talent for sports or music or art. i know i have more talent for music and things creative, but didn't get the sports gene.

on the other hand, trust is also an attitude that can be cultivated. that's very similar, yet different, because the propensity for developing an attitude of trust is relative to the positive or negative experiences an individual has had in the past.

there is a lot of risk involved in trusting. what will happen if the person i am expecting to prove their self trustworthy does not behave according to my expectations?

is my system for monitoring the person's trustability broken or in some manner flawed? what evidence have i that they have the capacity for participating in a trust relationship?

as a victim/survivors who has had my trust capacity breached and interrupted in formative years when these types of systems would have otherwise developed naturally in stages, i find there is a tendency to approach the trust issue very hyper-cautiously.

how can i trust strangers and god who i can't see, when the people [family] who were my classmates in the school of life, proved themselves emotionally and psychologically unavailable, and therefore rendered incapable of trust?

further, because i did not learn the early important lessons on how to develop trust instincts, many of my decisions made throughout my lifetime, were made according to an imagined script that somehow got installed in my thinking system.

i acted 'as if' and the results left huge amounts of baggage in their wake.

as a result of all that, i have had very little interest in developing trusting relationships with individuals. it seems to take too much time, and the risks [to my narrow mind] seem to out weight the effort that doing so would require.

i can participate in things, but usually periferally, in service capacities, and i am not a good team player. in fact in my career and vocation i can develop trust, but the conditions for it are established and constrained by me.

i think this is why i have a difficult time 'finding a mate', because i am essentially unable to trust that good will intentionality exists in the potential significant other.

i see so much evidence of that here in the relationships of other survivors as well. even those who are already coupled seem to attest to the fact that they have a hard time establishing trust between their married partners, whose very relationships, it would be assumed, would have to have been predicated on a major portion of mutual trust. it seems that we are all working from the same script.

god is the only one i trust, and i put my self totally in god's care. when i look all around me, and observe how effusive the manifestations of the material world, i can't deny that the same is holding true for me to the extent that i do n ot interfere with the process that god has planned for my life.

it's all i have to cling to. and though the word 'cling' carries connotations of negative energy, i mean it to mean more like a 'hug' than a latching onto.

what is most important for me, since i trust that since god brought me to it, god will see me through it, i can rest easy that things will go accoring to the plan. just like those lilies of the field that flower and blossom without a care. that's how we are made to live our lives, in full faith that god's working out his purpose, in spite of all our vain efforts to interfere and interrupt the process of god's arising in our lives.

thanks for the opportunity to reflect and express my thoughts about this important topic....

your brother in recovery,

ron

_________________________

• my gift
• my story
• voices affirming gay males: wc journal

finally coming 'round right'

here it is almost the end of the summer and right after labor day next week the rehearsal cycle beings at work again.

i actually got a lot accomplished this summer.

in july i produced and facilitated two seminars: one entitled 'intro to music reading' and 'discover your singing voice. they each had over 20 registered participants. they were very well received and the people are interested to do more, so i may do some group voice classes this fall if i feel up to it. but that probably will not happen, because i am going to be tied up in rehearsals 4 nights out of the week. [my morning will be wide open though, just the way i like it! none of that madcap morning rush hour for me, no siree!]

which i doubt i will. it has been nearly a year since i returned to pittsburgh after a 7 year stint working in the midwest, and another several months in the monastery discerning a vocation. since returning i have had two separate full time jobs, one in retail [never again!] and now my current work [yes, i returned to music ministry ... i just can't get away!], also helped my mom through 2 knee replacement surgery's and recuperation since last november.

the new church job started in february..... it really bites to start things in mid year; very difficult to get the momentum going, but everything worked out well, and the ranks are expanding this fall, quite nicely.

in addition, this summer, i joined my son xian's band, started dating again, started karate, joined the local gay men's chorus and the local metropolitan community church and began to create a life that suits me, and have even reconnected to some friends that i lost contact with upon moving to the midwest in 2000. not too bad for a guy who turns 55 y/o in a couple of weeks.

this is the first year that i am starting the rehearsal cycle without my job being the most important thing in my life. i think the most important thing that happened in the lazy ease-filled summer daze was that i had time to gain perspective on what is important. i had time to transition from a 'purpose driven life' to one that is lived more in the moment.

i know i could not have had that before now. and i have to say, it is scary to be living without striving to catch that carrot on the end of the stick. in prior years, that had been my dynamic focus till now. now i have no expectations. i have no need to prove my worth. my eyes open in the morning, and i say to myself 'well i guess i get another shot at it....this could be my last one, i had better do it justice'.

who said life was over after 40?

keep on keepin' on........

_________________________

• my gift
• my story
• voices affirming gay males: wc journal

Sexual assault stats from FBI

1 in 4 girls and 1 in 6 boys will be sexually abused before they turn 16. (FBI, 1990) Source: Center for the Prevention Sexual and Domestic Violence, http://www.cpsdv.org/

are you one of them?

bridges

i have been in this transitional period for a long time now, where i kinda feel as if i am somewhere between definite and delusional.

part of me wonders if it is just a combination of the sexual abuse and having a gay orientation, but recently, i have been realizing that there has always been a disconnect between me and the worlds that i live in.

i just came in from the front porch and was hypnotized by the beautiful gentle rainfall. i was thinking about my life [i live with my sister and her husband; their two daughters are grown and one is in the navy and the other is getting ready to go back for her junior year in college], and what i was thinking about in particular was the sense that even tho i am loved by my sister and her family, i am acutely aware the feeling that i have of always being on the outside looking in.

it was like that in my family after i disclosed the abuse. it has always been like that in my career as a gay catholic church musician.

i am deeply longing to feel psychically connected to some puropse beyond myself, such as the second person in a partnership, or a community where i do not have to hid 90% of who i really am.

i keep looking high and low for the missing link, and i think that is it. i do remember when i was quite young, feeling that sense of connection and repose in the family system. but since the abuse i have found no place to call home, and that has been reflected in my own inner wanderlust. throughout my life, i have had to compartmentalize and portion myself out in increments and only as it related to the set of circumstances of a particular moment.

i wonder if 'straight' people feel that disenfranchisement within themselves? i am sure they do to some degree, we all have to on some level; i just goes with being human. but how many have to conceal their very essence? no this culture is built around the assumption of hetero orientation, and the rest be damned who don't subscribe to that mindset.

i am glad that i have been taking steps to make connections to others recently.

i have started dating, and i plan to join the local gay men's chorus this year. i still have to close off parts of myself in my work persona, but if a job opportunity would come my way that would relinquish me from the career i have tried to leave so many times before, but feel compelled to remain in, well i would surely take it.

the silver lining in this dark cloud is that at least once i join the chorus and keep on dating, then at least a greater percentage of my life will be 'connected' or linked to communities which i identify with, and that are larger than just me.

the only places i can be fully myself, are with my children, in the band, and in my head.

i think my desert wandering will find its oasis as i begin to become involved in organizations larger than me; places where i don't have to keep on apoligizing or fearing that i will not be accepted unconditionally for who and what i am.

i am sick of just being tolerated, and having to just keep quiet about everything. i am tired of this big invisible hand covering up my mouth.

Tired of feeling Separate and Unlinked

dan's post on struggling triggered me a bit [in a good way i guess] to ponder a few things about my life.


i have been in this transitional period for a long time now, where i kinda feel as if i am somewhere between definite and delusional.

part of me wonders if it is just a combination of the sexual abuse and having a gay orientation, but recently, i have been realizing that there has always been a disconnect between me and the worlds that i live in.

i just came in from the front porch and was hypnotized by the beautiful gentle rainfall. i was thinking about my life [i live with my sister and her husband; their two daughters are grown and one is in the navy and the other is getting ready to go back for her junior year in college], and what i was thinking about in particular was the sense that even tho i am loved by my sister and her family, i am acutely aware the feeling that i have of always being on the outside looking in.

it was like that in my family after i disclosed the abuse. it has always been like that in my career as a gay catholic church musician.

i am deeply longing to feel psychically connected to some puropse beyond myself, such as the second person in a partnership, or a community where i do not have to hid 90% of who i really am.

i keep looking high and low for the missing link, and i think that is it. i do remember when i was quite young, feeling that sense of connection and repose in the family system. but since the abuse i have found no place to call home, and that has been reflected in my own inner wanderlust. throughout my life, i have had to compartmentalize and portion myself out in increments and only as it related to the set of circumstances of a particular moment.

i wonder if 'straight' people feel that disenfranchisement within themselves? i am sure they do to some degree, we all have to on some level; i just goes with being human. but how many have to conceal their very essence? no this culture is built around the assumption of hetero orientation, and the rest be damned who don't subscribe to that mindset.

i am glad that i have been taking steps to make connections to others recently.

i have started dating, and i plan to join the local gay men's chorus this year. i still have to close off parts of myself in my work persona, but if a job opportunity would come my way that would relinquish me from the career i have tried to leave so many times before, but feel compelled to remain in, well i would surely take it.

the silver lining in this dark cloud is that at least once i join the chorus and keep on dating, then at least a greater percentage of my life will be 'connected' or linked to communities which i identify with, and that are larger than just me.

the only places i can be fully myself, are with my children, in the band, and in my head.

i think my desert wandering will find its oasis as i begin to become involved in organizations larger than me; places where i don't have to keep on apoligizing or fearing that i will not be accepted unconditionally for who and what i am.

i am sick of just being tolerated, and having to just keep quiet about everything. i am tired of this big invisible hand covering up my mouth.

stalled in a moment of time

tinman, i can relate to the sense of feeling stalled.

this is the greatest challenge i face at this point of my life. i feel that in retrospect, i have reached the close of a long journey that began as an ascent up to the apex of a grand mountain, and ended in a return to its summit: a metaphor for my life, up to this moment. the journey traversed the linked moments of time, ordinal, and measured.

after having realized this dream, i now find that i am in search of a new ethos in my life, and one that does not include, nor will it allow, escape into the polarizing activity of obsessive compulsive behavior, of food, tv, sex, drinking and all the rest; circular behaviors that keep me spinning like a top in space and time.

the gears are down shifting in my life now; actually my entire life force is in park postion. in contrast to that previous chapter, my life now is to be an advent. a period of waiting. its lesson will balance out the over-arching trajectory of its previous chapter. my new challenge in this chapter is to traverse a desert wilderness. much less exciting than the busy, activity driven, anxiety filled moments of the mountain challenge.

in this chapter i will become ron, the human being, here, now, present, shedding the driven nature of ron, the human doing, striving for happiness and completion in some future arrival.

i am still waiting...........

and as i wait, i do so, captive to the polarizing tension that holds me present between the sense of being at the ready point for beginning a significant relationship with another person who is also at the ready to begin a significant relationship, and having to deal with the fact that we have not yet been brought into each other's life at this point in time.

but looking closely, i am able to admit that, in fact, i do already have such a relationship in my life, and it is the one i have with myself. that is most likely the most significant relationship that i can ever have with a living person. all other relationships will be extensions of that one, and if they do not contain the seed for such potential, then perhaps they are simply better left untried. at this point of my life, i do not have time nor the energy to carry the baggage of long term mistakes.

so i continue to wait. but not to hope, because hope seeks to induce a product in some future moment. to conjure up a happening that will be as contrived as a strategy designed to declare a victory that will be realized in some future now.

so for today, i don't try to make things happen. i just try to notice what is attempting to arise out of the angst and the pathos inherent in the tension of resisting the tendency to act for the sake of acting.

today i am seeking to incorporate new patterns of thought and behavior that were prior to any fabricated wants or desires.

i am still waiting for the information to be revealed. and as i wait, i try to allow myself to be a vessel for containing the emptiness, fully charged with the joy of anticipation and resting in the assurance that things are unfolding as they are intended.

Forgiveness and Synthesis and Confluence

this post is a follow up from one i had made earlier today called power, control and synthesis

anyway, i wanted to express some thoughts that were connected to those expressed in that subject in terms of the aspects of transference/projection as they are related to the idea of forgiveness.

what i learned from my own experience stated in the thread, how i released a rant against a person who i had begrudged for about 3 years based my own projections onto him who also happened to be my employer, of what a self-centered and deceitful person i perceived him to be. i saw him in many respects as an 'abuser' type figure, and the reason for that being because of the fact that he held the power to inhibit my own self-determination, such as my abusers did, be they sexual, spiritual, emotional, intellectual or psychic.

what i realized is that the inability to forgive, has been tied up with degree in which i had transfered and projected my own undesirable character attributes onto others. in characterizing others in such and such a manner, i realized the connection to my own anger at having my own freedom [ie. power] to self-determine limited by the actions or decisions of others in situations where the balance of power was out of whack.

because of this, usually my anger at them led me to develop frozen badittudes about them, which cast them in thought memory prison from which i could not release them, until i came to the understanding that they were for all intents and purposess proxy models of my abusers.

in this process, i came to understand that prior to my abuse, i had no recollection of having the need to forgive anyone for anything. that was because there was no connection to them in the sense that they took something from me that was not theirs to take, ie, once again, my own power to self-determine.

in fact, prior to the abuse, i do not even have any memories recalling seeing myself as an 'i' who identified with self-ownership, someone with an i-thou relationship with life. i was very well situated and satisfied in my unperceived role as a mere thread in the giant fabric of my life. so the abuse in my early life groomed me for panic as my normal modus operandi, such that any situation where i would sense that i, as a self contained entity, would be in danger of having my safety breached. because of that, i built fortresses around myself, so that i could be prepared in the event of future attack. these walls not only kept me safe within, but they also kept me separate from the world of possibility and potential that lay beyond their brick and mortar.

and this is the crime of forgiveness; that in unforgiving, we imprison ourselves, lock ourselves into a mindset that rules out the possiblity of expansive freedom of expression, a 'sin' against the spirit of growth. when we do not forgive, we not only lock ourselves in, but we lock others out. the separations themselves are a 'sin' against the essential life force tendency to synthesize all points of view from separateness into unity and confluence.

lack of forgiveness locks us into a state of separation from which we cannot escape.

yes, religion and other forms of spirituality create mandates against an unforgiving attitude, but none of them have explained how we became unforgiving in the first place, or how to get out of the unforgiving attitudes we thunk ourselves into. they merely judge the act of unforgiveness, and the state of being unforgiving. and of course we have inherited the 'mea culpa' mentality which does not serve well the principles underpinning the rules that attempt to reinforce it.

level one forgiveness, is a purely human attempt at merely going thru the motions of forgiveness, mostly out of fear of the moral retribution according to one's adoption of a prescribed personal/cultural moral code. saying i forgive, and truly forgiving are not the same; mere intentionality will neither lead me, nor those i hold captive to true freedom.

level two forgiveness stands outside of a moral mandate, and its effects can be evidenced by the manifestation of the whole physical realm in all of its diversity. how could such diversity co-exist in time and place in perfect balance, without that balance between tolerance, agreement, acceptance, being reflected on deeply subconscious and abstract levels, expressing confluence therein?

level three forgiveness, will arise as it purports, to the extent we share in its work synthesizing all disagreement into a new paradigm of cooperation. but that can only happen to the degree that we allow new levels of 'love' to permeate us and our lives and the lives of others.

with my newer understanding, i can truly let go of all persons, places and things i held captive in the past.

now my new challenge is to learn to live with the daunting responsibility that is now mine, to live as i have never been able to live before when my life task was primarily as warden for all my hostages.

Power, Control and Synthesis

lately i have been noticing at the self-center that dots are being connected and parallels are being drawn around these issues.

my head is finally connecting to my heart particularly around the issue of control in my life, how the power of control has dominated my life, and how the dynamic energy of my emotions seem to factor into the dance that happens when these two collide.

the light bulb moment occurred for me the other after having written in my blog about a past experience of someone who had the power to control my destiny, a former employer. after i puked out my wrath into the blog i stood back from it and realized that all the nasty comments i made about how he was driven in all of his action and behaviors by the need to bolster his self image, and how he would go to any lengths to do so, it dawned on me that that in fact was how i lived my own life, and knew at that moment, that i was truly talking about myself. i had been aware for a long time that i was image driven, but reading someone else thru the same filter, i had to stop and say to myself: well, how exactly have you arrived at this determination? did you further investigate these claims you are making, or are you in fact just juding him using the senate in your own head to draw the same conclusions? ouch! while, i may have been correct about his motivation, after all, what struck me as most important is that tendency to justify my own bitterness by projecting my own motivations onto him.

as it turned out, i went back and erased that blog entry the next day, out of a sense that the whole thing was just unfounded. what i recognized in this whole process is that what i was really pissed about was the fact that this man had power over me to make determinations about me, and to make decisions that could determine the course of my tomorrow. i mean, after all, there are a whloe lot of eggheads in the world, but they have no relation to me as far as they have no power to impact or limit my capacity for self-determination. and i have no opinions whatsoever about them or their proclivities.

do you see the connection between that and sexual abuse? it started to become very clear to me. memories of moments past where i felt threatened that my power would be taken from me, where i feared my own potential would be threatened or derailed, i reacted in the same way, bitter, vengeful, angry, and with tendency to flight, rather than fight. isolation makes so much more sense to me now.

the other issue that colluded with this one helping surrey me down the path toward greater understanding and enlightenment of this particular issue in my life, was the recent dating experience that i had.

i met a person thru match.com. after exchanging a few emails and speaking with him on the phone a few times, we met on wednesday for a light dinner. after that we went across the street to enjoy a couple of libations while talking about the past, and just stuff in general, nothing really specific.

i felt him to be a very easy person to talk with, and noticed that i was hyper aware of any red flag statements that might creep out as blatent or unguarded 'oops-es', but the only thing that i noticed was tendency to just keep the conversation flowing. there were no heavy topics discussed, no religion, no politics, just alot of 'stuff', and it was mostly about him.

i did enjoy the company, and i genuinely liked him as a person. he did not use off colored language in the course of normal conversation, did not speak ill of others. when it was over, we walked to my car and i then drove him to his. when he got out he asked if he could kiss me, and i thought ok, no problem, i would welcome that and even enjoy a nice good evening kiss [it had only been 4 years since i last kissed anyone]. but i was really shocked when he went in for something that was a bit more passionate than i thought was appropriate for the occasion. so what did i do?

nothing.

i just let it occur, and did nothing to either encourage nor discourage it, but my lack of enthusiastic participation certainly did not prolong it.

i was a bit chagrined to say the least, and while i did not think it was necessarily a 'deal breaker', it did make me wonder if he was in the same 'moment' that i was. from what i have learned in the past about moments like these, is that they are indeed the ones that determine our future. i say this because the past two relationships that i got into in the 90's lasted 5 years each, but they were essentially built on a moment such as this, where after spending only a little bit of time together, a decision was made to build a life on a such a kiss.

now i have no experience with confrontation, but i have leared to confront once i have withdrawn, and then later established a position of power from which to reengage. and i was making myself ready to bring up the issue in subsequent opportunities.

so my guy sends me a text that evening thanking me. the next morning on his way to work he calls me. i don't pick up. i later text him back. he calls me again later that afternoon, but i can't pick it up because i am work and in the middle of a conversation. so later i call him back, and he does not answer. i got home from work and then as i am going to bed for the night at 11pm the phone rings; i don't answer. 5 minutes later the phone rings again. i don't answer. the next morning i listen to the messages, and they are both him, and he sounds a bit tipsy.

i am starting to feel creeped out. he calls me on the way to work and i answer this time, and he asks me if i want to come over his house and watch the opening of the olympics. i say i am not sure at this point if i will be free or not. [ i did not go, but i emailed him to let him know that i would be preoccupied with a few other things that evening]

can you see my point? i am willing to build intimacy and trust with another person, but this seems too much too soon. i know i need to say that to him and i will, but i wanted to write about it in relation to my control issues, and the frustration and fear that overwhelms me at times when i feel that my space is being invaded.

i am just happy to report that i notice it and that i noctice the similarities to these issues as they have arisen in the past, no matter who the cast of characters have been at any given time over the years of my life.

what is most important about this realization is that i no longer have to let my fear of being overpowered determine my course of action from moment to moment. i can make the connections necessary for understanding my options, and reassure myself that this situation is not the situations where i was sexually abused by my brother, raped at knife point by a stranger, bullied by stressed out parents.

it feels very good to have gained understanding of things which had previously kept me chained to involuntary knee-jerk reactions that would only serve to limit the freedom to unfold as i was intended.

jottings #13

stuff is happening.

thing #1 is, that, after enduring 2 knee replacements since november, my 79 yo mother, just this morning, left her life and home in pittsburgh, to go and live with my brother and his family in sand diego. this is a tough transition, especially because of the longstanding undercurrent of tension that existed over the years after my disclosing my deceased brother's serial sexual abuse of 4 of the 8 of my brothers and sisters.

thing #2 is that she is leaving after our yearly family reunion was held on sunday afternoon. we have been doing this same family reunion in the same grove at the local park for a coupla decades, and it involved my family [which started out as 10] and my dad's only brother's family, my uncle and their 5 kids. we were just starting our own families at the time. since then i have seen so much dying in my family, and yet, so much new life. all the patriarchs are gone now, and we have taken their place. each year we would hold it, and everyone would try to make it home for the event. i went through a period where i could not be with my family for a few years due to extenuating circumstances, so this is the first one i was able to attend for about 6 years. everyone has gotten so old.

as i left the picnic, i went home and realized how ashamed i was deep down inside about who my family was. i am not sure why i had felt that way. i think i always wanted to be 'better' than who we are. i was always ashamed of our poverty, our lack of culture. i don't know where or at what moment in my life when those values became a factor in my own evaluation system. after allowing myself to admit this, i then had a good cry and realized how much i loved my family and extended family, warts and all. but i am still stuck at seeing how or why i would judge them so unworthily.

was it just because of a personality proclivity to be judgemental? or was it perhaps a way i could rationalize my anger for what happened to me as a result of being 'of it'. was my judging it was just a rationale for separating myself from it in reaction to the abuse that i endured as a member of it? a big part of me wants to throw myself into this group of people that i disenfranchised myself from, immersing myself in them, as i am of them, at least biologically through blood lines.

there is so much beneath the surface here, and i am feeling a bit overwhelmed at my own reaction to the feelings that have washed over me in the intersecting planes of these two recent events.

thing #3: after andy [come back!] posted a thread about on-line dating i thought i would give it a try, and went to match.com to throw my hat into the ring. see what it would be like just to meet others for interesting conversation, share a meal. the first person to contact me was a real card. we ended up exchanging a couple emails til he commented, in response to my reporting that my sex drive was in park these days, that i just needed a good lay. wtf? how dare you be so disrespectful? what is it with gay men and sex? i am really not trying to stereotype all gay men here. i can only comment on those who hold themselves up for public view in chatrooms and dating websites. i mean, most want to date some 15 years younger than they are, but are not willing to date anyone over their own age. that's real depth! then they have photos of themselves nude from the waist up, as if they were taking their own picture during a webcam session. HELP!!!!!!!
another guy emailed me, and we are going to get together for coffee/tea/not me on wednesday. we talked on the phone a bit today. he seems nice, and more than likely is nice, but he loves to talk about himself. i don't know that it will be a good connection, but i am keeping an open mind. no, really, i am.

so there it is, what's been triggering below the surface over the past couple of days, stirring up the mud. i'm trying not to identify too much with the thoughts that are arising with the emotions. just trying to acknowledge them, then the next job will be to sort them out! jeez, it never ends.

_________________________

• the musical me
• what happened
• inspiration: headless way

jotting #12

it has gotten so difficult lately to get through the day. ever since my final awakening to the fact that all my self-medicating behaviors were masking the real issues that were driving my life. i can't even bring myself to engage in them anymore, and since they are not there to distract me, all i can feel is the raw pain.

it's a new level of recovery for me, but it really hurts, and there is nowhere to run or hide anymore. time is my supreme enemy.

'i' is dying. and 'i' does not like it one iota.

blah.......

jottings #11

ah that charlie hayes is an awesome guy. it's hard to believe he is so sincere, but after checking him out for a couple of week's now, i have come to trust him. and what he says is such a welcome message.

you can see him on youtube sharing an understanding rooted in hindi philosophy [but with a twist], or at his website where you can listen for free to his telephone conferences that he has recorded with real 'seekers'. he expects nothing in return.

he has made one of his messages available for mp3 download 'you are that'

if so inclined check him out and let me know your thoughts/opinions.

ron

_________________________

• the musical me
• what happened
• inspiration: headless way

jottings #10

lately, i am slowly and surely drifting away from the need to glomb on to the recovery model.

after exploring the idea of narcissism upon reading a post by magraith
on the subject of sociopathic narcissism , i came to realize that there is a bit of the tendency in me [we all lie somewhere along the spectrum from sociopathic selfishness to sociopathic selflessness, but i think most of us lie somewhere in the synchristic balance between the two]. i could even pinpoint ways in which i have subconsciously used my friends in order to sate my egoistic needs. i felt ashamed for that. but i am not stuck in shame, it was healthy, because it led me to a new understanding of my own self-seeking behaviors, and brought me a a little closer to resolving the duality that is permitted to reign within, causing me to exist is several locations at once!

so one thing led to another, i can't remember the steps of my explorative process how i got from narcissism to non-dualism, but i did nonetheless and i came upon a rabbit hole that led me into a marvelous new realm of exploration.

they say when the student is ready the teacher will appear. and i am so ripe for this challenge. having been a seeker all my life, i really feel it has nothing to do with the abuse.

so there it is.

anyway in my adventure for exploring the topic of non-dualism ensued, i first came upon the advaita vedantablog when i saw the title it reminded me of the first time that i had actually heard about it: in joni litchell's album 'mingus' when it came out years ago, mingus was discussing it on the 'record' [yes, the days of 'records' and record players!] at the time i had been into reading about the akashic records and other 'new age' ideas. had tried transcendental meditation, zen, delved into chakra theory, kundilini energy etc. my interest in attaining higher stages of consciousness was very strong in the late teens and early 20's.


then the effects of the abuse started to kick in and led me to deny my true nature and brought me to the place where i became married, i walked away from my interest in eastern disciplines, and got plugged into western religion and born again christianity, had an emotional experience and came to believe that that was what it was all about. in the process i came to identify more and more with my own mind, my own ego, and all of its investments in cause and effect. this created a great deal of unbalance and tension in my inner world. but i do honor this part of my process. walking this path helped me to encounter the healing segment of my journey so that ultimately i could be brought back to unificity.

here are a couple of other awesome teachers that i have stumbled across over the past few days while exploring the comprehension of myself as 'present awareness':

if interested check out

http://www.advaita.org/

and here is a place where you can listen to ideas that emerge from vedanta for free [imagine that!]

http://www.theeternalstate.org/

well, if you need me you know where i'll be.....

ron

_________________________

• the musical me
• what happened
• inspiration: headless way

jottings #9

the day spent away from pittsburgh yesterday was very soothing. i just hung around the beautiful knobs and hills of western PA. saw a movie 'get smart' and went to the meeting at mt macrina. here is a view of the surrounding area from the mt macrina retreat campus where the meetings are held:


i actually lived and here for a year back in 1999 while finishing my bm in organ and sacred music. it is kind of an urban area with a lot of historic interest, george washington and all..... lots of caves for spurlunking and rivers for white water rafting and trails for walking. gorgeous and natural and peaceful.

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ah yes the meeting last night was very well attended and it was incredible. the palpable presence of everyone's hp is inspiring and peaceful and healing and reassuring. one of the topics that came up was on acceptance, just what i needed, since i have been working on this for the past couple of weeks.

this recovery chapter feels so unlike what i had come to understand recovery to mean for the past 23 years.

my first foray into recovery was in aa. then i got into oa, and attended a few isa [at the time it was called incest survivors anonymous], but my main interest was stopping compulsive drinking. i was willing to go to any lengths to do so, and the meetings and the slogans and the recovery culture kept me afloat. little did i know for the past 23 years, that i was in it for the wrong reasons. i was in it to make me feel good about myself; to alleviate my guilt and make myself more socially acceptable subject. little did i realize that all i was doing was an attempt to deny and erase the shadow cast on me by my early experiences with being sexually abused: first by my older bro, and when raped on 4 separate occasions while in the navy, once with a knife at my neck. i was using 'sobriety' for the wrong reasons, and so i did not achieve any significant recovery. yes i learned to let myself cry, and i worked the steps, but i was never brought to the place where i could stop blaming myself, and as a result, my whole recovery became an act of continued self-victimization.

what makes this all so surreal, is that for today, each time that i encounter words and cliches in recovery literature that used to have certain meaning and significance, i find that those understandings not longer apply. i no longer look for evidence of self-verification and affirmation in them. now i find that i am looking for real meaning: trying to allow the words to strike a chord in me that i am out of touch with. i need guidance in order to allow that to happen. and i am getting it with the group i am affiliated with. this is recovery unlike what i have experienced it to be in the past.

something in me is making me over in such a way that is not 'end gaining' oriented, but rather process oriented. my ego is not in the drivers seat this chapter. this is scary, and exciting at the same time. but the scary-ness is not rife with tension and anxiety. i think at this point, this chapter in my recovery, my life, i am finally beginning to take the first step.

_________________________

• the musical me
• what happened
• inspiration: headless way