Crossroads

i have much to be grateful for. in many respects, life has been long and difficult, and the struggles have been rewarding. and i know many people are dealing with the unraveling of their lives, while at the same time others are celebrating new beginnings. there will always be others who are more advantaged than i, and others more disadvantaged. there will always be this incongruity.

last year, i gained new perspective on the past, unencumbered by all of the things that formerly preoccupied my attention: raising kids, reducing debt line, worrying about whether i was getting ahead or sinking behind in life and in my healing and .....

now, being at the age in life where there are no guideposts to success, i feel thankful to have maintained a strong sense of relatedness to the creator, because in retrospect, that is the one main thread, the one thing that has sustained me all these years of struggle. when i was working against myself, and when all the world seemed to rail against me, something kept the parted waters from caving in around me.

at 55+, kids on their own, no mountains of self-actualization to climb, having processed much of the baggage i carried along the way from the effects of family/cultural systemic abuse, i find myself at a crossroads.

where is the book on 'how to enter and survive the later years'? who can show the way to live when there are no more hoops to jump through? on the other side of all this, there was always an invisible parent living in the shadows of the mind, always watching, guiding, from the wings suggesting the next move, who, what, where, when and how to be a person. cueing the next passage.

in the younger years, there was always the next big challenge:

• 16 yo: get to drive a car
• 18 yo: graduate from high school, enter college, get to vote, get to move out on my own
• 21 yo: can't wait to get my lcb card!
• 22 and beyond, the sky's the limit, just imagine all the things you were told you could be/do. education, career etc.
• get married have a family, and let that determine the specter of you life choices

and now, all that behind me, i reflect on what's next.
i ask myself, what new drama can i concoct for my life that will fuel the ambition for my succeeding daily endeavors?

previously, my life was lived from the center of 'me'. it had to be that way, because i had to succeed in bringing to resolution all that i initiated in my early years. i had to honor all the choices that i made, and in turn, honor all of the effects of those choices. i didn't have to think much about my life plan, because those choices pretty much dictated them for me.

now i am only held back by the limitations of my own resources.

as i count my blessing from last year, the ground gained, i see once again the hand of the creator gently guiding as in days gone by. i was brought to a church community, and my involvement in it has been the medicine i needed to shift from self focus to a life of service.

previously, i took all the truths i read from the scriptures of various disciplines, and tried to apply them as best i could, but i always felt i was merely performing service by rote.

it was almost as if in the early period of my life, i was being prepared, unbeknownst to me, for a fiat much greater than the limited scope of my own understanding. the theory of loving god and neighbor was a just that, an attempt to apply a set of principles. but now, with time on my hands, and a new group of people to love, and no excuse not to give myself totally to them, i have no choice to enter the phase of practicuum.

if i fail to accept this next challenge, then i have not really listened to all the things i have been reporting back to myself. i must walk my talk. and i must do for no other reason, than simply this: it's all that is left to live for. to help fulfill the lives of others with the same amount of effort that i served myself all these past years.

that others become my main interest. that all my resources be invested in the well being and care of those who need it most.

knowing what i know now about the deep need for love and connection that we humans so desperately seek, i am feeling compelled to respond with what little resources i have to offer: my hands, my heart and my spirit of gratitude.

no other agenda, no other desire but to help fill the cups of those who are lacking.

maybe this seems obvious to many other people, and as i said earlier, i tried to live this way through out my life, but i never felt the connection before now, with a community of people who will receive the gift of myself in the spirit intended.

i guess if i am to be honest with myself, i do expect a reward: the simple joy of seeing fear and tension dissolve in a person who feels safe for the time being, who feels loved for a moment, and who will savor that nectar and not waste a drop.

i attribute this post to my mcc brother, brian, who lives this way, and has given me the inspiration to know whom i am being called to be in this next leg of my time here on earth.

hoping for peace and joy for all in the new year 2009,

ron

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

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• voices affirming gay males: wc journal