Tuesday, January 31, 2012

Liberation

Last few days, and even right now, have been high stress. Court, financial crisis, transitional time. It's all scary stuff.

But there is something deeper I think that I have to deal with. An undermining energy. A fundamental lack of compassion for myself. I have not been taking the actions needed to protect myself from this situation. I have not been acting responsibly.

There's a part of me that wants to blame this on ZZ. That wants to say, look: ZZ has not solved all your problems. You have still made some bad decisions. But that's not ZZs fault. I abandonned that. It didn't abandon me.

It's T.V.. Internet surfing. Internet buying that have been leading me around like a lost dog looking for my owner. And I have been passively allowing that to happen.

Yeah, I need to sit down and make realistic getting money plans right now.

But on the plus side, at least I don't need a lot of money.

Monday, January 30, 2012

stress management

In The Way of Power Master Chuen write about stress management as a natural strength. Right now I'm dealing with a few tons of stress: an upcoming court case, a mid career crisis, a huge transition about to take place in Ben's life. I've been having difficulty falling asleep so I'm tired and more vulnerable to identifying with the sense of panic in my brain and body.

Chuen's words remind me that I have the resources inside of me to deal with this stress. If I keep the focus returning again and again to my tan tien, if I return to my foundation postures and re-connect as often as I need to with the natural warmth and the natural relaxation I've been building over years of practice, this stress will be lesss likely to take me over and block my intuitive abilities.

Chuen says over time this develops fearlessnes. What an idea, to be fearless. We have normalized fear so much in our culture that to be fearless is something for action heros and movie stars. Not something for ordinary people who need so much strength just to fight against the social forces in their lives that are allways threatening to take away job security, rights to shared resources, etc. And then there are, of course, the natural forces the bring stress: ageing, death, grief at the ageing and death of others.

We need a cultivated resilience to deal with all of these things. That's why I stand.

Thursday, January 26, 2012

indescribable marvels

My practice fluctuates like winter and summer between periods where I'm feeling amazing surges of energy and periods where I seem to have incrementally returned to where I set out from, a place of rigidity where the sap is thin.

Often my thin sap days are because I'm growing in a different area of my life. Right now, for instance, I've started learning computer programming and I'm more than a little obsessed with all the places that might lead me. Maybe I'll start a meet up for teenagers at the RPM center. Maybe this will turn into a business where I run after school programs.Maybe I'll start a career as a tech journalist. Maybe I'll design a course to teach at Dawson.

All these maybes. None of them right now have standing like a tree in the centre of that action. None of them involve keeping a space for the indescribable marvels that I can experience now.

I can't force myself to care about Zhang Zhuan. But I can break the infinite excitement loop to keep my feet on the ground. Otherwise I'm just giving away all my energy for free. And then I'm sapped.

Tuesday, January 24, 2012

Excitement

One of the things that has derailed me time and time again in my standing practice is excitement.

I get to a stable point where I'm feeling the inner peace and the joy and then something happens that sparks my enthusiasm, and suddenly the practice starts feeling very mundane and dry and well, treelike. My ego starts getting all fired up with the potential for success and before I know it I lack the grounding energy to keep that fire going. So whatever has made me enthusiastic dies, along with the practice.

Right now I'm excited about something, but I'm holding back. Is my holding back healthy, or undermining?

One thing excitement undermines is writing. It's hard to write when your brain is jumping about with ideas and visions. Writing needs a kind of energy in between depression and mania. Writing needs authentic joy.

Monday, January 23, 2012

My home

This is a really interesting process, the behaviour bias that happens when I make this my homepage. Homepages for me are traditionally newspages, New York Times, lately the blog at the New Yorker.

Why is it that I've never thought to make my home page my actual home, my blog, the blog that I love more than any other blog. The first blog I ever started.

And then I wonder why I keep getting distracted from this path...

Well yes, everytime I open a browser I'm browsing the big wide store of information. I'm shopping for the story that will make me happy.

The joy of being

I know I think too much of joy as something that I can attain, as something that I will eventually attain through standing, or whatever new skill my promiscuous, curious mind happens to settle on.

Standing has taught me that joy is accessible now, that it's in me and all around me. That I can have it whenever I want.

So simple. So easy to forget because of all the programming. All the code that says that enough food is not enough. Enough shelter is not enough. Enough time will never be enough. Enough joy will never be enough. And so as soon as I feel this innate joy I start running away. It's like there's an instruction in me that says joy is an obstacle not a beginning or end point.

That's why I decided recently to make this blog, this adventure, my browser home page.

It's a scary feeling, not starting the day with someone else's instructions, someone else's priorities. Where's my newspaper? Where's my water cooler talk? Where's my water cooler. It's just me here on this page. What's going to happen if it's just me? Who will tell me what to do?

Sunday, January 22, 2012

program or be programmed

I made a spontaneous resolution in January to learn how to code. Not exactly sure now why I'm doing this. It's good to have a skill. I've been thinking back a lot recently to what I most enjoyed studying in highschool. It was actually geometry, not English. Coding is a combination of those two things.

But I'm also curious how learning to code might change the way I see the world. Or might change my behaviour in positive ways. Something about coding feels empowering. Like learning to read or write.

Also been watching lectures by Douglas Rushkoff. He's usually a pretty good visionary. His mantra these days is program or be programed. If you don't understand how your mental environment is being programmed by the web now, then you risk being programmed by forces that are not necessarily working in your best interests.

I know that the web programs me to buy.

I would rather program myself to stand.