What money can't buy

Ten experiences I LOVE that money can’t buy.

Walking through old overgrown alley ways
Finding Feathers, shells, and pretty rocks
The smell of the earth on a warm spring night
Crunching snow or gravel after it rains
Slow, cold mornings with a hot lover
Twilight evenings in summer that stretch for hours
Watching the birds swoop and call over the sea or the sound
Fresh, crunchy, Line dried laundry
Making music with anything, and a friend or partner
Being a positive force in the lives of others
Driving anywhere in the sunshine with great music, someone I love, and all the windows down (does this one count? – it does cost a little bit of money for gas)

BALANCED SENSE OF SELF

How to do it. How to let myself enjoy and bask in the wonder of new found love and the simple organic, hearty goodness of such a healthy and robust thing, while maintaining that part of myself that is separate and whole and growing, striving, changing and yearning for recognition in my own right. I have often given up myself for the love of another, a husband, child, or parent. It is something we learn as children to survive and attempt to get our needs met in the face of poverty, abuse, trauma, grief, neglect and circumstance. Most of us have this tendency in modern life, depending on the amount of independence that was deliberately fostered by our parental units. Usually they wanted our cooperation so, independence was not always valued as highly, depending on our individual family groups, heritage and circumstance.

My goal now is to learn and practice newer, healthier ways to see, appreciate and relate to my partner, while exercising the discipline, and judgment I need to meet my individual goals and achieve my independent hopes and dreams within the context of a larger shared life, shared goals, shared dreams. There is so much to learn, and relearn, so many skills to polish and dig out from the trenches of bygone days and old coping patterns. There are so many options for communication, listening, respecting and functioning to dust off and brush up on. A new relationship is yet another new beginning, another opportunity to reinvent oneself, ones ways of relating to an intimate other, and to exercise both generosity and boundary setting. Respect and self-respect. The ultimate thing we all struggle to find balance with. Selfishness and generosity, graciousness and a healthy sense and expression of loving.

Some ideas. While our goal is to share a domicile making our silly twice weekly trek to one another’s homes, less ludicrous, there are some advantages to several days together and several days apart. For one I can focus only on the senses and how very much I like my new man, as a person, as a friend, as a lover, when I am with him, and then completely immerse myself in my own world and work and social circle when we are apart. I don’t have to worry about how late I stay up, or what time dinner should be when I am on my own, and there is a liberation in that that I don’t want to surrender… But as it stands, when I am immersed in his life and his world, there is very little of my own life around, so achieving balance while in that end of the seesaw or pendulum is extremely unlikely if possible, until we do move in together and each have our own life-in-full while immersed in cohabitation.

How do I want it to be? A home together that meets both person’s real needs. So we must identify needs verses wants… So one of the things I have to ask is what are MY wants, my needs for myself? For my ideal relationship, and my goals for and from myself with in that context… I am working really hard to please Him and doing my own thing too and the balance is bizarre. Simply because I am somewhat unaccustomed to it. So can I strike a balance in myself? Use my left side, my intuition and my own honorary identity within my own sense of value and desires. Can I maintain it? Can I keep both simultaneously? Is it truly the ultimate in multi-tasking?

There is some evidence which suggests my intensity, my OCD tendencies, is what has cost me important relationships in the past and yet, there is also a deeper sense of destiny here, of purpose, of opportunity. Why have I been fighting it all during the loss and regenerating time of my own growth and transition. How do I maintain command over myself and allow myself to swim in the waters of peaceful, nourishing plenty and affection. Basking in the lap of sensory, experiential living as I long to. A place reserved from the self I share in the main stream and preserved in itself from harsh labels or judgment. I feel a bit Like Anias Nin. On the threshold of a lifestyle, a system I have circled around for years, only I am no longer just dipping my toes in the water…

Once again in my life, I find myself at a place that keeps me pushing the envelope of my own sense of terror, like a chaos junkie or adrenaline freak, I don’t know how to calm down emotionally, unless we are apart completely or he is actually touching me. It is heady, cloudy and the direct chemical response from my brain is tangible in the physiology and emotional components of my perceptions and reactions. I am like an affection starved beast, but I am learning to feel safe on such a deep level and I am probably rushing my emotional self, wanting to drench myself in every bit of him. Typical, how else do I know how to do anything except to just dive right in, mistakes and all, risking playing the fool!

If there is one thing I know how to do after the life I’ve lived, it is to take risks, to win sometimes and to lose a lot. But to settle into successful attainment, bridging the gap of preserving and maintaining the quality I have busted my back and ass, and neck to recognize is something my attention span or nature seems mutually exclusive to doing. I am good at beginnings, many people are, and it is good to learn new habits but it is also good to face our fears. So how fast or slow is the right pace? We want to add quality back to our lives and our sense of self but how do we regulate a healthy level of interacting with our new found sense of quality and the expanded, sense of capacity to appreciate quality and a sense of wonder and safety and well being when it is something we’ve seen very little of.

I am reminded of the journey up Hwy 58, to Hwy 97 between Eugene Oregon, and Klamath Falls. There is a small town called Oakridge nestled in the western foothills of the Cascades. On the edge of town, there is a historic milestone, recognizing the pioneers who came to this town on the Oregon trail. The story is that they followed a new trail, and got a bit lost; many starved to death before they made if through the mountains. Once they got to the town they were greeted with a big pancake feed. Many of the survivors, actually gorged themselves to death. Literally ate themselves to death because the starvation physiology was advanced, and desensitized them to the feelings of being sated, fed, or full. It was literally death by pancakes, because they didn’t know how to stop after being so hungry for so long.

So like the starving people that finally found salvation and false sense of safety when they reached Oakridge, we enter new, seemingly harmless territory situations with the desire to take what seems so freely offered and abundant, and gorge ourselves on every nuance, every flavor, every variety of delicious sustenance offered. One sees this phenomenon again and again, the same theme dancing before our world weary eyes and hearts and stimulating our salivating sense. Janice Joplin, and John Belushi overdosed on drugs with no way to censor or regulate the experiences they felt starved to indulge. People experience and fill this void in almost as many ways as there are people. With drugs, alcohol, food, work, sex, internet, religion, gossip, affection, electronics.

The flavors of the choices are endless, but the act, the hunger, the addiction, the sense of emptiness and unrestrained desire to alleviate its ache, remain the same. We don’t always know what enough looks or feels like, and seem to stay hungry regardless of how much we have or get or share, wanting more and more, like a once feral cat come home. At what point do we calm down and relearn our own perceptions and a sense of trust? How do we learn to feel the signals of enough, beneath the panic and frenzied need to feed? I think the answer lies in our ability to be discerning, to recognize and add quality back to our lives, and the moment we are in at any given time.

A sense of QUALITY

Perhaps even more than a sense of purpose we NEED A SENSE OF QUALITY, perhaps they go hand in hand. In much of modern America, our lives are filled with busyness, with tasks, goals and endless varieties of detailed accomplishments, sometimes for self, sometimes for others but so frequently devoid of a deeper meaning or bridging a deeper connection to humanity or existence. We are squirming on the edge of our own awareness and consciousness trying to grow. Yet we are pressed against the glass ceiling of our cultural or familial beliefs, and our understanding of the world and reality, squandering our time, energy and attention.

If we are lucky we have guides and mentors that clue us into a deeper sense of well being and coping mechanisms, and the abstract unseen factors of life that provide a framework for the events we see around us, the choices we make and the actions of ourselves and others. If we are not so fortunate, we spend our lives feeling hollow, hungry and never quite understanding that the thing we seek is not outside of ourselves, in lives incidents and experiences, but something we bring to the table ourselves, an intent we carry within ourselves and infuse into our perceptions and expectations for and of ourselves.

Sometimes even when we have learned this lesson, life has a way of testing us and making us prove it, relearn it, demonstrate our understanding, the quality really is up to us, but we don’t often realize or know how to go about claiming and creating it. The purpose of the project and blog has been to explore these ideas in a practical experiential way, that perhaps inspires, dissects, and shines a light onto how to realize our vital participation in quality. We explore quality VS quantity in a number of areas from materialism to relationships, to esoteric functioning.

We discover the importance and process of inventing or reinventing ones self-ness after significant loss or trauma. But perhaps the most significant theme explored is the link between a lack of ritual, rites of passage and the depression and lack of meaning in modern north American society at large; the tiny things in life from which we have extracted, normalized and removed significance, which when that meaning is acknowledged makes tiny rites of passage in the lives of everyone of us, if we choose it.

Modern Life: A Balancing Act

Modern life is full of demands and we must choose which ones we will give precedence to, because no one can meet them all. As a skill of survival we must all learn to say NO not that, to a few things, but we must also make sure that our priorities are where we think they are. Do we claim to want a deep relationship and then throw all of our time and energy into our jobs or how well our furniture matches? These are not bad things, but one must prioritize for what is truly important to oneself. Not what the rest of the world seems to tell us we should prioritize (whiter laundry? Really?).

Prioritizing is also skill. Another skill that most of us were not taught to well. It can be extremely helpful to actually list the most important elements of your identity or lifestyle or goals and actually number the top five for yourself. Things like Job, education, looking great, being healthy, time with friends, goofing off, eating healthy, great sex, good parenting, a fun healthy relationship, a bigger house. You get the idea. Now choose only five to really focus on the most. Increasing quality of life really is about simplifying. Quantity is only a replacement for quality when we don’t know what quality looks or feels like. Typical of our arrogant western emptiness. Now ask yourself: Do you make time for these top five things or do you squander it on things or people you claim are less important? This is not a list you have to show anyone or try to justify in any way, but the result might just be surprising.

Life! The Amazing Bittersweet Adventure

A new experience is a journey of sorts, like a road trip. Yes you want to get to San Fran, or Seattle, or Elmer Idaho, but the journey is often the best part of the trip, it’s the adventure of the unknown, and what happens along the way to the destination that you remember and retell in the years to come. The way you and your cohorts handled those unforeseen little events becomes the stuff of future legend. Love too, is a journey, so many things in our lives are journeys, and for many of us it is nearly impossible not to mentally rush ahead to the destination, the hoped for outcome. We may not even realize we are doing it, but many of us go so far as to plan out a script of what should happen when and how, forgetting that true partnership means relinquishing half of the control to the other person and risking being open to their preferences and speed of doing or not doing anything. A real relationship requires a deep friendship, and constantly increasing trust and vulnerability to succeed.

Love is not possible without trust, certainly a happy and fulfilling relationship is not. And yet, trust can be hard to come by for those who don’t know what it should look like. We’ve all heard the poetic yearning of Shakespeare and Christopher Marlow, and have some very archetypal ideals of what we think love SHOULD look like. But we are often wrong, and those intensely burning flights of fancy and fantasy, more often than not burn out or come from a hunger that ultimately must be fulfilled in the self rather than the externalized desire to be completed by another. In other words, the dark passions we come to associate with romantic, and literary love are often the most unhealthy types, doomed to disappointment and failure before they begin… search your experiences, you probably know this to be at least partly true in your own past, even if it was back in high school.

So what does healthy love look and feel like? How can we create something we have so few models for? Many of us fear that leaving the dark romanticism behind may doom us to a life without passion, adventure or excitement. But perhaps it’s just a matter of perspective. When ones way of looking at life, love, experience, and expectation is limited or slanted from a very tightly controlled point of view the possibilities may seem limited or very black and white, good or bad, either/or. That is a sure sign we are stuck in a rut and NOT seeing the whole picture of possibilities.

There are a thousand, thousand things we can do, and ways for a fun, healthy, loving relationship to unfold, be it a new romance, a new job, a new creative partnership or professional association. There is NO script, and that may be the scariest thing of all. We like to have a sense of control over our lives and the things that matter to us, and interactions with another person that stirs our deepest most uncontrollable emotions is something many of us do not know how to do with open, loving, vulnerability.

We’ve all been hurt, we have all been through some stuff, we’ve all been wrong in our judgment, or expectations at least once. And it is this fear, this unhealed resentment that clogs the flow of our trust and the new opportunities to do it differently. We really do have a choice, and sometimes, the less choice we SEE, the more choices we actually have, but it takes courage, strength and dedication to step outside of our comfort zone and allow things to unfold in real time, present NOW. Sometimes Risking Trust is a moment by moment struggle, as we build new synapses and ways to relate to new situations.

We are so incredible blessed to have this opportunity of choice. Again and again. To choose to see things without the scars and wounds of the past coloring our perspective with bitterness. And if we miss it, or mess it up, it comes around again in a different guise, a different coat, a new day. There is no rush. We can put it off as long as we wish and it will present itself over and over in newly profound ways each time, until we finally trust LIFE enough to leap, even when we have forgotten how to trust ourselves, or our own judgement. Eventually we lean to not judge what comes to us.

Eventually we stop overthinking what we perceive, even if it is just for a moment and our hearts are heard without the cluttered scripts they mind lays down from past synapses and accumulated experience. Throw it out! Be here Now. Feel your way forward, and don’t worry about the destination so much. Life is all about the quality of your journey. We will all got there in the end, regardless of the road we take. Don’t be afraid of a few bumps and bruises, you can take them. You were designed for the daring adventure that is life, and fear itself is worse than anything that may have once set it in motion. Get help! Therapy doesn’t carry the daunting label of being somehow inadequate that it once did. Modern life is difficult, and we all need help coping from time to time; to learn HOW to heal, to see differently and to truly be fearless. It is your own wonderful, joy filled life that your fear is preventing, and that isn’t about anyone else but you. You deserve a joy filled life that you fill with love and NO one can give it to you but you. One baby step at a time.

Ultimately the biggest adventure has an element of the unknown as what truly makes it worthwhile and trans-formative. The right person, often is NOT the person we want the most, no matter how much we desire it to be so and go our own way. That would be one sided, and fantasy like, in other words unrealistic and Not healthy.

The right person is the one who meets you where you are, authentically, and whom you respect enough to allow and appreciate a different perspective and opinion from. The right person agrees to go on the journey with you, step by step, with a lot of courage and honesty, un-contrived. You sense in a very deep and calm place the truth of trustworthiness in them, and the desire to always be forthcoming and trustworthy yourself. From this space of respect, and vulnerability and willingness to be open to whatever the other person brings to the table, Love grows deeper, and passion only increases with time and trust. This then is the fairy tale that the other thing looks like it should be. We don’t really choose the right person, we simply recognize them when the time is right.

Blessed Be your Journey.