how to... stop the yearning

[Phoenix Stone]

feeling strangely more cheerful somehow. Gonna think about the points you made, especially Sheath and rosco. Hard to think clear yourself when in the middle of something. Thank you. Good night all.

 

[CoyoteTales]

Raining Ashes...

H'lo, Phoenix. A good lady with a guitar told me I ought to drop by....

A bit late to the party, but I'll claim illness and a working on some artwork that needed doing. But I can hardly turn down a command performance, can I....

I'll start with this:

"You already have all your answers. They're in your hands, if you just choose to look."

The emptiness I see in you comes from the knowing of the things that would erase the ache, the weariness, the empty lonliness -- are things which would destroy, hurt, and irrevocably thrash the baseline of your life; your husband, your child, your peace of mind.

You have touched them; felt them; know the feeling of aliveness that the moment gives you.

But at the same time, you know that you cannot keep them as your own.

Because your path is no longer just yours; you have others who depend on you.

But a Phoenix without fire, or the ability to be reborn from the ashes, is a phoenix no more. You can blow on the embers to keep them alive, but only fire begets fire; and only fresh fuel thrown on the minute sparks will sustain the reaction.

This, I believe, is the source of your pain.

You might believe there is no way out.

But there is. There is always a way out, though not where you might think to look.

Your greater fear here is that of losing the things you have by way of hurting; but this is also going against your own nature to spread your wings, wide.

It is a single choice. Live for yourself -- or live for others.

The choice will come again and again.

If every time you take the choice of others -- you will always return to poking through the ashes of who you began as, trying to recapture who you were, while worrying about tracking the ashes on the white carpets of the feelings of others in your life.

Let me ask you this.

When was the last time others considered your feelings?

If the answer is 'it's been awhile', who can you talk to that will be sympathetic to them? If not the people who are currently in your 'circle' of fire, where would you go to find people who are? I think you're already working on this one....

Like the Olympic runners, a single torch flame can be passed from hand to hand, to take up the miles that a single journeyer cannot cross.

You have already found others who feel as you do; who have seen the darkness and call it their own; who feel lost in the shadows though it be full daylight.

[And damnit, now I have a deja' vu attack going on. Well.]

"Consequences, schmonsequences. As long as I'm rich." -D. Duck

It is very true that your path is your own, but your path also winds about the roads of others. Some folk are not easily drawn down a path that you choose. If you find you are changing away from the people you care about, bridges work just as well as bending your road in uncomfortable directions -- it's just a matter of learning how to get yourself into the engineering business.

Specifics, Coyote, specifics?

If you consider the flames that you wish to rekindle a many-toothed thing, one that threatens to bite and burn the ones you value the most, I would start by learning that not all flame burns; it is also heat and light and energy.

Heat is emotion; start by recognizing two good emotions in yourself, and one bad one. Write the first two on a piece of paper; stick it inside your pillow, and sleep on it. In the middle of the night, stick your hand inside the case, and touch the words of your dreaming needs.

Take the bad emotion, write it on the mirror when you've showered, and wipe it away. Put it out of your mind. If you think about it again, don't go to bed without taking another hot shower, and erasing it once more.

Light is the choosing to bring up spirits of those around you, rather than standing in the shadows to one side, or being darkened and dragging others about you down, or hiding in darkness that is complete.

Organize something with your husband. Romantic need not lead to sex; it need not be romantic.

Involve your kids with your art -- your music -- whatever. Make something out of nothing. When I say 'kids' plural -- make a day of it with someone else's kids, too. Bond with the local parents -- have a Spring Outing. It doesn't even have to be expensive -- a twelve-pack of lemonade and Capri Sun, a local park, and all the sunLight you can handle.

Energy is the ability to move. Lack of energy is Inertia. Inertia can lead to fear of getting things wrong when moving. Fear of not moving leads to being in the wrong place at the wrong time.

Rearrange something significant -- even if it's just rotating the chairs in the kitchen, or shuffling the books in the library from bottom to top. You'll probably find yourself opening a book you haven't read in awhile. Remembering.

Fire has teeth, but so do people. But we brush our teeth one bit at a time.

So too, must you tackle this problem.. this yearning, one part at a time. Replace the negative with the positive. Find the healthy flame that's not going to cause an explosion.

And at the worst case, you end up burning everything down anyway.

But you'll never know until you try again.

You were born with wings, and a fire hotter than the Sun; follow your nature.

But nothing says you can't channel yourself properly.

Good luck.
-CoyoteTales.

 

[Phoenix Stone]

Wow. Thank you. You saw so much there.

I'm on because of waking from a druglike nightmare -- recognizing that I'm a crank (which puts me one generation improved frm my parents;> ), and because of wasting time crank stuff, neglected protecting one of my kids who got hurt, possibly permanently. To find this. whewh.

Guess I'll put crank on that mirror, this time. And love and protectiveness in my pillow.


Good night

 

[CoyoteTales]

*nods*
Ce bon. Did you notice how naming your pain makes it just that much at arm's length, now that you know what it is?

And I'll be sure to pass along a thank you to my teacher; he was the one that nudged me last night to show up, and thereby found the message to come here.

Looks like the timing was good after all.

And I learned something for myself, too.

Tomorrow, I'm going to write 'Mindlessness' on the mirror in huge fingerpainted letters.

And I just finished writing the words 'SPIRIT' and 'Thought' on a piece of paper that's going in my pillow tonight.

Sometimes when we help others, we help ourselves... energy begets energy.

-CoyoteTales

 

[thesultan]

I sort of new here and cant offer the eloquence of all the rest, but I can offer the few things that work for me.

I beleive that life is split into two experiences, with actual reality some level of mixture and tension between these two.

The first one is very complicated, yet ultimately very simple. It is the structure of you, the value system that you hold, the beleifs, the goals, the example of your perfection (impossible to reach) that you want to show your children or other people. Ulimately the essense of us is the conceptual and philisophical undercurrent of our actions. You describe yourself and shout out the beauty of yourself everytime you open your car door. To me this is very important, because I try and live each moment as my perfect being. Obvioulsy I fail all the time, and in a sense that is built in to the framework of this concept. Realizing this about ourselves, it allows us to take back, hopefully understand, and ultimately control our own fears. In my case, I try and experience all the parts of my life as contributions toward my ultimate goal, by they inadequices to fix, or talents to nuture. My perfection happens to be only realized in reference to them.

The second and fundamentally different experience is the concept of flow. This can be likened to the Buddist refutation of self, or even the Freudian idea of id. It occurs at the moment when self-realization is ovewhelmed by other more poweful energies. A simple example is when music takes over a musician during a jam, and hands move as if controled by the flow of the music. The person, the self, is then submerged into the rythm and texture of the music. The Buddhist believe (obvioulsy bastardized definition here) that the self never exists, but is only part of the complex and beautiful dance of flowing energies and cycles of the universe. Another example of this could be when we were children, playing somewhere, intent on our fantasy, and time just didnt exist. We were lost in that world and a fraction of a second could have lasted forever or an hour passed without consideration. When we lose ourselves in something, and the energy of the rythm sustains us, we have found a peice of perfection.
This is the way I treat lovemaking and I beleive that many women do also. That is why many women speak about the mood and their partner and the experience. It is only when the self is lost, and consequently reinforced, by the passion of the moment, that real pleasure and satifaction can happen. Lovers become one, controled by the rythm, lost in the power of the moment.

Anyway, I digress. My point being that we have to balance these two concepts. Find as many avenues for release that we can find. It is necessary not to get too involved in ouselves and as often as possible, to release into the flows of the universe. At the same time, it is importatant that you know who you are and who you want to become. The fantasies of our youth are over, and we have killed them ourselves. Our only real contribution, even if we perform some amazing accomplishment or become a movie star or whatever, is ultimately as an example to others of how to live life. We must construct ourselves, define our values, make our descisions, and live our lives as close to our own idea of perfection as we can. In this way, we own ourselves, and we understand that our failures, our problems, or our busted dreams, are all just ways to trim the fat from our morality.

So to paraphrase and condense, always look for ways to release yourself, and always look for ways to define yourself. Strive for these two oposites and l believe you can find happiness.

 

[CoyoteTales]

Hey, haven't seen -this- thread in awhile...

Sultan -- if this is your only post -- I hope you come back. That was very well thought out....

...and it made me think.

And I'm lying here with my trusty laptop, nodding my head -- and can only add this:

"Who do you serve?"

If the answer is 'yourself', the world screams 'selfish', 'greedy', 'taker' to you.

If the answer is 'others', the your friends yell 'you're being abused/used', call you a 'doormat' if you do it too efficiently.

Yet... following an ideal of how you want to be -- all good, no bad, no wrong impressions, always the right answer -- is something that we're told we want to be. 'Model husband/wife.' 'Poster child.' 'Perfect.' "No complaints."

And then we run into someone for whom we can never be good enough.

And we make it into our fault.

And I very much believe in the whole 'lose yourself in the moment' routine -- it's hard t'get to -- I find it first and foremost when I dance -- and thankfully, second when I write.

Do stop in on our regular haunt -- check out the thread 'What feeds your soul?'


-CoyoteTales

 

[RavenSpirit2k4]

Phoenix Stone, this sounds to me like it might be caused by a chemical imbalance. I know how bad that can be because I have to take medicine every day for the same thing. I really think you should see a doctor and explain the situation.

Regardless, I'm here and so are many others if you need us. Please feel free to pm me anytime.

 

[thesultan]

Re: who do you serve?

Thank you for your compliment. It is as always a concept under construction.

You ask the question "who do you serve?" but it sort of answers itself. There is no real service, there is only a belief in a set of values, as well as the burning desire for release. As you hone those morals down to their base elements, and then give them the power of your belief and the power of repition, then they become a deep seated pattern that becomes second nature. This is what religion teaches, though I do not believe in any sort of organized spirituality. As I wrote in the last post, you have to cull these values from your own experienes, in totality.

The question of doormat becomes a little more manigable then, because you understand the desicion that you made, the fact that you choose one action over another, ie someone elses comfort or profit, over yours. You gave something up, you need to understand what that is, for something else. As you advance in understanding of yourself, you realise that we sin against ourselves often. We can feel it. We are quitly or secretive or regretful without even knowing why. Each time this happens, just try to understand yourself, and what brought you to this pain and try and adjust your values and hopefully behavior so that it wont happen again.

The trouble happens, as it always does when your desire for release comes in direct conflict with your values. These are only false releases, or in my mind- counter releases. They deny the integration, or release, of you into the patterns of the universe. An example of this is the desire for the ego boost. This feels like a release, feels good, but it is incredibly singular and upon analysis most likely happened through some compromise of your values. Real release happens through the integration of yourself with everything around you, like dancing for instance. Your body becomes an extension of the music, the cadence, the complex hues that surround you. You merge with floor, with the instrument, with the musicians. It is a wonderful feeling.

I guess what I believe is that you are the constructor of your world. So many people just putter along without taking responsibity for their actions, good or bad. You must begin to learn about yourself, and in doing that you can shape yourself into something that is wonderful. People talking about this or that, critizing you, will slide off the edifice of your morality, and you become the savior of yourself.