maybe now you're ready? 2/2

continued

I'm not into casinos. I have no interest in gambling, but I am fascinated by the patterns of the carpet. Is it deliberately disorienting? All those vibrant colors swirling, mesmerizing rivers through profit and loss, with no windows, no light from the outside world. Thick, low hanging clouds of smoke, there are no clocks--nothing to orient by in a casino. Confusing, unexpected sights make the impossible a potential: flocks of pink flamingos, elephants and temples built of flowers, spectacular light shows, fireworks, concerts. High on dreams of winning big, of being up and up and up, only up. But wait, there's more!

All-you-can-eat buffets and bottomless drinks, every desire, fueled and fed, greed is the motivator, the fire here. I guess it's fun for awhile, for somebody. Vegas, Reno, every big, little city has its delights. All designed to maintain distraction, spectacle. That's the moment we're in now, keeping mind focused on the fleeting and fluctuating, ever-changing extremes of highs and lows instead of what's unchanging, the deathless. 

I know I'm not alone in trying to grasp hold of what's continuously changing. I've shifted through many levels of betrayal and addiction. I'm not saying I've experienced all the sufferings, only my share which has already been more than enough. One funeral after another along with losses no one else acknowledged. Losses that were never marked or recorded. I watched lovers lust after others, their passionate embrace and engagement, along with all the attendant moans, cries and fluid exchange. I was right there, witnessing it. Not because I enjoyed watching, but just because it was happening and had to be acknowledged, however much it hurt. Whatever stories I had running as background assumptions about how a relationship ought to function, they were just my expectations. Only true for me. Come to find out I'm just not into policing others' desires and behavior. Let everyone want what and who they want. None of that has anything to do with me. 

So what if a person I love has their mouth, their hands wrapped around another lover's flesh, dripping with lust and passion? What happens? Do I fly into a jealous rage, a fit of possession— I crave you, I must have you, you are mine. We had a bargain, an agreement? No, not really. Or not for long, certainly not forever. Every feeling is fleeting, eventually it goes. Patience allows the waves to rise, crest, fall and pass away. There's usually another wave right behind it, but there are calmer waters farther out. It's also possible to drop down, sinking into the depths where waves no longer happen. Floating, falling, no ground to stand on, no up or down, without direction or momentum. Disorienting, confusing, but also not forever. None of this is.

If it's not relationships or sex creating drama, maybe it's money. The so-called news cycle will be be wanting to talk about fluctuations in the market next if it's not sabre-rattling or churning up something for people to be offended and indignant about, constantly fueling crisis. Lately, it's not so different outside the casino from the way it is inside: disorienting, dysregulating. It's enough to make people want to end their lives.

Another loss I didn't get to mourn properly was the loss of a cousin who made his exit in a hotel room after a series of medical and financial crises. His eldest child wrote the obituary that was published in a local paper declaring that he'd seen the world as a place of endless possibility. I've been wondering about that. Can people really imagine how different things could be when they're in the depths of suffering?

For me, possibility seems to disappear. Awareness constricts, self-neglect takes hold, oppression feels everywhere even within the bodymind itself. Change can seem impossible. Feeling like the walls are closing in, like I'm sinking, like I'm invisible, and my life has no impact. Disoriented, dysregulated like I'm still stuck in a casino or shopping mall somewhere, but I'm not. Not in this moment. When I'm not in crisis, I'm aware of possibility, I know we are powerful agents of change, each of us, spiritual beings having human experiences. I remember, but then I forget.

Hardly any time at all had passed, it was only a couple years later that my cousin's kid, still a teenager, was also dead— car accident. No one told me about the funeral, I only heard about it later. Grief can calcify, get buried deep in the body. It has for so many of us. Every life a universe, oceans and deserts of dead, the planet itself nearly a wasteland for those whose hearts can still feel. May life be celebrated in kindness we offer one another, read the child's obituary, the hope we give, and the joy we spread.

I would help us with our suffering. All of it. The losses and lack, the absence and restriction, internal and external limitation. All feelings of not deserving or belonging. Doubt, confusion, anxiety, despair, it's possible that they are always present. Maybe not for you, but for somebody. For some of us it's present all the time, everywhere, unrelenting. And no one to blame– not parents or teachers or schools. Not governments or bosses, not really. We can blame them, of course, but what does blame accomplish? I've found that you did this to me doesn't change much. Doesn't really change anything.

I could be crying my eyes out while my lover fucks someone else. I'm right here on the other side of the glass, I can see them panting and moaning, sweating and grinding all over each other in their passion. It doesn't matter if I protest until the end of time about how unfair it is, I loved you, I gave you the best years of my life. I can pound on the glass, cry out, can't you see what you're doing to me? Can't you feel my broken heart? until the end of time. It won't make a difference. People are going to do what people are going to do. Consider the horrible possibility that perhaps people can't even perceive others' experiences, only their own.

No matter how self-righteous I feel, no matter how articulately I explain my experience and perspective, no one can hear what's not happening to them. They only know what's aligned with their views, their experience of the world. I can restate my position forever without any impact. Am I invisible? Can you hear me? People are living their own personal realities, mostly impervious to others' experiences. If they notice me at all, they're perceiving me through their filters, experiencing me not as I am, but as they believe me to be. I'm helpless against this. 

Everyone centering themselves and their narratives, judging others as good or bad, right or wrong, acceptable or not according to their own value systems. Rarely is any of it open for discussion. Some people don't even reflect on their values or recognize that they have them. Unaware that they have the ability to reflect and consider operating in different ways, trapping themselves in a belief that there's only one way to live, their way. Mimicing whatever they see other people do, living the way they learned from their parents and families, from shows on television, from neighbors down the street, church groups, schools and communities. Looking outside themselves for authority, guidance. Imagining themselves in choice, exerting agency while operating from un-interrogated beliefs, mostly unconsciously. Happily chirping a popular refrain about this is how life is to imply knowledge and expertise. 

Positioning themselves as alphas in the pack, tails and ears up, making decisions for everyone. Know-it-alls here to delegate, take charge, enforce standards of behavior. Always having the answer (or pretending to) can be another form of addiction, attachment. Attachment to knowledge as clinging to intellectual comfort, hanging on to an orientation that centers the self. It probably feels good to be the one who has all the answers, but I'm suspicious. Anybody who says they know what's going on right now is lying or trying to sell something.