I've been a wishful skeptic for most of my life, always highly influenced by what I'm reading or watching, enjoying trying on the lives and points of view of others in an effort to discover my own preferences. After all, how can I know unless I've tried it myself?
As a child, I didn't observe anyone I associated with (these were not really "friends") who went to my little Baptist church being any better or worse off after baptism (aka: giving your heart to Jesus), but I also was told (and partially believed) that if one didn't do this by a certain age, then hell might be the outcome. So, I finally gave it a try, had a very cleansing and dramatic moment of feeling quite pure coming out of the baptismal waters, but I also noticed the feeling didn't last. My mother used to say that I could only be "good" for so long, and then I worked my way into deserving (i.e., by being a typical kid who couldn't always hold her tongue) another whipping (i.e., she hit my legs with my father's belt while holding on to my arm because I tried to get away). Supposedly this whipping "cleansed" me of my desire to "talk back" for a time. That didn't last either.
Of course, I do also have innate tendencies: I love the magical, being solitary in Nature (capitalized to denote I am recognizing my preference for what some consider to be the magical side of nature, the nature in which we communicate with the unseen and plants and rocks and trees and rivers), testing my intuition in various ways (predicting radio tunes, actually seeing someone I thought about, following synchronicity), and traveling.
My "wishful skepticism" also translates into a tendency to wishful thinking: I wish my mother didn't have Alzheimer's; I wish I could help her. I wish my husband didn't hate his job. I wish my daughter and granddaughter lived closer. I wish I didn't get depressed. These wishes go round and round through my mind, even when I don't realize it, when I'm not conscious of it. Wishful thinking is my bane.
Combine these tendencies and various series of synchronous events, and I go to Peru, alone, hoping to be permanently cured of depression. Before that, I traveled alone in France in the hope of becoming "healed" of fears that have been holding me back forever, and in between, practicing Holotropic Breathwork and experiencing fascinating visions of Truth in more hopes of becoming even more deeply "healed" (preferably PERMANENTLY).
Extraordinary experiences are downright fun. I've never been afraid to try out what appeals to my heart----at least in what I perceive as "safe" levels. I'm no daredevil, and I don't have the money to experiment with everything I might desire.
But I also have learned (over and over, from childhood) that my greatest challenge in living is in THIS MOMENT, this present, ordinary moment. And so, I have been steered over the past few years, especially, toward meditation, and, more and more, the study and practice of Buddhism (which, in a Netflix production I recently watched of Columbia University professor Robert Thurman, is rightly defined as a method of learning).
Even as a child, I wondered about who this "I" is, and noted its continual changing. As a teenager and in my early twenties, I was taken by Carlos Castaneda's Don Juan's wisdom (and his noting that telling one's personal history can cause others to believe they'd "captured" you), and also by my own experience as I got older that such personal stories just get longer. . . and more tiresome to update (and listen to). Besides, I thought, it's the current "me" that I am, not necessarily the ones from yesterday, and I am not merely the sum of those stories.
What am I trying to say? In part, I am wondering (again) what to DO with my understanding. I am impatient, clearly, and got a good internal chuckle from a blog entry about such (typically Western) impatience this morning.
Reading IN THE REALM OF HUNGRY GHOSTS by Gabor Mate' is illuminating (and disturbing---in a good way). But I am also prone to thinking that if I read just one more book (as they pile up around me, no time to both live and read them all!) I will know what to do next . . .
So as it turns out, this is merely a mixed-up mish-mash of what's swimming in my head and heart right now, and perhaps should never be posted, yet here it is, evidence of my attempts to "evolve" (doesn't that make me sound noble ;-), and wondering, too, how the disturbed mix in the kaliedoscope (or, in a neat play on words someone made) kaliedoscape will settle again.
And, of course, it won't be a permanent settling. . . as there's always (until we die?) another tap that occurs, either from without or within.
As a child, I didn't observe anyone I associated with (these were not really "friends") who went to my little Baptist church being any better or worse off after baptism (aka: giving your heart to Jesus), but I also was told (and partially believed) that if one didn't do this by a certain age, then hell might be the outcome. So, I finally gave it a try, had a very cleansing and dramatic moment of feeling quite pure coming out of the baptismal waters, but I also noticed the feeling didn't last. My mother used to say that I could only be "good" for so long, and then I worked my way into deserving (i.e., by being a typical kid who couldn't always hold her tongue) another whipping (i.e., she hit my legs with my father's belt while holding on to my arm because I tried to get away). Supposedly this whipping "cleansed" me of my desire to "talk back" for a time. That didn't last either.
Of course, I do also have innate tendencies: I love the magical, being solitary in Nature (capitalized to denote I am recognizing my preference for what some consider to be the magical side of nature, the nature in which we communicate with the unseen and plants and rocks and trees and rivers), testing my intuition in various ways (predicting radio tunes, actually seeing someone I thought about, following synchronicity), and traveling.
My "wishful skepticism" also translates into a tendency to wishful thinking: I wish my mother didn't have Alzheimer's; I wish I could help her. I wish my husband didn't hate his job. I wish my daughter and granddaughter lived closer. I wish I didn't get depressed. These wishes go round and round through my mind, even when I don't realize it, when I'm not conscious of it. Wishful thinking is my bane.
Combine these tendencies and various series of synchronous events, and I go to Peru, alone, hoping to be permanently cured of depression. Before that, I traveled alone in France in the hope of becoming "healed" of fears that have been holding me back forever, and in between, practicing Holotropic Breathwork and experiencing fascinating visions of Truth in more hopes of becoming even more deeply "healed" (preferably PERMANENTLY).
Extraordinary experiences are downright fun. I've never been afraid to try out what appeals to my heart----at least in what I perceive as "safe" levels. I'm no daredevil, and I don't have the money to experiment with everything I might desire.
But I also have learned (over and over, from childhood) that my greatest challenge in living is in THIS MOMENT, this present, ordinary moment. And so, I have been steered over the past few years, especially, toward meditation, and, more and more, the study and practice of Buddhism (which, in a Netflix production I recently watched of Columbia University professor Robert Thurman, is rightly defined as a method of learning).
Even as a child, I wondered about who this "I" is, and noted its continual changing. As a teenager and in my early twenties, I was taken by Carlos Castaneda's Don Juan's wisdom (and his noting that telling one's personal history can cause others to believe they'd "captured" you), and also by my own experience as I got older that such personal stories just get longer. . . and more tiresome to update (and listen to). Besides, I thought, it's the current "me" that I am, not necessarily the ones from yesterday, and I am not merely the sum of those stories.
What am I trying to say? In part, I am wondering (again) what to DO with my understanding. I am impatient, clearly, and got a good internal chuckle from a blog entry about such (typically Western) impatience this morning.
Reading IN THE REALM OF HUNGRY GHOSTS by Gabor Mate' is illuminating (and disturbing---in a good way). But I am also prone to thinking that if I read just one more book (as they pile up around me, no time to both live and read them all!) I will know what to do next . . .
So as it turns out, this is merely a mixed-up mish-mash of what's swimming in my head and heart right now, and perhaps should never be posted, yet here it is, evidence of my attempts to "evolve" (doesn't that make me sound noble ;-), and wondering, too, how the disturbed mix in the kaliedoscope (or, in a neat play on words someone made) kaliedoscape will settle again.
And, of course, it won't be a permanent settling. . . as there's always (until we die?) another tap that occurs, either from without or within.
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