Now What?

Typically, a college town, a different demographic of folk has gathered at Jameson this morning—business professionals, male dominated. It’s one of these places that can be confused for a Seattle based coffee shop. Munching on a feta and dill flat bread and watching a girl trying to find a seat in a place where every seat is taken except for one at the community table. She takes it. She puts her headphones on and so is not aware that one is about to open up.

False alarm. Someone just jumped on it from a table across from the bathrooms. And here’s a salesperson who really loves his job as he enthusiastically sells the woman in front of him. I hear words like “passion” and “drive.” “It’s an investment.”

            Before yoga class this morning, the following came: When you find the thing you wanna do or just that thing, you feel like anything is possible. It suddenly doesn’t matter how much money you have or what it’d pay or how hard life might look because with this thing in your life, how can anything be too hard or too serious? Perhaps that’s the difference between the thing that you love and the thing that you settle for. When you settle you say things like, “I can make this work; At least it pays well; At least I’m contributing to society, family, etc…; At least I don’t have it as hard as some other people.” But with this thing you can stop time and live many lives and discover beyond the reaches of your imagination. You can cover more ground, infinitely more ground. You look forward to getting up and doing this thing. It’ll even get you to get up early and go to the gym. That’s how powerful it is to do the right thing, to follow that unexplainable joy you receive from folding your clothes or baking that cake or gardening or writing about absolutely nothing. It feels like you’re connecting to the elemental, to the most basic joyous part of you that doesn’t need this thing to mean anything but to simply be enjoyed like a refreshing watermelon on a hot day. Elizabeth Gilbert, Ekhart Tolle, they were all right about this whole “enthusiasm” part. It moves the experience from ordinary to extraordinary.

            Two more men came in to do work on their laptop right next to me, discussing how to do something. Sounds like they’re talking about web design. A man in his late fifties just checked out a shapely girl in her twenties. The world keeps turning.

            Or is it?

            Three more older business persons in business suits came in. It must be a business kind of day. This explains lack of parking on the long street full of five-hour parking spots. A group of four college kids came in and just then a four-person table opened up. How accommodating the universe is.

            What is this slightly rumbling panic?

            Is it observable?

            Yes.

            Ten hours later I find myself at a Starbucks, primarily to stay cool. Five minutes in and I’m in need of some white noise: "train sound." So, emotion is the paste that holds the ego-self together says Jed McKenna (Jed Talks #1). Yes, I would say so. I would add that believing in the reality of emotion is what holds the “me” together. S**t will still come up and getting mired in it is what really holds it together. On my post-it notes I used to write: Don’t Get Involved. Right now my post-it says: Emotion is the Paste. To sum up: Don’t get involved in the drama of your mind and the stickiness of emotion.

Not only do we get suckered in on the inside, but everything on the outside is designed to trigger emotion like this remake of a Bee Gees’ song, “How Deep is Your Love,” for instance that I’m trying to drown out with the continuously moving train. Music is just one big part of the outside world, then there are people—the push/pull dynamic of “I like you” and “Stay away from me.” But they all supposed to be me. So it’s back to emotion. Whatever triggers me about them is really whatever triggers me. And really, it’s just the trigger itself that should be noticed and seen as emotion and then immediately dropped.

            But who’s going to drop it? (Suzanne Segal enters my subconscious)

            With no self here doing anything, it’s just a bunch of sounds and sensations and perceptions flickering about and then change with the scenery. (Peter Brown chimes in)

            The dramatic one goes, “What am I gonna do now? There’s nothing to do. No one to be. Nothing to see. Oh, hey, it could be a song. What’s going to entertain the monkey-mind? It’s too hot to go outside. I have another hour here before my husband comes back from yoga. I could read I suppose. I could edit a blog or two. I could keep doing this thing I’m doing now. I could check inside again and see there is no one there. Maybe this time I will feel something other than this. Maybe I will be taken over by some magic euphoria and won’t care what I do or how long I have to sit here.

            What’s observing all this?

            Something. A quiet one.  A patient one. The non-needy one.

            Perhaps I’m not even doing the dramatic one. Perhaps it goes on by itself doing its own thing while I silently, indiscriminately watch.

            There’s still someone here who wants bliss or peace or something that doesn’t feel like it’s always seeking. The moment I start something—a new project, a new idea, a story, housework, job, helping a friend, whatever—I begin to feel this discomfort on the back of my heart and in my throat as if air is being constricted like I’m on the wrong path. Then I’ll feel good about whatever it is I’m doing for a bit and things begin to make sense again when a voice asks, “Are you sure about that?” Of course, the answer is always no. Sometimes I ignore the voice because I’m not sure where it’s coming from.

            Where is this voice coming from now?

            From the back of my chest. Is it just a mind’s voice, the one who’s never happy and always complaining?

            Some of it maybe. The one who’s observing is there too. The one that says, “You’re not doing this right” is also there. There’s also the one that adds, “Keep going even if you don’t know where it’s going.” I think that’s Jed’s voice. “You don’t have to know. Question everything.”

            I want to put part of this writing piece here in Just Passing Through and the more self-inquiry part in the Un-Creating Me Blog.

            Let that do its thing, but you stay here.

            That’s Mooji’s voice.

            “And no, now what?” he adds.

            But if no, now what, then what?

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Just Passing Through

I’m sitting at the observation deck at Jameson Brown Coffee Roasters—a seat with an overview of the whole place with no one behind me. Right now I don’t have to figure out how to be non-emotional as the current state and appearance are relatively neutral. So it is the sensation of being swept away that becomes curious whenever it presents itself. But that’s not what’s happening now. Now there is a hum of voices with occasional scratching of chairs against the cement floor like aberrations in the atmosphere. Something loud just ended, perhaps the coffee grinder stopped grinding and in an instant the humming of voices ceased. But only for a second. They resumed just as quick.

            I’m remembering sitting at my husband ex-boss’s house and writing my way into the moment while I waited for him. It occurred to me then, perhaps for the first time, that that’s the only kind of writing I wanted to do. Yesterday the same thing happened. Writing for the sake for writing as long as what was written was true to the moment. Blogging might be the most perfect medium to accomplish such a feat. Immediately publishable, shareable, and forever continuous. It accomplishes a task I love doing most frequently while at the same time sharing it with others without having to have a neatly wrapped up ending or a story line.

            I did it. I looked at my old blog sites. I believe one is about to expire and the other sounds like a yoga practice: Breathing Through It. The name sounded like a good idea at the time. I have no idea what I would call this imaginary blog. “My Imaginary Blog?"

BLOG = a website that contains online personal reflections, comments, and often hyperlinks, videos, and photographs provided by the writer; a regular feature appearing as part of an online publication that typically relates to a particular topic and consists of articles and personal commentary by one or more authors. (Compliments of Merriam-Webster.com)

Yes, I looked up the definition. Perhaps having a dictionary tell me what it is will help me see what it is I'm doing clearer. When I first heard of a blog, a decade ago, I recognized it. That’s it. That’s what I should do. It’s a perfect medium for someone like me. And I did it. I started one in 2010. All two of them. Without readership, it was no longer that interesting. Of course now with Facebook and Instagram and Twitter and whathaveyou, you can get a response from at least a person or two giving you the thumbs up or perhaps even a comment or two. Your friends are bound to validate your existence.

All right, back to breaking into the moment. A man with a curious mustache just walked by, you know the kind that curls on the sides like one of my exes has now. The man’s salt and pepper hair is cleanly brushed back. You know what’s also groovy about blogging is that I never have to have a topic or finish a story I had begun or provide any resolutions to questions. It’s an ongoing project that thrives on not ending. And it will always give me something to do—just write what you see, write what’s happening, write what you’re thinking, feeling, being, or passing through. Maybe it should be called “Just Passing Through?" I just asked my husband what he thought. And my sister. And an old writing buddy. And then I went on a rampage fixing the existing blog and renaming it, which blogspot lets you do without a hitch. It’ll kind of be my experimental blog, the one no one knows about that I can use as a template.

We’re all watching each other, feeding off each other.


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