Fake Sounds, Real Emotions

I’m creating an ambiance of a coffee shop by putting on sounds of HQ Coffee Shop off YouTube for an hour. The library won’t be open until 10 am and the coffee shop across the street doesn’t have a customer restroom. I want to take a break from Jameson. Besides, the energy got Kaldi on its mind. I made myself a breakfast veggie sandwich at home on the right kind of bread—Ezekiel.

I did it. I posted another blog. I fulfilled my purpose. The background noise has 14 minutes left. Isn’t it wonderful to be able to control your reality this way. Of course, the energy of others is a safe distance away. Because I don’t really have to deal with the outside world, there’s an element missing. Sometimes that missing element is good to miss. The comfort of home is here. I can go to the bathroom whenever I want. I can get up and walk around and no one will look at me funny or tell me to sit down. I can eat and drink whatever I want and no one will tell me I can’t bring outside food in or have social decorum force me to order something, even if I don’t want anything. Other times, lack of a real ambiance is an obvious hole. The constrictions of the outside world add to the ambiance. The seeming other who observes you also creates a distinct difference. This “being observed” changes how I behave, think, feel, and what I do. I also feel less alone, more involved somehow even if I’m not interacting with anyone.

            A minute to go on ambiance noise. Then I can go join the real world. Whatever that means. Just like that, background noise fades out like it never was.

I am now at Kaldi with my hot tea next to me to soothe the throat on this hot day. This extreme weather is effecting my system. And I’m on the outside world where it’s socially appropriate to order something, preferably right away. Let’s say if I didn’t order something like that one time when I was with an ex-boyfriend and he insisted we just sit there and don’t order anything.

I felt uncomfortable. The person behind the register was giving me a dirty look. I lowered my eyes, yet not fully understanding why I was feeling so guilty. I’d been coming there for years, always ordering; many times ordering a lot. Sh

ouldn’t that have secured me a time or two of not having to order anything? Which was what I told my boyfriend at the time. I ended with, “we should still order something.”

He went up to the girl behind the register, and instead of ordering, told her that she was making me feel uncomfortable. I turned crimson. The coffee shop girl said, “This is my place of business and you’re just sitting there and not ordering.” She was losing her cool. I thought she was going to call the cops or at the minimum throw us out. My ex said, “We might order something later. We just wanted to sit first. This is not how to treat your customers and I’m going to yelp about this.”

Granted, I never went back to that coffee shop again.

            But that’s how we get placed in our “correct places.” Try and not follow the rules of this world and doors will go slamming. But that’s not the case for everyone and it’s definitely not the case when people think they can get away with something behind closed doors and encrypted Internet spaces. It still comes back to emotion. If one feels bad about certain behaviors, then that one will avoid doing them. Guilt functioning as emotional paste combined with social agreements and we’ve got a fully functioning “dreamstate” as Jed calls it. You won’t let yourself off the hook and the world won’t either. The two keep perpetuating each other. So, I say, there’s gotta be a better way.  

            If, for instance, the inner emotional paste was no longer in service, would the world rules still exist for that person?

            “Emotion is the energy source of the dreamstate. Emotion is derived from fear, but fear is not compulsory because it’s not the only possible core emotion. There’s also agape, most resembling a natural state of wistful gratitude…” Jed McKenna, Jed Talks #1

            So, the answer would be, Yes. The rules would exist but how would our relationship to the world change if we were walking around in “wistful gratitude” versus guilt, which is another form of fear. Wouldn’t it feel more like lucid dreaming? I’m not me, I’m not the guilty one or the lacking one or the angry one, but I’m still wearing the body of someone who was. So this one goes out into the world, who knows the rules of this world, but doesn’t take them too seriously, but who wants to play the game where she gets to come back to this place over and over again. With wistful gratitude for being able to walk around in this dream all the while knowing that it’s a game she stepped into, plays her part the best way she knows how.

            “You didn’t create yourself, you are not the author of your character, so what is it about yourself that you take so personally?” – Jed

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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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Aliveness

Aliveness is full. 

It feels like you don't need anything else. 

It's so full, there's no room for supplements.

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How Enthused Are You?

“I get more pleasure out of failing in a project that I’m enthused over than in succeeding in a project that I know I can do well.”
– Woody Allen

The failure and success part is nebulous. Every little discovery either within, or without, is a success story. But the word I’d like to focus on is “enthused.” In Latin, enthused means in God. It’s possible it’s a Greek translation. Either way, it means that enthusiasm comes from the higher source. What we’re enthused about doesn’t always match the societal, cookie-cutter path our parents would like us to follow. Isn’t it interesting how much more appealing the road less traveled is? It must be the forbidden-fruit syndrome. Or is it?

Maybe it's a calling. A calling usually comes with a set of challenges. As with beginner’s luck, the first time we feel enthused over something, events go our way for a little while. Everyone is supportive, doors are open, and opportunities are all there when we’re least ready for them. We can also refer to this portion of the “enthused program” as the honeymoon period. 

There’s always a honeymoon period. 

It is after this period is over when enthusiasm really starts to play a role. I find that whatever has excited me about a project in the beginning, continues to excite me throughout. I can go through periods of forgetting and breaking up with a project, but sooner or later I always come back to the ones that have enthused me.

Having said that, we can get excited about projects we do well, simply because they come easy to us. It’s that same enthusiasm at work. That’s why the part to notice is the enthused part, in whatever direction it may be flowing.

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The Artist is loyal to No One

A fellow writer and a friend has recently told me that I need to stay loyal to one book until it is done and published. My creative process does not like nor follow that rule. Inspiration does not come linearly nor does the execution, at least for me. I finished a draft of a book that I've worked diligently on for two years and now I'm giving it a rest while I revamp an older novel I started several years ago. My friend thinks this is active procrastination. But I don't see it that way at all. In my experience:

There is only one river, but the streams to it are infinite. 

Other novels want their moment in the sun. Blogs want to be included. Songs want to be written and sung too. A brushstroke here, a word there, and the mural gets completed. It just so happens that my mural looks like a collage rather than a picture.

Is it wrong? Am I swimming in too many directions at once? Am I swimming in the wrong direction?

But if all streams join with the ONE body of water, then what difference does it make which stream and how many I take? Is it out of principle we try to be linear or perhaps out of loyalty? The loyalty to whom?

The artist is loyal to no one. 

The artist can only be loyal to the moment. THIS moment. Whatever IT wants.

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At the Waves

I’m at the waves this morning. 

They’re crashing me down. 

I’m just a wall on which they crash against. So solid am I. 

Every fiber of my being wants to loosen up, but my mind makes me fight a battle of not my doing. 

I’m gazing at the deep ocean behind me and I long to be there—where the waves have no ground to stand on. 

My body forces a breath out of me. 

I exhale. I stretch my low back. I twist in both directions. 

The next breath is easier to take. 

Life wants me to perform. To go out there and show myself. 

But I want in. I don’t trust without, I trust within. 

I want to know where the breath is coming from. 

Cuz it’s sure ain’t from this body. The body comes from the breath. 

Where do you come from breath? 

I sit and wait. 

But all I get is Silence.

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