Meditation

Meditation allows the practitioner to intentionally settle the mind so as to reconnect with the experience of being. This is useful over time, because there is a particularly troublesome habit of mind, called the ego, which cannot survive in a still mind. Meditation is a purifying process in the sense that weeds out the most pernicious habits of thought by virtue of starving them. Ego is like a disease which we are all susceptible to (in varying degrees) and meditation is its treatment. Meditation is useless as a practice to the enlightened because to be enlightened is to be unaffected by the ego delusion.

Conditioning

All thought is conditioned thought. It is the nature of thought to be conditioned in the same way it is the nature of water to flow downhill. The process of conditioning cannot be stopped. It can only be improved. Awakening to the present moment is the way to improve the conditioning process. Conditioned thought is just thought patterns formed by past experiences and interpretations. You are conditioning your thought patterns right now. To attend to this process is vital to improving it. When you attend to what you are experiencing right now you bring the full power of your attention to the pattern of thought you are feeding into the conditioning process. By doing this you create your present experience and sow the seeds for you next present experience. You cannot stop thoughts arising from your previous conditioning from coming- they come, that is the nature of thought. What you can do is attend fully to your reaction to that thought and its impact on your life right now. This process of attending to what is happening right now will, over time, support conditioned thought which is useful (comprehension, modeling, insight), and allow conditioned thought that is not useful (prejudice, reactivity) to gradually atrophy. If you hurt your hand you know only that you want the pain to stop. If your realize that you hurt your hand by slamming it in the door jamb, you will be less likely to slam it again next time. Similarly, awakening cannot keep you from getting hurt, but it can teach you how to stop hurting yourself.

Nature

I have been enormously grateful for the voice deep within myself that reminds me, everything is nature. I live in a world where nature is held as dichotomous with man-made, where nature refers only to flowers and trees and squirrels and tigers, and I've learned to move in this realm. But deep within there has always been my voice, calling, "rocks are nature too, so are metals, and chemicals, and compounds, and concrete and buildings and airplanes and the people-who-make-them". And if it's all nature, then it's all real, which is to say it all exists beyond the labels I might attach to it. It all has existence. And existence is me.

Everything Changes

I have a bad habit of writing the least while the most is going on. I'm sitting in the bus in Downsville, LA feeling lonely and depressed. I'm wondering how I could have ever thought I was satisfied here. Keli and I have been having problems relating since winter, maybe because Hany and I have been having problems relating. I started to travel more and more, and this only fed Keli's discontent. Everything started to come to a head while I was on a six week visit to Rosie. We were talking about buying a house together in New Orleans. We even made an offer and had it accepted, but then Keli started talking about stability and reliability and how she'd be spending six nights out of seven at home with Hany and maybe one with me in my little efficiency at the back of the house and I couldn't ignore it any longer. The dream broke. It seemed my relationship was all ready suffocating from insufficient time and attention, and this shift was in the exact opposite direction of what I'd been needing and wanting. Suddenly, I started wondering why I was moving to a new city just to live a satellite life. Living with Rosie had been so wonderful, and I couldn't ignore anymore that I didn't really want to go home.

I was just starting to rationalize again, think up new structures, new ways to arrange space, new plans and schedules about how Keli and Hany and I could better manage our time and find better ways to relate. Then Keli called and said, "My mom had a heart attack and died this morning."

I drove straight through the night to make it home about 24hrs later. On the drive I had plenty of time to get clear about my emotions. I drove the whole way in silence, without even the radio. I started out anxious, then all I wanted was to be supportive of Keli, and I felt grateful that there was something real to focus on, some way I could connect with Keli beyond our relational difficulties. But as I drove on, I started to get angry. Up until this point we'd talked only about what wasn't working for Keli and Hany, and how my actions (going away so much, being withdrawn and distant when I'm home) contributed to that. Now I was starting to discover that I had a few gripes of my own. I was sick of always waiting around for Keli, and sick of the lack of emotional space to be myself in our house, in our relationship. I was tired of feeling shoved aside, unwanted, an invader in my own home. Then I started blaming Hany. I reminded myself of all the times I'd supported his relationship with Keli, even when I felt treated badly. I felt betrayed, like Hany had fed on Keli's discontent at my being away, and convinced her that all she really wanted was to be with him.

By the time I arrived in Downsville I was out of it, wired with too much coffee and fuzzy from lack of sleep. No one greeted me when I pulled up. I went looking for Keli, and Joseph told me she was at her mom's apartment. Another woman was looking for Sue's apartment too, obviously wanting to convey her condolences. I showed her the way in and called out. A sleepy, puffy faced Keli came out of Sue's bedroom and into her living room. I got a casual, "hey, you're back" and Keli was hugging the stranger, crying on her shoulder while the woman said she knew how hard this must be for Keli. I felt confused. I was hurt by the casual greeting after I'd just driven all night long, but at the same time I was aware of how self-centered these emotions were in the face of Keli's tragedy. This whole drama just got worse as the funeral preparations got underway.

After a little while Keli came for a walk with me and we went down to the pyramid. I wanted to just put all our relationship stuff aside, but I was still reeling from the cold reception and Keli could sense how stiff I was. She convinced be to talk about it and I let her have it. Told her she wasn't a very good friend, that she never stuck up for me, that she sold me out to conciliate Hany. I got so mad i kicked over the big candle and it's wax smeared into the plywood wall. Keli just listened. I told her I was moving out. She cried a little, and asked me questions. I told her how pissed I was at Hany and she said I should confront him. But then she said she had to get back to her family and we went back up to the house.

The next morning I shouted at Hany. Blamed him for stealing Keli, accused him of stabbing me in the back, told him he had no loyalty. He cried and shouted back. Told me I didn't know what I was talking about, told me he'd only ever spoken well of me to Keli, tried to get her to understand me. Said I was just taking the easy road out by blaming him. Told me to look to my own self. I realized he was right and I apologized, but he railed on for another couple minutes before it sunk in that I wasn't shouting back anymore. We made the best peace we could, which felt like it was better than it had been in a long time. Keli came in to find us chatting amiably in the living room, and when we told her what had happened she almost cried with relief.

I wrote this poem for her:

I am a child,

Cake uneaten,

Crying because someone else

Got a bigger slice.

And you

(Wise mother)

Do not scold

Or berate me

But let your heart break

With the pain of my folly.

And live again,

Through me.

I am powerless

In the face of your love.

The gravity of stars is paltry.

Yours is more subtle

And further reaching.

Do the planets feel this way?

Heartbroken to be only satellites,

Eager to grow up,

Break free,

Roam the universe.

Desperate to be sucked in,

Annihilated,

Made one with you?

Do the stars watch,

Caught themselves in the same

Web of cosmic forces,

With your open hearted

Love?

I read it to her on the way to her ear doctor's appointment, and to my delight, she loved it. She'd been wanting me to write her a poem for a long time, and knowing that, I'd wanted to for a long time, but none had come before. I was glad of this one. I was glad too to be hanging out with her too, and I thought of all the times she'd asked me to go with her for this or that errand and I'd said no because I was involved in some computer game or tv show or pot haze. I thought of how living with Rosie for a while had encouraged me to get into life more, and how good it felt to bring this back into my relationship with Keli.

The viewing was hard. Really hard. I told myself that I was just there to say my own goodbye to Sue and be an emotional support for Keli, but I ended up feeling estranged and auxiliary; badly in need of support myself. Everyone kept asking who I was and I kept saying, "I'm a friend of Keli's". Relatives and friends were lining up to shake Hany's hand and offer their condolences to Keli's new husband. Sometimes, if I was standing next to Keli, people would ask her if I was her husband. "No," she'd say, "we're really close friends." This went on for more than four hours. I wanted my support to be more important to Keli than other peoples opinions. I wanted her to want to cry on my shoulder and share her grief with me. Instead she was "on" talking to all the family and friends who crawl out of the woodwork when someone dies. I was just hanging around feeling uncomfortable and sorry for myself.

The next day was devoted to preparations for the funeral, and I didn't see Keli much all day. I ran errands and tried to find ways to be helpful. Shelby got me to help with the printing and editing of the funeral program, and on the front cover I read, "Sue Bryan is survived by Keli Bryan and her husband Hany Nagib and Jeff Bryan and his wife Tempest Bryan". My heart dropped. Later that evening when I finally got to spend some time with Keli, she asked how I was doing. I said I didn't want to talk about it, but she encouraged me to do so anyway and we'd already talked about how all that time I spent dealing with my emotions privately had kept us distant, so I told her how I'd been feeling at the viewing and when I read the program. At first this went well. She said she could see how hard that would be, but then she started talking about how there was nothing she could do about it, and I got triggered. I said she could shout it to the world and let other people's opinions be damned, and she got mad. She was tired too, and decided to go to bed. I spent a lonely night in the bus trying to figure out where I'd gone wrong.

Like the moment I realized I'd worn a groove in my front tooth from biting my fingernails, these small denials of my own needs have accumulated in my life and now I am staring in shock at the damage I have done to what I thought was stable, solid, and resilient. I have done this before. I was heartbroken and betrayed when Debbie left me, at least until my life started to get better with my increased freedom and I realized that I was better off without all those small compromises even at the cost of being alone. Now again, here I am again, the dream of my romantic relationship shattered, nothing much really, though it has the weight of the world. Just a dream, just a way of seeing things, a way of holding things, a thought pattern. Nothing real has broken.

How to put as much energy into the act of living as possible.

Discover your goals. You may not think you have goals, but everyone has goals. If you do not have a concrete plan for your life you can make very little happen. Think about what you have been telling yourself is a possible future and write it down. Write them all down. Evaluate and choose the best one. Until you think of something better, this is your plan and you should take at least one step toward fulfillment of your plan every day. This is how you make things happen. You make a conscious effort toward accomplishing something you think you want. Nevermind that you won’t want it anymore once you get it. The fun is in figuring out how to get there and trying to realize it. If you don’t have the right plan, you’ll know it because you won’t be having fun. The best way to realize that you have an unfun plan is to go on trying to accomplish something toward it every day until you find a new plan to replace it with. Possible plan inducing questions…

1. Improve finances?
2. Improve your relationships?
3. Increase quality time?

Each of these questions has a corresponding addiction, but that doesn’t mean the questions should be avoided. On the contrary, the addictions exist because these things really are important or fun or life improving to a certain extent. It is an experience of lack, an experience of having not had enough of something that creates the psychological addiction.

So what’s my lifegoal for right now?

Find an enjoyable way to increase my income to at least $1200 per month, clear.

Best prospect so far: become a teacher. Might not deliver on the “enjoyable” in which case I’ll have to abandon it since that’s a core part of my goal. But then again, I might really like teaching. It might give me a sense of larger purpose and help me to feel connected to a community. I might like knowing so many young people and having their influence on my life. The time commitments might be heavier than I’m used to, but the salary is much more than I need, which is an added bonus. If I can stick it out for two years I should be able to save up $20,000 or so not to mention the equity I will have built into the house we’re buying.

Next Step in Current Plan: Interview is on May 9^th at 9am. This requires transportation arriving in New Orleans no later than the 8^th. I can arrange this transportation tomorrow.

Step I Took Today: Took a returned call from Karen Ollendike to reschedule interview for the 9^th. Arranged housing plan in New Orleans with Keli and Hany.

I lay here in the darkness. I lay here in the darkness, listening to the rythmic thump of the headboard against the wall; The rythmic thump of the headboard against the wall, and the delicate gasps of breath from the parted lips of my lover, who is in the next room, in the arms of her lover, my not quite but almost friend. I want to cry. I'm longing for the sweet release of tears, but they won't come. They won't come and I'm stuck with this terrible ache.

I'm thinking, I have to get out of here. I have to get out of here at least while I can still here her breathing like that. But then, a shrill little moan, and another; a rustle of the bed and the breathing is heavier, deeper. The breathing is from down low in her belly and I'm transfixed with dread. What is this life that I've chosen for myself? I know that her orgasm is comming and I know that she won't be able to keep it quiet though his father is sleeping down the hall. Just as I know that I'll feel a terrible thrill in my chest and my stomache will drop when it comes, and God, I wish it would just hurry up and come. But no, the heavy breathing just starts again.

I'm reminding myself that I love her but she's not mine. That just a few nights ago I was happy to share in their lovemaking and it was a sweet little threesome that we had. But I feel my stomache drop even before I expected it would, and this is not that. No, it is a very different thing to share sex together than to listen helplessly from the next room.

On the long drive to get here, to his father's house, she and I had a hard talk that left my emotions coiled like a hard knot in my belly. She said that she hasn't felt hungry for me sexually since I got here. And I asked, knowing full well it would be disasterous, if she was hungry for him. Yes. Of course she is. And I still here her demonstrating it in the next room.

Would I feel differently about overhearing their lovemaking if we hadn't had that conversation? If I hadn't felt mildly snubbed first by being put in the seperate room, then by having to knock on the door and ask for sheets and a pillow? Then by her coming in to my lonely room to say she wanted a proper goodnight hug, oh, and by the way could she borrow a condom?

In every lull of quiet from their room I decide that I'm exhausted and done with my melodrama, then comes another little gasp and no, I am not yet done. But then, suddenly, to my surprize and against my narrative instincts, I am. Really done. The heart wrenching that was so unavoidable a few moments ago is now a bit forced and ina moment more I am laughing at my sub text of victemhood and mistreatment. Happy for the sounds of pleasure that are now slowing from the next room. And as it becomes apparent that I was wrong about the inexorability of a climatic orgasm, I'm a little sad that it didn't happen that way. Not too sad though; sounded like they had plenty of fun.

It doesn't matter whether I'm at the top of her list of men who get her going. It doesn't really say anything about me; about who I am. And even if it does, I can handle being the worst sex partner in the world if it's true. I don't need to secure her love. Her love is none of my business. It's my love that matters, and I find, in this moment, that I love her just fine.