yes, i am accelerating my routines now. i suppose that my work life has fallen into place. every day, i have a plan, and my ea and i execute it efficiently. even the kids (when they come) have fallen into the plan, and have steadily improved under our watch. so i guess with things settled on that front, i'm able to pursue my personal interests with greater fidelity...
i'm really into this guy named adam mizner. he's a taijiquan person. however, he's different in that he's demonstrated fajin under conditions that i would consider to be more "real life." and he's explained the phenomena clearly and simply. that's not to say that he's made it easy. it's clear that, for him, the path is, as he puts it, "bitter." it involves a lot of sitting and standing... a lot of drudge work. meditation and stuff. but i guess since i'm an older coot, i'm okay with it. i feel like i've been told to do that sort of work all my life, but as a younger fool, i'd only done those things half-heartedly. but with my heart settled, and fine with pursuing my desires, i suppose it's a lot easier. there's less resistance now. so i do sitting meditation regularly in my routine, and i also do standing meditation (zhan zhuang).
i did some zhan zhuang this afternoon. i think i'm getting better at it. i just keep telling myself "open and drop." that is, when i encounter or am made aware of tension in my body, i repeatedly just tell it to "open and drop." my shoulders start to burn (throughout the 30 minutes, i'm holding my arms out in front of me), but whereas before i would have a lot of tension that would build over the course of the meditation time (to the point where things would be trembling), now, i'm able to just "notice" the pain and release it. it never quite "releases," but i guess i'm reducing the tensing as much as possible. i also notice tension in my hips and buttocks, and release it as much as i can (i imagine this is following the taijiquan idea of "opening the kwa"). all that tension goes down to my legs and to my feet. it honestly feels as though my feet are being smashed into the ground. i don't know how to really release the tension from my legs, because they are the supports, and it doesn't seem as though the released tension has anywhere to go. but i imagine i'm releasing things there anyway.
yes, yes, i've probably said similar things before. and i've been on other trips or wagons before, riding on hopes for something better. but i don't know, maybe something feels different now. again, there just seems to be less resistance. i think in the past that i felt guilty or something for following my desires. i think i wrestled a lot with feelings of obligation or duty, or the expectations of others. but as i get older, i realize that life is too short, and that i might as well honor this body and this spirit by following the paths i'm interested in... after all, in a few years, i may not be able to do these things. i may be just a decrepit old man. so i'm just going to try to better myself in the mean time.
*****
i have been thinking a lot about my psyche. about how, deep down, i think i do things for the attention of women. even figurative women (muses). i was recalling my life when i was like about four or five years old. back then, i was in the koteki marching band for the tenrikyo religion. i was likely the youngest kid there at the time. there were a few instances where, i recall, i was so tired marching that i kept going in a daze, even when everyone stopped. and i remember struggling with the whole left-right-left thing (because i could never quite remember which side was left and which side was right). anyway, in the early years of my participation in that band, i was always surrounded by these pre-teen to teenage girls. i guess they all thought i was cute or something, and adopted me as their unofficial mascot. i loved the attention, but it seemed contradictory. paradoxical. i think the girls lavished attention on me because i was so young and so inescapably innocent... but i wasn't, and didn't want to be. the odd thing was that, as i grew older, there was this feeling that i wanted to be understood and accepted as an equal, but the thing was, there was this templated relationship with women that always made of me this goody-goody child. i didn't know how to relate to women on a "level playing field." in fact, i always thought the only thing they could love or respect about me was my capacity to always be a "good guy." in a lot of ways, i am still like that, trapped by a pattern of my youth.
this has interfered and interrupted with my capacity to express love (and lust) because the me that could speak of such things and that could even have those sorts of feelings was always buried beneath something that had to maintain this "cute" ineffectual facade. in a lot of ways, that aspect of me- i think- is dead. i can't conceive of it. i couldn't conceive of it, even when things were literally "in my face." i can't summon those feelings within myself... i can't create a believable story of it... somehow, those aspects of myself, if they even still exist, are so weak... they speak through decades of denial and silence.
so that's the paradox. i perform for these female audiences. maybe even now i still do. i have realized that "relating" to real women in the sense of having them pay attention to me in the way i'd want them to- well, it's impossible, and laughable, and disloyal. so i don't really feel that much (which is a good thing, or it would make it impossible for me to function). but i think the pattern still imposes itself upon me. in my weaker moments, i imagine some "angel" that would have seen me and known me, and felt sympathetic to me... similar to those teen girls who once, long ago, saw fit to bestow upon me the blessing of their attentions... unreachable. unattainable.
i used to have fantasies about striking up conversations with attractive women... i mean, women for whom attraction was mutual (like, really? did any ever exist?)... playing the game within conversation and deed. but it never happened...
my relationship with my wife, which really was the first and only real "relationship" i ever had... it was actually more of a friendship that developed into something deeper. and perhaps that was the best way - maybe the only way- that something could have happened. because i likely would never have broken out of the prison of my warped and distorted way of relating. i simply couldn't... i know people in high school who almost despised my way of relating... my penchant for putting women on pedestals and almost worshipping them, while simultaneously negating my own existence... at the time, it was- how should i put it- so emotional, so "right." i guess it sort of goes along with the whole adolescent mentality, the "drama" of it... but it too, i see now, was a trap... always a trap of negating or erasing the self in the face of this irreconcilable gap between myself and the idealized women...
well, enough psycho-babble for one day...
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