Artist's Process Part Nineteen

Returning to this room,

Setting it up, making the crossing welcoming.

I cleanse the floors, lay a broad supportive mat,

Elaborate incense burner, a trampoline at its head.

Ready to be behooved.

Starting with a gradation, then complete stop.

So grateful, a deep breath. Listening,

Feeling my self buzz, process, sort, contemplate, inform.

Resolve, and with more than willingness,

A knowing there is no further and so instantly transcending need,

Almost enthusiasm, almost because when I arrive,

There is never any more projection.

This is the way. Here is this.

I have been to this before. I can arrive hurt, pride bent.

Even full of blame, shame and sense of loss,

Deep loss, worse; missing, missing out,

 Viscerally felt, as in a lucid dream, but happening right now.

I contemplate. Not to be repeated when not listening deeply;

The pain is my own resistance. Where? I play back, look.

Amoung choices of viewpoint; That one!

The one my self says so.

All other of sense of personas calculate.

I engage issue from all sides, each side, persona of the consortium.

My self, that buzz, me. Selects. I have learned to trust me. To trust myself.

This is what it means for me to trust myself.

So I return to, learn and add principles to empower my self to present me

With the right principle at the right time.

This is the gentle gradual way that I dissolve as a false identity.

No longer making decisions from an identity,

Relying only on principles.

Resolving conflicts I created, inside or in life where I act as my identity,

My pattered response. Or where my prial responses cannot act in civilized life,

But the anger persists for an hour or more beyond an engagement,

Where there is tribal rejection, or feeling restriction around others,

Negotiating others’ states, identities, adopted cultural aggressive acts.

I react internally, coolly dealing with issues, but arriving to this mat in a lather.

The awareness that I am okay, I am heading in a good direction,

This must be. It is important, because just knowing that one is good,

And heading well. That it was a principle that was bent,

Whether I know them or not,

I am affected physically, circumstantially, and emotionally.

In the same way, remembering, accepting through these experiences.

 I feel calm, whole. Now ready to give the pain, because this existence,

I am of it, either made by or I made myself,

But as a mind, I ask for compassion.

I stop. Receiving as a pregnant woman waits, in trust, cheerful stillness.

This art is receiving. Nothing in my life has changed.

I am receptive, and from the arrived at vantage,

Issues are either remembered action plans or drops, I drop it.

So I don’t need to defend it. And there is an outcome where I feel whole,

I observe, or me observes. Whatever does, is happy to return to this.

Beginning again.

In this way I can dissolve gradually as an identity.

Otherwise, why feel ‘better’ and act with clarity, or rest enjoyably.

Unless it is a very clever theatrical mind game.

Countless books are filled with such techniques,

We can only hope to accomplish one of them,

If not, then to drink, tighten till ropes cut the skin,

Defend against every pin prick with an axe.

Deep remorse, guilt shame, no matter the gain,

Always a loss, always baggage, always more to attain to prove myself.

I prefer this lie. Except there is evidence it has worked for countless generations.

It is not new.

This I remember, and it is okay, it hurts. I know listening is real.

And besides, there is much to enjoy, do, feel, produce in love.

Why fight knowing my mind has before as now seemingly taken guidance,

Understood, felt. Was able to stand before the count.

Where under the circumstances, I used visualizing dying as a way to

Speed up the dissolution, just to make the pain stop.

But even this was not agreement.

This was collapsing. Nor was hardening into anger or aggressive reaction a solution

It complicated. What exactly did it complicate?

Being in the in between place.

A place where a person cannot go back and live like that,

Beyond social graces, taking care of necessary business, eating well and dressing well

That. Living by expectations, distorted social roles, expressing any original thought,

Worse. Asking questions.

Not having the energy to wear that mask successfully, even from kindness.

Sucking at playing that persona.

And yet being just as much ego and repressed animal as everyone else,

Seeking the same strength in numbers, the same things wanted to experience.

In the in between place,

Where it is spring but the leaves have not returned to the trees,

My trust must be met with something that fills this space,

There is no back, I am not an impostor, and my dignity too strong,

There is no later. I am too aware watching accomplishment

Unable to just enjoy purchases, clouded by fear of impending death,

Loss of achievements, strategies to hold on,

Ever growing variables needed that I can feel alight.

If there was future, there are these things, real things. They are real.

In the in between place, it is a gap,

I made up the story in my head that this is how the universe

opens space in my life.

But would I expect that it would be full.

It does not fill me. I dissolve,

And there is fullness.

In this way, I can work, give, love. From having.

In the in between place, I have to get my own.

And the vibe is not created between me and the other.

I have it, sense the moment with the other, or alone,

And celebrate, or listen,

So that a moment is created. I am the moment.

As a mind, knowing my nature,

I choose the party.

Often it includes this time on this mat,

Then painting, dancing, trampoline, stretching, recently learning music.

If there is enough existing resolve, I can enter these celebrations gently,

Occupying myself. Often, I need and look forward to letting

the in between work for me. If not this attitude, I have nowhere to go,

I cannot enjoy group escape, the shirt cuff gestures, the roles

Unless I do it with irony and while laughing offend everyone,

So I am not ready for comedy. I have further to grow,

Until there is less that is personal, and more that is from love.

I choose to germinate in this space rather than bank on the social conflicts.

I carry on,

But as wading into water, returning as expansion as does a seed.

Dissolving, not submerging.

But in the in between state, it is not total or complete.

I have to choose this again. Stopping.