Artist's Process Part Twenty One

You know I came to return to that feeling and sense of self

But without the best man at my wedding to dance with

Surrounded by understanding and camaraderie,

That never came together or lasted long enough,

And there was the hangover, the headache, the bill

and the achievement that led to a disinfected fashionable stuffy office.

But I keep feeling it in moments when reading, listening to music.

I analyzed it, was it the music, or the book.

Something was accepted as a way by my mind. Dreaming in it

Gave me me.

It was just focus and stillness. But not motivation to receive stillness.

The gentle sincere focus of someone who sees possibility,

Who a writer can allow belief enough to relax , just relax into a story.

And then in moments feeling tipsy, or a couple puffs in college,

What the ingredients are witchcraft? Pure elemental magic?

There was nothing except a bunch of bored friends, already safe,

Acknowledged. So it was not enough.

Success. It was not enough. Just now, okay what.

Nothing just, ‘this is life’ be a man, ‘its in the simple things’

Why is everyone drinking and smoking and why am I

Incessantly shopping, videos or what? People making diy gadgets?

But there! I feel it watching the Japanese in this one video artisan

making a pair of shoes. Wait, all of my watched videos becoming,

people doing, making. Do I want these objects?

You can support, please do. But I don’t want the objects.

I want their easy sense of self, purpose, joyful doing.

The participation in creative flow watching skateboard grip tape

Being expertly and so artfully applied.

I want to. I am frozen. I have what they have, just as me.

I am a container, and flow is present, I feel it surge.

There is a blockage. The flow is present beneath this accumulation.

Is it pain, indecision, guilt, worry. Don’t do this, you should be doing that?

When? How to find time? Okay, lets plan it.

Planned it, I don’t feel like it.

Why?

Identity.

I don’t know me then when I am not influencing positive things in those I love,

negotiating with the market. Growing some skill to enhance ability

to reposition myself.

Because my life is going to happen.

I am happening toward it, but it is not here.

So then regret. If I had persisted in that, I could be that master

And feel that thing I want.

But I realize the feeling comes first. What I do with it is by my will,

To lend to spaces and things where my mind can accept this as

Reason to stop, relax. And my ears, my inner sight,

Can feel me. Trust me. See me doing with freedom.

Get to know this person.

My identity. By following the threads in our personality,

Our tendencies. When not initiated by ‘motivization’ to steal joy,

Possess love. But instead to return, and remember it.

Remembering first that I possess it. The candle reminder.

I return to this mat. I set up my space. I am my own story book.

I have dropped the hand of wishing.

Hope is much shorter interval duration between returning.

And carried as a candle remembering in my negotiated day,

Holding that frequency. Asking to be guided,

Only as my respectful readiness to listen. This is affirmation.

I work, remaining with this affirmation and visceral feeling.

I need to know I exist, otherwise I will take over.

There is either I to live this and guide and protect this dear innocent soul,

This beautiful body. Or there is someone I will follow.

And that leader is this flame. All other outside authority is helping

Keep the world in the best order it has been in millennia.

If there is further change, there is needed.

It starts with having ones identity, sanctifying ourself.

Acting from love, strength, trust. It is not by lobbying another to

Give up their values and change my world. And it wouldn’t.

Even then, I would have to receive me. Serving from that fullness.

So I choose this mat.

A little time for the individual,

Imagine the thought that this is selfish.

It is okay to explore this.

So that I am not frozen.

Frozen meaning unwillingness to engage will,

That it does not correlate with felt and known sense of self,

So why do it, plus fear, plus feeling distorted.

No longer. It seems my identity was designed to avoid awareness of self.

Who would that serve?

So I remain, I return, stop. Listen. Allow. Respond.

Best intentions, spiritual guidance. Okay, I am good.

May I please please, please let me know some joy, some feeling of flow.

I have no time to earn another, to take another position,

Win glory, lament loss of authority, loss of love, pain, regret,

Another new project, another position in my family.

That impression of me that I can feel,

It animates me, others impression, meeting demands,

Demonstrating myself in trials. Sitting with a cigarette as that made person,

Or was the secret that I could relax, enjoy, and drop the cigarette

Close my eyes. Wait, I thought I needed the story to go on and on.

Basking nonstop, planning nonstop, lamenting, angering,

Consoling, rationalizing non-stop, medicating.

Identity is something felt. After it has produced good in the world,

Served those close.

Can I have me, an identity I can feel, enjoy, enjoy with?

Can I have purpose that is really really honestly; mine.

It is really me, not just good and important and why?

Just even brief modest non-indulgent times, between tasks?

I felt me reading, then in the midst of engaged in focused tasks,

But that is all I saw, the role producing a feeling.

I attributed my role to joy. I became a way to ensuring the supply

of these feelings would last, return, held by reflection on image,

had even in suffering about inability to retain position or status,

to ensure continual supply.

This I saw as mind, in thinking and reflection. This is what I do.

Then luckily dignity stepped in.

I would not need to behave this way and beg others by the show I put on.

I would give, perform good deeds, show up on time and do my best work,

receive what is mine, ensure I have taken care of my needs and those I love,

But what if what I needed emotionally was not available, withheld,

Manipulated. What if simple good daily doing made me feel

That there was much unexpressed. That ready made answers felt

Insufficient and seemed to make my mind more busy?

But I was still screaming to be heard, wishing I could be seen,

Wanting deeper connection, authentic heart to heart,

Understanding. But it was not available.

Now it became more than dignity or pride. Finding the solution.

One that did not manipulate my outer world, demand of it,

Or take on unfulfilling relationship roles, or loose all of my

Every available moment of personal time,

And seek never ending ‘upgrades’ and ‘remedials’ and

Strategic preplanning actions, that I could return to joy,

Feeling safe.

And then I go jogging, and I feel joy, all women who I pass are my sisters,

And men are my brothers. Visceral, not some manifesto proclamation.

A real visceral feeling.

This time I am jogging, not watching a silent man making shoes,

And not suddenly going from bored friends to crazy adventure avec alcohol.

But alone, and jogging.

Was this active meditation?

Sometimes a reckoning of values is needed, sometimes I start at my mat.

There may be things that I mind need to sort out.

I am containing emotions, generating, withholding, guarding in this body.

I need to contemplate on my values while receiving guidance

From my trickle flame. Listening, remembering it is me that is using the mind.

Sometimes as yesterday, I workout, trampoline jump,

dance, write thoughts insights, sometimes paint.

First I inspire, receive, then express. But not to have.

From having. Otherwise, there is no point.

Life is simpler, why dance and paint, just workout and have the

Hendersons over for dinner, eat drink laugh, make love and wake

up to my role, entering it with a brow lifted doing up my shirt buttons.

I found it! I recall that time dancing. I was jogging and that!

Watching YouTube of people in immersion in task or roles.

Movie heroes. Oh, all of them given a purpose in conflict,

attaining something that would bring ongoing connection,

achievement, self defense skills to project my will.

The struggles to attain followed by brief moments,

Then another call to arms.

Brings me to this mat. I know what I want.

This is me returning. Every time, beginning again.

Then I saw it. I was watching, listening.

Will. Bound in the search.

Intention to move, visualized, energy present and moving.

I am blank space. I open my eyes, I am the dance.

I am the one initiating, enjoying, visualizing, engaging,

And the one observing the outcome, sensations, actions.

And in between, will energy intention goodness. That is me.

I have learned the same lesson in prior conflict.

Conflicting values, bearing with outcomes, times of endurance.

Pulled apart. In the chasm, the same energy intention goodness.

Is this possibly the silver lining of conflict.

Otherwise, I would imagine it is, ask this space of its truth.

I felt to make it so out of necessity.

But the sense endures, provides shelter.

Okay, maybe it was a glorious survival mechanism, I dreamt it all.

Then this we reveal is the secret of changing oneself.

To do, be, reach from your best. Observe, identify with.

Question is why it works despite knowing I invented it, possibly.

And I love this, I need this. I feel refreshed, not dissipated like watching media.

Not turning to bogus advice, not playing out my personality

No matter how much it conflicts with others or loved ones.

That is quite a wonderful lie.

Nietzsche and Picasso aghast and combined.

A lie that reveals a truth of something I already am that I can’t live without.

So, where do people go when they drink, or smoke weed?

Why not I asked myself go willingly, minus the personality.

Somehow thoughts were about what was presently doing,

I was not thinking about myself, only technical actions.

And I continued to exist.  And saw actions one could identify as personality.

As long as you are okay never being the same twice.

But living from the same core good principles.

Those principles are my choosing. But some resonate,

Some do not. The ones that do not, drain, distort, unbalance.

But there was that candle, I had luckily identified with something innocent and sincere.

My parents did not reward false persona,

And being sheltered, I was allowed to retain some innocence.

That could be the gift, or lesson in circumstances.

Everyone I feel gets what is next able to be absorbed without destroying

The person and body and mind.

Right now I can handle being without tribe, and being me.

Alone, meaning sensed wellness, wholeness, flow in creativity,

Rest, meaningful rewarding interrelationships,

Taking care of necessities, having even more,

Then even more reason to stop. There is no more in that.

This is for me. I do think there are easier ways to learn

If our conscious universe ‘gifts’ us these lessons.

I just wanted to no longer be a hard nut to crack.

I am now willing, receptive to this process.

I do not want it to take more from me. This is humility.

This is a core principle I hold. To stop and listen to that sense.

Because resonant principles speak. They. Speak. Express.

I am either resonant, or I choose to be a product suffering from it.

There are events, physics… I am very very vulnerable.

And would you know it, it feels like I can do something

Following, stepping back, receptivity, humility.

And then there is all this joy, flow. Flow.

Do with it what resonates from your heart.

My heart, engaged in this flow, leads my mind.

I listen.

Will it put a person a person on Mars.

Maybe it would allow a society employing an engineer

And with their willingness to collaborate more openly,

Less abrasively. Maybe part time, and work as a chef part of the week,

Spend time with the brood of kids that bears their resemblance.

Take more rest. Get to Mars a little later, more emotionally ready.

It will not be enough and people will argue that it is our nature.

I am okay with everyone moving in that direction.

A different direction.

What if all social problems were created by identity, roles,

Overpopulation, agreement to give up so much when there is so

Much to go around.

Where is the core principle of respecting limits,

Making discerning actions. Gradual development

Based on already having.

Not creating cliques and subcultures, but a sense of togetherness.

And once there is overpopulation,

the majority are very cavalier about solving it, and not having time to

look within and why did we, and why do they, wait why do I.

Returning to why do I. I return to this mat.

I see how much I enjoyed analyzing criticizing others.

Always others change, I want a certain at least mini world around me,

This is what has to happen.

But then without any of that happening, I happen.

And I happen to feel great. All that changed was me.

Could I not show up to give better in this state of person.

Argument aside, I don’t care. I feel good.

This short span of time, sitting, moving, dancing.

I am allowed this. And the cares of the world can be taken care of

In an hour or so.

But I will bring with me a deeper sense of this experience

This is good. I don’t care after some point, if there are counter arguments.

I am resolute now, failing only in the corridors between states.

Trusting, it is easier every time to do something I love,

To accept this form of identity.

I see it doing good in my work with person I work with.

I am less holding on to what I want to happen.

I am meeting opposing forces part way better.

Or recovering better. I have a great credit score.

I did not have a great credit score when I was struggling to

Intermix the oil and water of trying to feel good

And give to all of the different sides to me by

Trying to ‘manage’ outer variables.

Things are getting easier, ironically after already finding some solace.

Should I have killed myself when already not happy, conflicted

The world sneered back and more blocks were put in my path,

I could not manage my health, and I could not practice a musical instrument.

So, if there is no consciousness or destiny, I created one.

And it spoke. Okay, mind tricks. A very very wonderful trick.

I can turn the tide of my emotions, feel wholeness, flow, joy

With nothing having changed. Simply arriving at gratitude

Rather than practicing it hoping to become grateful.

And forgetting it, feeling conflicted and about to explode.

Returning this place. And.. what. Just simple daily tasks,

Feeling in the zone.

This has been a marvelous trick. Did I ‘manifest it’

Did ‘energy flow where intentions flowed’. All these catch phrases.

Whatever, here is something visceral.

So why drink or smoke then. For those that do not want to trick

The chemicals of their mind. I am producing this ‘drug’ by will alone.

That is damn good.

So I discuss this in my mind. My own thoughts.

I test stopping. There is a buzz, a filling up. A warm fuzzy warmth.

My mind feels resting, a place to dissolve thoughts not serving me.

I decided that. I see thoughts that I initiated, and from where knows where,

And oh, here I can decide I am okay done with that.

No headstands, or breathing tricks. I agree to. I am resolute to.

Relax. Stop. Big sigh just happened now.