Hello from Montana

Hello From Montana,

The sky really is big here. The colors breathe from blue to grey to blue again.

I keep imagining myself like folded steel. Heat, fold, press, fold, press, heat. The days feel most like spirals. The same routine but each day is different. I carry a flame of hope within me. I feel more fragile than before. Like if I broke I would never be the same. I’m not the same. Every day I’m breaking and realigning the script of what I think I ought to do given each moment-to-moment circumstance. The script of where I am and where I’m going, what I’m made of, and what I’m made to be comes into and out of form like warm putty in nervous hands. I consider the round-and-round-ness of my thoughts like a quiet vortex in shallow water.

Attention. Awareness. To notice the script at all! I once dreamt I stared into a mirror so intently I saw the human eye reflected in front of me as a separate body and I wondered where I went and how I knew I’d lost track of myself. My day is full of songs like these like a song stuck in my head but it’s a dot pushed and wafted between a landscape of hurricanes full of thoughts I’ve been meaning to be rid of for a very long time, but without them I am bleached linoleum blankness.

These vortices which I resent for holding me back are what bring me comfort. Too much comfort and there is no growth. Too much growth and there is no comfort. Perhaps, just my being alive shows how balanced it’s been for me.

—

The heater turns on when it gets too cold in this room and I’m contemplating how my place in the world right now is so comfortable. I consider the cost of the systems paid by my ancestors and neighbors to bring me a heater which turns on when the room begins to chill.

Sometimes I leave the room to be outside. I walk along the hill, between the trees, and under the sky. On my walk back to my room from the hill, I noticed some mushrooms growing on the path. The mushrooms showing above the ground are a fruit of the mycelium under the ground. I understand mycelium to be a conduit for trees to send signals back and forth. On my walk back I imagine the path to be alive, I imagine the path’s awareness of me. Or the trees awareness of me.Trees move towards light. I wonder how aware of that they are. Or if they just do move toward like like I breathe. I wonder if tree awareness falls into vortices like me. I wonder if vortices of thought shape the trees. 



—-

I’ve been sitting in the water of the lake at least once each week. Just deep enough to sit comfortably with water up to my neck. My skin hurts with chill at first when I enter the cold water, I find that walking into it slowly my skin temperature adjusts and once the cold stops hurting, I notice many more intricacies of the temperature gradient of the lake.

I can wade in up to my shins quickly enough, and my thighs I notice are more sensitive. I get halfway, then the cold laps some pretty sharp sensations up my inner thigh, especially as the waves go up and down, they challenge me to walk deeper by stretching the edges of my willingness to enter the cold water.

I’m up to my waist now and my legs are comfortable; the next sensitive area my attention rallies around is my belly. Working my belly in, every inch is hard-won, and the lolling of the lake oscillates between being above my “edge” where my body is still uncomfortable in the cold, and below my edge where my lower half is adjusted to the cold.

I take long strides along the lake edge, rather than into it, so each step brings me only slightly deeper, keeping a constant discomfort as one inch of skin adjusts to the cold at a time.  Then I’m up the pain of cold to my chest and I rest there for a while, belly submerged. My forearms go in and out of the water, hurting, getting used to the cold, then feeling numb even though by now my feet are adjusted and delighting in the energy of the water.

As I walk in, I consider my boyhood memories of being yelled at “just dive in! like a band-aid! It’s going to be more painful if you stretch it out like that!” I consider my experience now, allowing for a longer, apparently “more painful” experience. Is it more painful? Haven’t I chosen this way? I am keenly aware of the discomfort of the lake’s rippling surface as it challenges my willingness to be in its embrace. I feel supreme resistance to the thought of submerging, remembering the traumatic urge to breathe deeply in the cold. I consider submerging for some time, and finally decide to drop my entire chest up to my shoulders into the water. It hurts, but in a minty fresh way. I feel the hurt of the cold subside and eventually the thought of dunking my head sounds appealing, so I do that. It doesn’t hurt and it doesn’t feel like I’m conquering fear. Final submergence feels like an indulgence, in contrast to the rest of my painstaking wading.

I swim with delight, aware of the slightly warmer layer of water towards the top of the lake, and an increasing coldness gradient down to my toes. I feel the joy of my engaged muscles feeling themselves move against the gentle resistance of the water. I play with the sounds and feelings of the water as I splay out my fingers and cut my hand through the water column like a sword through the air. I think it should be fun to splash, but I do not splash. Instead I slow down and watch the ripples of the surface. I slow down more, I notice debris and the way they float so quickly bobbing back and forth. I notice an ant on the water’s surface. One leg is in the water, but the other legs are spread out enough to get purchase on the surface tension. I decide to push him back to shore with my benevolent breath. So I slowly walk my breath behind him, blowing on the surface until he reaches shore. He’s washed onto land and I think I lose him for a bit, then I notice him crawl up and make his way up hill. I watch him for a while.

Eventually I grow a satisfied weariness and am called to sit. The sun feels warm, but my skin is still acclimated to the cold, so I sit in the water up to my neck.

Here I am sitting on the bottom of the lake, head above water, taking notice of the energy of my body. There is stress and I work my way through, inviting whatever I can to relax into the sit, feeling gravelly lakebottom hold me. I notice as I relax, my core tells my body to keep my head above water, and I let this happen as unconsciously as I can, like my breath. My awareness gently takes up and releases control of breathing, pushing, pulling, reacting to the tide. Now the lake is playing with me, the energies up against and away from my body’s need for air. I am a third party watching the dance between the lake be a lake and my body be a body. In flashes, I lose track of the difference and allow the circumstances to be.

Then I am reminded my goal is to have a oneness experience with the lake and I wonder how I am doing and if I can achieve this more deeply and more quickly than now. I consider my walk into the water, my body’s adjustment, the stories and memories which came up as I went in, and how often my mind has gone to the memory of the last time I got this cold in the lake and went to take a hot shower. What a rush that was and what a rush that will be soon.

I go back to trying to be at one with the lake, then I think of how trying to do that makes it harder to do, then I think about how I want a hot shower, then how I shouldn’t want a hot shower because it’s indulgent and comfortable, and how the discomfort of sitting in the lake is fruitful. Then I recognize the discomfort as an expression to myself of my capacity for self-discipline. Then I think about how great I am for having self-discipline and how I’d like to be more disciplined in other areas of my life.

Each cycle of thought between the hot shower, self-discipline narrative, oneness narrative, pride narrative, shame narrative, each arc of swirl into the next, I’m able to notice how each narrative inspires the following narrative, round and round. For a brief moment I’m able to track these thoughts just as I watched my body hold itself up in the lake. Layers of awareness! This sparks a new dimension of the thought-vortex, and eventually my body tells me I’m cold enough to have a shower because it starts to shiver.

—-

The hot shower after a lake-sit is very different than a hot shower just out of bed. In the lake-sit-hot-shower, I consider the profound pleasure afforded by discomfort. I remember the supreme resistance to diving into the water all-at-once. The aversion to discomfort. How that same aversion to discomfort arises both in instances of stepping into the lake as well as into my emotional growth.

Then the idea which comes up, saying “you need to be better at overcoming discomfort so you can grow the most in the least amount of time”. I view this as an industrialist idea which exists within me, and I allow myself to be uncomfortable about being afraid of discomfort. This first discomfort of discomfort is the first step towards walking forward into the lake where I intend to flex my body and show my dance moves while I am alive. To let go, let my body keep itself upright, to let whatever parts can relax to relax, let the buoyancy of the water hold me up, let the lake gravel keep me still, and notice the temperature gradient and all the littlest ways that the lake is.

Change the World, you say

Beloved Reader,
Dear Co-Creator,
Play with me as I process:

Today as I pour my hot cup of tea, I consider my privilege to consider responsibility, obligation, a call to arms in a world continually falling apart each time I open my eyes. I have been a guest in a garden this last Spring growing cut flowers, and a fresh batch of yellow tulips is up today from the soil. Another plant, before it flowered, was thought to be a weed and it turned out to flower rather beautifully. The keeper of the garden tells me he's glad he didn't manage to pull them all out.

Today I feel pulled in so many directions, so many paths forward. The urge to return to my comforts and desire to be Good. To speak and to be silent. To be vulnerable and be hurt. To be silent and be rewarded by a self-perpetuated culture of advantage and complacency. To be clumsy, to save this person and these people. To acknowledge my power afforded by my advantages and so perhaps my responsibility.

I consider what I consider to be "Enough" from me against the backdrop of a crumbling horizon.
The past several months have Deformed me.
I will never be the same.
This is for me to know, and I know this is True.
and
I am the only one with patterns I can control. 


So I am responsible to control me by this logic!
If I am not a part of the solution I am part of the problem
(This feels like Dualistic thought. Another example:
If I am not changing the world for the better, I am changing it for the worse.)
Here's a skimmable skippable readable belief I carry around related to Dualistic thought: To call out a thought as dualistic is to unknowingly participate in an agenda. To participate in agenda I do not agree with is to be manipulated. To participate in agenda I believe in is patriotic. To refuse to play the game at all of "With or Against" is to be a coward? Or to be named "other" and shamed fought battled to be control to be fodder or gunpowder? And ultimately unwillingly thrown into the game at the cost of pain, shame, exile to Wilderness.

"If you're not with us, you're against us."
"If you don't play my game it's gonna cost ya."
Opportunity, Reputation. Those who control the resources control the price on not playing the game.
The idea of Power was true on the playground and the idea of Power is true here.
This idea of being classified into compliance makes my hackles go up just to express. I want to pick a side proactively so I don't get lumped into the wrong side? The losing side? Oh to refuse to play! To not choose is to suffer and to choose too late is to choose poorly! The ultimate shame of refusing to play the game of WWII! The price of not playing goes up, up, up. I feel like I can't just "end up" on the good side. I feel like the good side must be chosen and committed to. All goodness seems to have an aspect of commitment. Commit to God. Commit to Loving. To be uncommitted is to be lazy, an adulterer. Duality, hm.

"Can't we just Love?!?!"
No, this, too, is called Spiritual Bypassing.
Unpacking my process is called White Fragility.
Laying these thoughts out in this way is called Gaslighting.
I am Horrible, which is called Self-Pity, a Pity-Party, a defense I use to stealth-cloak myself from a Dualistic occasion, competitive game.

My inner child is here and he is so frustrated. My inner patriot is here. My inner life coach. My inner angry protester. My Special Snowflake. My Alt-Right. My Freedom Left. My inner Moderate. I carry my politics like a sloppy necklace. I am white I am white I am white I am white I am white. I am  delicate, willfully ignorant, gaslighting gaslighter, hypocrite preacher. I preach false love in pursuit of God. There is my privilege. To dwell in self-composed righteousness.

Oh, let me mire in my Privilege. Here is my Inheritance I take ownership of, I call on all the work of my ancestors to Claim this Truth of Me:



“I am. There is. That’s it.” says the singular One.

Says God.
Says grace.
Says the wordless Wub of Being.
I use this mantric idea as a rock step in my partner dance of discernment. I throw it all out and I am One and I build again from there. So I am in a partner dance with my little time, but still we dance and so acknowledge the same song. Call the song the mythology of Death.



When CHANGE THE WORLD becomes spoken in the context of the partner dance whose rock step is DEATH, even control of others comes through careful REPOSITIONING of MYSELF, my vantage point, my perspective, the context or frame which surrounds my lens of the world.

A poem:
"I am going to die.
I need to change the world for Everyone!
Everyone is going to die.
I need to change the world to save the world, 
The world is dying.
The world will die.
Is that all there is to say 
This flickering candle in my chest?"

So I ask, where does this eagerness for control come from? Save the world. To save the world by some loudest and kindest and most holistic agenda? To Control what I may in a Responsible way.

I ask myself, as I stir my hot tea, on what hill will I die with my one life?

I consider my responsibility to this garden.
The time it takes to pull weeds instead of read about the world.
The engagement and attention it takes to notice what plants are asking for.
To study the other caretakers of plants and carry their lessons in the yard.

Because my sense of responsibility is linked very directly with my sense of control, although I have been taught I am in control of my destiny. Work hard, earn reward. If I am rewarded, I have worked hard, I am responsible. If I fail, and I have control, I am “irresponsible”.

If, on the other hand, the work is out of my control, I am not “responsible”. It is unfair to judge me as "Irresponsible" if I had no power, no control. To judge one who is powerless is against the rules of the society I abide by. The weight behind Fairness of a judgment is due to the consequential nature of being named irresponsible.

Irresponsible children lose their privileges.
Irresponsible drivers lose their license.
Irresponsible parents lose their children.

This garden began with the soil (or perhaps the garden began with an idea or intention, if you like!). These pesky weeds with blue flowers grow everywhere. I am too slow to pick them all. How shameful, how irresponsible.

“Responsible”, as a societal label:
To be heralded as responsible is to be in control of what others EXPECT I Should-Be-In-Control-of. The idea of connecting the social Title of "responsible adult" as something I can only receive "Externally" is important.

To be called Responsible, to me, is to be given safe passage through an institution. When one Responsible Person calls Me Responsible, it doesn’t matter if I actually respond to what I have control of. Just like if I get caught speeding it doesn’t mean that I speed all the time. The way I thought it was supposed to work is that To Be Caught Speeding means I must speed often enough to warrant create an unsafe environment.

Some greater statistical analysis can tell me, by way of ticketing, that I am being unsafe. That's what I thought. Some wisdom of past stories, past experiences, higher knowledge of the species can inform my behavior so I do not harm in the way others have mistakenly brought harm.

That was my idea of law and order.

George Floyd
Breonna Taylor
Elijah McCain

You all have died for so long unnamed and I am naming you now to begin to feel what my body has capacity to feel. Still, simply naming is not Enough in my eyes. I invite and so seek the rest of your story and those who have witnessed your lives. Spider Man says I am Responsible so long as I have Power.  I have Power so long as I have Breath.

—-

I consider My Privilege in the face of the reformation of “The System” which I name a trade game started years ago. The trade game fought with "off the grid" and the trade game which has wrapped more and more STUFF into the game. Nobody has to play, but there is a COST by those with Power, and the cost of not playing has increasingly become Cold Hungry Torturned Death.

To name "the system” is to name my bias. To name my bias is to out myself in the game, to out myself in the Duality as somebody's "Us" and somebody's "Them".

I know Nothing At All.  For now I believe the following:
+ Listening to Black, Indigenous, and People of Color will Save Everyone
+ Every dollar spent or donated is a vote
+ Power Always comes with Responsibility
+ The Path Forward Will Be Hilarious and Nonsensical
+ Everybody is Already Worthy of Love

And so comes Relationship. Ah, sweet holy, a word for another day. My tea is low now, the last bit, the rate I drink my tea ends with this cold, bitter drop. I feel it a waste to throw it out so I drink the tea out of obligation.

The tulips are up and while I gulp the dregs, the tulips are picked by the hand of the garden's keeper. I consider our control and our responsibilities in the garden briefly and I stand up to go inside and clean my mug.

Take it up with me, those who are looking to spar, to sharpen, I have said my piece and I am here to listen.

Summertime Anti-Racism BlogPoem

Dear Beloved,

I am doing my absolute best.
I am a woodpile who hears a whispering tale of sparks and fire.

I can only imagine what anybody else is experiencing right now.
I do not know how anybody's experience feels.

---

What I’m noticing about myself at this point in my process:

+Today I notice the RELIEF I feel pouring through my Black Lives Matter and Anti-Racism-Education resources, articles, blogs, YouTube videos. I acknowledge my schedule and pressure to align my energy to my priorities. I fear this time to receive and to listen has come at the cost of my own "nothing day" relaxedness and well-being. I do not know what this means, exactly, and still I recognize the sensation of breathing fresh air which has come with my study.
(My most comprehensive resource below:)
https://www.michaelcaloz.com/race-for-white-people-part-1/?fbclid=IwAR1ZdQC2N8XAbJ8lq190Bb-BR98_ImKcH7Leixm31bz6jitwoAuERo5ly2w

+ I build common vocabulary from common ground.

+ When I feel seen and heard, it is easy for me to share and listen.

+I build into my process moments to check in and make space to express discomfort.

+ I know the process I follow to build trust and I know how to make space for that process.

+ I visualize listening as wiggling my headphone wires until the music catches and goes through.

+ The energy that I turn towards listening and acting with the Black Lives Matter movement is harmonious with the environmental movement and so begins with racial justice. I see how they are connected.

I’ve been playing with this idea of:
“How I do anything is how I do everything.”
Dismissing parts within myself is dismissing communities as dismissing aspects of the earth. Viewing productivity and industrialism within myself gives me lenses to view productivity and industrialism in my relationships, my career, and the ways I vote.

My vote is my attention. My vote is my dollar. My vote is my ballot. My vote is my little choices in every day.

Trying to change others is an act of trying to change myself. I invite myself to notice when I take the words of others personally. I am deciding to accept others work to change me as work to change themselves and I hold that so gently because I cannot be changed by them, I, ultimately, must be the one to buy in.

Still this pressure!
What does it look like
Within me
What does an energetic relief valve look like in an online space?
Can this pressure fill balloons?
Can this pressure be a pressure washer?
Can this tension fire arrows?
Can this tension hold a sail?
Can this pressure bring fresh water to freshwater taps in homes and fields?

How do I recognize the language of call in my everyday life?

I am a woodpile surrounded by sparks. I am an oil tanker on a dry hot day on grinding wheels.

The woodpile can burn and it’s a disaster or the woodpile can be chopped and cared for and keep us warm all winter until the summer comes.

So it goes
So it goes
So it is

Riley