This I Believe, 2020

To The Beloved Artful Conductor of Moments in Whom I Dwell:

You don't have to do anything with this letter. You are living a human life, which is a slow descent into something perfect, and so the descent itself is perfect. Relax into the frantic awareness of imperfection, this frantic awareness is itself of the perfectness! If you're reading this to know what to do next, know that you're already perfectly broken like you always will be. The illusion of brokenness is a function of expectation, which is always changing.

Your attention to this point in your life has been experiencing what I will call samsara, an endless wandering through all of creation, which you call The Valley, the intersectional shoreline of Void (the darkness) and Source (the light). For you, samsara is the unceasing awareness enraptured by unceasing change at the moment where light meets the dark.

You are here, re-reading this letter because you want to find the places along the way through the valley to your healing in preparation for the next breaking. Trust that, as you move, you will ALWAYS pass through a point of balance, and away, and back again. The departure teaches you how to recognize the arrival.

I want you to play and create and hold and be held. I am the sage who reads your journal and listens to your audio memos and sees that all of this life you have is precious and I really truly care about you as you already are, today, in this very minute, as you breathe this next breath. I invite you to breathe deeply, which means, of course, you can refuse the invitation and still be just as whole.

Today you are reading this just to watch yourself move, you are here to do The Work. I know you want to see The Work differently. The nature of the work you are engaged in right now is to see beyond what you are conditioned to believe, for the purpose of being yourself. 

You want to disrupt rhythms and patterns and notice what brings you back into the patterns, so you can choose whether or not to engage in the patterns, so you can choose to leave and choose to stay. Watch yourself move in and out. Just watch. Listen.

This is the garden where your future self sprouts. What are we growing here?

Stories

So I write to you this respite for your attention from a trusted source. You are skeptical if this will make any difference because you have experienced the flatness of Words. Words, as in the things made of letters, are flat on their own. Gongs in the void, but they are painting and directing attention, which paints experience. Experience has dimensionality. Your experience is what has dimension, and the telling (remembering) of your experience is the story. Words are the blankets in which stories are swaddled.

Stories are like clothes. They are not YOU, and you feel very exposed without them. There are times to wear clothes, and times to be naked! Every story is a shirt, a sock, a pant leg, each of them have textures and colors and prints and qualities made up by the stuff of this Earth. These clothes, these stories can be made by you and made by others. Some clothes you inherit. Some clothes you give away. You get to choose how much power to give yourself in choosing your own outfit. Some outfits are a disguise, an expression, a uniform, a poem. Different outfits change how you view yourself and how others see you. How others see you does affect how they treat you, but how they see you is a function of how they see themselves, not a function of what you are wearing. This letter is a garment you are weaving for yourself. You can put it on. You can take it off. 

Awareness

Remember you can choose to stop reading this at any time. Your choice to read this is an active choice, surrounded by motivations and beliefs, your choice to read this is in relationship with your choice of what clothes to wear, what stories to inhabit. You mostly believe your awareness is bigger than any experience you can have. You carry a small doubt about the vastness of your awareness, but you also doubt that doubt. You believe one day you will live in full belief that your awareness is bigger than any experience you can have, and this embodiment of full awareness is what you mean when you use the word freedom.

Freedom, the epiphany that your awareness is bigger than any experience. So long as you believe in an experience bigger than awareness, you are not free, you are in service to fear of this unimaginably enormous experience, which you yourself are imagining. The experience of imagining an experience is itself an experience. The experience of imagining, of visioning, is only a product of your decision to rest your awareness. Your awareness is bigger than the imagined experience. At some point, you forgot you have chosen to agree to pay attention to the imagined experience. You are immersed in the show.

Experiences have a felt sense which lives in your body. Experiences live there as a memory in your body, which words and so also stories can reignite, or "trigger". For instance, you've experienced a queasiness which was in sync with your awareness, you recognized the resonance between the queasiness and your attention, and as your attention shifted, so also did the queasiness. This lesson of watching your awareness and your experience move at the same time was profound for you. What's possible is a dance between your awareness and your experience. Your experience calls for the movement of your awareness, and your awareness can invoke a change in experience.

Marking this experience with sounds, letters, words, stories, naming it, is a method to leave waypoints and monuments as your awareness wanders through the vast stimuli of your whole body and mind. Your memories and your felt experience are both the same, both are experienced in the present moment. Monuments and markers create space for recognition of patterns, which is what changes patterns. I'll say that again, recognition of patterns changes patterns. The awareness is what recognizes patterns.

You are developing a map of the nonphysical stimuli within view and reach of your awareness. You are orienting in a landscape which you believe simply rests on the physical plane while also extending beyond. This letter is a map of this plane, which you also call The Valley.

Belief

You are beginning to pick up the pen which is scribing out this new story, weaving a new garment. You recognize there is a playfulness to this pen, its ink is of the light which is You, which is Your Awareness. You use the word "journey" as a name for this story, which is the felt experience of walking through this valley with a small lantern in your hand, which you call your "present awareness". You are beginning to recognize this lantern is also the tip of a pen. It shows you both what is in this nonphysical place, and also authors your understanding of what the nonphysical place is composed of. 

This journey is a story of awareness of pain, pinpointed in your body from movement of awareness can indicate a boundary, limit, obstacle of another realm. That navigating memories, stories, and beliefs is analogous to walking around a physical place. You sometimes feel like you're swinging your "awareness" limbs into walls that your eyes can't see. You call this place The Valley.

You fear The Valley's vastness in the dark, even though you are so touched by some parts of The Valley your lantern has revealed to you. The Valley's darkness embodies the fear of the unknown, and the unknown is uncontrollable because it is not predictable because it is not known. You believe the valley is real and vast, even though all you can see is what light returns to you from your lantern. You have named the dark night sky above the Valley "The Void", which is beyond even what your awareness will ever encounter, or even imagine.

You believe The Valley is made up of stuff from The Source of All Things, and is only experienced through Awareness. You believe that Source is pure light. You believe that The Valley is where Source meets Void. 

You like to flit between imagining The Valley is always there, and The Valley is only ever what you see. For instance, perhaps the past is real and has happened, and exists behind you as you walk, or perhaps the past does not exist except as a Present experience of memory. Both feel true to you and that tickles you to watch everything change as you adjust the focus of your attention. The experience is kaleidoscopic. 

In addition to the fear of the valley is a belief in another presence which you call by the name of God, YHWH, Love, Christ. You have a wonderfully woven quilt of this presence, and particulars aside, this presence is a guide who knows you and loves you and Calls You Deeper into the Valley. This Presence is the Energy which is the light which is You.

There is a quiet despair felt in your gut, in you throat, behind your throat, and on your head as you are called to step into the dark, when you imagine the valley is already there, and is unknown to you. This feeling softens when you believe you have Space. You have created an experience of Space by allotting yourself time to experience a low sense of consequence, in your bedroom, for instance, reading and writing without any sense of time.

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In crafting Space, you are trying to embody what you call your "most full self", your "authentic self", your "organic self". You believe this self is known and seen by your guide through The Valley. You are listening to this guide in pursuit of what They see in you. By identifying this desire, you are simultaneously separating yourself from this Truth in this moment, which is already you, and also creating a path to walk. You love this path, you are choosing this path every day.

It is as if you have forgotten who you are, and in forgetting, you have given yourself the gift of the Grand Adventure of finding Yourself again.

(Please know that the most integral part of your wholeness is the felt sense of unfulfilledness. You are beginning to realize the experience of incompleteness is the essence of your wholeness.)

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Mindfulness

Over the last couple of years, you have been entering relationship with the word "mindfulness", which has slowed or expanded your awareness to notice more nuanced Truths of yourself than you were taught to believe by those parents, teachers, neighbors, relatives, and friends who raised you. This mindfulness is like a fulcrum on a lever-arm for conscious, intentional transformation. The act of mindfulness is like listening to a garden asking for what it needs to grow.

One example is how you noticed that you made a decision to broadcast your shallow breaths, this is a translation to those around you (including yourself) that your nervous system has tightened up and is breathing shallow, a heady, reactive, cognitive state. How you interpret these breaths and how others interpret these breaths are always different. Every person uses their language to convey meanings. The words themselves are flat, the experiences and conveyance of meaning are vast and vibrant. The noticing and interpreting of felt experience, whether internal or external, is an act of translation.

Relationship - Language - Translation

You don't know if translating your experience is as important as being with your experience. How do you discern when to translate and when to be with any particular experience? For instance, there are different conversation patterns (look up "High Participatory/ High Considerate" communication styles). Imagine the whole country is talking to each other in different patterns without pausing to calibrate, and instead assumes what is intended by each word. 

You want to move forward with the understanding of differing conversational patterns by following your curiosity in new relationships and playing with your conversational patterns in your own relationships. Differing patterns make differing assumptions for how to translate. How to notice, identify, define, and redefine pace and tone to convey meaning and seek understanding in order to foster trust and presence. In fostering trust and presence, you create space for your most authentic, whole self to be broadcast through your body's words and actions. 

You also learned that when you physically move your body while in conversation, it changes what you have to say. This is important to consider when you feel frazzled or stuck. This goes farther to say if you are on the phone, describing your body language is one way to express wordless shares.

(The word Weird-Normal's relationship to co-regulation, which is balance manifest)

(You've noticed also how environmental elements are reference points for navigating relationship. Clocks are the most constant environmental element, a reference point for relationship. Having a drink, also, for instance, can be a way to set a localized sense of time and pace check from a safe distance.)

You have also come into relationship with the word "container". The container is relational scaffolding with a set of explicit agreements to adjust the pace and tone of a conversation by directing awareness and so also expectations in pursuit of some well-defined intention. 

You "craft" or "set" a container. You can create this by setting intentions, by invoking the names of influential forces of your life, by stating boundaries and limitations for yourself, and open opportunities for consent. It is a way to make space for participants to notice "edges" and "boundaries". You use the word "edges" to identify a discomfort you are willing to experience. Boundaries, however, protect both the discomforts you are NOT willing to feel, and energy you need to protect in order to stay resourced enough to avoid regressing into a state which is more easily triggered. 

You use the word Trigger to talk about the moment of transition from one set of assumptions into another. Different words, sounds, feelings, and ideas "trigger" different states, bushels of assumptions, and lenses of interpretation. You often do not realize you are being triggered in the moment, but you are learning to recognize when you ARE triggered. You'll also use the word "activated" to describe a heightened emotional state. A heightened emotional state makes you prone to quicker assumptions and less conscious reactions. You aspire to be conscious in your decision making. Recognizing your triggers is the way to set boundaries to maintain a state which is open, receptive, and present in relationship.

Relationship and Co-Regulation

You believe that to be in Relationship is to move and be moved. Touch and be touched. Hold and be held. Energetic Balance, (and perhaps energy itself) made manifest. This relationship exists first within you, and then between yourself and others. While your relationship with yourself affects how you interpret all the relationships around you, your external relationships show you parts of yourself in different light than you are capable of seeing on your own. Tending to both internal and external relationships tends to the whole system. You hold Relationship as Most High, it is the most tangible manifestation of Love, which you understand to mean Interconnectedness.

You care what other people think because it is a way for you to regulate your experience, wants, and needs with your environment. It's important for you to shape your environment. You are also a node by which others regulate themselves with their environment, which is why it is important for you to speak your Truth. You are speaking the Truth of your environment for others to hear, as well. There is always some element of the environment that only you can see.

You desire to be in relationship, almost for its own sake. You often forget that every relationship needs to create space for both yourself and the other. You forget that a relationship with yourself is a relationship with multitudes, with many parts, an ego layer cake. This relationship has often been called shamefully "selfish" to focus on. Yet, your relationship with yourself impacts all of your external relationships. 

Intimacy is a word you use to describe a relationship you have with another human which has access to vulnerability through trust or faith. Within the realm of vulnerability, there is access to Truth, which creates tension against Belief, and so Truth begets Change. You believe The Truth is Change, and the Interconnectedness of Change is Love.  

You believe the crafting of space for Truth is wrought with vulnerability and so also discomfort, a nakedness. You believe commitment always includes a conscious acceptance of discomfort, which carries with it a stink, like the taste of morning breath kisses. You believe that intimacy and commitment are interwoven because intimacy has an inherent human "stink" to it, and the commitment is the structure, the decision to remain in connection through the discomfort, the stink. 

Some of the stink is inherent in the commitment to the truth. This discomfort, at a certain magnitude crosses a threshold into a Trigger, an experience of overwhelm which has more to do with the experiencer than the one who trips the triggerwire. It is not the action, but the interpretation of the action which sends signals called reactions. It is only in relational safety that the pace can be adjusted to tend to these reactions. Boundaries are the tools which cultivate Safety which allows the discomfort which begets the Trust.

You recognize patterns within relationship. Your patterns in proximity to another person's patterns make new patterns of the relationship. You cause new patterns and reinforce old patterns in each other. The cultivation of awareness, the crafting of spaciousness and a slower pace is a way to calibrate language and so also redirect and reprogram awareness to cultivate understanding or relational attunement. 

You desire to cultivate a sense of safety within relationship so Truth has room to move, so both of you can experience each other in full Authenticity.

Relationship is what you view as most holy. Relationship with all the parts of yourself, extending to all the interpersonal relationships of your neighbors, the people who you are most immediately affecting and affected by. I do want you to know, every relationship is different. Every. single. one.  

It is easy to forget how different each relationship is because you are constantly using one relationship to understand other relationships by way of stories. Remember these stories are garments. Your relationship experiences you choose to remember are what fill your wardrobe. If stories are outfits, relationships are a ballroom dance.

You want your friendships to have consent baked in both ways the whole time. (How do you let yourself have crushes on your friends without either of you being coerced or have your attention be taken advantage of? What is it to be taken advantage of? There's some element of a lack of consent when one  is being taken advantage of.)

You worry so much about what it's like to fall out of connection with others because you know what it's like to fall out of connection with yourself. You are often out of connection with yourself because you choose to prioritize connection with others. It's hard to let others hold you because you're not letting yourself be held by you.

You want to make more space for coming back to connection with yourself. You want to be with the fear/discomfort of being yourself so you're not afraid of the discomfort of being yourself.

You see boundaries and consent as the CENTER of relationship. Once there's boundaries, there's consent! With that consent, there's so many dance moves you can come up with. Container-building, and so also trust-building are ways to scaffold these types of relationships to be intentional and balanced.

You see language as an access point to co-regulation of the self and the collective. (Or one part of the self with the whole self). Language is the stuff which sets containers, (which makes a container a Story) which is important because you want to know the "house rules" of each relationship. These "house rules" are informed by the greater societal rules of engagement, but each relationship has the sovereign power to adjust these rules. You want to know how to know house rules which, as a rule, go unspoken. How to identify them, adjust them, and give permission for others to identify and adjust. You believe the phrase "Safe Word" operates within the realm of this intention. 

You like to make the right assumption about people, and you like people to make the right assumptions about you. You do not like questions, there is a vulnerability, a squeemishness in expressing your desires, curiosities, or stating your assumptions. You fear being seen just as you desire to be seen.

The discomfort of making the space for the truths to come through. Receiving judgment and poison, there's patterning within you to receive others' experience before or ahead of your own. Understanding their experience first is a way to maintain connection and create a safe space for you to understand yours.

Society, Culture, and the Outward to the Collective

In a collective, you believe a Culture is the amalgamation of all the participants. Each new participant both changes the culture and is changed by the culture.

You believe the name of Society is simply a culture which acts in accordance with its fear of the unknown. Your actual role in the story of society is determined by your willingness and your capacity compared to the willingness and capacity of others. You are less interested in following the rules than you are curious to understand their origin story and that the rules are then expressed in terms of mutual respect, and acknowledgment of the others' complexity.

You believe plastic garbage bags embody the story of "away", which you believe is a part of the myth of separateness. In an interconnected universe, there is no "away". You aspire to choose what you consume based on what you want to create. Simply eating and drinking is an act of creation. You love the idea of spending money at a concert as a way of participating in an energetic co-creation just to find everyone else who wants to see this moment be created on stage and watch together.

You believe that all of these things, and all of these pieces all funnel into your intention and ultimately the co-created world which is Now, that this co-creation of a concert experience happens over and over again in the massive co-creation of "The World". 

Closing

This is what I have to write to you today.

You told me once you want a life where all your sounds, asks, desires, are contributions to the song of your surroundings. To be one in the music of it. Just getting ready for the day makes the music. Doing. Resting. Work to get to know the part of me resistant to you changes for the part of me pushing for change all meeting in my body, the joyful process.

You told me you want to learn to both recognize and cultivate safe paths to change as you identify parts which are dying and ready to change. To recognize and construct safe channels to move energy from the Source within you to the Void around you.

What will happen to your life if you continue to focus on refining your questions? What if your beliefs are made in pursuit of crafting a cathedral of yourself, made up of energy channels, carved by the divine, so you can see how the divine sees you?

Create a beautiful dream. Let it come from you, who are already a gift from God, of the Divine. Already one with the Christ. Give yourself permission to create a beautiful dream to enjoy. It is all there is to do.