Somewhere inside...

No one is going to save me from this hell
Inside the walls I built for myself
My inability to love anyone else
Creates the loneliness I try to dispell
With no family and few friends
I wonder how to get through to the end
Of this life I cant seem to mend
Because I refuse to play pretend
Yet the passionate flame is strong
Hot enough to burn us all on
How can it feel so right and then go so wrong
Have we been fooling ourselves all along?

The journey is a spiral, we revisit mistakes until we learn the lesson.

I've been caught up in cycles of thought, struggling to accept the way things have come to be in spite of a great deal of effort to remain unattached to the outcome of anything. I'm feeling unsure of how to get through this. Except to let the pain burn through me, like a forest fire. Sear away every bit of the emotion that I had let back in.  What was I thinking?  Was I thinking? Like a little too much whisky leading me to fumble and fall, forgetting all the strength I'd been gaining.  Time to put down the 'bottle', back to working on myself.  The mistake was not continuing to focus on myself, slipping back into the old habit of living for someone else.  There is nothing wrong with caring so much, but neglecting myself only leads to an imbalance and moved me far away from my peace, my center, my aware, reflecting and accepting inner light that contrasts the darkness of my suffering and together they make the beautiful contrast of life.  There is no good or bad, no up and down, just foreground and background. I'd like to maintain a lively functioning foreground, the moment of now.  Let all the rest fade into the background.

Hyperfocus and Trauma

The recovery from trauma involves a lot of learning to catch yourself when your body goes tense or your heart rate goes up or breathe gets shallow.  Sometimes I may have déjà vécu or go into a non responsive state.  Any or all of these flare up and I find myself saying strange things, hyper-focusing on a thought that came through during the moment of flight or fight response, grasping on to a comfort zone of people or places.  The search to know my triggers and work through them has created a habit of oversharing with people who don't need to know what I am going through internally.  Yet being able to share those struggles would be beneficial.  I've shared some of my journey on this blog mixed in with my slow and unsteady art practice.  While one goal of my recovery process is to return to my pre-trauma work ethic in creating art.  Another is being able to socialize without getting caught in a cycle of anxiety.  Living in the comfort zone for me is a fairly lonely life.  While I enjoy my time of reflection and self improvement, it needs balance.  My habit of hyper-focusing on a concern or a mistake, it can exacerbate the stress and I devolve into behavior that is entirely in contradiction to my self identification and personal philosophies.  The embarrassment from such behavior leads me to struggle to return to socialization in the same circles, very few people are capable of understanding we all fuck up sometimes, most people find that support in family, family is always there.
Hyper-focus can be beneficial to a fulfilling life when directed in the right places. If I'm hyper-focused on a book, an art piece, researching a curiosity, resolving a situation, or completing a task for work, than the results are a sense of accomplishment.  My current task to find the best way to redirect my hyper-focus to the right places.  I'm currently redirecting my focus from a failure to keep myself together when engrossed in a concern that was eating up all my mental capacity for days, desperately needing an answer.  I fell into a poor state of mind and didn't handle it well.  The search for possible resolutions, for experiences that might help me get out of the comfort zone has brought me to some very triggering situations, but it has also brought me some grand experience that I can be proud of.  I like to think those achievements have more weight than the anxiety I experienced during them or the way I may have alienated myself among new people I was getting to know. At times I've wondered if I self sabotage out of fear of getting too close to new people, out of distrust that festers up from my memories of how horrible people can be. If so it's unconscious and it'd be great to catch myself ahead of time and breathe my way back into a calm non reactive state.  I've read that some people who tend to hyper-focus have friends, relatives, significant others who help them direct it.  My relatives are distant, my trauma has prevented me from getting close enough for significant others, and my friends while amazing for being there for me, don't quite get all this self improvement stuff. Luckily I re-directed myself today from feeling like I alienated myself again opening up about my recent concerns, to finding a possible solution.  Private therapy has only acted as a sounding board much like my journal, and seeking group activities always has a barrier at getting a new acquaintance to invite me out with the group.  So I'm going to find a PTSD support group, somewhere that sharing my shame is welcome, and understood.  Then, or perhaps instead take a class or join a creative art group or active hiking group where I can be social and not have to think or share my internal struggle, rather focus on the activity and learn to enjoy socializing again. 

The person who treats you right deserved to be treated right.

Today my mother told me I am the one child she can always rely on. It seemed such a strange sentiment from the woman who treated me like an unwanted burden through my entire childhood and youth. I have a deep seated sense of only being able to rely on myself because of it. I struggle to let anyone in or be vulnerable for anyone. Often feeling like at any moment they will tell me to be someone else or be mistreated, to do things a certain way or be neglected. This is my pain, the tragic thread woven through my life to give me reverence for the contrasting joy.  Since I know how it feels to be neglected, ignored, abandoned; I refuse to do that to any friends or family. I have a strong sense of honor and dedication for those I care about. Even those who don't do the same for me.

Dream of loss

Last night I dreamed all my things were stolen out of my car. My car contains my entire life. Everything that isn't my personal being. I was devestated, it would take years to replace all those things, so much time and work. Life without it all so empty and difficult. I felt stripped of my being.
In reflecting on this dream I realized it was my mind working through the loss of my best friend. The one person I always want to share my joys and sorrows with, even when we were out of touch. I was once attached to them romantically and the loss of them in my life forced me to work on myself, on the PTSD I suffered from. To become a practitioner of process, to accept the possibility of a life alone, to seek enlightenment and inner peace. It took me years to find stability and when they came back in my life I wanted it to just be friends, to have no reason for them to shut me out again.
Yet the gravity between us didn't make it easy and they decided to do just that.  I wonder what I could have done differently. Just as in my dream I wondered if I should have parked elsewhere or if I forgot to lock the door.  In both the dream and now in waking life I have to accept the loss, accept the lesson to be more present and aware in the future. There is no replacing what's lost but in time I can fill my life again, because no matter what or who is no longer there for me, I'm still here, I'm still breathing, I can still seek the joys of learning, gaining experiences, and find peace within myself.

What is this.

You occupy the best of me
The worst of me takes control
Not sure if I'm in love with you
Or the void deep in your soul
It reflects the emptiness in mine
Can you feel the gravity within?
A vulnerable way to live
Exposed by the flaming twin.
It's like a flaying tearing away
All these ways I'd rather not be
I guess I'd prefer it to be you
Who reveals the flaws in me.

Intoxicated

He only loves me when he's drunk
So perhaps it's not real
Perhaps he's conflicted in his interest
Not sure of what he feels

Or his self defeating doubts
Get taken out on me
I should listen to my friends
Who tell me to flee

Far from the pull of his voice
Far from the center of my dreams
He only loves me when he's drunk
While I love him unconditionally

I deserve to be honored
To be treated with respect and care
The integrity of the truth
Being shared anytime, anywhere

I won't settle for less than I'm due
Even though I can't help how I feel
He only loves me when he's drunk
Every day it's becoming more real

One Love

When you experience the realization that we are all one existence, one unified field. Then the success of others becomes your success and you can celebrate the rockstar or model or whomever is living your dream.  You can also empathize with those who are downtrodden, the  unfortunate who's life just doesn't seem to go right and they bear a lot of work and weight on their shoulders. With this way of thinking, there's no cause for envy,  and there's a very real reason to help others and lift them up because they aren't actually others they are just iterations of you. Remembering this can improve your relations at work, home or wherever you go.

Mostly when I drink too much...

When life seem to be piling up and weighing on me, when I can't figure out why the world, people, situations, are unnerving me. When being triggered is easier than usual... I always realize that I haven't been practicing yoga, nor writing, nor doing any of my usual activities that center and ground me. Without regular stretching and checking in with my body I end up cramped, aching, and thus easily annoyed or frustrated. Without regular writing I don't have the opportunity to flush all the thoughts that stream through my head. When they linger they mutate and end up twisted into a monster that I don't recognize as my own thought any more. As an artist I often have an open channel to that which is not of this world, something beyond myself. All my thoughts, emotions, physical sensations are in over drive. I'm screaming full speed down a lost highway of daydreams, deamons and darkness. I usually treat this over stimulation with mosh pits, marijuana or booze. If I'm lucky I channel it into art and exercise. Exercise connects me to the physical vessel I inhabit which brings on a feeling of being alive and helps to clear the excessive thinking clogging up my mind. I prefer the raw feeling feeding directly into artistic endeavors. Wipe away the logic that might hinder or redirect the flow of divinity that my hands have a rare occasion to convey. Let go of reality and take the ride. I bought the ticket, let's see this through. I'm not sure how this exposure of my inner workings might help you, perhaps you feel it too. There comes a time, when rhyme is natural and true without trying, no denying we are due... for something beyond our eyes, beyond the lies, beyond our cries, beyond the skies.... 

One people, one cause, one planet, one love...

An Excerpt...

...from my personal journal...

It's been a week since I wrote to myself.  Probably a little too long.  A meditation by water keeps me centered and strong. I gaze at the Columbia, wondering if my urges are wrong.  I keep rhyming like I'm writing a song.  The depth, the hole, the emptiness in my soul.. absence is presence, readiness for essence.  The void is there to fill, to be still is to be ready. 
Silencing the mind is difficult.  There is always a thought, even when I seek to observe what is before me I put words to it.  Not focusing on specifics, taking in the whole picture, that is the goal and breathing helps.  Paying attention to the flow of the breath. Yet before I dive in again I want to pose a question to the universe.  What question is most important right now?  How about... How can I bring my soul into my art?

Find your heart and your happiness.... 

Well... my heart is inside me, literally and figuratively. From what I've come to understand about happiness it also emanates from within.  It is born out of contentment and acceptance of things as they are.  Today's meditation has been all about accepting myself. Accepting where I am in life.  Accepting that events will unfold however they do.  There is no need for control.  The interplay of chaos and order is the essence of life.  I can actively engage, passively watch or fluctuate between the two.  Right now I think engaging will be good.   Engaging in art, engaging in thought.   Just have to remember to take enough breaks, pause and reflect when the time is right.  It's the dance of life yeah? Finding the rhythm of push and pull, of engaging and releasing.  I'm not interested in forcing, I'd like to flow.   Destruction over stagnation, but the real goal is re-creation.

Wavy

I've been on a mission to find my way

Working on myself day by day
Won't try to change what can't be changed
I just shuffle my deck and rearrange

The people who would be good for me
Want nothing to do with me
The people who are bad for me
Want to fucking devour me

I've been on a mission to find my tribe
Just can't seem to match my vibe
Won't force it or coerce it, not my style
I'll just keep moving and grooving for awhile

Sure sometimes there's something missing
I imagine someone I could be kissing
Yet most people aren't really listening
If they don't get me then they start dissing

I've been on a mission to find my way
Working on myself day by day
Won't try to change what can't be changed
I just shuffle my deck and rearrange

All possible possibilities lay ahead
Some full of joy, some full of dread
Yet closed hearts like mouths don't get fed
I'd rather embrace the beauty of chaos instead.

Love Eternal

Something in your eyes
Makes me explode from inside
The well has been tapped again
My love for you never ends
Yet me you look right past
Your heart is hers, so this won't last
I'm yet again the port in the storm
While your feelings for another form
Yet I'll be there in an instant
I just can't seem to resist it
This unrequited love has me ashamed
That my heart is yours to claim
I don't see you feeling the same
Still I can't just walk away
In the dark night of my soul
This fire keeps me whole
Though your gasoline will burn
It only fuels how much I yearn
Charcoal and ash mixed with tears
I'll paint you all my fears
Slice the flesh from the bone
Bleed my pain, purge the old
Allows new growth from below
Yet deep in the soil we know
Is the seed that could bestow
The bloom of love eternal

The Law of Love

"Spiritually the earthly contracts do not have more validity than the one you want to give to them. I mean, nobody is bound to love anybody, nor to keep loyalty for the obligation of a marriage contract, nor for any other cause. What is really wrong is to trick the other person making him/her believe that there are some feelings which in reality do not exist. What is fair is to be honest with what one feels and to act in consequence. In the previous example, since the woman recognizes not to love her husband, the right thing is that she reveals it to him and that, consequently with it, finishes the loveless relationship for being able to live the relationship of feelings with the loved person without the need to hide.  There are people who know they are not in love with that one who they signed the marriage contract with, or the commitment to be a couple, and maintain the link for convenience, for necessity, for feeling of guilt or for fear of the reaction of others. We have already talked enough about it. On the other side, there are people who know who they love too, but for fear or comfort, they don’t fight to join with the beloved being, instead of that they prefer to repress or nullify their feelings to not suffer, and they get used to comfortable earthly relationships however they are not fulfilled with them, because they lack the essential, the mutual and corresponded affinity love. They live a life of appearance facing to the outside, and of emptiness and repressed suffering facing to the inside. Be honest with your feelings and make your life to be a reflection of your feelings. That’s how you can avoid unnecessary sufferings. Have the courage to fight for your feelings, because that is the only thing worth fighting for." - The Law of Love

I feel like I've been trying to find the words to explain this exact concept for years.  I've questioned monogamy and it's validity/feasibility but what I was really questioning was the standards to which we operate our romantic relationships. The core tool to use here is truth.  First recognizing your own truth, deep within, then braving to share this truth with others. 

"One has to be aware that true love is free and cannot be forced, it arises spontaneously and it is on that basis of the free and mutual spontaneous feeling where the union will be produced, without the need to exist any obligation or an effort to maintain it."

When we meditate we focus on being.  Being here, now, in our bodies, existing without want or judgment or force.  The surrender of acceptance.  I have come far in my journey to find center within myself. Now I'm on a mission to open myself up to experiences with others.  To share myself  without being held to it as an obligation. This is a vulnerable place, but a mission well worth engaging in.  It takes self awareness, communication and risk.  Maintaining autonomy has been more about remembering to focus on my own goals, needs and achievements.  An exciting interaction that makes you happy, perhaps makes you swoon, could bring sweeping emotions and it can be easy to fall into all the old traps.  The entire process is about breaking the mold, discarding the old patterns and social expectations. I have to navigate my internal compass of honoring my truth. Not everyone is going to understand, but they don't have to.  One of my top affirmations lately has been to "honor the process".  All is process, every action is practice, success is merely mile markers on an infinite road.

What the !?

I feel hopeful for the future...
Or is this just delusion?
I think I'm getting stronger...
Or is this just confusion?
My foresight becoming clearer
As I learn to trust my intuition
My moves become much bolder
As I don't need any permission
Learning how to co-create...
Without their need for competition
Rejoicing in small victories...
As I reduce my inhibition
Where do I go from here?
Is there a chance to reach my vision?
I recognize I'm not in control...
Of the circumstance or condition.
Yet I know I am capable
Of making a decision.

Raising the Jed eye

The plan for this plane is a planet, so let's play!

Today's affirmation

Working on yourself is the most important work you can undertake.

Conflict Resolution Experience #1

The greatest challenge in my recovery from PTSD is handling conflict. I am still passive and often prone to flee. Despite being aware that my response is my responsibility and should not rest on the manner of the other person, my chest tightens and the need to escape takes over all my thought processes.  A walk pushes oxygen through the system and provides a reprieve from the panic. I remind myself that I have complete control on how I handle a situation. So far this has functioned, but it requires the ability to take a break at a moment's notice. It requires that I abandon what I'm doing. In the future it may not be feasible. So I need to develop a shorter stabilization trick. A,way to bounce back in a near instant. It's hard to plan ahead for unknown situations. My best idea currently is to mentally list the Fibonacci sequence. This pattern consolidates attention to something beautiful and pleasing while bootstrapping a return to rational thought. I'm going to try to keep it on hand and see how it helps.

Skyview

As we ascended over Denver flat patterns of lakes and housing sprawled nearly treeless into the distance where the Rockies bordered the edge of the landscape like a video game Nintendo wall. From up here downtown Denver appeared as a cluster of monoliths, like a modern day metal Stonehenge. The clock of their lives revolving around business hours, beating to the rhythm of a city heart.
Then into the clouds over the Rockies, surging into the crown mandala of the region, leaving the obelisks of the city for the clouds and realms of imagination.

Cicada's Axiom and Focault's Pendulum

At the turn of February I was reading Focault's Pendulum by Umberto Eco.  Something in the way they were building a puzzle of sorts reminded me of the Cicada 3301 puzzles my friends had shown me last fall on YouTube.  I decided to see if there was any news of a new puzzle, and found a link to this image: http://popfilesxuru7lsr.onion/~truth7/7111317192329.png  You'll need to use the Tor Browser to access it. I used to play cryptograph puzzles as a teenager and had some fun pulling a phrase out of the Morse Code:

A New species is emerging. Evolution is no longer guided by survival.
The Future is ours to choose and the singularity approaching.
Myriad Choices will me made, and utopia will usurp the world, 
as neurons designed into something new.

Then I came across a forum, where I found a link to the starting image for the puzzle which had this clue:
A Fludd approaches.
Chart the stars.A Chord of would WARMS My I

Opening the file in a word program provided a geographical coordinate and a link to the image I had came upon first.

The coordinate according to the forum goers was a payphone that had been removed from the Mojave Desert. (I couldn't help but think of the Mojave Wasteland of Fallout). The wikipedia for it listed an old phone number that allows for group chats, I hate being on the phone, so I decided to allow myself the ease of catching up with their help. There were tones and a list of numbers, which someone else decoded as:

FLUDD KILLS ALL BUT ROOTS
    WOLVES ARE FOXES FOXES ARE RAVENS THE HUNT DRAWS NEAR THOSE WHO CLAEM GOD HOOD SHOULD BE STRUCK DOWN BY
    THOSE DEEMED ORC WHEN KINGS RISE TRUMPETS WILL PLAY THE WORLD IS NOT YET FLOODED KEEP HUNTING   3301   

I have a feeling there are a couple errors here, but I have yet to go back and decode the numbers myself. Another person suggested the tones meant something, and until I came across a youtube video that may or may not have been relevent and recent it showed a tonal code that through music software came out as:  THE TRUTH IS LOST.  FIND IT.

I don't remember how I landed on the countdown page, it was the title of the png dot come.  That title was 7 prime numbers in a row starting at 7: 7111317192329.  Being fond prime numbers this enthralled me.  The countdown page was counting backwards from January 25th when I found it, and skimming the forum I used to dig into the initial puzzle they had all started before hand and theorized a time sensitive puzzle.  Though the date January 25th may be important.  Another user posted size details of an image that seemed to encode March 13, 2017 and the prime series 29 19 79 89 that came from multiplying the height and width in US inches. 

So from all these clues I went on an exploration.  Fludd designed and created a monochord instrument that is a physical representation of the harmonics of number, and the numbers of harmonics. Myriad is a company that creates programs which create and read music.  I'm guessing this is how the YouTube person decoded the tones.  Chart the stars at this point didn't correlate to anything I'd found yet.

I then searched for Wolf, Fox, Raven and found this folktale: http://members.home.nl/marcmarti/yugur/folktale/tale12a.htm
In it the Wolf is said to be the first brother, the Fox the second and the Raven the third. If we assign each of these numbers to the clue it then states:  one is two, two is three.
Searching for this phrase I found the  Axiom of Maria:  is a precept in alchemy: "One becomes two, two becomes three, and out of the third comes the one as the fourth."

I also love alchemy, so I read up on this axiom, which got me reading Jung's take on it, which led me on a tangent of self guided study.  I enjoy the inspiration it brings to research and to find associations even if they aren't the ones I was supposed to find, especially if they aren't the ones I was supposed to find.  I was making my own "plan", exploring possibilities.  When I came back to the puzzle I realized that the wheel in the eye of the skull must relate to Chart the Stars, and the key lodged in the png must unlock some encoded message somewhere.

While I love math and puzzles, I'm not very well versed in encryption or privacy, my study of computer coded went as far as early 2000's HTML and then I shifted gears to studying art.  I felt that perhaps this was going to be my wall when it came to the Cicada puzzles, and perhaps part of the reason they put them out.  To push us to learn about online privacy and anonymity.  So I decided I'd look into some of these processes like PGP and TSSL.

Wanting to take a break from puzzle chasing I returned to my book.  Two pages in the characters began discussing Robert Fludd.  I laughed at the synchronicity.  The macrocosm and microcosm reflect each other.  Something proclaimed by gnostics everywhere; as above, so below. I finished the novel, finding multiple more references to Fludd.  I wondered about his unpublished work, and about references to him made by Pierre Grassendi which was not published widely. The book often returned to the idea of the fixed point which all revolves around that the pendulum shows us.  I think that fixed point is where we move both inward to, and outward toward when we meditate.  It's that well from which divine inspiration comes to the artist.  Everything is connected, and all is number. 

Challenge Accepted.

I've been needing a creative challenge to fuel my inner fire.  I came across the Dogwood Photography 52 week challenge.  I'm considering using video as my medium if I am inspired to do so. Week 1 is rule of thirds and I took the opportunity to visit the Columbia River the day after a large snowfall. I couldn't pick just one so I'm going to share my top three.  Can you tell I like the number 3?