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Ph.DONE.

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After one helluva year, it’s done, the dissertation.  And Maitri and I, we have a son.  He’s sleeping up against my chest right now.  Those two events, my finishing my dissertation and the birth of our son are inextricably intertwined. So I feel like this is the end of a chapter.  The manifest spontaneity chapter?  Mmmm…..No.  Actually, maybe I’ll go back to that beginnings and vision page.  And we’re back. I started this blog-project with the intention of writing more.  Writing from authenticity.  Manifesting spontaneity.  It’s hard to tell whether this project helped me write my dissertation.  One thing I do observe: writing frequency on this blog was inversely proportional to writing frequency for my dissertation.  I do think that this blog helped me.  Whenever I got stuck, I could come here to write.  I think this outlet kept me from stagnating quite so much.  Getting used to writing, no matter how I felt.  So what will this be now?   Before I answer that, there’s an
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Ouch

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So hard.  Afraid to let the words come, but I think I just will let the words come.  And it's hard.  The feelings are down below where the words swirl.  Falling apart.  Falling apart.  Holding together and falling apart.  Tired and afraid.  What is cowardice? Right-hand vajra-fist itching for the tip of the ink-dipped stroke-brush.  Heart feeling like a sponge full of tears.  I am hesitant to squeeze.  I remember Nayyirah Waheed, "i am a silk field of vulnerability." Cheerful low-key beats palpate my spongeheart.  Do tears wring like freedom? Yesterday, I was one of two people facilitating the Denver Shambhala community meeting.  I've been reflecting on why I feel so exhausted afterwards.  I don't think it's just the community meeting.  It's days and days of feeling.  I remember a recounted anecdote: Trungpa Rinpoche saying to Allen Ginsberg, "Don't you trust your own mind?"  Don't I trust my own heart?   Trust my own heart wit
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My out-dated future self

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About a year and a half ago my friend and editor told me that she’d like to see me write a piece on my life journey/direction and how finding and practicing the Shambhala teachings has influenced my trajectory.  At the time, that writing project seemed attractive, but daunting and I told myself (and her) that I really didn’t have time to do it right then.  From one point of view that’s true.  I could also say that I don’t have the time right now.  There are too many other things to do.  Finishing my dissertation.  Finding a career direction.  Establishing myself in a new city.   But when I look honestly, the truer reason that I don’t want to write that piece right now is that the course correction is still in progress.  I don’t now what I want to become, what career path I want to take, what role I want to take in shifting the cultural currents of today.  I do not know. Sculpture by Jamie Salmon, accessed at  https://www.trendhunter.com/trends/photorealistic-sculptures#!/photos/
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Thirst

I've been feeling like I should write for a few days (or maybe weeks) now.  Going back to the practice of 'manifest spontaneity', what arises? I'm tired, but not sleepy tired.  I'm tired of avoiding my experience.  And I've been doing a lot of that lately.  Reading lots of sci-fi and stuff on social-emotional learning, but not what will help me finish my dissertation.  Not emailing the people I need to email to get my data analysis rolling.  Cowering at fear is exhausting.  And so habit forming.  I have the itch to switch over to i-books and pick back up in my sci-fi novel right now.  There's something else down here too, though.  It's not just tiredness and avoidance.  Longing.  Longing for genuine connection.  Longing to be seen without the cheapness of having to confess everything I feel like is wrong with me or every stupid thing I've done.  Just thirsty for water, as opposed to a fancy cocktail, perfect latte or the IPA that gets that flora
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Moved

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Miss you.  Miss who?  Miss Yew, the well-bowed broadheart.   My heart swirls.  Head furls.  Sometimes I can just listen and write what I hear, but today, few words are heard. I need to get a picture of my cat.  Rather, I need to print one out.  He has died, and I am sad.  It happened moving across the country and though I’ve arrived here, in my new home.  I can’t seem to let it sink all the way in.   
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The self-flowing river

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I haven’t posted here in quite a while.  I’ve been trying to wrap up data collection for my dissertation before I move (3 weeks!!!). I keep thinking about how I work with my mood.  I call it my mood but it’s more than that.  It’s my physical energy level, sleep/wakefulness, gusto for life, breadth and engine of curiosity.  Not hard to see that all those things impact my relationships pretty directly.   This morning I’ve been thinking about movement and flow, momentum.  The most ready image being a river.  Only a fool would try to stop a river altogether.  Doing so would be ignorant of the immensity of force generated by the environmental conditions culminating in (or descending into) the river.   River in the Blue Ridge Mountains.  I found it here . How can I guide this mood-momentum in a beneficial direction? (I intentionally avoided using ‘productive’ there.)   Gentle firm pressure might shift the course, but no dams, no 180-degree course reversals.  
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Spiritual Practice and Mental Illness OR ‘This’ll go away once I’ve practiced enough, right?'

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I’m often questioning the relationship between my mental illness and my practice path.  Sitting here I’m at the end of a pretty intense week.  On Tuesday I was sobbing like I’ve never sobbed before.  On Wednesday I was mostly anxious, Thursday I was getting hypomanic and I don’t know what’s been going on today.  I would say hypomanic because I woke up about an hour before my alarm, but I had to take a nap because I was so exhausted this afternoon.  So something other than hypomanic.  Maybe today was a transition day. Why am I writing about this right now?  Well, my mood has been as the forefront of my awareness, clearly.  The second thing is that I just read a sort of micro-memoir of a pretty famous dharma teacher in which he talked about experiencing clinical depression, viewing medication as the last resort, and left it ambiguous whether practice was sufficient treatment for his depression.  The feeling I got was that he did not in the end ‘resort’ to medication.  When I use th
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