Manifest Spontaneity

It’s been a while since I’ve engaged writing here specifically as a practice.  The most recent posts have felt report-y.  So here I am.  I don’t know what I have to say, but I can trust this welling-up feeling.  Is it hope?  Hope that something good will come out of me?  Something helpful or insightful?  Yep, that’s definitely in here.   Relationships.  That’s where a lot of the juice has been for me lately.  Just writing that, it’s like blowing on a bed of coals glowing in my diaphragm.  Relationships are hard, and I love them.  I think I take refuge in an image of myself as successful in my relationships.  When I get really discouraged and hopeless about my research, I find myself trying to latch on to and shore up my relationships.  “I refuse to be a workaholic, because relationships are what will really make me happy and proud,” I say to myself.  I’ve been doing a contemplation recently on impermanence and the reality of death.  Every relationship I have now will dissolve.

        On Monday, August 1st, having been back for 5 days, this is what I woke up to: I’m going to try writing my way through this.  Paralysis.  Feel SO alone.  I replay my interactions over last week.  Only remember the ones that felt painfully disconnecting.  Think about the people I feel closest to.  They feel so far away.  This feeling like, “How can I even…?”  Tears roll down my cheeks.  Actually, I’m encouraged by the tears.  It’s the numb heart I fear.  What one little thing can I do?  I know that staying home and finding something to occupy my mind, avoiding this feeling, these feelings, won’t help.  What about all those who sob and don’t know why and come up with their own worthlessness?  Do I believe that I sob because of my own brilliance?  Honestly right now it sure feels like brilliance.  It’s very hard to look directly at.  Having relaxed some, there’s a monolithic quality.  Like the feeling of a rock on solid earth just after the single thud of it’s la

Sun Dragon submitted to Stanford Solar Center by Henry Roll.   I just got back from a 3 week program at Shambhala Mountain Center.  Re-entry into my midwestern PhD life has been anything but what I expected.  Being in a 3 week intensive meditation program surpasses any description, but it’s sort of like experiencing your whole life through both a microscope and a telescope at both 0.5x and 1.5x speed.  That feels like a pretty apt description, but I find myself frozen up, thinking I can’t possibly convey this experience.  And I can’t.  But I can share something with you.  This is what I want to share. One evening after a lot of processing with Maitri during the day, I really needed to be alone.  During dinner, I was thinking that I was going to go somewhere outside and just be with myself and settle into what I was feeling.  All I could do was go to the tent.  I lay down and I was overwhelmed.  Tears welled.  Tears streamed.  My thoughts leapt from the past 5 hours to