Clearing: Late Night Log

Hectic day in a
Busy week,
Couldn’t stop for anything,
Had to go at peak.

Drowsiness set in
At the end of the evening,
Forget all about blogging
And writing and believing,

Trouble picking a topic
Just driveling along,
Trying to say something
But fuzzy mind is dawdling.

Did some visualizations
And found some rest,
Putting all together
To prepare for the next test,

Hoping for the best,
But trying to be in this moment,
Relying on now instead of
Resting on hope,

No time to mope,
Have to pull up my socks
And get ready for more,
Though not knowing what it’s for,

Hence, have to sleep loose,
To be up for anything,
I need to be equipped
In case the chips slip,

I can’t afford to get depressed,
As that always makes a mess,
Of my mood and my sleep;
So, no more ruminating
And off I go to bed!

Clamour: Mind Flutter

Pain, loss, grief,
Commentary and reaction,
Judging and rage,
Don’t like this page.

Expanded attention
To let be what be,
Letting inside be
And outside be.

But the arrows
Kept flying,
And discouragement
Dropped by for a visit,

Yet felt good
About facing this onslaught,
Really being there
For this projectile barrage,

Self-consciousness,
Irritability,
Rumination and worry,
Struggling to include it,

Frenetic energy overflowed
Into compulsive thinking,
Then converted to
Walking and stretching,

Working with agitation,
Containing it,
Being it,
Waiting for it to go,

Besieged by longing
For a slow down,
Yearning towards ease,
But chaotic mind,
Not easily appeased.

Civilize: Thinking the Unknown

Thinking, ‘this is unknown.’ Thinking, ‘the unknown is somehow dangerous.’ This is thinking. Recognize, accept, investigate, non-identification, fold it into practice. I did not always think this way. I thought I knew what I was supposed to do. Now I know better; now I ‘don’t know’ better (accept not knowing better than before).
Perhaps practice is not about knowing but about how to ‘don’t know’ better. Once upon a time, I had no trouble at all not knowing. Then for some reason I got the idea that knowing was the thing to have confidence in, that knowledge was the place to anchor myself. But what is knowledge? What is knowing?

Maybe it’s good to know certain methods, certain techniques, but at the end of the day, there’s just this moment. Ironically, that’s how I lived in the first place; that was how it was early on. I was taught something else that was only half of it. I took this half for the whole and abandoned, forgot the other half.

I was persuaded that this other half was dangerous, unsafe, but it’s merely the other half. This perpetual contraction is learned, required effort. It’s something I learned how to do. Thus, all I am learning is balance between the innate (what I came with) and what I have learned, between instinct and rules/philosophy/structure/ culture/order, between chaos and order; bringing chaos to my order and order to my chaos. Life is a mixture, a blending, a continuous, unified whole.