Yesterday? Probably yesterday, I noticed how the wind was coming in gusts. Each gust of wind is strong, moving limbs and debris that happens to be light enough. Dust and pollen on my porch chairs are clinging for dear life. The rug i put out to dry fell off the rail. The point is the wind is noticeable, but not frightening.
This is the beginning of spring, so the pollen, wind, and unpredictable but equally brief showers, are the normal now. It is warming up out here and the carpenter bees, butterflies, and birds are out and about, doing what it is they do. That’s none of my business.
While it is still cool out, I will go on the front porch at random points in the day. The back porch has sun and my shiny-bald-head would either instantly get a sunburn or take out the vision of an unfortunate neighbor. I refuse to store away my beanies and migrate to caps. Don’t worry, the self-negotiating is almost at an end. There will be winners and losers, if or when I decide to switch out everything.
On the front porch is a couple of chairs and shrubberies. I will sit there at times, or lean on the railing and talk to the plants or the unfortunate carpenter bee that decides to hover in my proximity too long. Nothing important, mostly random, usually rhetorical. Usually.
So far I’ve seen two butterflies, one today (reminding me to write this), and that other one a few days ago. Different ones, for sure. One is yellow with black borders on the wings. The other one is smaller and is more of a red/orange and no borders. I’ve seen them separate and one seems to prefer the dusk, which I consider dangerous because of the bats. I digress.
While sitting there watching this butterfly… flying. I was struck by how, he seems to lack any effort moving in the gusts. I expected him to be unable to fly at all given the way the wind flutters my shirt, hat, and pants. I found his ability to get to his destination interesting.
I watched as the gusts moved the grass, the limbs and leaves, particles of flowers and tree “junk” being carried on the wind. There was movement all around. The butterfly seemed to be wholly unaware of this medium. He went the direction he was headed, and seemed to get to where he wanted, chaotic looking, but calculatingly.
I could be wrong, I didn’t ask. But he looked unphased by the movement against his objective. He flew into the wind, I watched as leaves and flowers floated past him. It was in the wind, I’m sure of it.
At some point I realized that he sees something I can’t. My eyes only see what is altered by the wind, and caught in the drift. Somehow, he sees the patterns in the gusts.
Wind moves like water does. But we can see the bubbles that indicate the currents in a river, it shows us how a salmon can use them. Air is different because the currents aren’t visible. But they have those same veins and fluctuating pressure zones inside the air.
This little dude was surfing between the strong and weak forces of air moving. These veins are confirmed by his movement. As the gusts come around him, there are these seemingly uncoordinated or chaotic changes in his altitude, pitch, yaw, and power.
Watching before realizing, it looked like a naturally clumsy butterfly. Where his wings gave off too much power, often and inconsistently. And this may still be true, but for the moment I was noticing the movements as shifts to the flow of the wind.
I see myself here at the moment. Frictionless.
Sure we are ALL happier without resistances. It might seem obvious when phrased that way. We complain, internally or externally about the resistances that chafe our hide. But in our lives, we accidently (incidentally?) seek out drama, to induce anxiety, and confirm our traumas. Generally speaking, of course.
Life is traumatic and we haphazardly redistribute trauma without being aware. So naturally as we interact with others over the ages, we are learning and living within the rules and established protocols of those who shared their traumas. “Sharing is caring…,” or something.
They come from anywhere, everywhere. Our parents, other people, events, it doesn’t matter. Something will traumatize us and start the ball rolling. Trauma doesn’t have to be big or fancy, just emotionally noteworthy. Only we get to decide that, when we decided the emotion was something identified with.
After that, and until we observe ourselves, we install that trauma to define our lives. They are written and established rules to live by now and shape us to encode our “meatsuit’s” reactions. We seek the prescribed amount of drama in the specific flavor of our angst and then are sure to experience the anxiety that resurfaces and reinvigorates or trauma.
Even if your anxiety is immune to being activated you will explore the exotic “excitements” of the human experience. Maybe not even jumping out of planes, but debating, kink, trolling on the internet, or being entirely too focused on making others happy. That chemical cocktail has a few powerful methods to bring back those things we feel and should be experiencing.
We want the warmth of the familiarity of the trauma and not the activation. The emotion doesn’t actually go away until it is reconciled, and dealt with adequately.
This dance with drama is just as determined as that butterfly was to get you where you need to be to deal with the trauma. It will find the path needed to get a better position to confront your emotions. You may NEVER see how this happens in your life, but you will return to the same cycles of emotion, you have long called “normal.”
Now, my frictionless is different from that one. I found a way through the trauma drama. It got reconciled and now there aren’t conflicts that exist for me. Pretty much since October-ish my anxiety, depression, and feelings of shame have by and large disappeared. They’ve dissolved.
“He’s fixed!”
Well, no. That isn’t how I see it. I am now focused on the experience instead of the outcome. I wanted things to exist a specific way. Everything I did was to focus on making that happen the way I believed it should. I defined how I would achieve it, the metrics to determine progress, and the execution to get to that objective.
That was abstract. I wanted to be at Duke. I didn’t want a new environment. I felt what I did mattered there. I didn’t want to lose the feelings of value, success, and being seen. Those focused me on the outcome and not the experience.
When a new experience was putting an outcome in jeopardy… I resisted that experience and this went through cycles of existing drama, causing anxiety, and triggering burnout. A trauma of inadequacies. That drama was a fuel I have since found a way to operate without.
What this means in practice is when an emotion comes up, instead of forcing it back down or ignoring it, I look for ways to approach it curiously. The idea is, “if hunger is telling me I need food” and “hitting my toe on a bed post is telling me to go around it,” then feeling a strong emotion, is also trying to inform me of something.
“What?”, you might ask.
Well apparently bringing a Meatsuit Operating Manual through the exit of a womb is frowned upon or something. To be fair, it is probably larger than it should be with all the different languages.
I wouldn’t say “I’m excited to have bad or hard things happen.” But currently, everything is classified as “an experience,” and noticing when I define things as “good” or “bad” is providing me with information, but not a story.
To be clear, this isn’t experienced as numbness. I want to point that out specifically, because there is a form of depression that can sound similar and is considered numbing. This is not that thing, I’m observing. This has active curiosity and awe that provides me with freedom.
It is freedom.
This freedom has allowed me to see the patterns emerge that expose the rhythm we dance to in our daily life. Like what I wrote about above.
Our rituals (from morning coffee to bowel movements) are part of those rhythms. Spiritual life or religion isn’t meant to necessarily be our focal point, they simply offer some structure to the dance number.
Most people chase the aesthetics—lighting incense, studying crystals, hitting church, praying, manifesting, floating in bliss. Anyone can meditate on a mountaintop. But can you hold ground when someone disrespects you? Ram Dass has said, “If you think you’re enlightened, go see your family.” Pretty sure that nails it.
We can easily write about gratitude but it gets harder when life is falling apart. Perhaps I feel oneness now and when my ego goes buck wild it will become unrealistic.
The point is that spirituality, enlightenment, and awakenings aren’t escapes. They are operating on a different current though. Where I once spent my energy battling the air to find that perfect zone of emotion-without-confrontation it is now being used, much more effortlessly, to pull me on a thrilling adventure.
By now you need some meaty thinking.
A Stoics’ perspective to happiness, is to accept the facts as they are and then decide what you’re going to do about them. I got no beef with that, honestly. I would add, instead of try to see our events as “good or bad.” We should consider those “heads or tails” of a coin with the side you are observing. Those “facts” will have a shade on them to help identify why we feel it has a “negative” or a “positive” feeling associated with it.
Released
Spirituality isn’t about transcending (leaving) the human mess. It’s about transforming how you show up in it. What are you actually reacting to? Use curiosity to find out what you are aware of, and let your emotions guide you. Don’t fight them, observe them and let them do what they need.
You might cry, or laugh, or simply yawn until you feel something inside you open up. A thirst that can’t be quenched any other way. Find that perfect beverage.
Find your frictions, rules, restrictions, and points of resistance. Experience them as invitations, find how they move and follow them for a1 ride of your life. If you feel good about it, share with me. I’d love to learn what grows.
Not “The”