jane

I keep finding interesting pieces of advice to myself that I wrote a while ago. Here are some that I thought would be nice to share here:

Basics

Commune with nature. It enhances your connection with alive, high vibration energy, your access to the positive energy of the universe.

Nourish your energy by eating energy-promoting foods with healthy, alive vibrations – living food, whole foods, nothing deadened and processed.

Practice GIVING ... without fear of losing.

Become good at something – and that just means, DO THE WORK – over and over.

Here is an allegory: There was a pottery class. Half the students were told they would be graded on their final project – namely, the three pots they selected from the semester’s work as their best pots. The other half of the class was told that they would be graded on the number of pots they created during the semester. At the end of the semester all students submitted their favorite three pots from the semester for the final review. Everyone in the class agreed that those who were graded on volume had the more beautiful final submissions. This applies to everything you may want to do: creating more, creating consistently, creating without attachment to outcomes, without fear or perfectionism, CREATING WITH A FOCUS ON PROCESS rather than product, will grow you.

I’m feeling sorry for myself tonight, as is my wont. So, here I am to remind myself to snap out of it.

• Paying the clerk at Staples for my pretty new notebook, the man behind me in line offered to brush away a “beast” I had crawling on my back. He swatted it away gracefully. He had a pretty accent. He was handsome. I’m grateful I didn’t have to see the beast – in my peripheral vision it looked giant as it hurtled through the air.

• My cholesterol is good. I made a little chart of all the ranges of different cholesterol numbers and triglyceride numbers, and ratios and whatnot, and colored the desirable ranges green and the moderate threat areas orange and the high risk zones red, and then I drew little stars at my numbers, so I could relish how green they were. I’m grateful I can take pleasure in crayons.

• I read today that drinking, even moderately, can be a factor in compromising female fertility – I’m grateful for more motivation to stick with my sobriety experiment.

• I said a prayer for a man in the car adjacent to mine at a red light, that he would have the motivation and strength to quit smoking. Then I had a talk with god and asked whether praying for other people was just empty b.s. since you can’t back it up with any kind of action. Talk is cheap, after all. Anyway, god, I said, here I am, trying to be less selfish, so I’m saying a prayer for that guy over there. Please help him stop killing himself. Then, an hour later, sitting in an AA meeting and thinking, what in hell am I doing here? I looked around absentmindedly. Sitting directly next to me, to my right, was the very same man I had said the prayer for earlier. I wouldn’t have recognized him for sure except that he had funny 50’s-style eye glass frames. I took this as a sign that little efforts to care about people count. I’m grateful to know that.

• I’m grateful the sun came out for a few minutes today.

• I’m grateful I got 20 minutes of walking in.

my new psychiatrist. LOVE LOVE LOVE! ! !

He is wonderful.

He is OLD and little and sheepish and small voiced and meek. He has a funny little upturned smile like a drawing of a smile and upturned crescent eyes like a drawing of happy eyes, and spittle collects sometimes in one corner or the other of his mouth, and he sometimes eats during a session. He is hilarious and easy not to take too seriously. And yet he is fucking smart as shit and lovely and compassionate and I fucking love him.

SIGH. Thanks great universe. THANKS.

I feel I’m on the right track here, with a good helper. I need lots of helpers. He’s a good one.

Today we talked about me and alcoholism and how I’m now NOT (woopsie daisies. I meant to write not... ) an alcoholic but I like the 12 steps and I think I need a community and I think I need some spiritual help and he was ALL FOR IT. And we talked about how I am an addict in a lot of different ways, how I do a lot of things additively, and sometimes it’s one thing and sometimes it’s another, and how I’m smart about it so I find ways to avoid being a clear cut obvious case – a drug addict or an alcoholic… but that I do a lot of things and whether or not I’m “REALLY” an alcoholic isn’t the right question. The right question is, all of my behaviors, collectively, the ones I know I do too much of… they are all anesthesia.

ANESTHESIA.

ANESTHESIA.

And the reality is, I’ve been trying to anesthetize myself all my life in a lot of different ways and it doesn’t MATTER what ways they are. The thing is to look for the use of anesthesia – whatever it is, look at THAT. And sometimes it’s compulsive internet searching and sometimes it’s compulsive eating or compulsive TV watching or video game playing or things that everyone does.

So, Ahhhh. I feel so much better now. I feel validated. I am a general addict sort. I don’t need to definitely be one specific kind of thing. I may not be specifically an alcoholic, but that doesn’t mean AA isn’t good for me. He said a lot of people could really use the 12 steps in their lives, because it’s essentially a community focused on physical health, mutual support, and spiritual growth, so I can just go and see if I like it and that’s good.

So. I am an addict in my nature and the thing to look at is the seeking of anesthesia.

He says, also, that I’m addicted to my infatuation with.. something. I missed it because I was interrupting him, because I thought I knew what he was going to say, but when I heard him say “infatuation” I thought, ohh, what an interesting word. I AM! I AM addicted to my infatuation… with certain luminous things, like potential and fantasies about the future.

No more anesthetic. I told him I got all this, and was trying. But it’s hard.

He said something quite beautiful when we were discussing how I feel I need some spiritual core. He said, well, you can feel your spirit washed away, sometimes, overwhelmed and washed away, if you try to fix too much and look at too much all at once. We need to turn the heat up a bit, yes, but also turn it down a bit.

This was upon my telling him that since stopping drinking and stopping eating carbs and trying very hard to avoid doing things like sitting in front of the computer reading recipe blogs all day… suddenly I find myself weeping every time I hear a pin drop.

You can feel your spirit washed away.

I had an image of Alice in the pool of tears, then. And I was so happy he’d used this phrase because it felt like good synchronicity.

I’m grateful. So grateful he gets the whole spiritual core part of it.

I still have to relate this other thing, this other great thing. From last friday.

But right now I’m headed off to the inaugural meeting of a brand new Artist’s Way meetup starting in Cambridge.

Morning pages! Writing! Creativity! Collages! Artist dates! I hope it’s good and will be one more battering ram working toward creating the breakthrough.