Recent photos of 'growth'

It scares me to post these things. I don't want people to be afraid or feel bad. Heck, I don't like looking at them either. Much more fun to be in denial about the whole thing. For contrast, our healers say it looks bad because it's dying in all the gnarly looking places. We choose to be optimistic. Why wouldn't we? What did I used to say? "It may kill me, but it's not going to beat me." I'll go with that.

The thing that is inherently unfixable

The truth is, the realization is, that I can't freaking fix this and even if I could, eventually I'd have to face this truth again, that I can't fix my life in such a way that there is no death, if you will. The death thing is the ultimate unfixable situation, that's why I'm using it here. Other issues may or may not be solved by employing thought and action but this one thing is inherently unfixable. If we can come to terms with that sooner rather than later we can face all of the events in our lives in a way that maybe gives us a great deal of peace and freedom. It feels to me that accepting that ultimate existential reality opens a gateway in myself that allows an appreciation for the beautiful things to flow in and through me. The 'if only' dissipates, the denial of what is true evaporates like the specter that it is leaving nothing between myself and the greater part of existence which from this window looks like late afternoon sun on the grass, the smell of plumeria blossoms and bird song.

Life is...

It does what it does. Disatisfaction is inherent in the experience of being alive. Even in a perfectly happy life, eventually there is aging and disability and death. Much more commonly there are many experiences along the way that are painful or feel "wrong". Maybe not until there is a problem that the mind can't solve, that action can't overcome do we finally recognize and perhaps employ a completely different operating system that is so far removed from thinking that the two are not even in the same universe of experience.

Dissatisfaction and suffering propel us to inquiry

Dissatisfaction and even suffering are what propel us to inquire, to ask, to wonder about life, about our existence, about what is real beyond material things and activity. What is true?

First days in Hawaii

First days in Hawaii. Still not quite here. Sleeping, looking, listening. After weeks of doing "Am I attached to this, can I let that go?" Living in the world of STUFF so much more than living in a world that is integrated with both stuff and truth. Making the shift slowly.

James Baldwin

‎"Any REAL change implies the break up of the world as one has always known it, the loss of all that gave one identity, the end of safety. And at such a moment, unable to see and not daring to imagine what the future will now bring forth, one clings to what one knew, or thought one knew to what one possessed or dreamed that one possessed. Yet it is only when man is able, without bitterness or self pity, to surrender a dream she has long cherished, or a privilege she has long possessed, that he is set free-that he has set himself free--for higher dream, for greater priveleges. --James Baldwin

Real Change Implies the end of your world as you know it.

‎"Any REAL change implies the break up of the world as one has always known it, the loss of all that gave one identity, the end of safety. And at such a moment, unable to see and not daring to imagine what the future will now bring forth, one clings to what one knew, or thought one knew to what one possessed or dreamed that one possessed. Yet it is only when man is able, without bitterness or self pity, to surrender a dream she has long cherished, or a privilege she has long possessed, that he is set free-that he has set himself free--for higher dream, for greater priveleges. --James Baldwin