Stinkwanink

Valentine

noreply@blogger.com (Jude) — Tue, 26 Oct 2021 13:53:00 +0000

Beach (fabrics) 10x23in

Here, cupped within the brimming horizon,
held with the same yearning gravity
that spins planets courting suns

Innocence Mandala, fabrics, 9in diameter

now, while whirlygig galaxies
bloom on all sides equally infinite

Constellation (detail) fabrics

as lush within your intimate cells,
the DNA couples again,
its patient twining fingers
stroking the braille of wholeness

Zinnias (detail) fabrics

while you scratch, or fart, or sigh, forsaken,
you matter, you are spirit-matter,

the very center of everything,

Moment (fabrics) 16x18 in (available)

the vast spaciousness inside the atoms,
the zinging quarks never in one place-time
to call here and now at once;

you, that huge a trueness,

private, particular and first-time-ever,

Scorpio Rose, detail, fabrics, '97

all the way out and all the way in:

you are made of love.
Love can never leave you.

Jump for Joy (detail) fabrics

Don't Get Out Much

noreply@blogger.com (Jude) — Wed, 10 Feb 2021 23:18:00 +0000

Bob stopped by to pick up my packages and the supper I'd made for him. It's always so good to see him. He couldn't stay to holler local news across pandemic distances–one of his many jobs is pet-sitting, and he had four dogs to give attention to. "Consider me the fifth dog," I shouted, wagging. "Oh, I think we can move you up to first dog," he said, always courteous. "Top dog."

In the bare-faced Before Times, I'd get to see him whenever I had an errand to run at Home Supply, where he was the genial host, a sommelier of hardware.

I arrived once near closing. After escorting me down the aisle to the wood filler and discussing the merits of both kinds, he pivoted to a large red-faced man huffing over plumbing parts.

“Anything I can help you with, Dave?” Bob inquired from 10 feet away, in a tone of sturdy tact.

“Do you have something like this, only small enough to use with this?”

Bob considered, lowering his voice like a doctor reporting test results. I headed to the cash register to give them privacy.

By the time I’d paid and was preparing to depart, Bob had glided back up near the door. I lingered, gazing out across the street. I noticed, with a little shock, that the been-there-forever Army Navy Store had closed.

It had been dark and crammed with stuff, a vestige of a less touristy downtown. I’d felt unnerved by the seedy taxidermied fox in the window, but went in every year or so to buy another wool watch cap for my girlfriend, who likes extras for when they go missing.

“Ye Oldy Christmas Shoppy?” I said, dubious.

“We embrace changes as they come,” observed Bob, rocked back on his heels.

I held up my hand as if to block the glare. “That sunshiny attitude is getting a bit blinding, Bob.”

This reminded him of a place he delivered to where the atmosphere was very negative.

“One of the people in charge there is always angry and can’t be bothered to do anything. The other has attention deficit and does everything and nothing at once, all of it so very urgent that I get to stand around for 45 minutes waiting for someone to sign a piece of paper so I can be on my way.”

He beamed.

“So I decided to be Mr Positive there. I act way too positive for anyone to stomach, so they’ll be in a hurry to get rid of me.” He signed the imaginary piece of paper in the air quickly.

“Wow,” I said. “Aggressive positivity. I’ve never heard anyone admit to that before.”

“Yes,” said Bob, holding the door to usher me out. “Aggressive positivity. So far, it doesn’t seem to be working very well.”

Gentleness

noreply@blogger.com (Jude) — Thu, 20 Feb 2020 23:33:00 +0000

In the I Ching Book of Changes (one of the world's oldest advice books) Hexagram #57: Gentleness/The Penetrating talks about clearing entrenched destructive tendencies.

The power of gentleness dissolves difficulties with persistent influence like wind dispersing clouds or roots penetrating soil.

"The Gentle: Success through what is small.

Gradual, inconspicuous effects

are more enduring and complete."

-- from I Ching Book of Changes, trans: Wilhelm/Baynes

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When meeting unwanted circumstances, we may react with a contracted, agitated state of mind which demands quick solutions. Or, we may tend towards despondency, abandoning ourselves to numbness, inertia and doubt. When we try to force big improvements we're often dismayed to find they don't last.

How, instead, to live from what is truest in us, even when we don't like what's happening within or without? How to act from love rather than fear--not in some imagined heroic version of our biography, but right here in this humble, messy moment, alive with exactly these challenges and opportunities?

Hexagram 57, Gentleness offers a pointer: success through what is small.

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Gentleness might look like simply noticing what's happening within. For instance, here comes the next defense/attack thought, churning through the mind-field, bristling with hooks and spin.

What if I realized that I actually don't have to argue or agree with a thought? I don't have to believe it. I don't have to take it personally and make myself right/wrong for having it. I am free to not-follow it into acting-out.

I don't even need to get rid of it. I can simply recognize it as a thought-form. Such a small, small thing! And look: it's already dispersing like a weather front clearing before the wind!

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Gentleness is an attitude of healing sensitivity as we connect with our stuck spots and witness their passing, illusory nature. It takes a grounded, persistent, light touch to cooperate with the dissolving of conditioned mental habits and blockages. We can train in meeting our shifting mental/emotional landscape as non-judgmentally and intimately as a breeze touching every leaf and branch it passes.

As we continue to free ourselves according to our current understanding and evolution, our light naturally brightens. It shines to the benefit of others as well; they can sense our sincerity, and relax in our presence. Nourishing insight, vitality and creative curiosity grow in our awareness and express in our choices. This is the success of gentleness.

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To give yourself a reading loosely based on Hexagram 57,

pick a # 1-6 and consider the pointers below that correspond to it.

1. As you are able, disengage from your own patterns of defense, attack, explanation or justification--even when others approach aggressively. Stop using your imagination to construct schemes and fortifications against what anyone might do, think or feel. "In my defenselessness my safety lies."--A Course In Miracles

2. Look for hidden drains to your well-being such as pride/shame, self-pity, or rigid notions of 'how it should be.' Ask for and accept help to free yourself. Gentle, sustained, honest clearing will bring great relief and renewal. Check your dark corners and hidey-holes.

3. Withdraw attention energy from conflicts. Cease struggling to solidify a position or force a solution. Seemingly small habits of fighting mentally can keep you unbalanced and distracted, intensifying confusion and suffering. Simple self-honesty is all that is needed.

4. When you discover fear-mongering habits of thought, be clear and resolute about questioning, correcting or disengaging from them. Abstain from engaging with their seductive, alarming stories. Weed your inner garden. Watch for difficulties to resolve themselves in creative ways, bit by bit, without you having to make anything happen.

5. The butterfly is the death of the caterpillar. Before full renewal can come, the old, entrenched habits must end. Remain persistent and non-judgemental, knowing these patterns are well-established and may temporarily return. They are on the way out if you neither resist/reject nor harbor/indulge them.

6. Sincerely checking in with yourself is enough, even if nothing particular shows up or resolves. Don't overdo a search for what to clear up; you don't need fixing. Do what's in front of you now, stay simple and humble, and move on.

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I've studied with the I Ching for more than 25 years.

It always helps me reorient to my inner truth

Would you like an intuitive reading informed by this rich oracle tradition?

New View I Ching Consult will give you a fresh perspective on your situation.

-------------------------

Being the Noise

noreply@blogger.com (Jude) — Thu, 27 Jun 2019 13:20:00 +0000

For 18 years I lived reclusively in the small attic apartment of an old clapboard house on the main route into town. Chimneys ran up through the center of the kitchen and the bedroom; I tracked round and round them. Seagulls sometimes landed with hefty thumps on the roof and fussed at each other. It was like living on a boat in the sky, everything wedged in tight.

In winter it was beautifully quiet up there. With the leaves off the trees I could see to a small slice of the bay through one of my three windows. But in summer, it got loud and hectic above the road gushing with tourist traffic. I tried earplugs and imagining the waves of vehicles passing as ocean sounds or drowning them in the white noise of a fan, but still my nerves felt abraded.

One summer, construction projects for a sewer line were also happening on two sides of the house. Heavy trucks and machinery started up at 7am and carried on all day. Back-up beep-beep-beeps pierced the air constantly. Sometimes I wanted to grab hunks of my hair in each fist and rock, moaning.

My girlfriend found a way to suggest a daring question: what if it really wasn’t all that commotion which was upsetting me, but only my resistance to it? Supposing nothing between my ears seized on those vibrations, identified them as irritants, rejected them? Mightn’t the sound waves just pass right through my mind without bothering me?

I guess this question could have landed with me as irrelevant, or worse: mocking the sensitive victim of objective noise-torment. But as it happened, I felt curious. I was practicing Byron Katie’s Work, so I took the question into a self-inquiry meditation. I realized with astonishment that it really was my aversion to the sounds which troubled me, rather than something inherent to the situation. Huh. Good to know. I still didn't like it, though.

Gangaji tells a story of her teacher Papaji reading aloud a letter he’d received to a circle of his longtime students. In the letter, a man described his difficulty in meditating, since he lived above a 24 hour garage which was noisy all the time. “What would you tell him to do?” Papaji asked. The students suggested things like, ‘He should listen for the deeper Silence which holds all sound.” “He might realize that he is one with the noise.” “No,” Papaji said, “Tell him to move!”

Of course, adjust circumstances to your liking when you can. Or, maybe you'll see whether you can shift your internal state somehow. But what if you don't have to manipulate or force solutions within or without in order to feel at home?

As I've settled into more understanding of how my experience is created by my thinking, things have gotten easier. My notions, interpretations and projections may still masquerade as solid reality and I may react accordingly, but that illusion is more porous and less convincing and it doesn't last as long. I have less of a personal stake in my own role, less anxious effort to boss situations around. I'm more available to let life move me in creative ways to work things out.

After I'd questioned it, that visceral intolerance towards the construction noise somehow let go of its grip on me. This seemed like a miracle. I remained an introvert who luxuriates in quiet, but I felt more flexible—if I wanted a break, I could go somewhere else, without pining for an imaginary silent apartment that didn’t exist at that moment.

The next summer, and every one after that until I moved out, the traffic sounds honestly didn’t bother me at all.

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Community of the Spirit

There is a community of the spirit.

Join it, and feel the delight

of walking in the noisy street

and being the noise.

Drink all your passion,

and be a disgrace.

Close both eyes

to see with the other eye.

Open your hands,

if you want to be held.

Sit down in the circle.

Quit acting like a wolf, and feel

the shepherd’s love filling you.

At night, your beloved wanders.

Don’t accept consolations.

Close your mouth against food.

Taste the lover’s mouth in yours.

You moan, “She left me.” “He left me.”

Twenty more will come.

Be empty of worrying.

Think of who created thought!

Why do you stay in prison

when the door is so wide open?

Move outside the tangle of fear-thinking.

Live in silence.

Flow down and down in always

widening rings of being.

--From Rumi – Selected Poems (Penguin Classics)

Translated by Coleman Barks with John Moyne

Stopping to Start

noreply@blogger.com (Jude) — Mon, 24 Jun 2019 16:21:00 +0000

"Start small...smaller...even smaller....Start by stopping" Jude Spacks '17

My neighbor the rapid Buddhist was already whizzing away after our chat, when she turned back with one more thing. "I'd like to start writing again--but I never seem to get to it. Could you tell me what to do?"

I adjusted an imaginary coach hat on my head and responded, "How 'bout this? For a few days in a row, write for just 10 minutes and then stop."

She scooted back towards me, shaking her head. "Oh, no, no, no. I have to write at least a page...that's what I used to do. It takes way longer than 10 minutes."

"Ok, but I hear you haven't been getting to write that page lately. Why not try 10 minutes, or, say, 3 sentences--whatever seems like a very easy amount--then stop? Later you can do more--you'll want to. But warm up first by practicing ease and stopping. That's a good place to start."

I imagined other ways she could play with interrupting the habit of Not-Writing to help shift her can't-get-to-it pattern. Even by mentioning it, she could already be renewing awareness of her lucky freedom to write or not. I didn't say this out loud--she was in a hurry.

She called back cheerily over her shoulder, "I can always use practice stopping!" as she hustled away. (When I next saw her, she said she'd begun writing her page-a-day again).

Most of us can use practice stopping, especially when there's resistance to starting something creative. Even the thought of the possibility of pausing may unravel the rope in a mental tug-of-war.

What might you want to stop, as an experiment?

Maybe:

Stop pushing to prove or fix anything about you and your worthiness.
Stop overlooking that you're already essentially ok, whether you do the thing or not.
Stop trying to strong-arm or cajole or rush yourself. Stop trying to force solutions.
Stop insisting you must know what you don't know (yet). Look with curiosity towards Don't Know. Curiosity creates.

Why not stop waiting for a shinier spark of inspiration, a bigger view, less squirmy fear, a better time? Why not engage with the humble, no-big-deal possibility in front of you now? Follow the path opening footstep by footstep under your own wise feet.

You, Too

noreply@blogger.com (Jude) — Wed, 03 Oct 2018 16:38:00 +0000

You, too
lit up in brave grace, standing
(or sitting, or lying crumpled
however puny, still in grace)
Thank you.

Courage tells the truth you know so far
(Listen, maybe you tell only yourself for now)
Thank you, too.

Waiting for the moment you're called--
may you know how to say right then
what only you can say

(maybe it shakes your voice,
shakes the ground,
quakes the last leaf
of that tree always falling
in the forest no one hears)

Listen

Does it drop like a coin into a well?
Like a tumbler in a lock?
Like the full-throated silence
within a true love song?

Sorrow, fury, terror,
mama bear howls of NO–
they gather flow
all the way down
to the ocean of YES,
fierce, tender truth
that sets us free

May you know your holy human shine
sensing ever deeper truth to tell:
Thank you.

Unassuming

noreply@blogger.com (Jude) — Wed, 22 Jun 2016 15:35:00 +0000

Bloom Where Planted #11 mixed media sculpture Jude Spacks 2016

In mid-winter, around the anniversary of my father's death and my birthday a few days later, I took a break from trying to do whatever I assumed needed doing. Instead, I found myself absorbed in making little homes for the tiny statues my father used to keep on his desk. They'd been falling over and and getting lost on the table near my favorite chair

Little Goddess Shrine (detail) mixed media, Jude Spacks 2016

Barry's Tara(?) mixed media shrine Jude Spacks 2016

Four Altars; mixed media Jude Spacks 2016

Then I couldn't stop this flurry of nest-making–which seemed like good luck. I made one after another. For instance, a little angel out of birch bark, and her wild/domestic home.

Birch Angel Shrine; mixed media, Jude Spacks 2016 (available)

Birch Angel Shrine rear–stands alone or hangs on wall

Winter dragged on. The odd lots store got in some hairy sparkly yarn for $1 a roll, and I binged on almost every color. Something had to be done with it. Unexpected furry flowers appeared, and a tiny purple bird in a hairy nest.

Bloom Where Planted #1 mixed media Jude Spacks 2016

Purple Seuss-Bird; mixed media, Jude Spacks 2016

Something possessed me to bring these tousled flowers to the Library, as a token of hope for spring-to-come. It was the week of Dr Seuss' birthday, and the flowers had a Seussian twang to them, so this made a kind of sense. I brought along extra chocolate eggs, like the ones in the bird's nest, for the librarians. The flowers were welcomed to the Library's counter, the chocolate offering stashed in a drawer.

Bloom Where Planted #2 mixed media sculpture, Jude Spacks 2016

Waiting for spring is a watched pot. Waiting for spring–or for creative insight about a difficulty, or for any kind of fresh start–can be confusing. It feels so urgent, but it can't be rushed. The I Ching says, in Difficulty at the Beginning, "Restless action interferes with the creative process unfolding. If we can persevere in non-action and disengagement, the Creative will resolve everything correctly."–A Guide to the I Ching, (Hexagram 3, Difficulty at the Beginning) by Carol Anthony

The restless action that interferes with creative unfolding happens first in the head. The loyal Worried Mind persists in singing its worried song, even though it doesn't help. I was afflicted with Crack-the-Whip thoughts. "We have to hurry up and do something about Important Topics X,Y, Z and especially $!" they insisted. "We don't have time for making more of these silly flowers!"

March Plow; fabrics and digital Jude Spacks 2015

Last year, there was still a lot of snow in March. This year, the ground was bare, the colors grim and dull, the wind seasonably harsh. My inner weather felt odd. I was being swept along by a fortunate creative thaw, but I couldn't fully surrender to it. Still, even when Worried Mind staged a panic about some seemingly scary circumstances, attention kept pouring into these slow, small pieces.

Before Spring with Nest for Green Rock; mixed media shrine Jude Spacks 2016

detail, Before Spring

An unexpected gust of grateful tears blew in when this Before Spring shrine was finished, late one night. I realized: even while I'd been seeing the current landscape as dismal, something deeper must have been witnessing a living harmony, a crackling spaciousness. Otherwise, how could that beauty have come through into this piece I gazed at with the besotted eyes of a tired new parent?

I found this reassuring. However Worried Mind might fuss, Open Mind has always been here too, alive with innocent wonder and connection. How could I really know what was important, or useful, what was big or small? It seemed possible to relax more, to get by with a whole lot less of assuming I knew better how things should be.

Bloom Where Planted #3 mixed media sculpture Jude Spacks 2016

The unassuming hairy flowers kept coming, and I kept bringing them to the Library. The librarians reported that patrons were enjoying them. One person told me she had burst out laughing when she saw the most recent in the series.

Solo Flower w/ Librarian Ashley

Solo Flower; mixed media Jude Spacks 2016

They can pose in different positions.

Yellow Flowers; mixed media Jude Spacks 2016

Yellow Flowers 2

Yellow Flowers Embrace

Some have little round mirrors. Many can hang on the wall as well as sitting flat.

Bloom Where Planted #6 mixed media shrine Jude Spacks 2016

Bloom #6 from above J Spacks 2016 (available)

They can keep you company on a desk. They'll bop around on their wire stems in the wind of comings and goings.

Flower and Bud; mixed media sculpture Jude Spacks 2016 (available)

detail, Flower and Bud J Spacks 2016

When it finally warmed up, along came bugs. Some of the bugs have bits of magnet on their feet, and may stick to a can lid (wrapped with silk) in their shrine-house.

Blue Bug Steps Out J Spacks

Blue Bug at Home mixed media Jude Spacks 2016

First Bug with Mirror Moon mixed media J Spacks 2016

Now, summer is already whizzing by. (News flash: seasons, external and internal, always change–ready, or over-ready, or not).

In Jen Louden's wonderful free e-book How to Follow Through on Your Creative Project I saw a suggestion to write a letter to whoever a project was for, saying why you made it:

Here's why I've been creating these flowers and shrines for you....I'm guessing you might suffer sometimes, as do so many of us, from wanting to do something significant, something that matters, that really helps, that touches people and fully expresses what you have to express. But so far nothing seems quite big or effective or true enough and sometimes your disappointed expectations feel sore–even though you know better than to think you should be more enlightened or braver or whatever than you are.

Maybe a surprise meeting with one of these quirky little pieces could remind you of the tender, comic preciousness of simply being a life-form here, being a unique, hairy, time-limited creature made of ordinary magic-stuff, sweet and small, and just as-is. How sacred this one irreplaceable human life is, in this very instant of no-big-deal relatedness with everything!

More than anything else, here's what I want you to know: you are already so loved, this brief blooming of you, with these exact wavelengths radiating from you, here as this, now. This loves you. That's all.

Summer Bug Before Tail J Spacks 2016

Summer Bug Gets a Tail J Spacks 2016

Camouflage: Summer Bug at Home; mixed media J Spacks 2016

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I'm working on an art website (perhaps Project X which Worried Mind wishes were further along) which will eventually offer these and other works for adoption into your world. I'd also love to make a special shrine for some small item of significance to you. Contact me at judespacks[at]gmail[dot]com to start a conversation about such things?

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Want more? Read about the creative power of not-assuming and expecting–give yourself a quick I Ching reading on Innocence.

Step Aside

noreply@blogger.com (Jude) — Sun, 21 Feb 2016 16:46:00 +0000

Meh Face, cartoon sketch Jude Spacks '16

I asked a friend how her writing had been going. She shrugged and made a meh sound. The light glinted off the silver typewriter necklace she usually wears.

"I just can't force it anymore," she said.

"That sounds like good news!" I said, feeling vicarious relief.

She went on, "But the other day I saw this cloth I've been wanting to make curtains out of forever, and before I knew it, I'd started working on them." She brightened. "I'd forgotten how much I like touching fabric and ironing seams. I was so into it! I thought doing that might somehow help my writing flow more. But maybe I'm kidding myself--I'm probably just justifying my procrastination." She deflated a bit.

"I don't know," I said. "Resistance might also look like judging a movement of real creative inspiration by calling it procrastination."

"That's true," she said. "It felt right at the time, but then my head likes to second-guess everything."

"Most heads do," I agreed.

Seeing the Handwriting on the Floor, markers+digital, Jude Spacks '16

When is it a good idea to step aside from your important work, and follow a tug in another, probably less exalted, direction? How can you tell if you're indulging a procrasto-habit of scattering your attention, avoiding whatever you're truly called to devote yourself to?

Never mind that for now. Aren't you tired of wondering whether you're doing the right thing the right way? It takes a lot of juice to run that background monitoring program in the brain which identifies us with what we do, keeping tabs on our imaginary bank accounts of gold stars and demerits with extra brownie points for effort.

Refresh those poor synapses that have been laboring in the mucky ditches of old neuropathways, trying so hard to earn your keep. Take a pause, redirect, reboot. Anytime, anyway you dive back into Here-Now, you serve your own true-loving, mysterious, zig-zagging, roller-coastering Creative Process.

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Truth and Dare coaching invites the liberating laughter
of seeing through scary mind-made illusions
to the reality of your own brilliance in action.

As stale thinking clears, the stress of trying to control the uncontrollable evaporates.
You reconnect with your own renewable resources of presence, wisdom and confidence.
Your realistic graceful solutions occur to you.
You find yourself walking with a lighter step

along the unique path that feels right for you now--
exactly as you already are, before you've got it all figured out.

Want to talk over possibilities for working with Jude?

Schedule a call to Explore Coaching Options

(This links you to my on-line scheduling page, where you'll see a list of types of appointments. Select "Explore Coaching Options" and book your time. I'll look forward to talking with you)

------------------------------------------

Here's another post on freedom from forcing it: A Theory
And an article on finding real discipline for sticking with your work: Dogged Dedication

Tidy Mind

noreply@blogger.com (Jude) — Sun, 01 Nov 2015 20:20:00 +0000

If you come across something that does not spark joy
but that you just can't bring yourself to throw away,
stop a moment and ask yourself, 'Am I having trouble getting rid of this because of an attachment to the past or because of a fear for the future?'

–Marie Kondo, The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up

Since taking a ride on Marie Kondo's tidy-magic bandwagon, I've been feeling tender and open as I let go of things which I had been keeping 'in case'. It's turning out to be quite the practical practice of trusting the present moment, where I actually live.

'Just In Case' drawing (markers) by Jude Spacks

As Kondo-san says, attachment to the past can make decisions murky. But what is this 'past' I find myself clutching on to, related to some forsaken item? A memory, an outdated plan, a storyline, a shifting mental position which reality has already left behind.

'Attaching to Past Thought' cartoon by Jude Spacks

"The worst thing that can happen is a thought."--Byron Katie

Fear for the future happens in the imagination, too, like the past does. It is an uncomfortable current thought-form, no matter how valid its predictions.

Future-fear seems to be trying to protect me from experiencing thought-feelings that might or might not show up in reaction to things that may or may not occur. I doubt it helps much to prepare for what may actually happen later on–I'm more likely to be resourceful in the unknown future moment if I'm not weighted with anticipatory worry.

'Thinking Future Thought Now' cartoon by Jude Spacks

Trying to make the 'right' decisions now to keep myself from thinking unhappy thoughts later is a tense, defensive way to live. It's a neat, self-fulfilling, often unconscious, theory that if I do the 'right' thing I get to feel good, but if I make a mistake, I'll have to feel bad.

'Fear of Future Thought' drawing (markers and digital) by Jude Spacks

Do thoughts (and the feelings they bring) really play by these rules?

For instance, sometimes I see with hindsight that I made a regrettable choice and yet still feel just fine, knowing I did the best I could at the time. Sometimes I give myself a hard time with no justification whatsoever from 'mistakes'. Things happen that aren't what I imagined I wanted and I may still enjoy a clear, open, grateful mind about them–or, not.

'JoySpark Thought?' cartoon by Jude Spacks

Thought-feelings will come and go, including thoughts that call choices good or bad. Thoughts take available evidence about circumstances and spin it however they do, and, so what? Why take them so seriously? Keep what sparks joy, for now.

“I think 99 times and find nothing.
I stop thinking, swim in silence, and the truth comes to me.”

--Albert Einstein

'Blue Thought' cartoon by Jude Spacks

____________________________________________________________________________________

Want to have a happier relationship with your own thinking?
Check out whether a coaching conversation might be just-right support
for reconnecting with your own wisdom and commonsense.
______________________________________________________

Here's another post on liberation from self-government by Bogus Thought Laws:
Woman Stops Braining Herself With Carrot Stick
______________________________________________________

Innocence

noreply@blogger.com (Jude) — Thu, 18 Jun 2015 04:44:00 +0000

What are you expecting of yourself and others? Wondering how it's all going to turn out?
Want a reading about that, based on the wisdom of the I Ching Book of Changes?

Jot down a topic you're curious about.
Pick a number between 1 and 6.

Read the post below, +/or scroll down to the end to see the reading that corresponds with your number.

Innocence Mandala, fabrics, by Jude Spacks

I am always very happy to see Hexagram 25, Innocence (The Unexpected) show up in an I Ching reading. It points me back to the wholesome satisfaction of doing things for their own sake, without conniving about outcomes. The I Ching calls this "supreme success": to move into action from a mind that is "natural and true, unshadowed by ulterior designs" (I Ching Book of Changes, Wilhelm/Baynes trans).

It also reminds me that if I'm trying to force things to work out in my favor, it's likely that nothing much will work out at all—it would be better not to undertake anything with that kind of defensive, pressured mindset. Likewise, if I come from a slapdash self-indulgent mood which is the flip side of pressure-head, I won't connect with the genuine ease and sureness of innocence.

This inherent, mature innocence is not naive or impulsive. It is a state of openness to the movement of the unpredictable. Innocence orients us to the present-moment flow of creative inspiration.

When we're not expecting an outcome or projecting our own mental state outwards onto circumstances, we're fully available to the present. In the undefended mind of innocence, there are no foregone conclusions. We are at home with the fact that we don't know what will happen later, and we go about our business, naturally harmonizing with what is happening now. It feels right.

But sometimes the innocence of residing in one's center without expectation of results seems vulnerable and risky. We might think we must throw ourselves outwards into efforts to manipulate externals through expecting and projecting.

Expectations can give an illusion of egoic control. "I expect you to finish this immediately!" has a nice tough sound to it. Like, "I'll hold my breath till my face turns blue!" Maybe sometimes it works to force things to bend to your will.

But if I'm depending on getting my way to feel ok, I've outsourced my happiness, which is not a position of real power. When I expect others (or myself) to conform to my wishes, I set myself up for resentment: disappointment laced with blame.

The Courage of No-Defense, digital artwork by Jude Spacks

If we give up the willful control of expecting/projecting, what will be left? Will we just sink down into lazy lumps and never get anything done?

It might be worth questioning the notion that we're programed with a lazy-lump default we must constantly labor to override. Basically that assumes we are guilty of indolence until proven innocent, again and again.

The innocence of going with the flow doesn't mean the flow always goes where we'd like it to. It means that we're able to respond to unfolding reality with full access to our natural intelligence in the moment, unclouded by a struggle to force externals to match our projections and preferences.

What if we already have the natural curiosity, ingenuity, stamina, perseverance and all the other qualities we need to accomplish what can really be useful to us and the Whole?

People in touch with their original state of innocence are "rich in virtue and in harmony with the time, [and can] foster and nourish all beings" (I Ching Book of Changes, Wilhelm/Baynes trans).

Questions for Reflection

Consider the 12 Step slogan "Expectations are premeditated resentments."

Where might you be expecting things of others or yourself that set you up for resentment and dissatisfaction?
Scan your current plans. Are you depending on some outcome? How does that feel? Is it nourishing to you and to others?
What, specifically, might you be expecting of yourself today? What would it be like to drop that expectation, to see it as only a passing thought-form?
What would it be like to enter your next activity wholeheartedly, just to do it, without concerning yourself with evaluating how you're doing or what comes next?

Want a reading about innocence and expectations in some area of your life?

So, did you think of a topic related to this that you're curious about?
And did you pick a number between 1 and 6?
Now, read the message below corresponding to your number.
(Or, read them all and see which resonate for you).
Keeping an open mind, do you see how these pointers might apply to your situation?

Follow the original impulse of your good heart with confidence. Remain detached about outcomes, making no plans to influence what might happen. Everything will work out for the best for all concerned.
Keep doing every task for its own sake, in a flexible way appropriate to the time and place. Don't divert attention into speculation or planning about possible results. As you keep your eyes on the needs of the moment and the task right at hand, your work turns out well and your undertakings succeed.
Sometimes things happen that we don't like and which are not our fault. Act with care and integrity in even the smallest transactions; coming from your center doesn't mean you ignore the context you're in. Accommodate yourself with acceptance to the demands of the actual situation.
You can't lose what is really yours, so you can relax. Attend only to remaining true to your own nature. Don't pressure or distract yourself with opinions, desires or fears. Stay with what's essential and immediate and you'll know when and how to be helpful.
If something unwanted comes along by accident, don't combat it with external means. As long as it isn't rooted in some fixated confusion within you, it will naturally improve by itself.
If the time is not ripe for further progress, it's best to wait quietly, without planning, scheming or explaining. It won't work to try to push ahead in opposition to the way things are going. Give others space to come to understanding for themselves and just tend to what's in front of you now.

Mat for Tossing I Ching Coins On, fabrics, by Jude Spacks

I doubt I'll get to posting about all 64 hexagrams of the I Ching, but here some others, which also invite you to connect with the oracle on a topic :#3 Difficulty at the Beginning, #5 Waiting #12 Standstill #57Gentleness and #60 Limitation.

Enjoy the creative courage of your natural innocence today!

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Monster Mirrors Part 1

noreply@blogger.com (Jude) — Fri, 24 Oct 2014 19:27:00 +0000

For years now, I've been working on a graphic book about self-reconciliation called The Innocence Trip: How to Kiss and Make-Up When You've Been Fighting Inside.

This summer, I ditched the self-helpish version I'd labored over, and tried a new approach. It starts with a little cartoon about how scary thoughts seem realer when we argue with them and then goes into an illustrated memoir about my own (in-progress) liberation from guilt-tripping and other made-up mind traps.

Working on this version, I've had the turvy feeling of walking out beyond the edge of my maps. A spot of ground the size of my foot appears as I'm stepping on it, bringing a dizzy thrill. Or, What Next? doesn't appear yet, so I wait in not-knowing, and tend to other things.

Here's the cartoon intro, in time for Halloween.

To be continued....

Fun With Your Plastic Brain

noreply@blogger.com (Jude) — Wed, 01 Oct 2014 22:12:00 +0000

Neuroplasticity Success Story

A friend suffered from chronic pain for years. She experienced her first sustained relief after working with a healer whose methods apply new findings about neuroplasticity--how the wiring of the brain can transform.

She continues to practice what she learned. When she first feels the painful sensations, she reminds herself that the pain occurs only in her brain, not elsewhere in her body (where physical causes have been ruled out). Then she redirects her mind to something else, like singing a song.

Simplistic as it sounds, changing the channel this way has been revolutionary for her. She has stopped reinforcing the neural pathways of pain and has tangible evidence that they are dwindling. She is relaxing into longer and longer pain-free periods.

The Pain is in the Brain

This friend's experience suggests a powerful way to look at transforming your own mental pathways. The first, crucial step is to realize that the difficulty you face is happening in your brain.

This reframe looks simple, and sometimes it is. It might be easy to remind yourself that pain is in the brain if you already believe it doesn't really indicate something wrong in the body or the world, even though it might feel like it does.

But often it may seem irrelevant or inaccurate to see the pain as in the brain--especially when it looks like a difficulty lives outside, in our circumstances, with the brain only passively, objectively pointing it out.

The Mind is a Magician

The mind's job is to project its interpretations outwards and to believe its own conclusions. It creates the often highly adaptive illusion that its interpretations actually are reality.

This illusion makes for useful efficiency in many circumstances. We can go with our brain's best guess without being distracted by awareness that a guess was involved.

Usually the show is seamless. We might only become aware of the brain's magic of projecting interpretations as reality when there's been a misinterpretation of sense stimuli for some reason--when a mirage dissolves, for instance. But we're also influenced by a skillful illusionist when we believe there's no interpretation happening at all.

The Brain Behind the Curtain

Remember in The Wizard of Oz when Toto pulls back a curtain, exposing the Wizard as he manipulates the mechanisms that have been producing such impressive illusions? The magician brain sometimes has these Wizard-of-Oz moments, intoning "Pay no attention to the one behind the curtain"--it tries to hide its own role in creating our experience.

I know someone who lost her hearing in one ear. When she's in bed, the window is to her right, the side where her hearing loss is almost total. So now she hears sounds from outside the window as if they were coming from the left, inside her apartment.

But for her, there is no as if. Her brain confidently informs her, for instance, that a dog is barking outside her bedroom door (since she has no dog, she finds this unnerving). Her brain continues to interpret information as it did when she received sound data from both sides of her head. She gets to see the magician brain at work, spinning a story which might just as well be fiction as non-fiction.

What about mental distress?

It looks like a (forgive me) no-brainer to say the painful mental-emotional patterns that lead to creative blocks happen in the brain. For instance, if you get harassed by jeering critical voices when you try to work, obviously the problem is in the head; where else could it be?

But it can often feel like painful patterns are just the way things are, as if they were simply happening to you. Without really noticing, you may experience the discomfort of a habitual pattern as if it occurred out of reach of the brain which actually creates and projects it.

You might believe that the pain of those critical voices was caused by people who said mean things like that to you long ago. If so, you're believing a fixed story of a past. However insightful it might be about the origins of the pattern, such a story hypnotizes you into forgetting that the pain now is being invented in your current neural pathways--which can change.

Working Worst Under Pressure

Maybe as a deadline careens towards you, pressure starts squashing your inspiration. You just need another few days, or a better night's sleep. If you had more money or fewer responsibilities breathing down your neck, you'd be fine....but right now you have a real problem. You didn't make it up. It truly seems like the difficulty is happening outside the brain's jurisdiction--the oldest slight-of-hand in the mind's bag of tricks.

When you stop to consider, you see that the pressure problem comes not from the actual deadline, or the number in your bank account, etc, but from your reaction to these conditions, salted with ideas about your limitations and priorities, with a side of self-concepts about your worthiness, and so on. All that originates in your brain, not in the calendar or the bank's computer.

The Future is an Act of Imagination

You might be watching a gripping mental movie about how not meeting that deadline will lead to your eating out of garbage cans and applying all your creative zip to reorganizing the bags in your shopping cart.

"Fix it! Emergency! Emergency!" Your protective mind just amped up its job of convincing you that what it shows you is reality. "This pressure is real," it insists. And it is real, inside the mind that is experiencing it. As real as the phantom limb pain which the brains of amputees locate in a body part that no longer exists.

Future Fear

Fear can sound as certain as a meteorologist predicting the chance of dawn tomorrow morning. But fear does not have the predictive power it seems to. Sure, maybe you'll find yourself pushing that shopping cart on the street, and maybe you'll be loading it with high-end organic goodies in the supermarket.

Where does fear exist? Is it in the future circumstances and consequences you want to avoid? However helpful it might be to consider possible outcomes when planning, they haven't happened yet and have no actual reality. Fear occurs only here and now, through the mental process of imagination and the bodily sensations that reflect it.

All creative blocks involve fear in some form--fear of failure, success, or embarrassment, fear of change, of loss, of people's opinions. And no matter what their content, fearful thought patterns can change, once you realize that the pain is in the brain, nowhere else.

Got it. Then What?

OK, so now you're convinced by your reframe: you have your brain to thank for the experience of a block, not external circumstances, past, present or future.

Based on the success story we started with, your next step would be to find an effective way to change the channel and stop reinforcing the mental pathways that got you into this pickle. With practice, that old road to suffering will disappear from disuse, as new mental pathways strengthen. Brain research confirms that this is literally, physically the way it works.

Where's The Remote?

How exactly to change the channel? This is a creative endeavor of its own, calling for experimentation. Getting creative about freeing your creativity has to come out of the particulars of your challenges. What might happen if you noticed the specific mechanism of a block and then consistently interrupted it with a change of focus at the first signs?

Here are a few approaches you might want to play with.

Stop.

For brain circuitry to change, it first has to stop doing what it's always done.

When people can't use an arm because the relevant part of their brain has been disabled by stroke, re-training the brain begins with stopping using the arm that still works. The 'good' arm is bound in a sling so that some of the neurons that direct it can re-wire to control the other arm. Intensive practice with the 'bad' arm creates the new pathways that are needed.

Experiments have shown that neurons that fire together wire together--if different neural pathways are often used at the same time, they begin to physically integrate with each other until it becomes difficult to re-differentiate them.

The habit of a creative block may be made up of a lot of different coordinated factors. To stop, to put the pattern in the equivalent of the 'good' arm's sling, might mean to practice inhibiting one or more factors in an almost mechanical way.

For instance, I write very slowly. I've never been able to write a quick and dirty first draft, and I've tried. (It might be dirty, but it sure isn't quick!) The functions of editing, rewriting and writing new parts are usually all mixed together for me.

I've noticed that I often go back to the beginning of a piece and reread, while editing, to orient myself before writing what's next. Sometimes that's useful, but I'm guessing it's often part of how I slow myself down.

So I'm trying out stopping rereading what I've already got. When I don't know what's next, I simply stop myself from backtracking. I'm not being rigid about it, but my hope is that this might start to differentiate rereading and fresh writing from each other, and give me more efficiency and flexibility in my writing process.

What part(s) of your block could you practice stopping?

Curing Illusion with Illusion

Neuroplasticity research has led to relief for amputees with phantom limb pain. Often a missing limb is experienced as painfully stuck in a position it was in before it was removed. New treatments use mirror boxes constructed like the props for a magic show. In them, the brain 'sees' a mirror image of a missing limb and moves it; this allows the brain to stop sending out its message of stuckness.

When affirmations work, perhaps a similar trick is involved. You convince yourself that your illusion of stuckness has already been resolved. You might experiment with giving yourself tangible signs which mirror that the block or problem is already over.

For instance, if you chronically start worrying about money instead of giving yourself over to the next steps on your project, you might open a special bank account that you tithe a percentage of your earnings into, to symbolically or literally fund creative time. There are some other ideas about breaking through money blocks here; (remember, the pain is in the brain, not the cash or lack of it).

Attention!

Our friend at the beginning of the article takes her attention off brain-created pain sensations and throws herself into singing. When attention engages freshly, its previous focus disappears.

We've all experienced this. While you're ripping open an envelope containing the answer you've been waiting for, you don't really notice the toe you just stubbed. And if you don't feel pain, it's not there.

We often practice this kind of common sense anyway; now neuroscience explains that it actually rewires our brains. So when you catch yourself feeling stuck, put your attention somewhere else. Get involved in something completely different--go for a walk, or set a timer and doodle for 10 minutes , or, or, or....

It may take focused intention to recognize that a block mechanism is in process, and to then redirect that attention energy elsewhere. Or, it might be as easy and natural as cooperating with the urge to let out a sigh, stretch your body, take a drink of water and refresh yourself.

You don't have to know the solution yet--that may come anytime as the gift of an insight from your deeper intelligence. Your channel to the infinite and mysterious source of all creative inspiration is still here, no matter what temporary weather of reactivity you're experiencing.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Would you like to explore how you can more fully discover

freedom from stressful mental habits
and live with the clarity and ease of your natural wisdom?

Truth and Dare Coaching invites the liberating laughter
of seeing through scary self-made illusions
to the reality of your own brilliance in action.

Dark Joke

noreply@blogger.com (Jude) — Thu, 24 Jul 2014 21:43:00 +0000

One black hole says to another, "You are so self-absorbed!"

A Theory

noreply@blogger.com (Jude) — Thu, 12 Jun 2014 04:31:00 +0000

Road to the Pond (digitally edited oil sketch by Jude Spacks, 2014)

A friend felt she'd made a big mistake. Even though it had come out alright in the end, she obviously had to buckle down to some hard-labor inner work now. Where had she gone wrong? The story echoed resoundingly with unhappy themes from way back when. What ghastly hidden motives, tendencies and confusions needed to be untangled and cleared up? (In a most compassionate and forgiving way, of course). There must be something important to learn from all this. She'd called to ask for my help to go digging for it.

So many times I've diligently set about 'dealing' with an inner world snafu like this, believing I couldn't get over it until I'd bravely dived into the depths, mining for insights. But lately I've been semi-retired from busying my brain this way, even though I was pretty good at the job--a useful one at times, no doubt.

I saw a little cartoon in my imagination: I'm homeless, rattling a cup for spare change, with a cardboard sign saying, "Will delve for food."

A theory popped out of my mouth. "Fresh new neuropathways are being built, ones leading to creative, healthy ways to respond to experiences like this. So it's best not to send a whole lot of thought-traffic through right now. Let the mind slow down, give the new ways some space to develop. If you spin out a high volume of serious thoughts, they'll have to take that big old superhighway which you really don't like traveling on anymore."

Traffic

"Did you just make that up?" she asked.

"Yup," I said, "I guess so. What if there's really nothing to figure out? The voice of wisdom is notoriously still and small. Easier to hear when it's quieter inside. Amble on down a country road, without any hurry to get there. This whole experience has gone into the past now. Why not just let it be over? Play hookey from the school of Learning What's Wrong With You That Caused 'Mistakes'."

"I can't tell you how relieved I feel hearing that," she sighed.

My cat stretched in her sleep and tucked her nose under her paw. Pretty soon, my friend got off the phone to go spend time with her son.

----------

"Don’t give rise to any thought, and discover who you are."

--Papaji

------------------------------------------------

Would you like to explore how you can more fully discover

freedom from stressful mental habits
and live with the clarity and ease of your natural wisdom?

Truth and Dare Coaching invites the liberating laughter
of seeing through scary self-made illusions
to the reality of your own brilliance in action.

Fill out this questionaire, and we can have a (no charge) conversation

to explore whether we might be a good fit to work together

Drawing Papers

noreply@blogger.com (Jude) — Sun, 20 Apr 2014 18:00:00 +0000

Those Papers I've Been Meaning to Deal With For Over A Year

Before giving this prompt to my Awakening Vision Course, I tried it myself: Draw something you feel negativity or rejection towards--anything from boredom to aesthetic disgust. (I asked that they not choose anything oozy or smelly).

An experiment: Could aversion survive the beam of unbiased attention that engages with the act of drawing? Nope, not this time for me, anyway. My area of paper chaos had been evoking a mild cringe of shame and obligation every time I walked by it. Now this has simply dissolved into light and dark contrasting.

In class, I read a snippet from The Minor Adjustment Beauty Salon (A No. 1 Ladies Detective Agency Novel by Alexander McCall Smith): "If Mma Soleti thought that Daisy Manchwe nursed an undying hatred towards her for stealing her husband, then she was probably right. She would have seen the daggers in the other woman's eyes; daggers in the eyes were always visible, sometimes even through sunglasses."

I urged people to look at their object with daggers of rejection in the eyes to start with, and to let that energy transmit right onto the page--no holding back, no trying to accomplish results.

What we noticed: it's not easy to maintain daggers in the eyes. Starting that way can liberate some people from a notion of responsibility to make things look good which stifles direct involvement with what they perceive. But eye daggers naturally and quickly transmute into pure, keen attention, and even these not-worth-looking-at items began to glow on everyone's pages.

My papers remain unsorted. I walk by with a friendly smile for them.

--------

“Drawing...it is the best thing that i ever do. First of all because it gets me to be so silent. To not be blurting out what i think about this or feel about that. Second, I become an open observer, jotting down visual notes about something i see. And third, it puts me in the world of praise. To be looking upon an object and taking the time to sketch it is an innocent, unaggressive, and grounding act. It is where bliss resides. It is pure BEING. “

--D. Price in Moonlight Chronicles

Slugfest

noreply@blogger.com (Jude) — Fri, 15 Feb 2013 05:27:00 +0000

Day after winter day I've oozed around in the blahs. I don't know why I expected a gung-ho get-it-done energy to whisk in with the new year or soon after. Not what happened. My soggy matches won't light--no inspiration sparks have flared around here for weeks.

How did I get buried in this slow-poke malaise? Maybe I've tumbled into an unusually long creative mud season. Maybe not. Maybe I don't even care.

A lingering low-level flu? Some cunning (and deeply boring) form of ego-sabotage? None of my tools, insights or helpers were helping. I knew better than to beat myself up for feeling bad. I aspire to inner non-violence, even if I can't always practice the preach. But I sure wanted to slap myself (in the most enlightened way) and butt-kick out of this shrug fug somehow.

One sunny day during a thaw, I managed to get up and out for a walk around the block. Everything glittered wetly with snow melt.

On a tree near the corner, I saw a surprise: an enormous, slick slug with orange and brown striations on its back. How could it have come out this soon after the acutely cold weather we'd had? How bizarre that this jungle-sized slug should appear in my northern neighborhood in February.

As I peered at it, wondering if I dared trespass for a closer look, it morphed into a lump of bark. The shape, color and shine of moisture had made a convincing giant slug illusion.

Further along the sun flashed off something on the pavement that might have been a wet stick, but I swear it looked like another big slug, a skinnier one, maybe sliding across the street very, very slowly. Turned out to be half a pod fallen from a tree with bean-like dangling things. But I had to crouch and poke it to make sure.

Two Not-Slugs in a row. Huh.

A few steps later, it clicked: this was a waking dream sequence ripe for interpretation. I shifted identification and got the joke: I am not a slug! Even when I do such a convincing impersonation of sluggishness.

I felt relieved to try on this identity: Jude (Not-Slug) Spacks. I hadn't realized how personally I'd been taking my low mood, how ashamed I had been--of feeling ashamed? Useless? As if all lifeforms weren't astonishing, even the ones I might find a tad booger-like and repulsive. As if only perky, productive, quick-moving beings earn a right to belong here.

I felt a little more alive, blinking like a groggy creature waking from hibernation, with bad bed hair and morning breath.

I remembered greener times.

I remember driving on languid country-road curves in the soft dusk of southern spring. I bit into a sandwich my sweetheart had made, frilled with lettuce she'd just picked from her garden and washed with sweet well water. I felt a squishy texture, and my lips and tongue went tingly-numb, just before the frenzy of spitting started. I'd bitten into a hidden slug!

You are what you, eat, right?
Slug/Not-Slug, that's me.
I'll answer to either.
Or, call me Slugger, why not?

Winning at Nothing

noreply@blogger.com (Jude) — Mon, 08 Oct 2012 04:30:00 +0000

I remember feeling a tinge of Weary Lonesome, trudging up that familiar hill.

I probably thought I hadn't accomplished enough that day.

A loose-limbed man appeared at the top. He lurch-trotted down the strip of grass beside the sidewalk with his arm out like he wanted to high-five the woman ahead of me.

She kept walking without responding, clamping her purse tighter with an elbow.

His home-run grin didn't falter at all. He veered around the handicapped parking sign, careening towards me, and slapped my hand awake with a solid sting.

I so enjoyed the rest of the walk home.

Truth and Dare Group

noreply@blogger.com (Jude) — Mon, 10 Sep 2012 01:29:00 +0000

Occupy your Self
Allow the truth of who you are
to lead your genuine creative daring

This unique small creative self-inquiry coaching group is open to a few wonderful new members starting in October.

Find out about it here.

A Mind Stayed On Freedom

noreply@blogger.com (Jude) — Sat, 14 Jul 2012 02:18:00 +0000

Portrait of Fannie Lou Hamer by Jude Spacks, fabrics and paint, 35x42in, 2013

She was beaten and jailed for trying to vote. She wouldn't stop speaking, singing, organizing. She'd say, "We're sick and tired of being sick and tired."

I first learned her name from a Sweet Honey In The Rock song, which Bernice Johnson Regan introduced saying, "We are here today because of something someone did before we came."

Detail, Portrait of Fannie Lou Hamer by Jude Spacks

-------------------

Woman Stops Braining Herself With Carrot Stick

noreply@blogger.com (Jude) — Sat, 07 Jul 2012 17:39:00 +0000

List Misery

A client was deep in the woe-throes. Her mind whirled with worry and self-criticism about everything she wasn't getting done.

"It sounds like you believe that you can't feel better until you do the things on your list," I said, noting the obvious.

She was too polite to say, "Duh!" She re-explained the dire urgencies involved. Her scenarios gathered momentum, careened into side paths, pin-balled off impossibilities.

"Do you think you have to do everything on the list to feel better? Or could you do just one thing?" I asked.

Everything! That terrible anxious bad-girl feeling would not let up until every single crucial item was done. Her mind supplied even more reasons--excellent, compelling reasons.

Except, so far, they hadn't worked to compel her into action. However much the voice she called Responsible berated her, somehow the flip-side she named Irresponsible wasn't actually doing anything.

Reality testing

"Can you be certain that this theory, the I'll-Only-Feel-Better-When-It's-All-Done hypothesis, describes how this really works? For instance, is it possible that you could start feeling better, out of the blue, even if everything on the List wasn't done? Could you just be graced with a better feeling?"

Well...maybe possible.

"And is it possible that, even if you did everything on the List, you might not feel better, or not for long?"

She supposed so. Responsible might just pile on more items, and keep hounding Irresponsible into obedience by dangling the carrot of temporary satisfaction and threatening with the stick of feeling wrong and afraid.

And neither carrot nor stick came with a guarantee--she might feel better even without completing the list and she might not feel better even if she accomplished everything on it.

Plus: running after a carrot or fleeing a stick both tend to be stressful ways to live.

Does it work?

I call my version of the players in this pattern Gotta-Gotta and Can'tMakeMe. Or I use a friend's name for one of hers: Ina Wanna. My client is far from alone in this kind of inner tug-of-war.

The natural satisfaction of doing things we want to can be sucked up into this belief system and used as evidence that the carrot and stick trick worked. But maybe the good feeling came not so much from the Responsible part winning or being right, but from a ceasefire.

Maybe it simply feels good to put down the carrot/stick and relax into the present for a few minutes. Maybe that can happen before the conditions we think we'd prefer are met.

Do we really have to force, manipulate and boss ourselves around? Does it really help to get things done? It can take courage to even consider dropping the pressure. It's like being a heretic to a cultural religion.

The Happy Ending

My client began to recognize that her pain was in her brain. Her distress wasn't coming from the incomplete list or any of the possible consequences that her imagination could paint so vividly. It was coming from the pattern of conflict happening in her thinking, which didn't reflect reality.

She could see that players in the pattern were innocent. They were both out to protect her--Responsible by motivating her towards helpful action, Irresponsible by insisting on her freedom and flexibility. They were on the same team, really.

But the conflict wasn't giving her any leverage over getting things done, not in reality. Nor was it helping her feel free. In fact, it was making it much harder to do anything at all.

She dared to look within and explore who she would be without the whole pattern. What would really happen if she tried, just for the moment, stopping this carrot/stick schtick (which wasn't working anyway)?

She saw that without buying into the Responsible/Irresponsible drama, she'd be simply a person, breathing in and out--maybe picking up the telephone, making a note on a piece of paper, asking a friend a question. Taking care of the nitty-gritty of the list (or not) with the sweet, familiar peace and freedom of her own presence. Grateful. Willing. Unafraid.

It only took an instant.

----------------------


Papaji

"In the desert you see a river mirage and you are thirsty.

The more you chase it, the further away it moves.

You can never quench your thirst in that river.

This is samsara. You want to quench your thirst and

you move toward an object of enjoyment and you get no enjoyment.

Once you know, by your experience, that it is only a mirage,

that no river exists, this understanding alone is enough.

You will not run after these things. You will stay where you are.

This is the rise of desire,
to quench the thirst running after a mirage.

And nobody is happy running after imaginary rivers in the desert.

Nobody is happy. One desire leads to another desire.

Who is there that says, “I am satisfied”?

So we have to turn to that which is beyond suffering and misery.

When a desire is fulfilled, for a moment you are happy.

If you watch closely, you will see
it is not the object that gives you happiness.

In that moment there is no desire,
and your mind is empty.

This emptiness gives you happiness. "

--Papaji

--------------------------

Shake Your Meaning-Maker

noreply@blogger.com (Jude) — Sun, 03 Jun 2012 02:59:00 +0000

Looking in Mirror of Aging Beautifully

Backstory

Thanks to a recommendation on Havi Brooks' ever-wonderful Fluent Self blog, I recently read How to Disagree Without Being Disagreeable by Suzette Haden Elgin.

One of my fave examples in the book describes a conflict between coworkers following a successful sales meeting. The woman is furious with her team member because she sees him as having lied when he claimed to have confirmed with a key supplier. Worse, she thinks he made her complicit in the lie because she couldn't correct him in front of the client.

From the man's point of view, he didn't lie at all. He had a good-enough understanding with the supplier, even if it wasn't in stone. At the most, he shaded the truth in an acceptable, even necessary, way.

The underlying problem? Though neither knows it, they each perceive the situation through the framework of a different metaphor, with a different set of implied rules.

Hers: Life is a Traditional Schoolroom--in school, if a statement is literally false, it's a lie. His: Life is Football--it's ok, even skillful, to pretend you have the ball when you don't or to fake a pass--all part of how the game is played.

It was like they were speaking entirely different languages.

-------------------

What Language We're Speaking to Ourselves

We often don't notice that we've assigned meaning to a situation within a metaphorical framework, much less what that underlying frame is. Our unconscious imagery can seem like the only neutral, realistic way to see a situation, and we don't realize how it has influenced and limited our perception. Metaphor can be like water to fishes--we don't notice what we're swimming in.

For instance, we may live by the metaphor Time is Money. Or Time is a Thing (which can be divided into bits, quantified, allocated in various ways). How different the perspective offered by Time is (infinite) Space, or Time is an Ocean without a Shore! Not necessarily a better, or more accurate perspective. But by including other ways of seeing it, the experience of time opens into greater richness.

My idea of a good time: consciously playing with the metaphors we're using to organize our perceptions. This limbers up the ever-creating mind, giving us the joyful flexibility of seeing that we're making things up all the time. Which can free us from blocks and conflicts, external or internal.

Star Mirror (fabric, paints, mirror)

-------------------

Messing with Metaphors

Metaphor was the topic for our most recent Truth and Dare (Occupy Your Creativity) group call. The day before the class, I needed to make some decisions about money. I started to notice a vague anxious discomfort. I couldn't identify quite what was causing it. So I tried out a version of an exercise I'd designed for the group. What if this weren't about Money? What if it were about School, for instance?

What kind of School story might fit this situation?
I thought I already took the test and aced it, but now I find out it hasn't happened yet, and I forgot to study for it at all.

If this were like a Journey, what aspect would it be?
It's a dark and stormy night and no room at the inn.

What if this were a Place? What would it be like?
A sinkhole.

If it were a Game?
Tennis, except I'm trying to play both sides of the net.

How about a Relationship?
A child who has angered an adult and doesn't know why or how to fix it.

Scanning for the most resonance, I picked the sinkhole image.

What does this remind you of? What's the association?

That teaching story about someone falling into a hole in the road a bunch of times, but getting out of it quicker each time, and then going around it, until eventually they take a different road that doesn't have a hole in it.

I looked for how the money situation matched this. What was familiar? What hole had I fallen into again even though I tried not to?

Now the tennis-on-both-sides-of-the-net image was tugging on my sleeve. My association was about trying to manage what other people think and feel about me instead of just attending to my own business and giving my best game. That was indeed a hole I have some practice falling into and trying to go around.

I felt something click into place. Suddenly I could see that I had been making myself nervous about what another person might think and feel, as if I must be a bad girl if they felt displeased. Instead of looking out at others and worrying about their reactions, I could really check into where I might be out of integrity. I found it! (a way I hadn't communicated clearly). Easy to own up to and correct. Liberation! Out of the sinkhole for now.

Money had been a dream image, a clue, a breadcrumb dropped by the psyche to follow home.

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"Metaphors: knowledge existing

in several states simultaneously

and without contradiction"

–from the novel Alif the Unseen by G Willow Wilson

Phoenix Mirror (fabrics, thread, paint, mirror)

Mirrors

A metaphor is a mirror showing you an image of your truth. (That would make a mirror a metaphor for a metaphor ;-)).

Metaphorical description can bring poetry and fresh perspective. And a metaphor can sometimes take us beyond description. You can unpack its rules and different aspects to inform and expand what you see about whatever you assigned that metaphor to. It can point you to the wisdom available in peripheral awareness that hides if you turn full frontal logical attention towards it.

This kind of meaning-making works a bit like dream interpretation, or consulting an oracle. It calls for associative, fluid, creative interpretation.

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Interpretation

As it happened, I consulted the I Ching just before leading that Truth and Dare Group on metaphor. I got hexagram 51 (Shock) changing to 41 (Decrease).

This seemed to predict something disturbing about the class that would lead to diminishment of some kind. I furrowed my brow. The group had been going so well. Was it time for a pendulum swing, for it to fizzle in some shocking way? Was it time for some ego-decrease for me?

Maybe I could see this as a wake-up call to shake me out of identifying so much with whether the group seemed to be thriving. I utterly, completely, wholeheartedly love this group. But if I were making it mean something crucial about my own success/failure, I was certain to experience shock and loss if things didn't go the way I expected and wanted.

So why not drop the framework that I'd be evaluated on my teaching/facilitating, or even on my degree of ego-attachment–-as if this were some make-or-break final exam? Why not drop even the familiar Life is School metaphor that supported that frame? I breathed a relief sigh, and launched into the group happily, riding a metaphor of adventure, or surfing, or maybe yeeehaw meaning-wrangling rodeo.

When 2 people unexpectedly had to leave early, I thought, Oh! That kind of decrease!

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Want to play?

Pick a metaphor, any metaphor, (or a few) for a situation that you'd like to see freshly.

Answer some of these questions, or find others that intrigue you. What if this concern were some kind of a dream, or a house, an animal, a game, illness, weather pattern, building trade, relationship, country, food, family connection, terrain, body part, music, job, picture, journey, school, sport?

Let the answers be brief stories or phrases. Write quickly, grabbing the first thoughts that come, especially the quirky or unexpected. Most important: leave interpretation for later. Don't stop to make sense out of what you find. Just check into another possibility, make up another image. Keep answering until you feel a bit of relaxation of your mental grip/attention on the concern or situation you started with.

Then choose an image that feels mysterious, confusing, intriguing or resonant, and investigate what your associations are to it. Forget completely about the situation you started with. What does this image mean to you right now? What does it remind you of? How would you define it? If you had to explain the meaning of this phrase or image to someone from another planet, what would you say? Repeat with other images that call to you. Don't skip over this step as it can really pull out the less-obvious significance in your metaphors.

Finally, look in a non-literal way for what this meaning sparks as a connection to the concern you wanted perspective on. Does it give you a different language for it? Does it shift things, or bring an aha?

I'd love to hear what you find out.

Angel Mirror (fabrics, paint, thread and mirror)

I tried this out at the end of the day, looking back on it. What if the kind of day I'd had were a country? Poland.

Poland? How would I describe what Poland means to me? That despite centuries of various kinds of oppression and hardship, people there have a gutsy, grounded love of life that shines through.

Huh. I had felt ill and heavy in the morning, out of sorts with myself. But there had been a love of life shining through, all day. Nice to notice!

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If you'd like to hear about the next openings for Truth and Dare (Occupy Your Creativity) Group, sign up on the upper right of this page.

Recipe for Deciding

noreply@blogger.com (Jude) — Mon, 21 May 2012 14:15:00 +0000


*No Dichotomy*

I can modestly say I'm pretty good at Flying By Seat O' Pants. But sometimes it seems like a little decisive foresight might do a world of good for the home team. In the game of life, it can help to pick a card, any card, and go from there, without back-talk.

Consequently....

Here is one of my fave current mind toys:

Ingredients: paper, pen.

1. Make a list of "Things I might want to do" related to the decision-needing topic.

Drop any concern with How? or Why?
Abstain from But... and Because...
Include the silly, improbable and fun.
Include variations on themes, different configurations of possibilities.
Don't pre-qualify. Go for speed and quantity.

2. Do something else for a little while.

Take a 10 minute Field Trip.
Or: hum a tune
Get a little snack
Take a walk
Pat a resident pet.

3. Recall a recent satisfying decision, big or little. How did it feel?

Confident? Playful? Light and energetic?
Did the decision seem to make itself without resistance or second-guessing?
Did you sense this would be a fine move for all concerned?
Did you feel like if it didn't work out, you'd just try something else?

4. From the feeling-state of happy deciding you just recalled, read each item on your list, listening to your heart and gut.

Cross out, ruthlessly, anything that makes your energy sag. Be a warrior: the pen is your sword.
Circle anything that has a lift, a whiff of enthusiasm, a Yes.
If you truly Don't Know yet, write DK next to the option.
Let yourself be surprised.
Move quickly. Don't linger or cogitate.

5. Acknowledge:

No=Yes. No is yes to you, to your truth right now.
Don't Know=Yes also. Are you willing to whole-heartedly Not-Know about this option for now?
Don't Know is a place to stand and step on from, just like No and Yes are.

Voila! You have made decisions. To continue....

"If it's not a Hell, YES! it's a No."--Marie Forleo

6. Pick a circled option, a Yes–preferably a 'Hell, YES!'

Make a list of small, clearly-defined actions you could take to move towards it.
Clearly-defined means you can tell when you've done it, and it's within your power to do on a day of average wattage, not genius. Time limits often work well for defining actions.
Do something else for a little while. Mental sorbet: clear the palate.
Come back and circle and cross out those actions, yessing the ones with a lift....
and do one of the Yes's

Repeat as needed. ;-)

Difficulty at the Beginning

noreply@blogger.com (Jude) — Wed, 28 Mar 2012 21:09:00 +0000

Want a reading, based on the wisdom of the I Ching Book of Changes, about a difficult beginning in your life or work?

Jot down the topic you're curious about.
Pick a number between 1 and 6.

Read the post, +/or scroll down to see the advice that corresponds with your number....

Intersection (markers) Jude Spacks 2011

After the sluggishness of a creative mud season, what a relief to get a fresh start! Bright, sparkly, new ideas jostle for attention. The mind zips around like a crazed puppy, trying to sniff everything at once.

In this phase of beginning anything, so much is in flux. We may feel scattered and breathless at the variety of all that wants to zing into being. The strands of different possibilities intersect and tangle with each other, making it hard to see which comes before what, and who's next.

When you're blessed with a springtime of creative growth like this, how can you skillfully handle the confusion and chaos that may roll in with it?

The I Ching suggests we "arrange and organize the inchoate profusion of such times of beginning, just as one sorts out silk threads from a knotted tangle."(Wilhem/Baynes). We need persistence, patience, and a delicate, sensitive touch to help things sort themselves out. Sometimes the best way forward is to hold back from seeking quick results.

"Restless action interferes with the creative process unfolding. If we can persevere in non-action and disengagement, the Creative will resolve everything correctly."
--A Guide to the I Ching, (Hexagram 3, Difficulty at the Beginning) by Carol Anthony

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Want a reading about a beginning in your life or work?

Think of a topic you're curious about
Pick a number between 1 and 6
Read the advice below corresponding to the number you picked.
Keeping an open mind, can you see how this might apply to your situation?

1. If you meet a hindrance, don't act just for the sake of action. Dissolve inner obstacles within your beliefs and attitudes. Without abandoning your goal, pause, take thought, and don't be too proud to ask for help.

2. In the midst of challenges, something unexpected happens. You truly can't tell if it's a windfall or a set-back. Be cautious about premature solutions. Don't give in to pressure to make a deal that might compromise your integrity and independence.

3. You will not be able to find your way without more perspective. This isn't a time to try to wing it or slide by. For now, stop seeking resolution, ask for spiritual guidance, and wait for clarity.

4. Relax pride and take the risk of being the first to reach out for a connection. You need help in order to make real progress; there's no shame in this. Collaborate. All goes well.

5. Your good intentions are being misunderstood; explaining them won't help. For now, continue in the background without making a big deal out of it. Take one small step at a time, until the situation gradually clears up and the way opens to proceeding on a larger scale.

6. It seems like you're not getting anywhere and the difficulties are too great. You're understandably discouraged. It's natural that sometimes things just don't work out. But do not indulge in an attitude of resignation and defeat. Rid yourself of the effort to shore up any self-image. You have nothing to prove.

****************

"Times of growth are beset with difficulties....But these difficulties arise from the very profusion of all that is struggling to attain form. Everything is in motion: therefore if one perseveres there is a prospect of great success, in spite of the existing danger."
--I Ching Book of Changes (Hexagram 3, Difficulty at the Beginning) Wilhelm/Baynes trans

****************

Could you use some help with further untangling your mind about something?

See if Truth and Dare Coaching might assist.

Entering Retreat

noreply@blogger.com (Jude) — Tue, 07 Feb 2012 22:11:00 +0000

Self Portrait, markers, Jude Spacks 2012
(See younger self-portraits and reflections on arting about less-than-sunny stuff here).

This year for my birthday I gave myself a big present: a 10 day creative retreat at home.

I've taken other open-calendar periods like this in the last few years, and I'm starting to get the hang of what kind of structure supports me in risking unpremeditated new work (or just a humble return to any art practice when rusty).

This time, as my own private retreat leader, I wanted to take more conscious care with entry and exit practices.

I remembered a moving story from The Art of Possibility by Rosamund and Benjamin Zander. At a competitive university, students in a music performance class were given only one requirement to get an 'A'. They had to write a letter at the beginning of the course, pretending to look back on the experience from the perspective of themselves at the end of the class, explaining why they deserved their excellent grade.

Something about that appealed to me. The students' letters are full of authentic discovery of their own passionate commitment to their craft. But my own commitment, my own edge, has to do with retreating from the incessant habit of anxious self-evaluation which asks, "Am I doing the right thing? In the right way? How about now?" So projecting why I might "deserve" any evaluation, even a positive one, at the end of the retreat seemed a little off.

On the first day I brainstormed a list of things I might want to work on, and decided on a very attainable minimum to ask of myself daily. Then I found myself writing a love letter to my embarking self as if from myself on the final day. It felt like a great way to get oriented. It surprised me. Here's what came out:

Dearest JudeNow StartingRetreat

Thank you for being so honest about what you want. Thank you for your courage to take a retreat without really knowing what it would be about. Thank you for risking that I would be somehow disappointed or feel let down by you and do the sigh of Not Enough.

I'm so sorry for all the times I've done that. Of course it makes it so confusing how much to "take charge" and how to find the privacy of really resting into I Don't Know.

I am so grateful for this time we had together, Precious. It was so grace-filled, so full, so beyond enough! I love your willingness to keep experimenting with what structure helps us know freedom, and when resisting can be bondage.

I love how spacious this time was. I love how refreshed and sparkly-alive I feel. Thank you for this gift, Beloved!

Love,
FutureJude of Post-Retreat

It all came true!

Today, post-retreat, I wrote this report:

Was SO happy with the Conditions of Enoughness (Jen Louden's term) I'd set up for retreat. As so often, the main challenge was to wholeheartedly agree to the 'enough' part. And even partial-heartedly cooperating was actually enough in itself, too.

I don't need "Not Enough!" to vanish quicker or never appear again. I just want to hypnotize myself less often into identifying with it. As long as I don't turn that crank, the NotEnough pattern is harmless (actually, it's an artifact of early adaptation that is simply a form of love). I am not a victim of this habit of anxious attention. I am not the long-suffering roommate of inner havoc-wreakers and meanies. I'm the space, honest to god. Just the space, the alive holy space of it all....
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What would be in your love letter from a future to a current self on the borders of beginning and ending something?

Get Out!

noreply@blogger.com (Jude) — Sat, 10 Dec 2011 17:23:00 +0000

This time of year, the SoMuchToDOOOO voice can amp up to screech. A frizz of hectic rush skitters on top of the vast quiet of the Northern Hemisphere's dark time. Can you feel both at once? Just below the surface, the unmeasurable stillness of this moment in the wheel of the year?

I had been inside for I don't know how many cold rainy days, my head in the screen, pushing to get something done. It felt like I couldn't quit until I reached an end point.

Suddenly, I'd had it. Before even deciding to, I'd popped out the door for a wet walk. You can, too. That end point? It's now if you say so.

MysteryMind Course in Creating is open for enrollment! We'll have six months to meet the beginnings, middles and endings of the creative process while you bring what you're called to make now into form.