It's 1am and I've just gotten out of bed and taken a shower. The shower was kind of a religious experience. Cleansing of the soul, I took inventory. It's not normal.
Not the shower, not the being up at one o'clock in the morning. But then, what is the normal for me? I've been going to bed around 9:30 to 10:00pm and sleeping through the night, with just a few pit stops, and getting up about 8am or so. The last couple days I've been on edge because my mood is quite elevated. I'm starting to see some warning signs. Saturday night, I was having trouble sleeping, so I ended up taking a sleeping pill. That helped my mind to finally relax and I slept for a while-- several hours-- and got up with my wife in the morning. Now tonight, I slept for about three hours and woke up (got worked up) completely and couldn't get relaxed for sleep again. This isn't mania, but it's a warning sign.
My wife had the good idea to start a blog or spreadsheet of this pattern, or deviation from the pattern. Just so we can keep track of all that's going on. I'm having grand ideas of going out into the world today and making things happen. That's not to say that I'm having grandiose thinking. That would be another sign that mania is coming.
I'm up early, but I'm under control. My thinking is logical and relaxed, not racing. I do have a lot on my mind, but it's not at breakneck speed or relentless. There's a grace to it. A serenity. I'm on the right path, I sense.
So much about managing this disorder is being in touch with your feelings and emotions, being mindful. Being mindful is a soulful, spiritual practice. It allows you to be who you are meant to be.
So I know that I'm making my wife nervous with this behavior. Hell, I'm making myself nervous. But I am checking-in with myself and I feel calm, collected. Under control. I'm not spiraling or groping for great truths. I'm just living.
I really enjoyed Angels in America (we finished watching it this weekend). It's "haunting" my mind, its dialogue replaying on loops. There are lessons there, as there are in many things. Most things. When the conditions in your heart are just right, anything can be a learning opportunity.
Showing posts with label Angels In America. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Angels In America. Show all posts
Monday, March 12, 2012
Friday, March 9, 2012
What Does Your Mind Weigh?
Message from my dream this morning-- the only true ownership is self-ownership. Meaning, own thyself. Not the air, or the water, or the incorporated labor. Work is abundant. It grows from the stone, out of nothing. Tweaking the twig and replanting brings forth more life.
We can be sustainable. We can help secure the conditions conducive to life. Doing so sustains us all.
But what does it mean, really-- this self-ownership?
I think it means that no one can own another. Slavery is a no-no. A big bad. Cocka-poopoo.
And just as that is so, one cannot own the things that are sacred. The elements of the source that sustains us all. The land, the wind. The life force that turns seed into oak tree, plain into canyon.
The river cuts its way through it, finding its path around obstacles. So does our consciousness.
For me, spirituality is the source through which we are all understood, along with everything.
But I fear I'm not making myself clear. Please know that I am trying.
Religion is one thing; spirituality quite another. Religion is like a menu at a diner-- follow instructions and you'll be nourished, albeit with a greasy hangover. It says that if you read what is written and follow the way of the word, there is salvation. There is promise and hope for something much better than the reality that we encounter with our senses.
But much of what religion promises cannot be delivered. At least, as far as we know. There's been thousands of years of religion and attempts to communicate beyond what we experience as a collective reality, and far too little has been passed back, through the keyhole, to prove or explain or plainly justify the rules and regulations that have been written down in an attempt to capture the lightning in a bottle.
Our reality is a lie. It's an estimate at best. We've measured from here to the stars and back and down into the bloodstream and beyond the chemistry and the molecules and the atoms and the imagined building blocks of the building blocks. And still we have no answers. Only more questions.
Questions are the fuel of the imagination. They get us out of bed in the morning. It is this practice of judgement, not the actual ruling, that is important. As was said in Angels In America about justice-- and now I am paraphrasing, because I don't have a photographic memory-- the process of law is what is justice, not the verdict. The verdict may feel like salvation, but it too can be questioned again, under the right circumstances. We question and ponder, and that reshapes and hones reality and law and is the basic process of our justice system. And it is what is wrong-- very wrong-- about many religions.
Religions stake a claim to some holy sanctity, some static entity, of eternal truth. They build their rituals around this claim, purporting to have found the answers to what is right and what is wrong, and simply cleaning up all the messy grey areas and printing it up in black and white. But true divinity does not solidify. It is always in motion. Alive. Breathing. Blooming.
This is what spirituality is, for me. The acknowledgement of a greater than thou. A simple greater than. There is more, abundantly, in perpetuity, and it grows freely out of nothing.
At least, that was what has been on my mind today. And several other days in my life. What is the mass of the mind? And is it heavier with though or without?
Questions are greater than answers.
Today, I weighed myself. I looked down and saw a number. I realized that I was much more than that number, that my ultimate self was actually much lighter than the number. I am on a journey, and I believe that my mind and body are on that journey with me. But I am not the number. I am oh so much more than that number.
We can be sustainable. We can help secure the conditions conducive to life. Doing so sustains us all.
But what does it mean, really-- this self-ownership?
I think it means that no one can own another. Slavery is a no-no. A big bad. Cocka-poopoo.
And just as that is so, one cannot own the things that are sacred. The elements of the source that sustains us all. The land, the wind. The life force that turns seed into oak tree, plain into canyon.
The river cuts its way through it, finding its path around obstacles. So does our consciousness.
For me, spirituality is the source through which we are all understood, along with everything.
But I fear I'm not making myself clear. Please know that I am trying.
Religion is one thing; spirituality quite another. Religion is like a menu at a diner-- follow instructions and you'll be nourished, albeit with a greasy hangover. It says that if you read what is written and follow the way of the word, there is salvation. There is promise and hope for something much better than the reality that we encounter with our senses.
But much of what religion promises cannot be delivered. At least, as far as we know. There's been thousands of years of religion and attempts to communicate beyond what we experience as a collective reality, and far too little has been passed back, through the keyhole, to prove or explain or plainly justify the rules and regulations that have been written down in an attempt to capture the lightning in a bottle.
Our reality is a lie. It's an estimate at best. We've measured from here to the stars and back and down into the bloodstream and beyond the chemistry and the molecules and the atoms and the imagined building blocks of the building blocks. And still we have no answers. Only more questions.
Questions are the fuel of the imagination. They get us out of bed in the morning. It is this practice of judgement, not the actual ruling, that is important. As was said in Angels In America about justice-- and now I am paraphrasing, because I don't have a photographic memory-- the process of law is what is justice, not the verdict. The verdict may feel like salvation, but it too can be questioned again, under the right circumstances. We question and ponder, and that reshapes and hones reality and law and is the basic process of our justice system. And it is what is wrong-- very wrong-- about many religions.
Religions stake a claim to some holy sanctity, some static entity, of eternal truth. They build their rituals around this claim, purporting to have found the answers to what is right and what is wrong, and simply cleaning up all the messy grey areas and printing it up in black and white. But true divinity does not solidify. It is always in motion. Alive. Breathing. Blooming.
This is what spirituality is, for me. The acknowledgement of a greater than thou. A simple greater than. There is more, abundantly, in perpetuity, and it grows freely out of nothing.
At least, that was what has been on my mind today. And several other days in my life. What is the mass of the mind? And is it heavier with though or without?
Questions are greater than answers.
Today, I weighed myself. I looked down and saw a number. I realized that I was much more than that number, that my ultimate self was actually much lighter than the number. I am on a journey, and I believe that my mind and body are on that journey with me. But I am not the number. I am oh so much more than that number.
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