The Way-Back Machine: A Rebirth

Most of us can agree, that any experience we have had is stored in the body, waiting to influence our next move or interaction in a stealth way. One might never recall certain things just because they were painful the first go around. No need to relive old pain, there is plenty enough of brand spanking new pain to involve yourself in for eternity. Which is probably the reason why most people don't explore other avenues besides reviewing it with a psychologist. Like when life presents a challenge like divorce, break-up, alcoholism or job loss. Most would approach new problems as they develop, understanding how to cope with them as they unfold. When I was younger, I saw a psychologist after a job loss seemed to pull the carpet out from beneath me. After a couple of sessions unraveling my past as a clue to why it was a difficult time for me, I found myself with more issues than I thought, I came in with. I was intelligent enough to know that she would have to steer me into thinking differently about what happened currently and the past probable causes. But that it was going to me that made changes in thought patterns or perception and so I discontinued and started a new business. That kept me busy not to wallow in my misery just enough, but that I had stamped back down some of the causes which were too painful to deal with.

If I look back now at my life, then it did seem like behavior/problems were bubbling up in different ways, while at the same time I wasn't totally useless. I was able to cope, keep some friends, and be involved in relationships.  There lies the problem if it doesn’t affect you enough to make you want/need a change then it all seems fine. But various times in my life I would look at others, and wonder why they seemed to have an almost carefree life, and things came up rosy more often for them. Sometimes it is just a one-sided perception, but other times it is spot on with its ability to show you that something is not quite right in your life.

There is also the reason that once I had been exposed to the brightness of someone who has a successful life made better by a holotrophic breathwork session. He also gave me my first one to try as a gift. And my second session last Sunday, was definitely a birth trauma leading to rebirth. It seems to follow going back in time from my first session to trapped feelings surrounding my birth. Most babies don’t want to leave the womb and so begins maybe the first fear one encounters. You don’t remember it, but your body stores it. Now, of course I will never really know if my session was rebirth or not, but as an intelligent perceptive person it did seem very close. A black hole surrounded by golden light, and I encountered a fear where I was flipping my head left and right, and broke into a scream/cry, “NO” while crunching up into a ball for quite a long time. Later, it subsided into a sense of forgiveness for me, and others. Then as the music got more peaceful, morphed into a resurrection of sorts, a heart opening. It was resolved in its own way, and has left me exhausted for a few days. Emotionally drained, but not in a bad way. I do feel calmer, and able to let things go easier.

One might say he made this all up to conquer it, or it was never really a rebirth just symbols of what I might be holding on to that needed a release. (Perhaps it was my near death or the insertion of stomach tube?) That the body only replayed something that it is familiar with or the active mind made up, but time will show me the scope of change brought on by whatever this experience was. Subsequently, after these last two sessions my dreams are current time wise, meaning, I think that I am not going over childhood fears or traumas and I even said my current age in one a few nights ago. My dreams have also included a new conscious awareness of absurdness of them when I am dreaming which then takes me out of them calmly.

My intention was to make myself as well adjusted as I can be, so that my partner will sense a greater stability with all the change he will encounter that is outside of us. So that in our home, he won’t feel like a stranger with less of my unresolved body sensations that could percolate out with our marriage. It was never a perfect world, and he has had a difficult time himself, and I don’t need to add to it. 

The removal of obstacles chant

Life is ...a Set-up

All wrapped in me, we stumble through life trying to find meaning. Often while wasting time searching out all kinds of supposedly happiness, that lie outside of our little bubbling internal world. So, here I am, fixing all the things I need to so that when my partner arrives, I can spend all my time with him showing him around, with no pressing projects to finish. It is becoming obvious that I am continuing to set him up in the best way, I know how. It will become his house soon enough, I was a temporary babysitter, really. And re-coating the floors today, I realized to love him ...was to believe in him, giving him as much help as he needed to flourish. Many years ago, when he was between jobs and was kind of lost I kept offering to help him finish school. Too proud at first, to take me up on my offer, he resisted. Knowing him now, it was to preserve our love by not being a taker. Then one day he decided, knowing I would also have to help with support him for a while. He got a loan for the first year, then the Thai government stopped the loans, not wanting too many people smart as evident by the current political turmoil. Luckily, he was well into it to quit out of pride, and I jumped in to help.The rest is our history, and he went on to a masters while working at the same time.

Now, for him to leave his country, and almost everything he knows is brave and he does this out of appreciation for me being there for all these 13 years. I saw a beautiful transformation in all these years, and when he had the visa in his hand, a humbling and loving appreciation which he recounted with true honesty. He never thought it could happen, beyond most of his dreams. I replay that day in Bangkok over and over in my head, because it all unrehearsed and true to the love we share. Our “marriage” was years ago, and the upcoming legal one will just be icing for us. Meanwhile, I work hard on letting go of any expectations, knowing him well enough to be able to work within his capability.

My recent holotrophic breathwork sessions have released a lot of deep down internalized anxiety from my childhood that would direct how I see the world and react in the past. And I did it all to make me the best partner I can be.

One can find meaning in life by helping others. You don't have to be a mother or even a lover ...just someone searching for meaning to our complex life. Helping others you will, at one point, find the greatest love of all...yourself.

Don't Fight What is Naturally Occurring

First of all, I am writing this to help myself remember certain facts about life that we often overlook. If any of you get inspired or awakened to reality, all the more better.

A common disease we all have is one in which we fight ...what happens naturally. Like when someone is not looking and cuts you off when you're driving, or plastering on one more expensive cream hoping to look like we did at 20, or even friends or family dying whether through aging or disease. It doesn’t mean that we can’t get mad when the person cuts you off, or disappointed when you look terrible in the morning, or grieve when people die. That is not the point. It is more of an internal wake up to what happens naturally, and that any action of resistance only makes us more disturbed or uneasy. One would best approach this is in awe or surprise, and gradually with wisdom it would mellow down to just a normal fact of life. Surely, a wise grounded person would develop a seemingly detached (looking) emotional connection, while at the same time exhibit compassionate awareness to everything the world throws at us. That is what we can work toward, instead of ignoring or trying to ignore the suffering that exists out there and the suffering we tack on to ordinary existence (the fight I speak of).

What does it take to get there? I have some ideas, but being not fully realized they are just opinions. You can hear them or add to them or throw them out the door for that matter. With a bit of gray hair and survival skills intact it seems to me, one has to first be aware of everything you do to escape what is happening naturally. That can be drinking even casually with friends complaining about life, which comes so naturally because it is often funny what we encounter that we had never planned on. It can be relaxing with the TV on for entertainment or company, or surfing the net to find the most outlandish viral video or finding politics amusing. Even sometimes we engage in physical activity to pause our brain from reality of day-to-day life.

Being aware of each time and why we are doing each thing, while we do it ...it's often called mindfulness, and will gradually ground us. It will unable us to see the reality of our escapism. I want to stress that this sober awareness does not make you morbid, or turn you into a nihilist when done with a long-term wisdom goal in life. In fact, the release you get from stopping running from what is naturally occurring brings a happiness that is more balanced and true to our being. It is something to work towards, bringing more present awareness in everything we do, fine tuning and rebalancing along the way. That it is work, with a keen eye on who we want to be. It is for people who are tired of the way we dealt with life in the past or that it was never quite working. It is not for people who see nothing wrong as it stands, for even they are naturally occurring in life.

I had the great fortune to live in Thailand for long time watching and living with a Thai showed me the wisdom that anyone can have and untapped joy when you fight less with what is naturally occurring. Even with the great demonstrations going on now, and with the whole country in turmoil, people still had a smile. And you thought all my wisdom came from within...hardly. I did use some of the wisdom through the whole visa process and with my partner...at times, because it takes awareness.

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The photo above of the shrine after 6 months planted under a bodhi tree, where I lit 3 joss sticks every time I passed, and people added offerings to it as well.

Find the Peaceful Cat

Not a Path, Nor a Choice

A year and half ago, it was beginning to look like I would go on my spiritual journey, and maybe in the process I would figure out a good way to bring my partner and I together, naturally. We do fine apart, which has actually helped us grow gradually and more soundly than most. He has a good job, and asked me to move to Asia to be with him. But, I felt that we needed to somehow seal our relationship that would allow an easier passing of the torch, when I die. Sure, I have a will and trust, but as a married couple it would be more financially wise. Plus he has never got a chance to see my life with no visa.

Continuing as we have while exploring how best to link us easier, like a making a home here in Asia, closer than the U.S. to him. With my brain injury, it is damn near impossible with the damage to speech and tone areas of my brain to facilitate learning a language. Jeez, it took my 5 years to get to the lousy English I speak now, stunted and truncated. I speak like I have been drinking, a lot, and even one time a police officer in my own business accused me of drinking when I called them for a theft. That is another story. So, with this in mind last trip I explored other English speaking places to live. I went home last time here, unsettled with no clear answer what or where to go next. I felt a couple of times I acted out my frustration of no clear answer. My spiritual path was a turning into a kind of avoidance in some ways.

While home I did another 10-day Vipassana last May, and upon completion the news was coming out that gay marriage was winning in the courts. DOMA was struck down, and Bill Clinton is still trying redeeming himself of his connection to this discriminatory law. I worked on this for over 20 years, protesting, writing emails, joining campaigns…and here it was.

There was a now a choice, and now I can chose to run with it or not.  The decision to marry would take my original intention further to a new level of giving my partner more opportunities. Because he has shined with everything, when I have helped ...and been very appreciative. It was never a hand out, it was more like a hand up. And beneath all my flaws, he saw a good heart.  If I did not marry him, and chose my own spiritual path over him, than I have not learned anything at all. The choosing mirage was disappearing.

My mother gives all for her children, and if I take after her, I should at give all to my partner. So, I hired a lawyer and got on with a fiancé visa, a month after the news. All along the process, I have given him an out, and still do if this is not for him, but at least he can try life in my house. It was a year’s process and it was never easy, and at the last minute they asked for another document.

It will be huge change for him and at times, he acted like it was not serious. Which would confuse me. It seemed now… looking back, his background of being abandoned by his parents at birth, made him able to cope with life’s drive-by's by not putting it all in one basket, so if his visa passed... he would prepare mentally, then. He thought it would never happen, so he postponed any feelings attached. Now, that it is concrete, and his ticket booked, and marriage planned he has relaxed being while being excited. We get to experience a whole new level of appreciation of each other, even after 13 years. Naturally bonded. To think we talked about this for years and exchanged rings in 2008. Now, I am only scared of crying at my own wedding.

Stretched Between...then a Release.

It was a sunny on a warm white sanded beach. I stood in the sand, between two taught stretched white cotton panels, hung between two coconut trees by ropes. I was supposed to meditate while standing up, and the two tight panels hugged me front and back to support me in case I relaxed and fell back or front. I could, if I opened my eyes see through the loosely woven cotton to the ocean and the light slope of the water. Playing in the surf were others who are not part of my history of familiar people, signaling forced seriousness perhaps.  I guessed the panels referenced the suspension while I wait for my partner’s visa, but I have never felt I was missing out whenever I meditate.

With this dream in the back of my mind, I wanted to go back to the south of Sri Lanka to just chill out. My partner said, “Go!,” since he was busy days and offered to pay for my flight, but deep down I was torn. We still don’t know about his Visa to come back to the US to marry and live with me. The embassy has his passport and their last request, “a single certificate” was not on our checklist from them, nor had our lawyer heard of it. He found out how to get one, with his Mom’s help from his home city government, completed it and sent it in. These are only good for 6 months, and if the embassy drags this out longer our visa fee, and other stuff will expire. They can demand anything, I heard from another chap who finally got his partner's visa. This has been frustrating to say the least.

If I take off not knowing, I may be shortening our time together if his visa doesn’t pass. Surely, we have thought about this and have a plan b and c and have dealt with our separation remarkably well for 13 years, but we have strengthened our bond these last 5 months over all the paperwork driving home our history. Looking into increases to almost all costs of this trip, to do alone it really felt selfish. There is a whole new appreciation for the other, which makes an upcoming potential separation seem even more difficult. We can do it, as we have in the past, but then it will push me in making another decision reflecting on the visa's failure. With all this in mind, I decided at the last minute not to go and in my partner’s formally stoic reply... to go ahead and go, he radiated the love that we felt. We try not to mess with each other’s idea of happiness, but when the hearts meet again it is lovely.

Two hours after I posted this ....and after a whole years process my partner received his fiancé visa. Our 13 years are finally recognized by our government. And I was around to see his reaction!

Are we hallucinating the belief that we are separate?

Perhaps a wakeup call. The ego, when fully purchased conjures up some weird stuff. I would find myself thinking I have been through so much suffering. Not my suffering, it was just suffering that we all experience our own version of. That same suffering that propelled me on this path. A perception believed in when you look at it, when it just is life ....unfolding. Or it could be a concept taught by others, perhaps society or family that we grab and just run with it until our grave. Why? Because… it gives us a feeling of being alive. Jeezus, could one just pinch out a couple of candles for quick feeling and be done. I feel like I have reinforced the idea by being or feeling unhappy and that I am a suffering separate person from others, at times. It may often give me the illusion of specialness because the ego demands a firm ground from which to stand on…. to maintain this individualized separateness.  For sure, the positive that came out of this was my meditation to look at life, as it is.

Now, tell me if you don’t, like me, can watch a tearful reunion of family members totally not related to you and feel or exhibit some emotion. It is not just pulling up some old baggage that you have put in deep storage, but real connectedness to others that we share.  Our I is their I and we had better wake up.  It divides us and blocks our happiness. Joy that exists in nature, and it's free! Your I exists, sometimes far from your body, enough so that when you walk into a room carrying some unhappiness people will turn away. I should not ask for validation when I am unhappy either because it was my ego demands. All I am doing is unfurling the pathetic flag that smothers my ability to connect with others suffering and do something as simple as raising the vibration of a room. The only separateness we perceive is others' conditioning from the culture or society that supports this hallucination.

Today, I watched a young boy who was about 5, draw a shark in the condensed water on a 7-11 cooler door he opened. I gave him the thumbs up, and I immediately had a friend. He played hid and seek among the shelves of grocery items. I joined in the fun. I realized his mom works there, and she smiled at our interaction.

You are not going anywhere

Life showed up at the door with another test. Frustrated, I told my partner which is silly.  What really he supposed to do mimic my frustration? It doesn't involve him and he has own problems. By not mirroring it, he with his own wisdom did not meet it head on. He let it die on its own. He reminded me that we all die, and this won’t be the last. Saying again, “All we leave when we die are the good deeds we do while alive, that are important.” Really, the frustration rose out of the fact that I was still there, and could not run out of the situation…..I was not going anywhere. Plus, no fairy with her magic wand would come and fix it. I would go into what it was, but that would distract others from finding their own innate wisdom. We all encounter such things and what we bring to the table is a history of reactions we may have learned in the past with our unique combination of traumas. If you did not have any, you would be dead by now. No one is immune.

Later, I watched the film, “All is Lost” and I went for a late night walk alone to get some air. I told my partner it was to get ice cream. Enjoying the night winds, I churned up some thoughts about being confronted with one’s upcoming death every second, and the natural survival that one gravitates toward even when it all seems hopeless.

We all die, so do we struggle with life’s dramas just to avoid this reality? Is it survival instinct or avoiding contemplating our death almost every second, like we should. Hopefully it will arrive onboard, and dictate how we treat others.

On my walk, I thought about my troubles, and then the actor in the film.  I knew to get out of this space,  it would come down to getting busy and helping others. It is not always about you and the gibberish your mind throws.

I knew where to look, and saw the couple again. I bought dinner for the blind couple who sing Isan tunes for spare change on a road overpass. Just in time because they were packing up for the night. Later, while sitting I watched a late night street vendor sit down, with a swollen knee bandaged, and smiled with compassion once I noticed his pain. I took off quickly to a late night pharmacy without saying anything to him, and bought some cream that has pain killer and anti-inflammatory while being cooling and hurried back to give him. I expected nothing in return, I just said hello, and pointed to my knee and gave him the cream and walked away. Immediately, any ideas of “me“ and my difficulties disappeared.

On the way back from giving the vendor his pain cream, I bought my partner two of his favorite taro ice cream bars. This wasn’t walk for me…it was for others. Little did I know, because I was gone long, my partner went looking for me, and while out he bought me two dark chocolate bars. It was funny when I came home, we exchanged ice creams.