Drunken I Ching, Cornball Shit that Works, Buproprion in the house, Moving day

Last night's I Ching shouted glad tidings right into my sad, lonely, angry, resentful and hopeless/worthless feeling soul, and I am still alternately laughing and shaking my head.

First Hexagram:

With changing second and fifth lines, morphing to:

There are many reasons why these seem ironic oracles to me. Many of them should be obvious to you as well, dear readers. I think I'll just post them and move along. 

Also making me shake my head lately: The couples counselor, who I saw once for an individual session prior to a couples session that would end up being the only one, because I was not interested in the ex's insistence on revisionist, negative narratives about what a liar, loser and commitment-phobe I am and what a shithole our 5.5 year partnership was (I really wasn't interested-- can you imagine?) anyway-- I digress-- the couples counselor gave me the assignment to write a list of affirmations starting with "I am," as a way of moderating my grief and anxiety. Now anyone who knows me knows I fucking hate shit like this. I resist anything programmatic, scheduled, forced, outside-in, artificial, etc. I think I will in fact put this resistance on my 4th step. 

For example-- I have bonfired perfectly salvageable relationships simply because the most effective way to do the salvaging would have been to schedule connection time, sex time, activity time. I resist, I resist. I resist so much I would rather fuck off and die. 

However, I must swallow my pride and odd dismissal and resentment and simply confess that the counselor's idea works. I have my list of "I am" affirmations and I look at them often. I especially look at them when I am having an anxiety attack and feeling the PTSD hit. It is embarrassing that this shit works. We are simple creatures after all. Fuck if I am not actually able to *flatter myself* and believe it enough to effect a noticeable change in my emotional landscape. I guess, more charitably, the "I am"'s are true, at least partly, and I just need a reminder, since my inner tapes of self talk are so fucked up and awful. 

I finally got to see a p doc yesterday, the ultra-nerdy Doc O, who happily prescribed 300 mg. of buproprion a day, two 150 mg happy purple pills. I launch out on the 30 day trial. We shall see. My expectations are low. But we shall see. It is a huge leap for me to seek help, to seek counseling and a p doc and actually take meds. It's just not like me in the least. I guess my misery got bad enough eh?

In a couple hours, I pick up yet another U Haul truck and get all my stuff out of storage and collect it all here at the house. I am hoping to go through it and prune, prune, prune. I am finally committed to digitizing all my vinyl. I never want to move vinyl LPs again. Digitizing all of it will be a huge step to streamlining the Percy Hades Roadshow. 

I only recognized last night, talking with a friend of mine, how much I am dreading this today-- just because of the echoes of March 1. But I can also move through it as a cleansing and disengaging ritual. I can think of it as soul retrieval activity, which seems to be where I am now anyway. 

Leaving Space: Some Statistics on Entrances and Exits

Isla Magdalena, Pacific coast, December 2016

Destructive impulses include forcing things out of my life as well as forcing things in. I remember realizing, maybe a decade or so ago, just a couple years into living sober, that I was highly skilled at entrances and exits. I have the ability to get myself into anything and talk my way out. Cameo appearances are my stock in trade. So much of the narrative of my life is about transition, upheaval, getting into situations, getting out of them, committing too soon (or at least appearing to) and leaving too soon,

Tomorrow, I retrieve all of my worldly possessions (except for a couple hundred cactus plants) from the storage unit in Chandler. I'll bring everything here and begin yet again the process of wrangling all of it. I'm tempted to go through it all and pare down yet another level this time. By some standards, it is pretty pared down already.

Since moving to the floor of the desert in 2007, I've lived in 5 places. Once every two years. That's a fairly stable ratio for me, actually-- partly enabled by stretches of time with the poet and the ex. The poet brought me here so she could get her MFA. We lived a charming suburban life in an inexpensive rental house-- the landlord was an awful human being and the house had a roach problem which we paid to ameliorate-- and the neighbor had a constantly barking dog-- but the life had its stable charms for 3 years, until the poet and I fell apart. That was the beginning, really, of a lot of where I am now, in many ways of tracing it. More on that another time.

The background for this life of peregrination is much more stable: from 5 years old to 26 years old (after an agonizing 8 years of separation problems regarding the childhood home from age 18 to 26, during which time I left and returned 9 times), I called the same address my home base.

But anyway, right. New living place every two years on average since 2007. Since I graduated from my undergrad college in 1985, however, I have had 28 different addresses. 28 places in 32 years. From when I got sober in 2004 to now, 10 addresses. I think there have been some very transient, temporary addresses in this whole history as well. But the essential point remains-- for whatever reason, I end up moving almost every year.

From 1985 to now, also, I have gotten myself into 12 "committed," monogamous partnerships (this number is significantly lower than the number of partners, and reduced by two stretches of longer exclusive monogamy with two wives, from 1992 to 2001). I think the total amount of completely unpartnered time in the past 32 years has been about 3.5 years, not even continuously-- with the longest continuous stretch of singlehood being between the poet and the ex, at 16 months.

In that last long stretch, I sat still for a little while and excavated a lot of the old patterns, did an extensive sex and relationship inventory with a good AA sponsor, and began to uncover a lot of my rackets and trash beliefs that had been harming myself and others. My upper limit of continuous partnership is approximately 5 years, and in all three of those cases, the last stretch of time has been conflicted, complicated or disconnected. The number of monogamous agreements I have had since I was 16 is 16, the number of domestic partnerships is 6 and the number of partnerships that I entered into where I can say I was truly free of attachment to a previous partner is only about 3. The number of times I have begun a new "romantic" relationship while still in my soon-to-be-previous one is 6.

So this is a history of entrance and exit (and overlapping entrances and exits) and hardly and value placed on staying. I have tended also to be with women who choose not to do the work of staying. I have been broken up with 5 times, which puts me in the position of dumper more often than dumpee, merely as a reflection of my refusal to be accountable for my bullshit, most of the time. 5 times, I have ended a partnership relatively abruptly and not remained in any communication with my ex after the breakup. Sometimes, friendship and communication has been re-established, especially in sobriety. But, given the current ex's complete abandonment of all contact with me, it is important to recall that I have been guilty of the same abruptness and inhumane disappearance, and to try to understand what was motivating me at those times.

Another statistic: in a 30 year span of teaching work, from 1987 to now, I have taught at 9 institutions in 4 different states. Not awful, but still just a little more than 3 years at each job on average.

It looks, from here, that there is not going to be much let up on the work and living arrangement instability, as I go toward finishing graduate school in 2-3 years. Regarding relationships, however, I'm offline. Total system failure. Friendship, connection, supportive adventures without commitment, I am open to-- and yet I know that I tend to take even those lighter and more free situations and slather codependent commitment sauce on them. "This is too healthy, time to add a 300 pound weight of obligations I can only speak and cannot possibly show up for." So: it is time to leave space instead of abandoning space.

Delusional involvement, annihilation and humiliation

My experience at this time is the enduring delusion that I am still involved in the situation with the ex and her new paramour and the house and her son and the cats and that whole life. It's as if the inertia of my narrative, my identity and my astonished outrage over the decisions she made ensnare me in complex nets, traps, obsessions and assumptions.

My morning meditations have been roiling, stormy, noisy and with only the barest flashes of silence or equanimity. Beset by what shallow fools like to call "negative emotions," I am even more woken up to the tensions and paradoxes that are established by this weird, ongoing delusion of attachment and involvement.

This passage is reminding me in newly conscious ways of just how difficult letting go, retreating, changing to a new situation and all of those forms of releasing and getting into non-action are for me. I am an engager, codependent in the extreme-- I go out to encounter and my first and overriding impulse is to get into shit with people in order to have a sense of myself.

My AA home group, for example, gradually became fixated on trying to prevent profanity during shares (it's a ticket meeting, so when your ticket is called you go up to the podium-- some of the guys in this men's group have been fucking cursing up a motherfucking storm of shitty fucking language, and some of the *other* guys find it offensive). I missed the group conscience about this issue last night, thankfully, since it is a pet peeve of mine. I find it hilarious when AA members who have acknowledged unmanageable life try to fucking police the speech of other recovering people. A newcomer who hits this meeting now will just be pushed back into some of that old thinking about a). how fucked up he is because he swears and b). how AA is a prissy fucking Rotary Club substitute for people with shallow moral codes dedicated to superficial measures of spiritual progress.

Can you tell, dear reader, that this issue ought to be on the 4th step I am currently putting together? I can tell.

Anyway, in spite of having to work until after the group conscience, when I arrived at the meeting someone told me that the topic had been how to get guys to stop fucking swearing like motherfuckers, and I got *into it* immediately. Thin-skinned and engaged, right away. Stuck in my close minded position and feeling indignant.

This is how I am wired in my default setting. I ENGAGE. I get in there. I go in without any sort of plan or equanimity of any kind.

This tendency to GET INVOLVED has of course served me extremely well in many ways. But I am finally sensing that it is also some old and tired and tiring strategy that could use moderation at least.
Ultimately, I really don't care about whether guys can "drop the F bomb" (how fucking juvenile) from the podium or not. The underlying issues for me go to the superficiality of the moral upbringing and hypocrisy in which I was raised. When I get down to that and look at primary causes, I'm sure I'll get some liberation from the impulse to shock, confront, belittle the sensitivities of others, etc.

More germane to the unsought uninvolvement (disinvolvement?) from my former life, which of course is a powerful driver for old habits and old strategies: the facts of the matter are that I am NOT INVOLVED. For someone whose landscape is contingently determined, NOT BEING INVOLVED contains within it the threat of annihilation. Of course, this is how delusions operate. In spite of NOT BEING INVOLVED, for the moment I still exist. So the clamor within myself that claims that I have been annihilated is strictly delusional.

Reality is clear. What is no more is no longer operating in reality. Like death, all loss is loss only for those who remain. If I could NOT REMAIN ENGAGED, there would be no loss in the present moment, since what I am experiencing as loss simply is no more-- it is over, gone, does not exist anywhere at all except in my engagement. My holding on is driven by self-centered fear which activates so many of my other old habits and failed strategies. I keep pressing the lever looking for the old payoffs. None of those old payoffs are forthcoming. The sense of futility and consequent helplessness, embarrassment, humiliation and rage are narrow passages. When the suicidal fantasy kicks in, as it is still doing a few times a day, it is usually in the midst of this transcendent feeling of humiliation and its attendant bitter shards of worthlessness, failure, incomprehension, anger and shock. 

(the link leads to the interesting website, Emotional Competency, which at the very least has an encouraging name).

It all points to my least favorite tarot image, a card I dread in readings more than any other. I used to resist archetypes of The Emperor, or Death, or The Tower, or some of the heavier minor arcana. But the real challenge for me now is definitely the 5 of swords.

Context and capacity

Hexagram 26: Controlled Power, changing to hexagram 57, The Penetrating, Wind

The changing bottom line of the first hexagram suggests that it is better to restrain oneself than to be restrained by another. If I were to advance (basically, take any action outside of the normal course of things at this time), I would be restrained by an outside force of some kind. But I have the capacity to restrain myself and thereby avoid being restrained by someone or something else. This is a vital difference from the standpoint of self respect, clarity of intention, effective action. 

There is a threat from a "subordinate," the changing 5th line. I'll take that to mean something less than productive in myself that can be changed, moderated, dealt with. 

The hexagram changing into wind over wind suggests very small efforts in a consistent direction-- no fast moves or big gestures, no sudden changes or reversals. 

This connects seamlessly with the general themes at this time. I'm appreciating how the I Ching addresses who a person is as well as what the situation is-- the conditioned nature of existence, no matter what qualities we have, means that time, surroundings, other circumstances require different action or non-action. My own tendency is to not even read the situation very conscously and smply to rely on the "rightness" of the story I am telling or my capacities. 

It reminds me of a time I got into serious heat exhaustion when I was doing field work in Baja-- I had developed just enough capacity and strength and stamina to get myself into trouble. I failed to holistically read the situation and know that simply exercising my capacities is not enough-- there has to be a contextual match or resonance. 

It also reminds me of the sound of a particular chord in a piece of music. Each individual chord is unassailable on its own, no problem. But context is all when chords follow on each other-- we exist in a web of relationships but think we are independent of conditions and context. 

Hooked on Chthonics

On this trip through the realms of death, loss, endings, shades and mourning, it's entirely possible to become overly attached to misery. I have begun to feel a few glimmers of wellness and freedom, maybe just moments of forgetting, but it's instructive to watch my mind snap back and say "You are suffering. There is no time for this foolish belief that everything will be okay."

The attachment to suffering is even more oppressive than the suffering itself, somehow. So I have turned my attention more to letting go, being present in this moment. I like Pema Chödrön's method of releasing the outbreath and simply saying "thinking" as it goes out. Meeting all thoughts with unconditional friendliness. For someone almost constantly at war and so prone to attachment as myself, this is a real enterprise and a full challenge. But then I can let go of that story also. In my morning meditations, which are only 10 minutes long, no matter how many daggers are stuck in my guts, I do find at least a flash of a moment or two of stillness and peace.

I ended up communicating with the ex after all via email. The main theme of my email was gratitude for the time we had together, because of the exhortation of Hajo Banzhaf in his excellent book, The Tarot Handbook, regarding the card Death, which keeps coming up.

"In the scope of our personal relationships, Death means that one phase of development is approaching its end, whereby a departure from a companion is often indicated. Even if this experience is extremely painful, we cannot escape it. We should not try to avoid the parting or design it to happen on the run, Whoever is on the run is quickly cursed. Instead, we should thank our companion for the time we spent together and give our best wishes in friendship for his or her further path in life."

The ex replied via text, expressing her own gratitude also for the time and experiences we had, but indicating she was not ready to communicate much else. I replied that I understood and that if she ever wanted to communicate more, the door is open. I also overstepped slightly in being perhaps too effusive, and she responded with some energy that felt like the old 100 foot high wall again-- a salutary reminder to me to stay out of sentiment when communicating with her at this time.

It was generally a fairly successful communication, though, on dangerous ground. Now it feels like a long period of silence is on the way. Back to the work I need to do, both in the outer and the inner world. But watchful now for an attachment to misery, a dedication to unwavering katabasis. It will bring itself about definitely on its own accord and I will need to allow breathing room for lightness and release.

Unconditional Friendliness Toward Oneself

Also known as Mettā (Pali) or maitrī (Sanskrit), translated variously as compassion, loving-kindness, benevolence, amity. Pema Chödrön calls it "unconditional friendliness." 

Cultivating this attitude is some current work for me. But I repeatedly find that I have been running into a fence. I went to dinner with a friend of mine last night who also has been living with depression. I asked her to tell me what was driving her feelings of overwhelm, sadness, incapacity and shadow-life and she unhesitatingly said "I fucking hate myself, 100%. When I look at myself, I cringe. I feel like I am looking at a leper or a burn victim. I can easily feel compassion and acceptance for other people, even people who have fucked me over, but toward myself, I just feel almost total aversion."

If pity is this corrosive, reflect for a minute on the disfiguring power of self-pity. I continue to learn more and more about exactly what self-pity feels like and looks like. My emotional lexicon has some blurry typography and shitty indexing, for example, which allow me to confuse self-pity with a variety of other proportional emotional reactions to events (grief, anger, longing, nostalgia, fear). This is delicate and tender work, involving unanaesthetized contact with extremely sore, infected and abraded places in myself. More on all of that another time. 

Anyway, when we have an attitude of aversion and pity toward ourselves, no matter how much we may have cultivated compassion for others, we will always run up against a boundary of conditionality. Our ability to open to unconditional friendliness will always fall short until we clearly see ourselves as worthy of the same unconditional friendliness as others.

At least, that's the theory behind a lot of "self-help" lit. I'm not sure I buy it completely. I think emerging into unconditional friendliness toward oneself is a dynamic, simultaneously reflective and action-oriented process. I know with certainty that, regardless of how I see myself or feel about myself, when I turn my attention to being useful and helping others, those experiences begin to erase my self-aversion. It may well be that the path to unconditional friendliness toward oneself is to forget about yourself entirely and lose yourself in practice and in effective service to others. 

Or at least, that this path of service is at least as efficacious toward self-compassion as any path that has one focus on oneself and make an attempt to "cultivate" love for oneself. In particular, the movement toward service is enhanced by meditation, starting from a place of paying attention. Asking how one can be of service and then listening for a response. And committing to showing up for the action, without regard to how one feels. 

"Self-esteem comes from esteemable action," many old timers in AA say, and they ought to know. 

These threads remind me of the Three Tenets of the Zen Peacemaker:

Taking refuge and entering the stream of Engaged Spirituality, I vow to live a life of:

Not knowing, thereby giving up fixed ideas about myself and the universe.
Bearing witness to the joy and suffering of the world.
Healing myself and others.

Great Power, Great Restraint

Another check in with the I Ching. I always end up turning back to these symbols when I don't know what action to take. In particular when I am fighting the impulse to take an action at the same time that I am fighting the enforcement of non-action. This is a very stuck place to be-- exercising willed restraint in a situation, forcing myself to remain silent, where the natural desire would be to communicate volumes, while at the same time resenting the stance of non-action and plotting in a frankly obsessive way how to break the silence. It is an especially laughable state to be in when the object of one's combined restraint and desire for communication at least seems to be completely indifferent. 

Anyway, the first hexagram this morning was Great Power, #34. Changing 4th and top lines, leading to Great Restraint, #26. 

The Great Power indicated by the first hexagram comes with all sorts of warnings. In particular, from the Confucian traditions, even though possessing Great Power, the chun tzu or "truly ethical person," is a person who lives by the highest ethical standards. This person displays five virtues: self-respect, generosity, sincerity, persistence, and benevolence. 

So any use or display of the Great Power that one has been given ought to reflect those 5 virtues. That's the thinking anyway. It reminds me of the segment of the St. Francis Prayer: "Lord, grant that I might seek to comfort rather than to be comforted, to understand than to be understood, to love than to be loved." 

The changing lines are very mixed here. A changing 4th line is very positive, indicating an end to entanglement and a release from a trap. But the changing top line indicates that any effort to force disentanglement will only lead to more trouble. 

The path out of the dilemma can only be found by waiting and consciously holding on to both sides of the conflict, by making the utmost effort to keep both sides in fullest possible awareness without repressing them or falling into a state of identification. This means nothing less than that the conflict with all its excruciating implications must be endured consciously; we cannot seek to terminate it forcibly by taking sides, by enforcing a premature decision. Symbolically this amounts to a crucifixion; by our consent, our acceptance of this suffering, we are nailed to the cross of the opposing drives. We keep the apparent evil in full sight and continue to wait for a way that allows us to express its energy in constructive rather than destructive ways, though this may seem impossible at the moment, both in terms of morality and of existing reality. E.C. Whitmont -- The Symbolic Quest (from the very helpful The Gnostic Book of Changes)

Moving to Great Restraint, from a somewhat paradoxical combination of freedom and a warning against forcing a situation, is the usual humor of the I Ching. Here are some of the other titles that have been given to Great Restraint: The Taming Power of the Great, The Great Nourisher, Taming the Great Powers, Great Accumulating, Great Accumulation, Great Storage, Nurturance of the Great, Great Buildup, Restraint of the Great, Restraint by the Strong, Potential Energy, The Great Taming Force, Energy Under Control, Power Restrained, Sublimation, Latent Power

The will is, curiously, not recognized as the central and fundamental function of the ego. It has often been depreciated as being ineffective against the various drives and the power of the imagination, or it has been considered with suspicion as leading to self-assertion (will-to-power). But the latter is only a perverted use of the will, while the apparent futility of the will is due only to a faulty and unintelligent use. The will is ineffective only when it attempts to act in opposition to the imagination and to the other psychological functions, while its skillful and consequently successful use consists in regulating and directing all other functions toward a deliberately chosen and affirmed aim. Roberto Assagioli –Psychosynthesis

This puts a very fine point on it- in fighting the urge to act, I am exercising my will-- something so obviously clear that I had to stumble into it, like a goat butting against a fence. There are special problems associated with the will in the context of recovery from alcoholism-- one of the central features of the recovery process for Bill W was turning over one's will to the care of a God as he understood God-- step 3. 

I have long felt there is a profound misunderstanding of this movement of the soul among a lot of recovering people. Many shorten the idea to turning their will over to God as they understand God, which raises all sorts of questions and imposes a bizarre false duality between "my will" and "God's will," a dangerous and frankly grotesque existential position. By contrast, if my will is under *the care* of God as I understand God, it makes it irrelevant whose will is whose-- what becomes important is am I *remembering* that this will of mine has a container now, and is no longer as subject to "self-will run riot," but rather, to be skillfully and successfully employed "in regulating and directing all other functions toward a deliberately chosen and affirmed aim." (Leaving aside here the vast entanglements of thought regarding this entire idea of "the will" and what it even means to "exercise one's will power," and simply assuming that we all know what it *feels* like). 

The feeling that accompanies this step 3 approach is one of letting go of my little plans and designs into something larger and waiting for an answer or an intuitive sense of how to proceed. If there is uncertainty, in itself that is speaking something important. The fullness of incorporating this principle of having a "cared-for will" into my daily life really hits home by the time I reach step 10: 

"In thinking about our day we may face indecision. We may not be able to determine which course to take. Here we ask God for inspiration, an intuitive thought or a decision. We relax and take it easy. We don't struggle. We are often surprised by how the right answers come after we have tried this for a while. What used to be the hunch or the occasional inspiration gradually becomes a working part of the mind. Being still inexperienced and having just made conscious contact with God, it is not probable that we are going to be inspired at all times. (Editor's note: this is perhaps the funniest sentence in the entire Big Book). We might pay for this presumption in all sorts of absurd actions and ideas. Nevertheless, we find that our thinking will, as time passes, be more and more on the plane of inspiration. We come to rely upon it." (Alcoholics Anonymous, pages 86-87)

So in a way, "not knowing what to do" is a symptom already of the reality of simply not yet having anything to do. Sometimes I struggle through this by doing something, anything, to see if it was the right thing to do or not. But instead of venturing out without an idea or aim, instead of seeking relief through taking action, any action at all, the uncertainty itself indicates some kind of non-action altogether, or at least only that which intuitively appears as useful and non-harmful, either to oneself or others. The trick here is in separating out the selfish, dishonest, self-seeking and fearful impulses that drive the tendency to take action. We often move and flail and butt against fences simply to try to find relief-- understandable but rarely effective. 

I'm reminded of two things one of my now-deceased AA mentors used to say. She told me once, "try not to confuse being busy with taking action." 

She also repeatedly reminded me, however: "You can afford your mistakes. We can't adhere perfectly to these principles. Sometimes we're going to fuck up. You can afford to fuck up. If you do fuck up, try to make it as spectacular as possible."  

Books of changes

Delay in having time with the ex's son, as she indicates to me that the boy's father is in the middle of moving in with his partner, out of the house that the boy has grown up in, and that the transition with the ex and me has also got him spun somewhat. Apparently, she asked him what he wanted, and his preference is to not see me just yet. I totally get it. There's a lot of change in the air. I'm in no rush anyway. The last thing I would want to do is force a situation and agitate him. He's sensitive and intuitive and he knows me very well, so I'm sure he would pick up on my grief right now and he's got his own stuff to deal with.

The I Ching, hexagram 44, Coming to Meet, Adultery, Temptation:

Changing 4th line, going to Hexagram 57, The Gentle, The Penetrating (Wind over Wind):

The fourth line changing in Coming to Meet suggests that the situation is definitely being heavily influenced by "outside" interference. I suspect the new paramour is threatened by me and is resisting my having a continued connection with the ex's son. At this time, the ex is trying to assuage his feeling of threat by preventing me from seeing her son. But the outer reasons given-- all of the upheaval in her son's life-- are equally legitimate, so there's absolutely no position from which I can try to force the issue.

Instead, the hexagram changing into The Gentle and The Penetrating (ceaseless wind), suggests that a reuniting process with the son will take a long time and a lot of consistently gentle, non-threatening behavior on my part.

The old school interpretations of Coming to Meet are all about the femme fatale, the evil woman, the temptress, the "dark force" of female sexuality "corrupting" a strong and virtuous man. I think it's probably healthier to go metaphorically with all of this, in spite of the literal temptations.

Overall, it's interesting to be dealing with so many different forms of restraint lately. I am in general not a patient person and especially impulsive with communication. My communication style does best in a free and open atmosphere that has few rules. The transition I am currently in is by comparison extremely constricted and narrow.

I keep getting the urge and impulse to confront the ex and try to force some kind of communication. At the same time, I keep getting strong warnings from the universe or whatever to just not do that. Just let go, turn my attention elsewhere, move on. Let it all unfold without you. Leave the situation rather than look for more information. Take all the information I already have and just trust it. These are all forms of non-action or opposite, detaching and letting go action that I tend to avoid.

Risus purus

"Of all the laughs that strictly speaking are not laughs, but modes of ululation, only three I think need detain us, I mean the bitter, the hollow and the mirthless. They correspond to successive… how shall I say successive… suc… successive excoriations of the understanding, and the passage from the one to the other is the passage from the lesser to the greater, from the lower to the higher, from the outer to the inner, from the gross to the fine, from the matter to the form. The laugh that now is mirthless once was hollow, the laugh that once was hollow once was bitter. And the laugh that once was bitter? Eyewater, Mr. Watt, eyewater. But do not let us waste our time with that. . . . The bitter, the hollow and—Haw! Haw!— the mirthless. The bitter laugh laughs at that which is not good, it is the ethical laugh. The hollow laugh laughs at that which is not true, it is the intellectual laugh. Not good! Not true! Well well. But the mirthless laugh is the dianoetic laugh, down the snout—Haw!—so. It is the laugh of laughs, the risus purus, the laugh laughing at the laugh, the beholding, the saluting of the highest joke, in a word the laugh that laughs—silence please—at that which is unhappy." 

-- Samuel Beckett, "WATT"

A necessary side effect of releasing resentment is welcoming tenderness back. Once you start to get forgiveness in your cells, everything softens up again. The icy pericardium gives way, cracks, shatters. The constriction of the throat and gut relaxes and the muscles are slack enough for sadness. This is at times unwelcome. The reassuring thing about hardness of heart is that it feels familiarly protective and strong. It seems like it has power in it-- protective and tough armor. "I am right, and I know I am right, and I am right about what I know-- and I was wronged, and it is unforgivable. THIS IS THE HILL ON WHICH I WILL DIE."

When the heart softens, especially toward someone who has hurt me, it's disconcerting to realize how fond we can still be toward those who inflict pain on us. How much we can still cherish memories and the experiences and gifts they brought to us. From the standpoint of my ego in its unyielding attempt to protect me from harm, this fondness and nostalgia is a terrible indignity. 

Yet still usually we harden again and end up back in ululation-- laughing the bitter, the hollow and the mirthless laugh- depending. It's oddly reassuring that, no matter how much we may melt back into compassion and mudita toward someone who is dangerous for us and to whom we react as if poisoned, our old reflexes for hatred and self-defense are bound to return. There's no need to put the armor on with any conscious effort. It just grows back around heart and skin and throat and guts as if by magic. Sometimes quite qickly after we have had the most tender and unconditionally loving thoughts. 

I tend to think of experience as linear. It comes as a much less than dignified shock to me when I appear to "make progress" and then experience a stretch of time that feels like "a setback." Yesterday was one of those days. I began in a red rage and journeyed through a wide variety of bizarre emotional states. It was a mad roller coaster, emotionally stormy and unpredictable. My sentimentality and nostalgia arose for a stretch of hours at the most inconvenient time, just before teaching a unit on renal anatomy and physiology in my human anatomy lab section. 

What I am experience now (always) is a labyrinth walk. The magic of the labyrinth is that of course one is headed toward a "goal," that is, the center of the labyrinth. But as one walks, space is folded back on itself in unexpected ways and most labyrinths are designed to throw the walker somehow-- usually by including a far flung ramification near the approach to the center. 

The labyrinth at the First Presbyterian Church of Oklahoma City

Folds in the journey are to be expected but I still find them jarring. Especially when it seems "I am doing worse" on days after I have felt that "I am doing better."

At the intensive study of the book Alcoholics Anonymous that I attend almost every Wednesday, at a church that has a rectilinear labyrinth in the courtyard that I walk while praying to I know not what that is just about every week, the topic came up last night of what the mind can do and where the power of the mind falls short. 

"If a mere code of morals or a better philosophy of life were sufficient to overcome alcoholism, many of us would have recovered long ago. But we found that such codes and philosophies did not save us, no matter how much we tried. We could wish to be moral, we could wish to be philosophically comforted, in fact, we could will these things with all our might, but the needed power wasn't there. Our human resources, as marshalled by the will, were not sufficient; they failed utterly."

(Alcoholics Anonymous, pages 44-45)

The spectacle of me trying to apply a moral code or philosophy of life as a cure or even a balm against alcoholism is a very unhappy spectacle-- and invites as a result the risus purus. The same is true in regard to my sex and love addiction, my codependency, my addiction to sugar, the form of my absolute hollowness and misery in whatever form it arises, again and again, no matter how much "progress" I make. 

a fascinating show-- 7 being the number of mentally unmanageable multiplicity that yet repeatedly seems like we could master it

I almost sent the following email to the ex yesterday in the midst of my nostalgic melting: "I still can't believe we're not together anymore. It seems to me to be the saddest thing. I am sorry to have failed you and I am sorry we drifted far enough apart that we are now done. I thought I would adventure with you until my heart stopped. I miss you and Everett, the cats and the house, and our life so very much." 

What stopped me was not my pride, or any hardening of the heart or a return of armor. In spite of it being true, or a truth, it seems unhelpful. It is in fact unhelpful. Is it true and is it helpful? Those are two criteria I am endeavoring to abide by-- a moral code of communication. Even so, that moral code never would have been enough to prevent me from sending the email. A power greater than myself intervened and seemed to gently say "That's nice, and kind, and you have a generous heart, but what does such a statement contribute to moving this situation forward? Aren't you also giving away your well being if you send this? Here is a person who is not communicating with you right now-- keep your tenderness and openness and acknowledgement of the gift the experience was, but keep it safer and hold it for people who can also hold it. It's a gift she has no use for or desire for right now, clearly." This is not my own mind working on this absolutely profound pause. The sense is that the ability to pause comes definitely from "outside" myself, from the wisdom of a greater ground than what I am capable of. 

In retrospect it seems worthy of the risus purus-- how a person melting into compassion might immediately think to take that unconditional love to the very person who is repeatedly shitting on it. Haw, haw. 

a free man in Phoenix

I was born without a conscience
Full of freedom, full of nonsense
From the mountains to the beaches
Eat the apples, steal the peaches
Will you be this wild child's lady?
Will you carry me to safety?

Lock me up & take me home
I don't want to be free
Goin' crazy - on my own
It's not where I want to be

-David Byrne, The Moment of Conception

A Black River, photo copyright Davorin Mance

On last night's steps along the river Styx, that outward bound of the underworld that is very cleverly disguised as the Western Canal, I was really struggling. Filled with feelings of remorse, regret, self-loathing, anger, jealousy, sexual possessiveness, sadness. All of it roiling along as I walked east toward some passageway of Hell, also cleverly disguised, this time as 24th street.

But somewhere along the way it coalesced for me through an odd chain of thought that there is an entirely other perspective for me in the dark.

I am the winner in this situation. The two of them now have to deal with the reality of having formed an actual relationship and neither one of them, obviously, has the requisite skills to handle it. That they successfully get: each other. Hooray for them. What do I get? Freedom.

I am a free man. I have decided to repeat this to myself whenever some of the stabbing pain of loss, anger, betrayal and resentment arises. I am a free man. It helped at 4 this morning when I woke up feeling angry and abandoned and resentful. "Yes, you feel those things. But you're free. You are a free man."

I didn't ask to be free, I didn't want to be free, it has been extremely painful being freed-- but all of that is irrelevant. In fact, I am free, whether I like it or not. It dawned on me that I had been acting as if I were not free-- as if I were bound to a situation where my partner of more than 5 years left me for my first year college roommate-- that tale that keeps going around and around. Circling the toilet bowl. I have been acting as if I have some continued obligation in this sick, toxic, ugly triangulation characterized by betrayal and bad boundaries.

But I do not. I was forcefully cast out of the sickness into freedom. Of course, inner freedom and effective, sustainable letting go-- well, let's just say that's a work in progress. But the factual reality of my situation is I'm out. I am out of a toxic, painful, eroding, depressing, embarrassing, humiliating situation. I'm out of it. I thought the train cars were still crashing but that catastrophe ended a long time ago.

One of the most meta-painful of all states along this way has been the stuckness. The sense of being chained to unkind, selfish, rejecting people. Of having my destiny painfully interwoven with that of people who were treating me like shit. Of having suddenly had my story interleaved with the stories of manipulative, dishonest, exploitative, indifferent, cruel, abusive people acting out their own loneliness, insecurity, toxicity and unprocessed shit.

But that is not the truth of the situation. I am only chained there to the degree that my thoughts and feelings are chained there and I can choose to begin to experience, right now, the liberation that comes through the resentment work, the work of self care and the natural healing and separation that arises from enforced freedom. It's highly instructive to me that, if I had been given a choice, I definitely would have stayed in the situation and "tried to work it out." I think that says a lot about the work I will benefit from doing. It's hilarious how we deeply resent when a duplicitous, dishonest, uncaring, critical and emotionally unavailable person asks us to leave. We ought to be overjoyed, right? I mean, wouldn't that be the sane response?

It has felt like painful exile and exclusion. I have been reading the ex's silence in all the negative and rejecting ways. But I can turn the silence around and bask in it. It's just as much freedom, peace and quiet, separation from toxicity and the open space the universe is providing me to get clear and to cleanse myself of having gotten entangled in a bad faith nightmare.

Reading my way through When Things Fall Apart by Pema Chödrön has been helpful.

"Only to the extent that we expose ourselves over and over to annihilation can that which is indestructible be found in us."

She pinned a sign that said this to her wall after her husband left her because he was having an affair.

"I remember so vividly a day in early spring when my whole reality gave out on me. Although it was before I had heard any Buddhist teachings, it was what some would call a genuine spiritual experience. It happened when my husband told me he was having an affair. We lived in Northern New Mexico. I was standing in front of our adobe house drinking a cup of tea. I heard the car drive up and the door bang shut. Then he walked around the corner, and without warning he told me he was having an affair and he wanted a divorce.

I remember the sky and how huge it was. I remember the sound of the river and the steam rising up from my tea. There was no time, no thought, there was nothing-- just the light and a profound, limitless stillness. Then I regrouped and picked up a stone and threw it at him.

When anyone asks me how I got involved in Buddhism, I always say it was because I was so angry with my husband. The truth is that he saved my life. When that marriage fell apart, I tried hard-- very, very hard-- to go back to some kind of comfort, some kind of security, some kind of familiar resting place. Fortunately for me, I could never pull it off. Instinctively I knew that annihilation of my old dependent, clinging self was the only way to go. That's when I pinned that sign up on my wall."

Of course, this kind of existential risk can be overdone, definitely-- and it may be that we do not discover a single goddamned thing that is indestructible in ourselves-- it may be that we just suffer and are demoralized and want to die. That's why it's a risk. It's also necessary to have guides. No one just jauntily goes wandering around the underworld alone, looking for lessons.

But it occurs to me that, when things fall apart so suddenly and spectacularly, doesn't that necessarily mean that things were being held together-- that great forces and efforts were being applied to hold things together?

Molecular structure of cyanoacrylate, a.k.a. super glue

More Pema:

"Life is a good teacher and a good friend. Things are always in transition, if we could only realize it. Nothing ever sums itself up in the way that we like to dream about. The off-center, in-between state is an ideal situation, a situation in which we don't get caught and we can open our hearts and minds beyond limit. It's a very tender, nonaggressive, open-ended state of affairs."

on the courage to die continually

"Fear is a natural reaction to moving closer to the truth....What we're talking about is getting to know fear, becoming familiar with fear, looking it right in the eye-- not as a way to solve problems, but as a complete undoing of old ways of seeing, hearing, smelling, tasting, and thinking. The truth is that when we really begin to do this, we're going to be continually humbled. There's not going to be much room for the arrogance that holding on to ideals can bring. The arrogance that inevitably does arise is going to be continually shot down by our own courage to step forward a little further. The kinds of discoveries that are made through practice have nothing to do with believing in anything. They have much more to do with the courage to die, the courage to die continually." Pema Chödrön, _When Things Fall Apart_

also from this chapter:

""I once asked Zen master Kobun Chino Roshi how he related with fear and he said "I agree. I agree.""

Reactor Core

I honestly have no idea what the hell I am doing. I guess that's all right. Maybe it's best.

I continue to work on 4th step resentments. Two yesterday that were very difficult to work through and the dissolution of which will take time-- my resentment toward the ex for being abandoned, and a general intense loathing toward her new paramour, for his generally shitty behavior.

I have known the paramour for 36 years, ever since day two in my first year dorm room at SJC in 1981. He is one of these people with whom it 's fine having a same sex acquaintance but you wouldn't want anyone you even half cared about getting romantically involved with him. He insinuates himself into other people's relationships, he talks and walks a super fine game up front with women and then engages in low class cheating, lying and toxic gaslighting and abuse. He sent me a message on Facebook as he and the ex were starting to get together that said "That's a formidable woman with whom you spend your time. She and I have found a surprising thing. No harm intended." I mean, that was literally just about it. I was very cold and distant in my reply because I so intensely did not want to be triangulated and entangled. I at first simply wrote "Indeed." Then he replied "That is not a very helpful comment!" Can you trace how he communicates in these shitty, deflected and dominating ways? I replied "x tells me everything, so I know already." When I talked with the ex about his stupid shit attempt at communication, she said "that doesn't sound very skillful, but I think he is just trying to behave honorably." These kinds of bland exchanges where she more and more ardently defended him were why I declared January a no-conversation-about-the-shitbag month, which I'm sure also didn't end up helping matters much.

I think I resent his fucked up entangling and triangulating behavior more than anything-- he is probably closeted bi and actually wants to fuck me, not the ex, not that there's anything wrong with that, but when it gets acted out in an unconscious competition and a project of destructive shitbag behavior, well, yes, there is something wrong with that. He succeeded in contributing to a good fucking, that's for sure.

On Monday night, February 27, just about exactly 3 fucking weeks ago, after I returned from my Ajo sojourn and then went and did step work and then returned home supposedly to practice the "reflective communication and empathy" exercise the couples counselor had taught us on Friday, and after the ex set it out for me in absolute clarity that she was done and that she was ending the partnership, I went into a fairly blind rage and sent the following message to her new paramour on Facebook: "Good job, very thorough, well done. No harm intended eh? I guess you really are a Master of Fates. I hope when she finds out what a fucking abusive piece of shit you are, she eviscerates you the way she has eviscerated me. Have fun." I still remember just about every word of that compact shit bomb, as there remains something satisfying about it.

Now, how am I supposed to locate my role in this resentment? That's the toughest work. He weaseled his way into a vulnerable relationship, seduced the partner of someone who was supposedly his friend, pretended to be operating within a set of poly agreements that were rapidly eroding, probably engaged in some other awful shenanigans that I don't even know about. What did I do? How was I self-seeking, selfish, dishonest and afraid?

I got to some of that yesterday. In fact, the biggest revelation was my utter foolishness in basically *daring* him to continue pursuing the ex. I felt so cocky and confident that he had little to offer her that she would actually buy that I did not engage with him actively. To his brief message to me about how they had found "a surprising thing" and "no harm intended," I now wish I had not responded so confidently and cockily. It appears I underestimated his skills as a toxic asshole and the ex's attractions to him. From the very moment that this new relationship began to emerge, I handled things arrogantly, egotistically, defensively, resentfully, fearfully and in a great many other unskilled ways. I am reminded of parts of the description of the Pluto/Moon situation currently going on for me from Cafe Astrology:

Fear-- sometimes intense fear-- can reveal itself at the beginning of a challenging Pluto transit. We confront our “dark” side-- those parts of us that are raw, primal, and instinctive. Resisting this process can cause us to externalize or project these parts of ourselves. If we do this, Pluto’s energy has to go somewhere, so we end up meeting Pluto in our lives in the guise of events and people. If we are attracting jealous, manipulative, and controlling people or situations, we can ask ourselves why this is happening. Is there something in ourselves that is provoking this kind of behavior or circumstance?

Never underestimate the persistence and skills of a toxic competitor and never overestimate the ability of your partner to be discerning and keep things in proportion when you are not showing up for her.

As a side note, it's funny to me that some people seem to think that our poly agreements led to this current situation. The absurdity of that is easily revealed by pointing out how many monogamous relationships end with extra-curricular adventures that "turn serious." There is no structural relationship hedge against the gradual dissolution of a connection with someone and the subsequent almost inevitable and archetypal emergence of an interloper.

At any rate, "putting aside the wrongs that others have done entirely" and working on getting free of this shit is both the most challenging and most rewarding endeavor currently. I can tell that the work will lead to some serious liberation. But I can't rush it-- the simple fact is that, obviously, my grudge, hatred, resentment and anger still boils away. There's more yet to be accepted. This is also true in regard to the resentment toward the ex for abandoning me rather than turning toward our partnership to attempt to salvage or renew it.

Grief, attachment, grudges and liberation-- light fare for the first day of spring

What a roller coaster. Remaining attached to the ex, emotionally, yet being largely ignored. She doesn't even know where I live. Or anything else, really. She's even resisting or at least questioning whether or not I should have regular contact with Everett. I might as well have died, seriously, for the amount of contact. Yet I miss her. I wish this were not the case. I suppose it's normal. We had regular daily contact for almost 6 years. To go from that to nothing almost overnight is bound to be difficult, no matter how she is deciding to behave these days. But it is a blow to one's pride to have plenty of reasons, all healthy and rational, to disentangle oneself from someone and yet to remain attached. It can't really be fought or managed by me. I have responded by turning my attention to people I can help, in particular my sponsees, and working on focusing on the tasks at hand with the PhD program and some teaching housecleaning. It is no anodyne to get busy at all, but at least something is getting done.

 I worked late last night on the resentment that I have toward the ex for not communicating with me. She started this complete shut down and cut off back on February 6th. Since then, she has just not communicated much of anything. Her outward behavior has been the same as that of someone who simply loathes me. It is behavior of hatred and rejection, manifested. So that is all I have to go on, really-- rejection.

She started to communicate a little bit in couples counseling, but it was all of a revisionist nature, mostly identifying how shitty I was and how bad the partnership was, after all. For example, we had a set of what I thought were mutually agreed upon guidelines for poly/non-monogamous behavior. In counseling, after more than 5 years, she related that she never wanted to be poly, that it always felt like it was just an escape route for me, that it made her feel second class, and that she only agreed to it because she was "in love" with me and would have agreed to a lot of things. This came as a total shock to me-- and is especially ironic because I had not had any real live outside relationships and she had two. She also began constructing the narrative that I "always had to be dragged into more commitment--": this was true to an extent when we first getting together, as I was still healing from a horrific break up and was working on re-tooling my way of being attached. But over time, I sure as hell got as far into commitment as I knew how-- householding, fathering her son, you name it.

 This kind of revisionism was just unacceptable to me.  I had no interest in revisionist narratives that seemed to me to simply be an excuse to defend her decision, so I canceled our further sessions.

So the sudden shut down and lack of communication has nursed a burgeoning and ferocious grudge in me. It is tied to the other resentment I am working on through step 4, which is the grudge against being so suddenly abandoned and rejected-- that is a more global one that I am sure will unearth a wide variety of awful and unprocessed shit from my past relationships. It felt more doable to approach the specifics of all of the lines of communication being down.

The fires are stoked by how her complete lack of communication affects my self esteem, pride, security, our relationship and my attitude toward others, my sense of myself as a man and my finances-- basically, one of those resentments that results from a seemingly global threat to my well being. It's interesting to recognize in this my essential need for communication and connection and how globally and thoroughly being cut off disturbs and destroys me. I fancy myself a sort of hermit, but that is always on my own terms. When I am forced into isolation suddenly and get virtually no information of any kind regarding the most important relationship in my life, I fucking freak the fuck out.

 Getting to the 4th column of the grudge inventory, which is what is my role?-- Where am I to blame? What were my own mistakes? What did I do before, during and after? In particular, where had I been self-seeking, selfish, dishonest and afraid?-- well, that provided the usual epiphany, the usual revelation. In the period of time leading up to the ex ending our partnership, *I* was not communicative. *I* was withdrawn and unavailable. I was distant, isolating, depressed. I continue to not communicate honestly, mostly out of fear of rejection and fear that I can't handle the almost total lack of response.

In some vague ways I realized these things a few weeks ago and even wrote the ex an amends letter, acknowledging my unavailability and withdrawal. But the specifics-- I was self-seeking by never, not once, turning toward the ex in a direct way and trying to reconnect. I assumed all was well and took the ex for granted, definitely. I was selfish in having the attitude that my need for isolation had to take priority over her need for connection. For example, for months, I had been staying up a few hours after she went to bed, and she definitely confronted me unhappily about this a few times, expressing her desire for us to go to bed together. I dismissed that and refused.I wasn't even in a space to make a compromise-- like maybe going to bed together and then getting up after she fell asleep, or having a couple of nights a week, even, where we were on the same sleep schedule.

Her loneliness grew and grew. I was dishonest by stubbornly remaining under the delusion that all was well and that her spoken indications that she was happy and we were okay were accurate. I too was in denial, was unhappy and depressed (not because of the partnership, but honestly so nonetheless). I was also operating under the delusion that I was such a great partner for her that no one and nothing would be able to threaten it. Behind all of this was self-centered fear, of course, ("the chief activator of our defects"-Bill W).

I realize now that I knew our partnership was failing, was vulnerable, was weak and disintegrating and the two of us were not connecting and it filled me with vague and chronic dread. I was afraid she would wake up one day and leave. Lo and behold, What do you know.

You may think that getting next to my role in this way is just awful, dear reader. But no-- it offers the hope of liberation from the grudge. It gets me next to the shared humanity I have with the ex. How we both made mistakes. How we were just two lost humans who began to drift apart. How I am cause in the matter at hand. It is a blow to my ego, of course, but after all, my ego is where the grudge gets nursed, where it grows and festers. In setting her free from being on the hook regarding this resentment around communication, especially by recognizing my own role in cutting off the lines of communication, I have a chance finally to grieve and move on. The total silence continues but I don't need to be attached to it or to try to manipulate it away or get angry about it. For me to be free from her choices by recognizing how my own have contributed to where I am, to what the reality is-- that is the essence of step 4. It's tough coming to the realization that I played such a huge role in the disintegration of a partnership that meant the world to me. But it is the stone cold truth and it is, like all truth, liberating. And I would rather be free and face the facts than be in victim mode and in a prison of my own making. When I get to be truly sorry for my mistakes and the harm that I caused, I also get to be truly free. A bare bones beginning that seems appropriate for Percy on the first day of spring.