Strange Magic

Oh, I'm never gonna be the same again now I've seen the way it's got to end sweet dreams, sweet dreams

The Cascades from Port Townsend

My mind and heart have been a little bit blown by my experience of the last few months. The expression: ‘this blows my mind’… what does that even mean? Does it mean that a fresh breeze blows through your stuffy old mind? Does it mean that the habit systems you run on get shaken up? Wow, I don’t know.

It’s so obvious that there is always more to see, feel, understand, than our status quo takes into account. It appears to require a kick in the cosmic pants to access a new, more comprehensive picture.

Living in an altered reality for months, away from home, getting up close and personal to the emotional detritus of other lives, and struggling to cope with the overall needs of the situation, offered me the opportunity and challenge to notice my modus operandi more easily than I can when I am in my habit world, where the habits themselves create the illusion of this is how it is. Except that it is very possible that this is how it isn’t, or doesn’t need to be.

Being thrust into an unfamiliar situation forced me to confront myself. How is my ‘self’ handling this? Which of my habits and ways of thinking are helpful, which unhelpful? Am I competent or incompetent? How the #%!@ do I do this?

Now that I am home, I face a greater challenge—to let something new (revised?) in me call the shots, or at least some of them, instead of sinking back into my old ways. That’s what my cat, who has been away from home as long as I have, is doing.

Changing habits and ways cannot be accomplished by force or logic. External events may be a catalyst, but an interior shift requires a chrysalis state of being/feeling, a quietness, so that something inside has the space to rearrange, revise, reinvent itself.

It helps if your sense of identity is soft. Easier said than done. I think; therefore I have a sense of identity.

There is an inverse ratio between a sense of identity and being here now. And being here now is where all the fun is. All the feels and sensations and pleasure. It is where the creativity is—the ability to imagine and act with confidence. It’s where I’d rather be.

Home, sweet home

How sad that the human condition, especially as it expresses itself in the harsh light of capitalism, is so much about getting and so little about having (to say nothing of giving). By ‘having’ I mean relaxing into the moment without fear.

What does it take to relax into the moment? Drugs? Alcohol? Substances can help, but there’s more to it than that. A baseline of life and death security, aka food, water, shelter, physical safety, helps a lot. If every single human being on this planet had food, water, shelter, and safety—it is hard to imagine the amazing human endeavors that would emerge. Too many of us spend too much of our time and energy trying to meet our basic needs without being slaves or assholes.

Birth and Death: strange magic on both ends

Any close encounter with birth or death makes it hard to avoid noticing the in-one-end and out-the-other structure of our little lives. And seeing that sheds a different light on the quotidian sturm und drang and all the ways we try to protect ourselves.

There’s a strange magic at work here.

What is weirder than being human? (Not that I have anything to compare it to…) What are we supposed to make of it? We’re hardwired to want to survive, and to do whatever is necessary to that end, just like all animals. And we are also hardwired (or is it soft-wired?) to want connection with others, with something beyond ourselves, with life itself.

Being part of something bigger than yourself is a basic survival strategy. And we have the capacity (as do other animals) to deny our personal selves in favor of a greater good. That’s the definition of being a parent…

Whether or not you have raised biological children, we are all potential parents, because the children who need us are everywhere all the time. And sometimes, in fact often, the children who need us the most are ourselves.

Being your own parent is something to aspire to. It is grand when you can do it. Be sweet to yourself! Love yourself! Tell yourself that you are a beautiful person who is doing the best they can and needs lots of hugs and kisses. Give yourself hugs and kisses. You deserve them, not because you did anything to deserve them. You deserve your own love because you exist.

I wish I had a formula in my back pocket that would keep me feeling empowered and self-confident all the time. I don’t. I only have the strange magic of being alive. At my best I trust in something that moves in me, when I let it. At my best, I feel gratitude for my life.

Here’s to the beginning of the last month of the year. The beginning of an end, which will lead to a new beginning. Here’s to love and art. Here’s to strange magic.