Michael

Yesterday morning, I was walking in a morning meditation. Slow, deliberately noting things without naming them and noticing. It's amazing what you can see, smell, hear and feel (e.g., the texture of the ground under your shoes) when the mind isn't lost in thought.

In any event, others are out strolling, walking dogs, getting exercise, etc.. My head is down (mostly), hands are in the pockets of my hoodie and clasped in front of me, hood is on (it was cool and windy out) and I'm walking very slowly. I notice a woman on the sidewalk ahead of me, approaching me, power walking - walking while swinging her arms. She's coming my way, sees me and crosses the street. I smile and think, "I probably *do* look menacing.

To me, I'm in sweats and a hoodie but my meditative walk is out of step (no pun intended) with the crowd. I forget about her and return to noticing. Later I turn around and head back and she's apparently done the same and here she comes again, bearing down on me, arms a' swinging! And again, she crosses the street and again I smile to myself.

This time it stuck with me. After I got home and had breakfast, coffee, showered, etc., I shaved my face clean. This is something I rarely do and is something I think could make me appear less like a scary homeless person (as if homeless people are scary).

I’ve never really had a technique or tool I could use to actually do this. Until maybe recently and even then, it “works” in small spaces of time and not for an entire day.

I imagined that I was going to be taking my cat to the vet to be put down. The next thing I knew, I was lying on the floor next to him, stroking his fur and speaking sweetly to him, deeply noticing how beautiful he is and feeling how much I love that boy. 

As I was lying there, the carpet I was on became more known to me; more soft. I could smell the chemicals used in its manufacturing and I could feel through the plush, down to the mat that the soft pieces are tied into. Under that I could feel the floor and the hollow space underneath.

I wasn’t trying to feel these things - only that I put myself in a space that fixed me to the moment and then a rising up occurred. A rising up of noticing.

I don’t want to imagine losing a loved one and at the same time, I’m not sure why. It did no harm, it wasn’t sad - it was lovely. 

Yesterday I spent some time at the beach and as I was contemplating the waves moving to and ending their apparent journey of thousands of miles to connect with the shore or rather, the energy moving through the water -- and I found myself considering how ancient that exchange is and the eyes that have stood where I was standing and watched the same dance; eyes that are now long gone and forgotten and the countless generations that remembered those eyes, also gone and forgotten. The recursive turning of the wheel of life and death or coming and going. Duality. The illusion of separateness.

And also I found myself trying to wrap my brain around the energetic equivalent of the Matryoshka doll to which I bore witness. The energetic wave being made visible by its conduct through water and its transfer of energy to the land. The energetic components of the wave harmonic’s many molecules of water and solutes as not only carrier but propagator as they bounce like little pieces of popcorn but with direction in their randomness, composing this wave. And the energetic motion of of each water molecule itself - the hydrogen and oxygen atoms sharing their electrons in a shaky blur of stable gorgeous geometry. And further down to just the hydrogen atom: a veritable basketball at the center of some large stadium with a gnat sized piece of energy flying around the perimeter of the stadium; here and now there in a flash so random (e.g., not well understood by the human mind) that equations can predict relative probability at best. It’s such a magician! And the quarks and their adhering gluons that make up these particles, and their chaotic behaviors.

I was at the beach again, today and I saw lots of people taking pictures. Again. Okay, that’s nothing new. My parents took pictures of me at the beach with SLR cameras back in the day - back in 1970 when I was a little 9 year old boy. 

In once sense, and for many, this hasn’t changed. The tech has changed but taking and posing for pictures hasn’t changed. And in another sense, and for many, this has changed in that there experience as captured on digital media *is* for the media itself, and the consumers of that media. Instagram, Snapchat, Facebook, etc.

Experiences are HAD in order to be captured and shared. Entire endeavors undertaken just for the sake of their being consumed by an uninterested and likely self-absorbed audience who is also undertaking experiences for consumption.

These things made a break with me. They told me, “It’s not you, it’s me.” And just as sure as we were lovers and I was telling everyone about them and in so doing sharing the better self I hoped to demonstratively be, they so surely no longer wanted me. And while I tried to want them still, I couldn’t.

Sharing a quote, even against the backdrop of a pretty image, from Jeff Foster, His Holiness The Dalai Lama, William Blake, Byron Katie - why? Why would I do that? I can’t remember why I ever did. 

I’ve been eating paleo for 10 days now. I’m not even sure that’s correct because “eating paleo” seems to mean different things to different people.

I’m eating meat, vegetables, fruit and nuts and seeds. I include almond milk, I brew coffee, I steep tea.

Just now, I thought I couldn’t make a shake because I was out of bananas and if nothing else, I am a creature of habit. Love that almond milk, raw almond butter, banana, and frozen blueberries in a shake! Then I had the brilliant idea of putting a scoop of Optimum Nutrition chocolate whey protein in with the other ingredients sans banana - to kind of make up for the loss. Okay so I’m cheating on paleo but not in a substantive way since the ON powder only has 4 grams of carbs per serving (so it won’t provoke an insulin response). So I did it. And I had 2 sips and it was nasty as fuck! Holy shit! It was like licking something sweet off the floor.

(I think) my body/taste has adjusted to real/whole foods. I poured that shit down the sink ASAP and then remembered that I had some trimmed vegetables and hummus in the fridge so that’s what I dug into, instead. And wow! Amazing!

Once or twice, I’ve felt the want to follow intuition or bliss. I feel the want usually when I do it and then declare, “Oh shit! Imma do this from now on! No more using my mind to make decisions!” <---mind in action lol

In any event, there are undeniable shifts occurring in me that at least in part include more trust in the Universe, Flow, God, whatever it’s called. I call it intuition and the Universe. Quitting Facebook wasn’t a statement but just part of that flow. “Can I really just cut off this “feel-good/feel-bad” thing that I’m habitually doing?” Fuck yeah I can and wow, now I’m breathing so deeply and at peace.

I contacted a local School of Music here on Oahu and it looks like I’ll be learning guitar. I’m so in love with Blues and Slide Guitar and now it would appear to be unfolding. 

I thought I was done painting because my mind had decided I was no longer good and even worse, I was never good. Falling back into the river, I’m again flowing without a need to be good so I bought a shitton of canvases and acrylics last night on Amazon.

My work for my employer has taken on a whole new joyful meaning after my having suffered it for about a year and a half. My driving has taken on a peaceful joy as I’ve slowed down to the pace of noticing. Noticing my breath, the feel of the road through the wheel, the scenery, all of it.

I like this and Imma stay here until I don’t.

It’s difficult to accurately capture how much time I spent on Facebook. At a minimum, it was 2 hours/day (an hour in the morning and an hour throughout the day). It was probably closer to 3.5 hours per day (same hour in the morning and then another 2.5 hours scattered throughout the day). I suspect if I had truly tracked it, I’d find the numbers would be higher - that’s the thing about self-estimates: they’re invariably conservative. 

But I’ll go with 2 - 3.5 hours each day. Performing a little arithmetic, that comes out to 18 - 32 40-hour work weeks on Facebook each year. And to continue my arithmetic fantasy that my numbers are truly captured within this range, I’ll employ the popular halving technique and choose a midpoint between 18-32: 25.

Each year, I spent 25, 40-hour weeks on Facebook. Okay well everything takes time. I could quantitate how much time I spend cleaning dishes or vacuuming the living room and were I of a mind to do so, I could create some big, frightening number that absent context, could appear wasteful.

So, I’ll consider that time in context: was I spending those 25, 40-hour weeks doing something fulfilling? Was I enjoying my time? If so, that’s time well spent (in the notion of time being a commodity). In my experience it went from fun new toy (2007) ---> connecting with old friends and colleagues (2009′ish) ----> habit energy (up to beginning of 2017). Even though a post-hoc analysis reveals a lot of time invested, it wasn’t the quantity but the quality of that time that ultimately drove me to delete my account.

For the last 4 weeks of my 9 years on Facebook, it had lost its appeal and I mean lost it as in dropped off entirely with a sudden fall; like off a cliff. I’d decided that anything that had been so central in my life that became uninteresting that suddenly was just me experiencing a phase. No need to act - just wait and watch; read posts; check in with my feelings. Interestingly, the feelings of disinterest only grew. Keeping the account was like keeping an old ugly couch in the middle of my living room.

I argued with myself. “Just keep the account but don’t use it. Why do you have to delete it, for fucks sake???” I must enjoy this kind of inner arguing since I do it a lot. And I had that argument for a few weeks until I noticed something clear and undeniable: every time I thought about deleting my account, I felt happy. Not happy, “here are all of the ways I’ll spend my time” but just a frank and utter happiness. 

So I made myself happy and deleted it.

I think it’s only been a couple of days. I didn’t think I would miss it and I was right. Once or twice I’ve thought, “Dang! I wish I’d have messaged so-and-so and told them, gotten their address, etc.” and then I notice that I have everything I need, always.

There are well stated arguments that can be made as to the sharing of personal information online; data mining and the loss of privacy; addiction to validation; comparisons against others; time allotments; distracting oneself from the present; and countless others and while it feels good to have opted out of at least some of that, none of those arguments have anything to do with why I deleted it.

When I give and I do so because it feels good and I do it and it feels so good that I don't want to spoil it by letting anyone know (it feels THAT good!), then what's up with discomfort around receiving? 

I’m not sure I can describe the intensity of increasing discomfort I experienced from simply sitting and allowing myself to be thought. I didn’t think that’s what I was doing and in fact, I was startled at my level of unawareness with regard to the volume of thought I process each day; each hour! Day 1 of 3 was miserable as thought hit me like a firehose.

It was as if I turned off a television and could hear an unceasing jack hammer that got louder and louder and louder until it was no longer new to me...and then it dropped off.

The desire to look away from it was intense. I wanted to walk around, meditate so as to focus my mind, I wanted to read, I wanted to cancel my time in solitude, leave the desert and go to Big Sur and go into the Esalen Institute (which is free to go into after midnight). I wanted to do anything but face my own intensely, oppressively massive weight of non-stop thinking! 

I used to have a story that if I did The Work each day on whatever was causing me stress, that I’d be free from suffering within a year....maybe 2 years, 3 or 4 on the outside. Peace and contentment were only a matter of dedication and perseverance. Like paying down a debt.

I no longer have this story.  I have an equally untrue story that waking up will be or is on the other side of a traumatic break with the psyche. It doesn’t feel like it can be reached gradually by degrees. It also doesn’t feel (in this moment) like anything that is necessary.