Rambles

Hi friends, 

Just wanted to let you all know that I’ll no longer be posting to this profile because I’ve moved all my writings to a new website: http://ramblewithaplan.com/ 

If you’d prefer, I can send you my weekly writings on my current research in consciousness, spirituality and communal narratives straight to your inbox. Simply subscribe here. 

Hope to hear from you in other places online :) 

Peace and good,

If you missed the previous update – a recap on Interchange's fifth counseling training session, which focused on healing old hurts and getting our whole selves back – you can read it right here. And if you’re enjoying reading these rambles, please consider subscribing to receive them right in your email inbox.

Dear Reader, What are your unanswerable questions? The ones that play on repeat, inaudibly, throughout every day of your life? For many of us, they’ve become so embedded within our inner dialogue that we hardly recognize them anymore, as they quietly cause us to wonder: Am I enough? Am I too much? Why do I want to hide? What’s the point? How can I be happy? What does happiness even mean? When will my real life start? (Or, insert any number of your own unanswerable questions. We’ve all got one perfectly tailored to ourselves.) On the surface, it appears that these questions could be easily answered with clever advice and/or reassurances. But, these replies don’t resolve the question, or go deep enough to understand its complexity; these questions have very deep roots. When asked to share some of my own unanswerable questions with my group, I had decided upon these three:

Why am I so averse to doing things the normal/traditional/easy way?

Will I find a way to make a living that’s invigorating and inspiring to me?

How can I not feel totally taxed by hanging out with people?

But instead of using these questions we were then asked to simplify them into one that we’ve been asking ourselves for as long as we could remember, making the question something that we could imagine our baby self asking.

As my group mates formed simpler questions and shared them around the circle, I got a sense of what mine would be and felt confident when I was chosen to share. But, instead of getting the words out, I was ambushed by a wave of emotion that silenced all logic and had me speaking only the language of tears.

I pulled my beanie over my head and curled into as small of a ball as possible for one seated in a chair until, when the heaving tears dissipated, I shakily shared my question – the question that has persistently plagued almost every situation in my life: Do I belong?

Before this weekend’s sessions, we’d been given the homework to bring in a photo of ourselves as a baby, or from when we were small. After we had met in our smaller home groups, the purpose of having these photos on hand was made apparent. We rejoined the greater group and, in silence, milled around the room with our questions scribbled on a piece of paper that we hung around our necks. These questions were accompanied by photos of ourselves as children. Here’s mine:

Knowing that such a personal question was being made common knowledge to everyone around me, and knowing that they were seeing an image of me in my most innocent state, brought me to tears in front of each person that looked upon me. I sobbed in strangers arms and bumbled around with bleary eyes.

Right now, as I type, it’s hard for me to imagine what you must be thinking about all of this. I am self-conscious that you’re not seeing what the point of all of this emotion was, so let me address your potential curiosity:

We were asking these questions, and exposing them to ourselves and others, so that we might learn to develop new resources, or answers. In other words, we were learning why we felt the need to ask them in the first place and then determine a path to resolve them once and for all. Otherwise, these questions follow us wherever we go.

We also realized that many of the questions we were asking are attached to afrozen need —something that we wished would have happened differently for us in our past, but now requires some time for grieving and healing to find its answer. For example, for some, the question, “Am I loved?” is one that can’t seem to be sufficiently answered even when, in fact, they might receive a great deal of love in their everyday lives. The old question is still being asked even in new contexts – places where there are answers in abundance, but an ongoing inability to accept them. So then, as a counselor, one could work to address that frozen need, so that their present lives aren’t impeded by their past needs.

Uncovering my question is only the beginning of my healing, but now that I’ve located it I see how it shows up in so many areas of my life – not taking the armrest on airplanes, letting others cut in front me in line and acting like they were there first, waiting for someone else to state what options are available instead of presenting my own, etc.

Now the real work begins as even more probing questions are beginning to surface: Do I want to belong? Why do I long for individual freedom more than collective camaraderie?

It’s likely linked to a need that’s somewhere in my past, frozen in time, but still so painfully present.

Peace and good,

Dane

If you missed the previous post – an update on Interchange’s fourth counseling training session, which focused on how shame prevents true intimacy – you can read it right here. And if you’re enjoying reading these rambles, please consider subscribing to receive them right in your email inbox.

The sound of weeping and wailing was rising and falling like waves from the main meeting room, but the volume decreased with each step I took farther away from the group’s emotional activity.

We’d begun 30 minutes earlier with a shortened version of group meditation that involved three 20-minute segments entirely dedicated to laughter, tears, and silence. I was all game for the laughter portion where, ironically, I laughed so hard I cried. But, when it came time to allow myself to give into tears induced by sadness, not even one would fall from my eyes.

If you missed the previous post – an update on Interchange's third counseling training session, which focused on the healing power of aggression and other stigmatized expressions of human energy – you can read it right here. And if you’re enjoying reading these rambles, please consider subscribing to receive them right in your email inbox.

The instructions were simple enough: “Find someone who you’ve wanted to connect with, but who you’ve felt some kind of resistance toward.” Once we located our person out of the 160 or so to choose from, we were tasked with sitting with them for about 20 minutes – each person getting 10 minutes of client time — and tell each other what makes us want to avoid them. We were encouraged to begin the conversation with something like, “I want to be closer to you, but these are the judgements that are getting in the way of that.” I couldn’t think of anyone that I wanted to be closer with – connecting with anyone at all sounded like effort that I didn’t want to exert. So, instead of seeking someone out, I thought it’d be amusing if someone approached me with some drama to air out. I remained stubbornly planted in my seat. Passive and planted. Then she walked up and sheepishly asked if I had a partner. We were among the few left in the room who weren’t already seated face to face with someone else airing judgments. I smiled in a way that comes about when I feel curious and nervous, but I’m not sure how that smile came across to her – how can we ever know how we come across to others without asking them? We sat down and began the session.

If you missed the previous post – an update on Interchange's second counseling training session, which focused on the nature of reality and how very little we know about it – you can read it right here. And if you're enjoying reading these rambles, please consider subscribing to receive them right in your email inbox.

Dear reader,

I pinned her up against the wall and yelled with all my aggression directly into her face. She told me I wasn't enough, and that I would never get what I wanted.

"You can't have it," she mocked. "You never will."

I pushed harder, my feet sliding out from underneath me, as I could feel her delicate shoulder bones start to give way under my palms.

OK, she said, losing all the intensity we'd developed in the last few moments. Now I want you to push up against the wall behind me, so that you can give it all of your aggression without hurting me.

I smiled and agreed. It was only an exercise after all.

Spread throughout the newly reclaimed elementary school campus on Treasure Island were nearly 20 more pairs of people connecting with their aggressive energies. I could hear angry yells down the hall, and  muted thuds from people punching pillows with all their might.

Earlier that morning, we were sitting calmly in a circle, listening to a lecture on the various energy systems that each of us maintain as we go throughout our days. To those who may have deemed the reference of “energy systems” as too hippy dippy or unapproachable, we clarified its meaning by conducting an experiment with the person sitting next to us:

Turn to the person to your right and look into their eyes. Say something if you’d like, like “hello” or “hi”, but this isn’t the important task at hand. What’s important is that you notice this person, be present with them, and recognize that they project something through their way of being. This way of being might be labeled with positive words, like warm, inviting, calm, and/or stable. Or, their way of being might be better explained as rigid, cold, distant, and/or detached. Whatever the case, we notice that this person next to us expresses a way about them that is communicated without words. We can feel that we know something about them without their saying anything at all. Turn to the person to your left and do the same thing, but notice your feeling is not the same at all. Notice that this person’s energy is unique to this individual.

This is what is meant by an individual’s energy system.

Once we’d developed a baseline understanding of what we were talking about when talking about energy, we recognized energies that are often deemed inappropriate in our culture. Specifically, we talked about aggression.

To understand the powerful potential of aggressive energy in ourselves, and explore how it could be useful in counseling, we couldn’t just talk about rage, anger, and hate. Instead, with the help of a partner, we were given an opportunity to bring these feelings to the surface, which is why I was pinning a woman up against the wall as she provoked me with choice taunts that struck my vulnerability.

I don’t know what your reaction to hearing this update is (though I’d be thrilled to hear from you), but, if you were like any of us in the training program, you’d be timid to willingly prod at an energy that is so often the cause of regret, hurt, and destruction in our lives. However, we weren’t engaging with our aggression aimlessly. Rather, we were curious about whether aggression held within it something that could be of service to us. After all, it is an inseparable part of every human’s experience.

Now, you might be wondering how this translates into a counseling situation. So was I…

After the enraging session with my partner, we split off into new pairs. This time, rather than stimulating each other’s aggression, we conducted a counseling session. As each of us took turns being counselor and client, we considered how aggression might be utilized in a session.

Here are some ways in which I found aggression could be helpful in counseling:

From a counselor’s perspective, aggression can be used to reinforce determination, focus, protection, resilience, and fearlessness. The energy can be channeled to remove great obstacles and stand for great good on your client’s behalf. Aggression can destroy, but it also protects the precious things we build.

From a client’s perspective, aggression catalyzes discharge of weighty emotion, repressed anger, resentment, and/or hurt. It can move a client from the role of victim to victor. Aggression can be blinding, but it can also be the backbone to breakthrough.

Aggression is only one of many energies at play within our human experience, but it’s one that is often discarded as useless or too unruly to wield wisely. What are other energies that we avoid rather than nurture toward our benefit? I’d love to hear your answers.

As a suggestion: What positive purpose can sexual energy bring to an interaction (other than the apparently obvious end of intercourse)?

Peace and good,

I am a speck. 

I come from specks. 

I’ve been to love and pain. 

Love is my home. 

Delusion leads to the destruction of relationships.

I am strong. 

I come from enduring people. 

I’ve been to mountaintops and low valleys. 

Middle ground is my home.

I know that the world spins on without my consent.

I am content. 

I come from chaos. 

I’ve been to heaven and hell. 

Neither is my home.

Currently, I'm enrolled in a 10-month counseling training program in San Francisco called Interchange. The sessions are comprised of lectures on therapeutic theories and techniques, as well as a lot of practice as both clients and counselors. This update provides a glance at an element of what this month's training entailed, involving meta models and personal narratives. For more background, I suggest you read part one of these updates: Why I'm holding guys' hands now. 

“Today, we are going to be concerning ourselves with the nature of reality and how very little we know about it.” It was Monday – as perfect a day as any to deconstruct existence as we knew it – and our class of 60 counseling students of all ages, vocations, shapes, sexual orientations, and colors were prepared to dive deep, led by our instructor Steve Bearman. But first, we needed to come to terms with all that we didn't know. "Whatever objective reality exists out there, we can't see it. We are limited by our senses and our interpretations of the world," Steve said. He asked us to begin walking around the room and, after a few shuffled steps taken in silence, to find ourselves standing face to face with a fellow student. Our instructions were to ask them: “How are you?” We considered how complex and layered we are, which makes it very difficult to truly know how we're doing. So, we were encouraged to reply: “I don’t know.” It felt vulnerable, not knowing, even though it was true. Then we were asked to continue walking around, find another partner, but this time ask: “Who are you?” It was an exercise in looking beyond the identity we bestow upon ourselves. Who are we without our name? Our national identity? Our religious affiliation? Our sexual orientation? Our ethnicity? Our profession? Our familial bonds? Who are we at all? I found myself thinking about my name; how my family has Spanish, Irish, English, and Croatian ancestry; how I’m an Orthodox Christian; how I’m white; male; heterosexual; educated; a writer. I am all of these things because these are the constructs I’ve attached to, and from which I’ve formed identity. But am I really just those things? I replied: “I don’t know.” Our last instructions were to walk around one more time and find ourselves face to face with another partner. We were told to ask them: “What are you?” The answer to this one seems very easy. We’re humans, right? But the appropriate answer to this question is not “human.” Can you guess what the correct answer is? “I don’t know.” Even our ideas of what it means to be human create a construct. Having models for how, who, and what we are can both serve and limit us. Fortunately, once we realize that we perpetuate the existence of these constructs in our lives through cooperation, we also recognize our ability to change them if needed. It’s discombobulating not knowing how, who, or what I am. But it’s also exhilarating to realize that I still exist even apart from the many associations I've hung my reality on. Maybe I am much more than the answers I come up with to these questions. If I don’t cling to the who I think I am, then I can be empty – in this emptiness, there’s a lot of mystery; maybe mystery is more beautiful than the self I have constructed. What constructs frame your life? To see them, ask yourself how, who, and what you are. Your answers will reveal the story that shapes your life.

Dear reader, It was in a simple church beneath a red mesa where my heart was softened to the tune of Have Mercy on Us – an old Christian Orthodox hymn sung every morning during Lent by monks at the Monastery of the Holy Archangel Michael in Cañones, New Mexico. Though there were countless liturgical songs sung over the course of the 90 days I spent there, this was the one that moved me. At the beginning of my spiritual retreat, I critiqued the song – the notes where the brothers missed their harmony, or were out of tune. But eventually, the song became a prayer; a melody of heart and mind where thinking gave way to embodied grace. Before leaving the monastery, I asked one of the brothers for the music to the hymn so that I could show it to my sister, Aimee, who I’ve made music with in a folk rock band called The Music Room for many years. I had it in my mind that, someday, we’d sing it together. Last month, we finally made that hope a reality. With this song, and accompanying visuals of the monastery, I hope that you will experience a bit of the peace and perspective gifted to me during my time in the desert. It's clear that, given our most current chaotic world events, we could all benefit from a moment of requesting God's mercy.

Listen to our recording of the chant, and see visuals of the monastery, by clicking here.

“Be patient toward all that is unsolved in your heart and try to love the questions themselves, like locked rooms and like books that are now written in a very foreign tongue. Do not now seek the answers, which cannot be given you because you would not be able to live them. And the point is, to live everything. Live the questions now. Perhaps you will then gradually, without noticing it, live along some distant day into the answer."

Dear reader, I first discovered this bit of advice in Rainer Maria Rilke's Letters to a Young Poet while observing 40 days of silence at a monastery in New Mexico. Questions had led me there – ones about spirituality, God, existence, and my own life’s meaning – but surprisingly, even after nearly three months dedicated to prayer, reading, and writing, I left with very few answers. I did, however, leave with much more meaningful questions – ones that I’m still living into today.

Possessing an answer can bring about confidence and self-assuredness, but bypassing the discovery requisite of “living into the answer” can deprive the seeker of ever realizing the full weight of the answer itself.

So, in honor of this learning, I want to open this newsletter up to those who aren’t seeking answers, but are eager to ask more expansive questions.

What questions you have been asking?

With your replies, I’m going to create a topic calendar of regular newsletters focused on musing with you about the questions you raise.

Would you like to participate in this existential rambling with me?

The only right answer to this question is to question.

Happy asking,

Dane

I want to talk to you about God, but it’s the most confusing three-letter word I’ve never understood.

How do you use it in a sentence?

Is it a part of your prayer, or profanity professed?  

Does it add levity to a curse?

Does it make your heart break or burst?

What do you call the mysterious divine that lurks in all of us, begging questions?

Do you ask these things at all?

Who answers?

What do you mean when you say God?

I look intently into his eyes and sense he’s hiding something. He's blinking more often than what seems reasonable. I stand more firm in front of him, looking up, trying to calm his nerves by offering a stable presence, even though I feel quite small.

He’s nearly a foot taller than me and probably weighs twice as much as I do, but his eyes don't convey the confidence his body commands. And so, in spite of my smaller stature, I feel like I must be strong for him.

October 8, 2015 Auburn, California 

Dear reader,

Nearly seven months ago, I set out to write and share a poem every day. The numeric goal was to write at least 191 poems. The “soul goal” was to better live into my given name, Dane, which I found out last year means poem.

The deadline for this poetic quest was my 30th birthday, which is October 8, 2015, meaning this journey of publicly sharing my words and thoughts has come to an end today.

I didn’t reach my goal of posting 191 new poems. Instead I landed at 177 shared “rambles” – as I’d come to call these posts because of their random nature.

These rambles were shared from pubs in Chicago, old houses in Fargo, beside lakes in Minnesota, within jungles in Nicaragua, and from hilltops in California. (One day, I even wrote pieces of a ramble that developed during a busy day of travel through Managua, Houston, Los Angeles, and Sacramento. You can read it here.)

Though I missed my target, I don’t feel like I missed out. In fact, it was the days I failed to post that were some of the most poetic; filled with love, connection, full life. And it has been the experiences that I still can’t put into words that have been the most transformative. Life, in the fullness of its beautiful ambiguity, is tricky to describe. There were days that I would’ve rather posted a blank page and said, “enjoy this digital respite; it’s in the blank silence that you’ll find raw poetry.”

What this writing challenge showed me is that honestly conveying the layers of life we encounter on a daily basis requires attention, presence, gratitude, and curiosity. Some days I felt like I stewarded my name well by embodying these qualities. On other days, I felt like a fraud – in an endless state of becoming.  

Publicly sharing my posts revealed to me how private I’d like to remain. I thought the public sharing would enlist some form of “crowd-enforced” accountability. Instead, it compelled me into being vague in my descriptions of life in its layers out of a desire to protect feelings and perspectives that I didn’t feel prepared to endorse with written word. Many of these rambles contain incomplete vulnerability…which leave much to be wanting. Sorry.

Only the truth, as far as I could grasp it, felt worthy of sharing.

As I continue seeking truth, I’ll continue writing about it in my rambling fashion. And, as I continue to understand what these truths mean to me, I’ll work to convey them to you. This will no longer happen on a daily basis, but, God willing, it will still happen when it happens.  

This challenge has shown me that poems are written and poems are lived. And this is especially true when your name means poem.

Thank you for reading.

Peace and good,

Dear reader,

I turn 30 tomorrow.

Throughout my twenties I’ve done a fair bit of traveling and exploring, all in an endless search for my “purpose, vocation, meaning in life, etc.”

In many ways, I’ve accepted the fact that I’ll always be pursuing these things. (It turns out that I find great fulfillment in exploring.)

But, I have realized one thing very clearly: I love people and believe kindness is how that love is expressed.

So, all I want for my birthday is $30 for my 30 years thus far. Then, I’m going to have a field day of kindness by giving all that money away!

Would you like to celebrate my birthday with me by contributing to my "kindness campaign"?

Click here: https://www.tilt.com/tilts/random-acts-of-kindness-birthday-altruism/

This campaign will only last one day (my birthday), so contribute now because after tomorrow...it's over.

Also, your suggestions on who might benefit from this money and/or where it might be most helpful are totally welcome :)

Peace and good,

October 5, 2015 Auburn, California

I want to be free. 

I see my only option is to let things go.

Prayer helps by turning anxiety into surrender.

Then brightness visits my soul in the middle of the night;

Where it has been so dark lately.

Fear moves me away from the very truths that can set me free.

Last night, I was told that “what you think of as ‘the problem’ is actually part of your problem.”

“Let’s not solve this problem,” I was encouraged, “let’s deepen your relationship with it.”

Life is not unbearable, but how I’m bearing with it is.

My perception is the problem and the solution.

Freedom spans only so far as my eyes can see.

Can knowing this set me free?

Only through surrender.

October 3, 2015 Auburn, California 

Every life has a theme, just like any good story, and it surfaces in how people describe you when you’re living and how they remember you once you’re dead. 

My Papa Don was a hard worker. This was repeated again and again by many people. He was respected and known for it. Of course he possessed many other wonderful qualities – charm, humor, and wisdom – but “hard-working” was the adjective that rose to the surface of people’s memories when considering his life.

Of course I thought about death at his funeral and how we’re all so fragile and even silly to continually be so shocked when one of our loved ones dies. We are all going to die. Instead we should be more shocked at how carelessly we handle the time we’ve got here.

His death has prompted me to wonder about the theme for my own life story. If my time on earth concluded today, what would be the adjective that comes to people’s minds for me?

We have no say in the matter when we’re dead, so we best know the words we’d want to hear now; this way they can become inner mantras to recite in our thoughts until they become who we are.

To me, the only thing worthy of eternal memory is love. I want love to be my legacy.

October 1, 2015 Auburn, California 

To start, I drafted some thoughts on how all of human history has been anchored in fickle human memory. Meaning that we inevitably perpetuate what can’t be forgotten. That’s history. 

Then, I thought it’d be fitting to write about the inner conflict of vocational decisions. How strange to feel called to eros when my psyche so loves to be deprived of love. A monk’s robe would wear well on my ego.

It rained today, so there were thoughts about focusing on the smell of dirt and clarity in the sky, but then I got a phone call about a funeral and stepped away from work that suddenly seemed like a planet removed from my reality.

Upon reflecting, I had hopes that I could convey the very weird process it took, mentally, to even write what I’m sharing now, believing that my background elucidation on the chaotic scenario that permits me to move thoughts to paper would be as entertaining as a Wes Anderson film. But, alas, I’m mediocre at best.