So, after hiking with Robert, we shower, change, and drive to his girlfriends house (Chaye) to have a barbeque. We ping pong, set the table, and eat: chicken, rice, broccoli, carrots, bread, ice cream, coffee. We play: apples to apples, play station 3. I end up getting home around 2am wanting to blog or meditate – consider. Its hard to describe what I want to look into – framing it simply or in a straight forward way will filter it too heavily. It’s subtle and shy. It’s grey and irksome. There are a few things floating around, contaminating it, muddying it up.
A few weeks ago I attempted to clarify my values. I wrote down a whole list of things that I deemed significant or of importance to me. I clarified this list, searching for the heart beat of each. Four values made it through to the final clarification process – a flourishing lifestyle (conditions situated so that vital feeling or sharpness may flourish), self-understanding (a clarified and open awareness of what one truly wants, what is influencing one, and a direct perception of the way that the world is, as a result, filitered), natural engagement (effortless and passionate work – doing what is most vital, allowing complete engagement in the world), and growth centered relations (intimate pockets of honesty – the capacity to show one another what they look like when it is necessary). In my mind, the heat of these trajectories sever ropes that keep one groundless and enslaved in expectational living. They point to Washington. Breathing deeply. Getting outside ones head. Dissolving the layers and layers of unease and inferiority.
So, Chaye’s sister Char is soft and shy and simple in the kind of way that brings up the forth value, growth center relations. I, however, have stated that I am going to be moving to Washington in three months (or so). A soft and shy conflict.
Things are never entirely dramatic, though. Such Drama is a either a tool or a mirage. I digress, meander, and dry out. I imagine unrealistic situations were I’m left to decide between a compatible, honest, and intimate relation as opposed to a something more pathless: stripping myself of attachments and getting down to what I should do with myself. What is the case here (the intention) is to investigate the attraction and see what it is that is happening. Cleaning away the mud and build up.
The trajectory of self-understanding – the trajectory of growth centered relations. There is a sense that in moving to Washington, I will get to know myself in a way that will not be possible here – with parents, old friends, expectation, and familiarity. There is, likewise, a sense that in pursuing an honest relation, a quieting down will come about. The space which I see off in another world, can be arrived at in being with another in any world. In coming to see another in every dimension, accepting them, nurturing them, seeing the tick tock, you come to see more clearly what it is that enslaves you. In moving beyond repression, you free what is buried, tangled, and disorderly. You can accept the disorderly tangled underground.
An aspect of self-understanding is experimentation, looking fearlessly into whatever comes up, actualizing one’s considerations. I have recently experimented with pushing myself into things: when there is anticipatory anxiety, I acknowledge it and then press on just a bit, feeling around, testing the water – like doing one more push up when it seems like that’s it. When you push on, you stop identifying with the mechanical thought, you dissolve the bite.
Char tends to get a bit embarrassed in a similar way that I do when potentially awkward situations appear to play themselves out. It’s also the case that I’m not sure if she has any attraction to me. But, at the moment, this seems irrelevant – it will, most likely, seem relevant when I am in a position to talk to her about this, but for now it’s beside the point. For now, what is relevant is deeply fleshing out the possibilities. I may attend their church service tomorrow morning. It’s very late as of now. It’s also a church. The obstacles, however, are reactive thoughts urging a may day in the moment – the dealing with second thoughts and potentially sever anxiety. So, what is most valuable? Can one look into it, consider something in a fundamental way, to such an extent that resolve blooms from tension? Is it the case, for instance, that when one really looks into something, when they face the ripe and red hot of an internal conflict, face it and see it completely, that a tentative acceptance drowns the immediateness of being pulled about in every which way?
In undergoing experimentation one must trust something, test it out, and consider.
