Journal # 3

Picture I took after reading The Spell of the Sensuous

Climbing down from Will Dawson's tree stand 20 feet up.

 

 

The lake looking pretty dirty

Love and Trust

Always nice to see them

We all need a little color in our lives

Mr. Abrams at sunset

As I looked up into the sky, lying on my back in a field, I thought to myself that we don't look up enough. Granted there's not much to see during the day, the blue canvas inhibits our view of the vastness. Its easy to forget how small we are and how incredible this thing called life is. 

During our second class we were lucky enough to have two guest speakers (1st picture), two gentlemen I've had the pleasure of knowing for a few years. After giving some advice about getting a job and finding housing, one thing stuck out to me that went something like, "leave room for your values to be redefined." I wrote this one down in my notebook because it seems like I've been trying really hard at times to nail my values down. You know, who am I? So being reminded that I don't have to do that kind of takes the pressure off. 

To say more about living and advice from older beings, Steve Jobs had a lot to say in his commencement speech. And it wasn't that he said a lot, I heard two main things in the whole fourteen minutes: Love and Trust. He said that we have to trust that the dots will connect in the future which will give us the confidence to follow our heart- and by following our heart and listening to our gut, we will always make the right decision. Personally I'm at a point where the potentials of my future are laid out before me and I stand before it without a map. I get asked every few days, "So what are your plans after college?" And I say that I don't have any plans. Its just funny because everyone seems to expect a plan of action, and it makes me feel like I should have a plan, but I've decided that I want to go with it, to trust that something will come up (not to say I'm standing before the future idly), and its a little intimidating. What if I don't make it? What if I fail? So its reassuring to hear from someone so successful that the best thing one can do is trust and follow their heart. I think this has something also to do with "seeing" too in that we have to be open for it to work and we have to in the present moment. Jobs also said that remembering that we will die eventually keeps us from thinking we have something to lose and that there should be no reason not to follow the heart because there's nothing to lose from doing so. Good point. But as he said, it does take some courage. I only hope that I can find that courage when I need it- because we all have it, its all there, its just covered up by shit, shit that keeps us down. But back to dying (because its a good transition).

I worry about dying. I want to know what happens, and I have trouble taking comfort in not knowing. The soul has a big factor in the figuring out what happens next equation. At the retreat center I was interning at over winter break, they all were under the impression that we all have a soul and people reincarnate. Sweet, awesome, all done. Well no because then you have scientists like these guys that we read about that says, well that soul that you're talking about doesn't exist and it can't be proven and to call what we don't understand yet a "soul" or "spirit" is frankly pretty stupid. And these two sides feel combative. They're so sure about what they believe. The scientist calls "consciousness" some "mysterious thing" while meditation leader lives by consciousness and knows it very well. And again, I am stuck in the middle, pulled very strongly one way by my spiritual side, but then ripped the other way by my intellectual side. But, in regards to Soul 2, I feel better. When I started reading the paragraph that introduces Soul 2 I said to myself in regards to the article, "Oh don't you dare take away deep feeling, sensitivity and soulfulness."  And they didn't, because if they did I would have stopped reading. So I have a dilemma. I am moved by my idea of Soul 1 but I am also moved by the idea of Soul 2. I believe in both. Soul 2 can be seen in my last photo above. I am in awe of the universe. I don't have a religion, but nature is the closest thing. And honestly if there is no soul 1, if there is no afterlife or unconscious part of us, I could take comfort, and I do, that we are all made of the same stuff, constantly recycled. I die, but the stuff that makes I never ceases to exist. 

I feel that creativity and success have everything to do with love and trust. Steve jobs said it, he'd agree. Van Jones said it too, "When it gets harder to love, love harder." If we trust, its impossible to worry about death and failure, and if we love we cannot be anything else than successful.

Shit it's cold

What does it mean to graduate?
       Good question, it means a lot of different things. I'm glad we talked about this last class because I know its been something on my mind as I found its on the mind of pretty much everyone else. This is a question I've been asked many times since the start of winter break, and I still can't put it all into words because words cannot fully express feeling, but I'll try. Graduating means reaching a goal I set four years ago, graduating means "making it", it involves some feeling of being "legit". I assume I'll feel like more of an adult when I get out of here, I've already started feeling that way. So in some way graduation = adulthood, at least for me. The image I have is being thrown into the ocean and told to swim, to make it. People say to me, "wow, the years have just flown by!" Its easy to agree when you don't really think about it, but when I think about it it feels like ten years.
         When you think way way back to that first week of freshman year, the second night going to kaiser house not really knowing what was in store, venturing off into the woods later to find a bonfire with 100 people around it, one guy yelling "40's for sale!", and you buy one because you've never had one and this is all fucking sublime. Or you think back to that first real girlfriend, the one that eventually broke your heart, the one that still gives you a little pinch when you hear her name, but the one that you had some incredible adventures with and spent so much time with, but that's enough about that. How about the friends you've made along the way, how about the Friday nights where everyone just let go and got silly. How about those best friends you've made through drunken nights, sunny days by the lake, and tough times. How about those classes that kicked your ass freshman year and reminded you that you're not in high school anymore, and how about the classes now that you've gotten the hang of. How about those all-nighters, how about those papers you stayed up doing in the library until it closed and then stayed up another 3 hours to finish. What about that day you felt so hungover you thought, "shit, I'm never drinking again" and then, by way of some basic peer pressure, you did it again. And what about how Binford smelled, or how it felt to you, or Bryan, or living at Legacy, or the Old Apartments.
         I think of frisbee by the lake without any shoes on, running around in boxers freshman year when the rain finally came, finding some peace in the woods when the academic environment felt too overwhelming, and all the other wonderful, tough, and everywhere in-between experiences when I think about what graduating means to me.  

Being cold and reading a poem
          Cold Poem and The Summer Day: it was nice to hear these read aloud. I felt that I understood them more every time they were read. Some people in the group talked about feeling cold when the Cold Poem was read, but I didn't. For both I felt that by listening and not doing anything else, all of my focus was on the words. Although I was cold I didn't pay too much attention to my body's needs. I actually found myself noticing the world around us. I heard the birds above and the breeze. I felt pretty centered, as if I was meditating.

No Bullshit
        One thing I noticed was the lack of bullshit in class. Its refreshing. I hope it continues because it seems too rare that I'm in an environment where people feel free to be themselves.


Syllabus:

         I'm usually pretty neutral on these, I barely read them because they're all the same. Reading about the journal part of our grade I'm still not entirely sure how to do one, but I'm giving it my best shot. One line in the syllabus struck me though, "Interacting intellectually, sensually, and emotionally with the overall ecosystem will help you find your own place in it."I can't agree more. I wrote in my journal before heading back to school that its a surprise we know that the outside world exists with distractions like our laptops, cell phones, TV's, gossip - we feel such a need to distract ourselves. Its about making an effort to be present in the moment. I know one thing I battle is getting out of the mental loop, or thinking too much. Feeling is just as important.

Seeing:
        I had trouble reading this in the beginning.  It was either that the author couldn't concentrate on one thought at a time or I couldn't concentrate because I read it after the Patriots lost. So I had trouble seeing this piece as a whole, but certain parts jumped out and I highlighted them. One that struck me was, "I cannot cause light; the most I can do is try to put myself in the path of its beam...The secret of seeing is to sail on solar wind. Hone and spread your spirit till you yourself are a sail..." To me this means that insight and understanding, but really so much more, is there waiting to be seen, its always there, one just has to make an effort to see. To see is to be in the moment, centered, open to the experience surrounding.
          The way I imagine being able to see is through meditation (since I just finished an internship at a meditation retreat center). With a meditation practice you learn to see because you live a life of awareness. You can't be aware (or see) when you're loud, when you're distracted by whatever. You see when a certain quietude takes over. You allow yourself to be in the moment, waiting for a lesson. There's a certain amount of surrendering involved, or passivity. In The Book of Secrets by Osho, he says something along the lines of one cannot possess love or life or joy, you have to be possessed by it. It's found in the not doing.
          So say you were on a mountainside looking over the rolling hills of Tuscany- In the reading he talks about the "kind of seeing that involves letting go...when I walk without a camera, my own shutter opens, and the moment's light prints on my own silver gut." As you look out over the landscape you have to be careful not to put your opinion on it, to define it, or to see it in parts or as a photograph; to understand it you need to be open and let the moment tell you its meaning as you take the breeze into your lungs, as you see the pine tree forest off to the left, or wonder what it would be like to live in one of those houses down there.