Livin' the Fool

junkyard-bodhisattva:

“Do not be daunted by the enormity of the world’s grief.  Do justly, now.  Love mercy, now.  Walk humbly, now.  You are not obligated to complete the work, but neither are you free to abandon it”  

                                                       from the Talmud

junkyard-bodhisattva:

A poem is never finished, only abandoned.

                                  Paul Valery

visceralsea replied to your post: excuses, excuses…. bittersweet…now i’m noticing my trend for excuses. how can you tell the difference between using excuses as a crutch for quitting vs knowing when a situation isn’t right and using your power to leave it? i have a specific example, but it’s too long

To me, the danger of excuses isn’t just about the way that they act as a crutch for quitting, but on an even deeper level it’s about the way they subconsciously affect our understanding of our own power. If you’re constantly using the language of excuses (as I am realizing I tend to do), you are again using words with relinquish your own agency. They focus only on the negative aspect of whatever you are trying to do by throwing barriers and backing down from responsibility.

Take responsibility as response-ability. If you rely so heavily on excuses, you are basically denying your ability to respond. “I can’t do this because…” I can’t respond, I haven’t the ability to take on this challenge.

Now, of course there ARE situations that are not right – and as you say I do think it is possible to leave them THROUGH your power. But again, taking excuses at a level of ‘Every Word is a Prayer’ – your approach to leaving that thing, the words you use to make sense of it to yourself and others, can have an immense impact on the way you experience that leaving in your own reality, which in turn can affect you experience of whatever the next step is on that path.

If you leave from a dejected, powerless, place – a place where you leave using excuses of “I cant do it because” “BUT this and this and this are keeping me from doing that” etc, there is no power in that, you are not recognizing what you CAN do. If, on the other hand, you can recognize that truly, for you, that whatever situation you were heading toward is not right; there is no excuse in that. You find your own Truth in that and recognize your ability to respond to something that is not right by creating something that IS right.

Approaching it with the language and feeling of accountability and creation has a profound effect on your ability to actually move forward into something that IS right – or, more specifically, something that you have created for yourself with an openness to the potentiality of creating something through the unknown. When you throw up so many barriers, you are also refusing to go into the unknown.

If you think about it, excuses are drowning in the known. You make up all these reasons why you KNOW you cannot do it; and in that you leave no room for creativity because you do not allow yourself to be open to the aspects of something that you do not, cannot, know so certainly. In these cases, when you open yourself to the unknown, you may not be moving toward accomplishing exactly that thing you were trying, because maybe that thing WASN’T right; but you are also open to seeing what arises in that unknown, and perhaps that thing will lead you to what IS right for you.

I also just wanted to point out the negative impact of excuses in the way that you called it a ‘crutch for quitting’ – again, that can lead to beating yourself up because you also feel like a quitter, a failure. When you already feel like a quitter and a failure, how can you find the power in yourself to create something new? Putting yourself down also bars you from recognizing your own power. There is a difference between challenging yourself and beating yourself up.

Anyway, I feel like I can get rambly with all this. Point being, it’s important to just watch yourself. Watch how you feel, watch what is happening inside you when you use different language. See what happens when you are burying yourself in excuses versus when you are truly recognizing when a certain path is not right and how it is in your power to take the steps to move you toward what is. Again, these are things I am just beginning to recognize in myself, and for me I am discovering them through the lens of my own Truth; but the exact way they manifest in and influence you will be according to your own Truth. You can only find that by watching and, when it feels right, responding. That is your response-ability to yourself, and can help you to recognize and find your power.

And if I know you at all, I know you are a very, very powerful creator. <3

I think I want to start updating this thing. I am having many a thoughts these days. Something is stirring deep within me that I feel needs an outlet into the World.

One thing I have been thinking about lately is the notion that Every Word is a Prayer. I believe this very deeply; we create our realities and the words we throw around each day cast out a vibration into the air around us, either nurturing or polluting the environment of our individual & collective worlds.

I learned the power of this concept when I was becoming aware of the ways in which we often believe ourselves into being victims. So many people in this world are victims, hopelessly mourning the trials and tragedies of the(ir) world; dancing in blame games and pity parties driven by ego-soothing disposal of response-ability & self-care.

Every Word is a Prayer. I felt the power of this when I started to notice myself feeling as a victim in different situations - large or small. Not trying to change it, I started noticing.

“ugh, why does this always happen to me” — “dude my life sucks, nothing ever works out for me” — “why is s/he doing this to me?” — “why do people treat me like crap”

There is no agency in these words. They are passive, disengaged, powerless.

Victim words. The world is acting upon me; I am not an agent acting in&upon the world in these words. I do not care for myself because I have no accountability to myself, I am laying down my power and offering it to preconceived notions of negativity and loss. In these words, I feel no abundance. When I started to notice these words, I noticed where I was giving up my power, and in doing so, self-inflicting victimhood. I am the perpetrator and the victim. Can there be justice in this war against empowerment and self-love? Restorative justice?

Every Word is a Prayer. The power of prayer has been seen across history & landscapes; taking form as meditation, trance, reflection, hymns, prayers, movement – across cultures and creeds – be it mystical or psychological there is no doubt it holds a particular quality which can somehow initiate a sense of transcendence. In it(s) intention is a powerful creator.

If the words I speak are prayers, each of those power-ceding victim words initiates the creation of deeper victimhood; drawing such negativity more tightly around my world, like the safety blanket of a fearful child. Do you remember those days – when you were small and afraid; each groan and creak of the settling house evidence of the monsters who cast shadows under your window? Pulling the blanket over your head and lying frozen, even though you couldn’t breathe through the thick cotton wall; your imagination building on the fear of the unknown that lingered in the darkness at the foot of your bed, until you were certain there was something there, haunting you with malicious intention? Victim words are like that stifling cotton wall. Except the malicious haunting manifests itself in more frighteningly tangible ways. You give up your power under that blanket, and let your imagination create an entirely terrifying new world.

But that new world is not the thing. It is not the reality. You have created it. It’s the same today, when we give up our power to a world in which we are victims. We create our victimhood as well. So what if we take down that blanket? Go into the unknown knowing our power to mould and create it into something entirely different? Not to make it known, but to recognize the immense potential for creation that is present in the unknowing of things?

If you stand fully in yourself and in your power, conscious of the depth of agency you possess, the world you create can respond to the unknown as it comes, and create within it from a place of openness, of transformation and transcendence.

Every Word is a Prayer. If words are intentions and intentions creators – words cast out in to the unknown either pollute or nurture our environments. If we use words from a place of power, of consciousness and agency, the world we create will respond by opening to positive creativity. When we renounce our agency through words of a victim, the world we create responds in deprivation of positive creation.

So why I am musing upon words and prayers and creation so much these days?

Lately I feel I have been living outside my body. I am disjoined and off kilter. I have faded in and out of the recognition of my power in haphazard attempts to create something out of desperation. The creation I was craving was born of a clinging. I felt myself sink into victimhood after a series of decisions that led me into situations which created pain and fear and an unkindness toward myself. I found myself clinging to out-dated notions of identity and purpose that had suddenly been thrown up against a wall of seemingly insurmountable question. In my clinging, I found that there was, in truth, nothing to grasp on to. I was reeling.

It was a familiar feeling. I began to watch it.

The victim words were back; but this time in a form I hadn’t recognized before: Excuses.

When I was in 6th grade, my English teacher wrote in my yearbook telling me, “No more excuses.” I was very offended at the time – why write something like that in a kid’s yearbook? Still, for some reason, her comment continued to float through my mind over the years, and as I’ve grown into myself and the world I have come to recognize the depth of her wisdom.

I’m full of excuses. There is always a reason I can’t do something. A reason I behaved a certain way or reacted to certain situations — a reason I am without my power. Self-analyzing, I started to come up with excuses for my fall; excuses that only reinforced the clinging sensation. Analysis, too, facilitates a clinging – a clinging to time-locked identity that denies the free flow of creation in the unknown.

Excuses are a denial of power. I see my power, but refuse to take hold of it. I reel because I cannot grasp on to my own center. Analysis is not consciousness.

I am beginning to slow in my reeling – instead I am opening myself to sink back into awareness. Not forceful as before, which was a fearful flailing mid-fall – but slowly, with watchful intention. I’m watching my words, too, recognizing my misgivings about my own power; and slowly re-integrating my self, soul, and body to be more wholly situated in the world – to go freely back into the unknowing space of creation.