Be Afraid

Over the course of 24 hours, I twice mentioned my story of galloping across the Mongolian plains by moonlight. The first time was during a ‘what really cool stuff have you done?’ conversation and the second was during a ‘what was one of your scariest moments?’ conversation.

I could not ignore the juxtaposition.

The road goes ever on and on...

I think I Khan. I think I Khan.

In high school, I did a report on Genghis Khan and became fascinated with a country that–armed with horses, bows, and bloodlust–managed to acquire the largest land empire the world has ever (or likely will ever) know.

That’s just badass.

Five years later (1997), while living in Japan, I remember thinking one day about the tenacity of the Mongolians (I mean, who doesn’t think, in passing, of Mongolian doggedness?) and I thought, ‘I should go to Mongolia.’ I then immediately thought, ‘I can go to Mongolia!’

Flights into Ulan Bator, expensive. Flights into Beijing, cheap. Trains to Mongolia (the Trans-Siberian to be specific), also cheap. Flight into Beijing, get visas, get train tickets, and get on the train. Easy enough.

Run Steve Run

Run, run, run, but you sure can't hide

Recently my friend Jeff in Kansas City gave me a thought on which to chew. He said,

‘I always saw you as a Portland guy and never really as a midwest guy. I didn’t feel like you came to KC for something. Rather, I felt like you ran away from something.’

I said something glib like, ‘Yeah, I think you’re right’ and nothing more because, while I totally agreed, I couldn’t articulate what that ‘something’ was.

Last week, I wrote a missive entitled ‘Refocusing‘ about the perspective you get when you take yourself out of the middle of the picture. The next day, I figured out what the ‘something’ was:

I ran away from myself.

I ran away from a life lived almost solely in my head.

I ran away from a narrow, unsatisfying, and incomplete perspective.

As a result, I lived life in KC from my gut and from my heart. I perceived reality first through my feelings, then through my instincts, and never through my head. It was a hell of a ride.

All my life I’d done the reverse: I ‘made sense’ of something, decided how I felt about it (yes: thinking about feeling), and then checked my instinct. When I ran away in the fall of 2009, I ran from that way of living.

I ran from deficiency thinking (the deadliest weapon of the busy mind).

I ran away from hearing past friends and lovers talk about my ‘wall’, that emotional distancing which kept me safe and them on the outside.

I ran from being a self-control freak.

I ran from thinking about feeling to feeling about thinking.

As a result, I made my decisions without consulting the busy mind which had imprisoned me for 34 years. Many of those decisions were ‘foolish’ inasmuch as they didn’t ‘make sense’: keep me emotionally safe, bring in money, or advance my career.

They were the best decisions on my life.

In the late summer of 2010, I ‘let myself back in my head’ and began interpreting reality through my gut and heart, then conducting a single ‘makes sense?’ checkoff with my head. After I let myself back in my head, the money and the career naturally took off again.

Fortunately, now I see those trappings for what they are: traps.

108 Memories of My Father

My dad also taught me how to smile for photos

This musing is part of a longer piece called “Waking Up“. I’ve separated it out into its own blog post for the simple reason that this was one of the most profound active meditations I’ve ever done. While my father is dead and there are no more chances for new memories, I think this exercise has incredible benefits for all of our relationships… living and beyond.

As I listened to a monk from India talk about the path of spirituality and ‘righting relationships, especially the relationships with mother and father’, I was struck with the desire to recall 108 (a sacred number in the east) distinct memories of my dad. He died in 2002 and I long ago realized that my path to self-discovery goes through my understanding of our relationship. Even though he has ‘shed this mortal coil’, our relationship is in very much in the present.

Waking Up

The universe was batting these false starts aside and waiting for me to see that there is a different path for me. When I asked myself where my passion and Bhakti flows, it is in the spiritual practices I’ve adopted in this new life. In other words, I am on a spiritual path and I cannot pretend otherwise.

Aum-a gonna tell you a story now...

This is the second musing in an ongoing series of spiritual essays. Click here for more info or just jump straight to the first missive.

Those who have followed the tale of my life in Kansas City know that a integral part of my life here has been a spiritual reawakening. You might also know that I’ve struggled with finding a niche that both excites me and allows me to not use a credit card to buy groceries. I knew in my heart that the disconnect was not the kismet of the world, it was a misalignment within.

The Fires of Rage

I got incredibly angry on the 7th of July and felt a rage burn in me that I’ve not felt since I was young. On the surface, I was angry about money; deep within, I was enraged by the perceived futility of my quest. Those who know me well will be surprised to hear that I didn’t lose my temper that evening.

Instead, I walked and raged in my head. I name called. I ranted. I sat by a fountain and chanted a mantra to the feminine divine.

An hour before I let the fires of rage consume me, someone said, “There is a lot of emotions running rampant these days and a lot of those emotions are very negative. When negative emotions and powerful charges come up–fear, anger, worry, depression–throw yourself into them. Don’t run. Be with them. Let them consume you. These are not the days to run.”

I took his suggestion to heart and burned up something profound that evening.

Finding God in a Crapper

The Mexico Crew

This is the first in a series of musings I’m writing about Spirituality. For more on the project (i.e. caveats, reminders, excuses, admonitions, provisos, etc.) click here. Or jump to the second entry “Waking up”.

The ‘Ditch’ Story

I grew up an interdenominational christian because my father believed “it’s the same damn book” (and I do love the fact that he used ‘damn’ in reference to the bible). We went to all sorts of churches through the years and I feel my mother’s faith carried the light for the family.

I never bought into any of it on a deep level until I went to Mexico with my Presbyterian youth group in the summer of 1991. I was ‘forced’ to go to youth group because my mom correctly saw that I was hanging out with a bunch of losers and no matter how good your upbringing may be, peer pressure can still wreck havoc. She ‘saved’ me and for that I am eternally grateful.

See, it was on this trip that I found god. While the story is referred to as ‘The Ditch Story’, I actually found god in a hole meant for a septic tank. Fortunately we were digging the hole so it was not in use at the time I ‘found’ her. Finding god in the bottom of a ten-foot deep shitter has an irreverent ring to it and my truth involves a god with a sense of humor. I wish it was a trait cultivated in more of her followers.

Losing Control

What you cannot control will set you free.

The survival brain says that we need to be in control. Control means safety. Control means calling the shots. Control means that we can relax… but only just a bit. Don’t relax too much or you might lose control.

I had control issues. I still have control issues. But my control issues today are opposite from my control issues in the past.

Personal and Environmental Control

My old control issues were all about self-control and environmental control. I wanted to present a face to the world that was calm, collected, together, and otherwise stable. My goal was to compose the face I showed the world before stepping out and then not to let that face change. Call it my “game face” or maybe my “life face”. I know I was successful because friends said I was the “stable one”, “the calming influence”, “Steve the infinitely patient”. Ultimately, however, I was projecting a false self, not my authentic self.

I wanted to be in environments that I could control; this is why I naturally gravitated toward teaching, why I always preferred a party at my house to going out clubbing, and why I didn’t enjoy huge crowds. I never sought to control those around me (in fact, I loved the originality in my friends, loved ones, and students) but I wanted the space I inhabited to play by the rules… my rules. What a frightening way to live!

Relationships

I am sitting in the same seat on the same porch at about the same time of day as I was last fall when I decided to move to Kansas City. I was journaling at the time and I wrote about the sunlight (which is shining today), the chickens wandering around my feet (they’ve since been eaten by a neighborhood dog), and, most importantly, reflecting on the relationships I have here in KC (which, like the sun, are still here and, unlike the chickens, were not eaten by a dog). That moment was the crystallization of an important thought: the community and the relationships here feed my soul. So why not make the move?

Relationships were on my mind a lot then as they are still today. While I was conscious of relationships during my married years, the end of my partnership obviously stirred up a lot more thoughts and emotions on the matter. As I was sitting on the porch here in KC thinking about the relationships around me I was also thinking about the lessons gleaned from my marriage and subsequent divorce. In other words, I was thinking about relationships of the romantic, platonic, friendship, professional, tangental, etc. variety.

I now offer up, for your consideration, those thoughts… which, admittedly, are largely in the context of romantic love though the lessons are applicable to all relationships.

Why KC?

Surely this question (or ones of similar variety) has crossed the mind of many after hearing that I moved from Portland, Oregon–the preferred destination of much of the hipster migration–to Kansas City, Missouri, the epicenter of… well, fountains? Meat slathered in BBQ sauce? Terrible sports teams? Jazz?

Truth is, KC was way cool a mere 70 years ago or so but now it is relegated to a lower-eschelon “cool city” status in the part of the country that my friend Marty refers to as the “flyover states.” In other words, it is no Chicago or Minneapolis or even Madison or Ann Arbor. So, again, why KC?

The answer starts a little over two years ago.