My friend Michael just emailed me the following:
I like that you have a blog! and... but... I sometimes have this thought/perception of you that you "Charge out of the gate like a bucking bronco... rootin and tootin with newness.... and then you loose steam a little too soon....."
Will your blog still be jumpin' in September?
My response: Thank you Michael! I smiled a big smile when I read your email. I like having people my life who have known me for decades and know some of the quirks of the Bruce personality. Your question is spot on. I am wordless as I sit here pondering it.
I watch that Bruce guy also. It does seem, as times, that he comes out full blast and then runs and jumps in a hole. Part of why he goes there is because there are magical kingdoms for him in those holes, whole universes of rich experience to be explored and savored.
And... and... I know there is more to the picture here, more to his showing up and disappearing. In this moment I find myself baffled by this, by the mystery of it and am somehow amused by my bafflement.
As some of you know, I like having answers to everything, and with this I just see ? ? ? ?. I like being clueless too. In clueless I feel like a wide-eyed child looking at the world for the first time.
Will I still be here in September?
If this blog becomes more and more of a collective event, I think so. If this becomes part of the Continuing Party, I think so. If this keeps cracking me open, I think so.
I have 492 planets in the house of groups. If some of you start posting here on a regular basis, I think so. I love checking my email and finding emails from all of you. As this becomes more of a community space, this blog will be high on my list of things to check on.
It is a sheer delight for me to have been down some interesting rabbit hole and to then check back in with other home planets that have morphed and changed since I was last there.
If this is just "my blog" that is too small, static and flat. The juice could run out of that for me.
And yet if the universe starts to dance and make music here, I am riveted.
And... and... dreaming forward a bit. If this changes into a website where you each have an opportunity to be center stage with your own new material, as well as comment, then, then... the party gets even more interesting.
In the meantime, your new material is welcome in the comments section, as long as it generally relates to the theme of a thread...
What is brewing and bursting forth as you read this? I would love to read about it here.
Is there something you see about yourself in regards to appearing and disappearing?
I am nursing a life time vision in this small, humble, rough in places, sprout of a blog. I will be throwing wood on that fire for sure, where ever that may be.
You are part of that vision. And friendly input like Michael's to me helps move things along.
Thanks for being here!
Bruce
We have already arrived. Yes! Welcome home to this here and now! This place is a place for Living who we are, and Living what we know. The words that show up here are not just pointers to something, they are the joyful expression of life on a roll living its arrival. Let yourself strut out on stage in the comments section. You are invited to let life Live through you here. Enjoy!
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About Me
- Bruce Terrell
- I see my expertise to be not so much about this subject or that subject, but more the navigation of the space from which all this arises. I am a student of what it takes to shift and surf, as Love, with great nimbleness and agility, through a diverse range of viewpoints and assemblage points. I am a explorer of the space which births everything and the space into which everything dies, of the dance between the infinite and the finite. As part of this, I am a ghost buster of sorts. I enjoy venturing into the dark haunted rooms of the planetary psyche, my own and others, and shining around the flashlight of awareness. I love finding old unexamined beliefs and memes there and shinning my flashlight new possibility there. Once seen these neurological ghosts loose their power. They turn back into light. Each time one is seen and busted, Living Our Arrival becomes more and more of an ecstatic flow.
Friday, August 3, 2007
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7 comments:
Bruce! I am glad you are stirred up, wordless and in the land of the unknown, in reaction to my pointed question.
It doesn't even feel like my question. Somehow the Universe asked it with me as its instrument.
Being with the mystery seems just right to me. Stay put with that. hang tight.
And, is it really that mysterious?
"The blog will continue if others continue to join me."
No, it couldn't be that simple! I'm too deep and multidimensional for a pat answer like that! It has to be a past life, or a deep seated unfaced fear, or a blah bidee blah!
And what if no one continues? What if this blog has ALREADY been abandoned as I am typing this very comment?
....the starship crew has died... and I, deck officer M. Alperstein am making the very last comment in the ship's log book....
...I shed a silent tear as the fear of the emptiness inside and out comes showering over me.... the mission failed.... I am nobody.... falling into nothingness....
Or did the mission actually succeed?
Maybe success was to launch the space ship and fall back into stardust, or magical holes...
Who's to say a one week long blog is too short? For a mesquito, a week is an eternity....
Dancing with the hurdles that arise seems to me to be what the Universe loves.... even more than so-called human results....
This does take a CONSCIOUS stick-to-it-ness...
It takes love to start the mission, and love to keep it alive. But this is a love of the dance, love of the hurdles, and the mystery.... It is the love of the wide-eyed child....
It is the love of Life that requires no sense of others joining you, because they are already joined.
....the starship crew has died... and I, deck officer M. Alperstein am making the very last comment in the ship's log book...
...not only are the 793 crew members dead, but the ship was carrying medical supplies to a dying civilization...
This story somehow is riveting. I read it and feel it as if it were true. I even hear thoughts like... if only...
As I sit inside this, hearing sad violin music playing, I also observe my response as a curious witness.
What it is in the human psyche that
is so emotionally stirred and captivated by dreams of loss?
Yes, very real loss is to be fully met, felt, grieved. This is a healthy here/now process involving our bodies, our nervous systems.
Yet, this organic unfoldment of grieving, is very different than a fixation on the story of loss. Why did this have to happen to me? If only I had... If only they hadn't...
True grieving somehow has a natural beginning and ending. The story of loss can be a preoccupation that can go on forever.
My grand father, Vincent Nicholson, lost a significant amount of money in an investment. For years he tossed and turned at night with the mantra "if only...". He lost his happiness focusing on his loss of money.
Michael, I appreciate your reframe of "tragic loss" story. Byron Katie often says: "My experience is that reality is always kinder than my story." This is a radical statement. It would be so easy to say that this women "is just in denial". And yet, this statement resonates for me.
If I want people to post on this blog and they do not what does that have to do with me? I am truly only impacted by the story I tell about that, by the meaning I give that.
What may be happening is reality being kind in its own mysterious way, the unfriendly part is what I do with that.
How would we live if we allowed ourselves to feel our grief, and yet trusted our losses as gifts?
Feeling our feelings all the way, without mixing it up with our religion about how it should be?
Thank you again, Michael, for allowing the universe to speak thru you and stir the pot in my psyche.
The question: "Why do bad things happen to good people?" could be changed to: "Why do good people think bad things are happening to them?"
The "poor me" or "poor us" ten lane highway is a really easy one to travel down. There is a lot of cultural agreement with that.
The "starving artist", the "unrecognized genius", can be so tangled up in his or her private story, that the kindness of reality cannot work its magic in their lives.
So this afternoon I am checking out how subtle parts of this psyche are preoccupied with and attached to drama stories of loss and death and not getting what I think I should get.
I am shinning a flash light around in there. In my seeing these holdings they start to unwind and release.
We do not have to follow along the continuum wave that our parents and grandparents and great grand parents were riding.
How would I live if I could not think the the thought that I "need" something from the outside?
I would allow myself to be carried along by the abundant unending kindness of reality.
One time Wally Ally, that famous Hog Farm leader, was driving along in a desert in 120 degree weather with no one else in sight and his car broke down. The first thing he did was run out into the middle of the desert, open his arms wide to the heavens and shout:
"Thank you God, For Everything, I Have No Complaint's Whatsoever!!!"
What would our lives be like if we did this every time something came along that we do not like?
The impression I usually get when reading your writing is "diamonds in the rough." My sense is that you have some rich raw material here that, with some disciplined writing, rewriting, reworking, could be fashioned into . . . I don't know, maybe a short story, maybe a philosophical rumination, whatever your creative lights dictate. But I feel it needs some ordering, some discipline, some structure, some purpose, to elevate it from the level of rambling, brilliant insights to brilliant, cohesive piece of writing. Just a thought.
P.S. I once heard an accomplished author on the Charlie Rose Show say that "Writing is not writing; writing is re-writing."
Bruce,
Here is a thought, see if this pertains to you.
Do you have an aversion to being boxed and labeled as such and such? Or staying put in the "identity map?"
Like for instance, I've had times where I have presented a main identity to the world: "Michael's the juggling guy" or "Michael's the guy who works with autistic kids" etc..
I've rarely or never had a time where I could point to Bruce and say something precise, "Oh he's the Already Free guy" or "Bruce is the guy working on the hand signals book" "Bruce is the guy who leads public speaking classes" "Bruce is the guy with the Living Our Arrival blog" "Bruce is the guy researching telepathic communication"...
"Who's Bruce?" "Oh, hes' the Spiritual Politics guy" etc....
You are all over the map in your expression and interests.
But for something to last, it sometimes requires being seen as the "such and such person." How would you like that?
This a response to your question Michael and also your feedback, Tom.
You ask, Michael, how would I like being such and such a person? I like that a lot if that is real.
How about these:
Bruce is a shape-shifting sort of guy. He is very committed to covering a lot of ground and not getting caught in any single frame of reference.
He is by nature a continual explorer.
His discipline is to stay out of ruts and not fit in anywhere.
I am here in Zion Canyon, Utah.
I have checked out almost every hotel here. I know the ins and outs of each one. Each hotel is a whole different reality, a whole different assemblage point, a different planet.
I find myself compelled to surf through different realities. Doing google searches on topics that I would be least likely to be interested in, like farm equipment for example.
Tom, my writing is intentionally rough and not linear. This is where the juice and aliveness is for this character in the movie who is termed "Bruce" and who turned 55 today.
Bruce is a shape-shifting sort of guy. He is very committed to covering a lot of ground and not getting caught in any single frame of reference.
He is by nature a continual explorer.
His discipline is to stay out of ruts and not fit in anywhere.
Those ring true. You are a pure embodiment of the river of change.
Sending you a Happy 55 Blessing
Love
Michael
Happy 55th, Bruce! Well, here we are in September -- is this blog "still jumping"?
Best,
Tom
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