I managed an absurd amount of practice today as well as time for zazen, an hour of yoga, and a lovely M Park workout.The garden is beautifully out of control, though the sunflowers now have a discouraging itsy-bitsy worm blight that is causing the blooms to barely open. Nature.
We’ve spotted another chrysalis on the cassia and are waiting for the emergence. Yesterday we spotted a big fat cassia caterpillar on a nearby firecracker fern. He was up-side-down and ready to do his chrysalis spinning. This morning, I saw him in lovely form- up-side-down, tail affixed to a fern stem, and head dangling by a silken thread- all systems, go! Well, lo-and-behold, by this afternoon his chrysalis was complete and I’d missed the whole thing! Some awareness!
Creative meetings an much practice ahead this week. All wonderment.
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Saturday, April 15, 2006
I am tired of giving my power over to others. I am tired of having words coming out of other people’s mouths influence how I feel about myself. It is an exhausting, defeating rollercoaster. Words are all well and dandy when they are strung together to create encouragement and praise, but when they are laced with negativity, either couched toward me or others, they bring me down, man. Can words be de-powerized? I don’t know. My instinctive answer is, ‘No’. Words are simply too powerful. They are the raw material for prayer, incantation, vows, poetry, literature and song, as well as the tools for deceit, lies, betrayal.
I am becoming more aware to hear others’ agenda for me in their words (both good intentions and otherwise), or others’ own weight, drama, baggage, failures and shortcomings, that they may want to project onto me, perhaps unwittingly, perhaps not. I cannot accept this. I think I have strongly relied on the praise and affirmation of others and I have sought that (who doesn’t?). If I am to reject negative projections that are created to saddle me with somebody else’s issues, I must also not be fed by the praise, resisting the lure of how praise makes me feel ‘good’. There must be a middle ground where I can accept affirmation, and not seek it out, where I can be impervious (is anyone?) to the negativity that drains my energy and depresses my spirit.
I am tired of giving my power over to others. I am tired of having words coming out of other people’s mouths influence how I feel about myself. It is an exhausting, defeating rollercoaster. Words are all well and dandy when they are strung together to create encouragement and praise, but when they are laced with negativity, either couched toward me or others, they bring me down, man. Can words be de-powerized? I don’t know. My instinctive answer is, ‘No’. Words are simply too powerful. They are the raw material for prayer, incantation, vows, poetry, literature and song, as well as the tools for deceit, lies, betrayal.
I am becoming more aware to hear others’ agenda for me in their words (both good intentions and otherwise), or others’ own weight, drama, baggage, failures and shortcomings, that they may want to project onto me, perhaps unwittingly, perhaps not. I cannot accept this. I think I have strongly relied on the praise and affirmation of others and I have sought that (who doesn’t?). If I am to reject negative projections that are created to saddle me with somebody else’s issues, I must also not be fed by the praise, resisting the lure of how praise makes me feel ‘good’. There must be a middle ground where I can accept affirmation, and not seek it out, where I can be impervious (is anyone?) to the negativity that drains my energy and depresses my spirit.
