2.20.26

Without ceremony or fanfare, I'm re-re-re starting this "blog" which I'm now labeling internally as a journal. The perfect lead image for this would be like the opening credits of Bob's Burger's with his home slash business that has be re-re-re grand opened due to numerous life/work stalling incidents. But I don't know how copyright and use works and I don't want to start this journaling with something that causes me headache (I am so sorry to my dear friends who have literally experienced this with a suit for using an image of my work harmlessly in a blog post and the online publication is being ruthless even though they complied with taking the photo down. But I digress.).

The impetus for this re start is my desire to share thoughts that crowd my brain. I've had the recent and most extraordinary experience with a new mentor, my first mentor really, that came into my life as a result of yoga teacher training.

She is giving me language for so much of how I think about things, and it's so comforting to learn about the immense framework and philosophy of yoga that really is in alignment with my thinking and being.

We've been discussing non-dualist tantric philosophy, and the space of holding things like good and evil in the same plane. Rather than valuing good over evil, I see the two as serving each other, necessary and complimentary. And I try to do this without the judgement and labels of good and evil. But as you might imagine, thinking this way makes it very challenging to live in America, and the modern world.

We live in a time that's more polarized than ever, and I sit in the middle. Non-confrontational, non-participatory in many social norms, and essentially a bystander.

In my Christian upbringing, this would make me a "lukewarm believer" aka the worst Christian ever. They say that apathy is the worst of being. And that's me. Apathetic. But not in the emotionless way, but in a slightly detached, wall flower sort of way. The kind of human that will speak if spoken to. But one who is now careful not to be honest because that honesty can be triggering for people, and not because my views are radical in the sense that I'm saying "I LOVE TRUMP" to a liberal, but radical in the way that I'd say I'm equally grateful for Donald and Barak.

I'm apolitical, but I have a lot of opinions about politics. Not that I follow them, or know what is going on with global affairs, because I truly don't. I don't consume media (no TV news or social media feeds), and I don't have a social sphere that by proxy inform me of current events. I used to consume information through social media, and used to vote, but the intensity of things that for me "don't really move the needle" but cause me insurmountable internal suffering were consciously removed from my life and I'm happier because of it.

That may sound selfish, and privileged, and both are probably true, but I am doing and acting in the ways that serve me best.

In thinking about all this I discovered today that I live with 3 distinct people in my head. I hear the voice of my past self (lived experience, personal trauma/struggles, emotions/perception based on those struggles, and morality), the observer, and my current self (mentally and physically "healthy", the first self I've lived with that has confidence, is mostly unbothered by being different, etc.).

The observer part of me and the current me are both very special, but they are the product, the result of the past self. The original self. The broken self, the self that needed to be healed.

The observer is I think the product of the current self. My new healthy being. The observer hears the voice of my past self, but is able to process additional information that is gathered with my eyes, and ears and all applicable senses. The observer holds both the past narrative/emotion/judgements while perceiving with "objectivity" the current situation. My current self, then makes a decision on how to act based on what my past self says and what the observer is saying.

An example of this is yoga teacher training. At the end of class we have to practice teach, and that requires us to teach the other students how to move through a portion of the sequence we are learning. This learning is based on understanding how to move into each posture, remembering the order in which they are formed, and providing verbal cues and adjustments along the way to guide the student through the flow.

It sounds simple after writing it, but in my head it's a lot. My brain struggles with rote memorization. And the sequence with verbal cues and adjustments is designed for an hour. That's like remembering an hour long song and dance. It's a lot.

And in school, I couldn't "remember the song" let alone write it down or speak it into words to explain it.

So in teacher training I freeze when my name is called. That's my past self. It's remembering all the trauma/emotions of sucking at school because my brain operates differently. My brain judges myself as stupid, that my brain is dumb, that I suck at teacher training and will never be a teacher 'cause I can't remember shit. The observer notices how kind and patient my teacher and the students are with me. It notices how they aren't treating me like I'm stupid or slow. They are supporting me, encouraging, and helping guide my way. And so the observer notices a student's foot shifting which cues my brain into understanding what to say because when my body makes that action, it knows what shape to go into.

And so my current self sits with all the negative thoughts/emotions, the sweat pouring out of my skin, the heat rising out of my chest, looks at what the observer is noticing, and then I speak following the visual cue.

"Spin your right heel down to the mat, shift your left foot shoulder width distance apart, ground down through your feet...." and then I begin to describe how the shape is to be formed by adjusting parts of the body from feet to hands as was taught by the teacher and felt and learned through my body.

The deep understanding through my body allows recall by feeling the posture a student is supposed to be in. The ability to see if someone is out of alignment, and provide verbal cues to help them find the shape. There are parts of teach I can be good at, I just have to get there through a couple side streets instead of simply using the main road. And my current self knows that that's ok, even though my past self says otherwise, and the observer feeds me real time feedback as objectively as it can.

This is the first time in my life I've experienced this type of healthy mind/body connection. In my past my actions would often be immediate responses to my past emotions. So in the past, I would have felt the heat rise in my chest, the profuse sweating in front of the whole class as I stood there frozen for everyone to internally laugh at. And the next day of class I wouldn't be there. I would vanish. Never able to face those people again because of my humiliation, the thought that I was a failure and would never be able to learn the thing or do the thing because I sucked at it.

I was so fragile. I was always flight or fight, and my default was flight. Never fight. But I was good at running in that sense. Ironically, I was bad physically at running then, and now I'm physically better at running but no longer run from the flight response I have. This is another example of that beautiful symbiotic relationship with "good" and "bad". They need each other, serve each other, and are necessary together even though they may be separated by time, they are still part of the same thing.

It made me think something "crazy". That bad guys are so important. The thought that bad guys are the impetus for heroes. Without bad guys, there would be no heroes. Without someone causing pain and suffering, no one would be compelled to do something extraordinarily good.

This thought came from my belief that God needs the devil. Which obviously led to the next thought that God and the devil, are part of the same thing. That God is good and evil. I my mind there is no way for the story to be true that God is trying to eliminate evil and will kill the devil. It's just not going to happen. Because if bad is gone, if sin is gone, then God and good no longer serve a purpose.

Light needs dark. Good needs bad.

It's even more wild then to think that good is the impetus for bad.

Thankfully I struggle with labeling things as good or bad, (even though I feel pain and suffering, joy and happiness). Because thinking that good is the cause of bad would really keep me spiraling. But I do spiral. My brain has a hard time sleeping/resting, because it does this back and forth, attempting to look with perspective from both sides, and finding it difficult to act.

But we must act. We must live. We must consume.

We are human.

Learning how to be one is hard.