The last few weeks have been shifty.  I turned 31, my computer broke again, windows closed and doors opened, it got cold and then hot and now cold again.  I've thought of writing so often, but the circumstances weren't having it.  I like to write with my laptop, in bed, on a day that I have nothing to do but dishes, when I am free to stare out the window and pontificate for hours.  It has come to my attention that this scenario is not one that is common to my readers - people with jobs, people with kids, people with extremely tiny windows of what is known as "free time."  To those of you I would like to apologize for being a whiner, and get down to this entry here, on someone else's computer real quick while that person is busy doing something else.  In situations which require superefficiency, I have found "list" format to be useful.  Here are my thoughts.

1) Today, it is my impression that cause and effect have an unstable relationship. I've loved them together like Oreos and milk, and I think they'll be together a long time, but let's be clear: sometimes a event occurs as the result of a logical causal chain, and sometimes not.  As well acquainted as I am with nonsense, this topic has been on my mind to write for weeks, and has stumped me each and every time I've been still enough to attempt composition.  I know, I know.  This is a problem for poetry to solve, you say.  But we have all those poems already - most of them koans - and they aren't helping.  Have you ever read a koan that gave you a sense of peace with the impossibility and limitlessness of the universe? Koans make me mad.

2) There is a vast, great energy - the bliss or light or goddishness* - that we can tap into via meditation, sublime experience and spiritual devotion, but I want to point out that occasionally our consciousness pokes its head in to the divine at random.  For example, sitting on a crowded bus and having a spontaneous sense of brotherhood which overwhelms a person to the point of shivers, tears or unprompted conversation, or seeing a TV commercial which gives one a genuine sense of illumination and breathless wonder.  Most people I know would agree, if only in secret, that this happens.

3) I am coming to believe that this energy has a counterpart - the suffering - that we visit during times of extraordinary loss, violence, tragedy and the like.  Parallel to the bliss, the suffering can also be visited at random.  You may have known this at times when the amount of feeling seems entirely disproportionate to the action preceding it, or, its "cause." Example, a person who is incapacitated with grief upon hearing of a stranger's death, or while simply sitting on the same bus as the blissed out brother from item #2.

4) Both cases of the bliss or the suffering by seemingly random induction are unhelpfully labeled by most as instances of mental illness, PMS, sleep deprivation, workaholism, mania, drug abuse or other pathology.  I love sciency stuff, and I would not assert that those explanations don't hold water in the world of science.  What I'd be more interested in pointing out is that there are more worlds that the world of science, and that we are not always served well by calling experiences of ultimate, infinite truth (if I may be so bold as to suggest they are such a thing) a problem to be solved.

5) What if we came to terms with the existence of these vast energies as presences in the world, and considered the ability to know them a gift rather than a curse?  What if we welcomed the expansion and transformation of consciousness rather than running from it fearfully in order to continue living out our routines?  What if we stopped telling ourselves, "I'm clinically depressed" and started realizing that we are temporarily experiencing The Suffering?  What if we allowed ourselves to be changed and healed by it so deeply that we are renewed with insight and energy to help others?  And of The Bliss, what if we stopped patting ourselves on the back for achieving some grand spiritual something or other just because we had a moment of clarity?  What if we took none of the credit and none of the blame and let ourselves be humbled and grateful for such a vision?  I'm just saying, what if. 

6) I think this is a good idea.  There is great bliss, there is great suffering.  It has nothing to do with me, but my awareness of it is pure liberation.

7) I think it is funny that I would attempt this kind of a subject, and even more funny that I just spit it out in 14 minutes.

8) There was actually something in this idea which was related to yoga practice, but I can't put it together very well now, and it's time to finish this up.  So, you think on that and come to yoga class this week.  For the record, we keep deep thoughts to a minimum during class.  Happy Hour Yoga (both Pilsen Wednesdays and Wicker Park Mondays) are full of wonderful people that would like to see you. This week, Daisy the Tiny Dog joined us both Monday and Wednesday, and I have a doggie crush on her.  I love her so much that I am not going to try and make any downward facing dog puns about her.  Because love and puns do not go together, friends.  They do not. 



PS: Due to the Thanksgiving holiday, Happy Hour PIlsen will be canceled 11/25, and Happy Hour Wicker Park will be canceled 11/30.

* I would have liked to officially coin the term goddish, to replace both god and goddess and for use in cases of gray-area divinity, but just learned it's been done.