Role Playing (#339)

6. F. I was watching a PBS program on Chimpanzees tonight. These were animals rescued from dreadful conditions, many infected with aids from experiments. It was heart wrenching but there was a bright side. The was a person who was self-described as a red-neck who had initially been worried about bringing HIV infected Chimpanzees into the area. But he had learned love from the chimpanzees and had managed to transfer that love to other people as well.

5. F. This morning at PaB I realized why I am in a bit of a rut. I haven’t allowed myself to break through to see timelessness, the eternal. Maybe I need to follow others into Pema’s exercise.

4. Gr. Yes, I AM!

3. Woke up with a fair amount of energy and I am back from a moderately long bike ride. (Lots of qualifiers there). When we put aside out identities, attachments, etc. the energy is there for us.

2. TGT. As I prepare to get a bit more sleep, I think too how it is enough to be alive. All of these petty troubles, caused by identities, attachments and the like, fade away when focused on that thought. I am alive for another day! I AM.

1. I am awake early this morning thinking about role playing. My role playing has ast time been radical but mainly involves me living through situations looking from a slightly different angle. For the first time, my new exploration is making demands on others to play along, to follow a script. This need for others to play a role has giving me some pause. The simple solution is to modify the exploration in such a way as to reduce that need. I can see this morning there is no need to make demands on anyone. The thought flashes through my mind “How foolish you have been”. Yes, the script needs to go.

I think once again about how my firends have helped me see things.

Hmmm. The script. Earlier in my explorations I struggled with a script that had been written for the late fall and winter months of my life. The role playing blasted away at my assumptions about myself. I realized my memory had been selective and it was one of my identities I feared would be out of control. Through role play I learned to see that identity and others.

Ah, but what emerged? Am I becoming attached to this other identity? Here’s the rub. How do I know what is identity and what is me, the I AM? Do I already know the answer to that?

At the same time I feel compelled to this exploration. It is a gift. All I have to do is appreciate the gift and see what happens. It will be no more real than a movie. Wow, the movie analogy! This is so very close. It may feel real to the mind and so obviously be not real.

Clouds and I AM (#338)

1. TGT, Gr. It is late and I am remembering it is enough to be alive. I am appreciating the presentation of clouds drifting across the sky. Today was kind of an ideal day with deep greens, low humidity, perfect temperatures, flowers,  birds singing, geese leading their goslings across a parking lot to feed in a grassy island next to a main highway, blue sky, and classic clouds, the kind we used to draw as children.

Eliza tonight talked of surfing inner waves and of thinking about my explorations while quiet. For I do wonder sometimes whether my explorations become a distraction. They are if I forget to stop and listen.

Time of Appreciation (#337)

2. Gr. A time of appreciation

1. TGT, Late afternoon and I am remembering it is enough to be alive. It has been a busy day.

On the Oasis (# 336)

4. I am awake in the middle of the night and this is a record of it. My mind is racing about tomorrow and a;so about my explorations in the virtual world. What if there were no limitations to what we could experience? What would we choose to do? How can this help us understand ourselves better? What drives us to these explorations? When are we done?

3. F. Stopping here. It has been a busy day. I have a decision to make tonight or tomorrow which involves a number of people. I wonder whether what I learned in the past year will help me make a better decision. I certainly have more empathy.

2. Gr.

1. TGT. Another day to be alive on this blue, green and white oasis in the universe. Yay!

Tigers on the Mountain (#335)

5. ZRM. As I am sitting here in this longer pause, I am thinking about appreciating. I start with my recent explorations and the feelings appearing from them. The edge is a bit of confusion. I close my eyes and drift off into aa vision in which we are placed down on the ground, and we are still, but the landscape is shifting beneath us and around us. It drops and leaves us in the air, or rises up an engulfs us. We then struggle to try to keep up with the landscape. Is that related to life living us or for me is the landscape my different avatars shifting around with me trying to keep up?

4. F. pause.  Feeling tired after a flurry of activity the past couple of days. I try to concentrate on an appreciation of the presence of this feeling. I feel a bit humbled by my own deficiencies  in carrying out the responsibility of the effect I am having on other people’s lives. I remember I can only do my best.

3. F. pause. It has been a busy morning setting up interviews. Competition is tough for people looking for art history jobs. I stop to appreciate the response

2. Gr.  Hats off to my job and friends for starters.

1. TGT. Beautiful, dark, rainy morning to be alive on this wonderful planet and in that other virtual world some of us inhabit where the sun is always shining.

This morning I was thinking about the tiger on the mountain. I had traveled with one to the very top, enjoyed the view, and came back alive. Was that foolhardy or wise? How wise or foolhardy or wise would it be to do it again with a new tiger? Does the danger become the experience then?

Peace and Quiet (#334)

3. F. pause from setting up a new routine for myself and others for the summer. So far, not much noise from the construction above us. It appears electricians may be doing tasks ahead of the heavy work. I appreciate the appearance of peace and quiet in my office. I should be getting more done but am in some kind of vacation mode.

2. Gr. Since I am returning to work, number 1 is that I have a job. Friends are high on the list.

1. TGT. It was a beautiful cool day this morning. I remember it is enough to be alive.

Life Living Us (#333)

6. F. Have discussed the thought about “life living us” with various people today. I am exploring along these lines in the virtual world.

5. F. After reorganizing the hot garage I come inside to an ice cold glass of ice tea and remember that sometimes ice tea is the ultimate taste pleasure. I remember supper times when my mother served a big glass pitcher of the stuff, with ice cubes, all frosty of the outside with little droplets of water rolling down the sides, on a hot summer day. The sight and taste and relief all still firmly etched into my memory. Without us knowing it, it is a bit of a tribute to the memory of my mother placing the pitcher on the table with two hands that my siblings and I all still drink iced tea year round after all those years.

4. F. Much later pause after life living me for a couple of hours

3. Gr. Much to be thankful for.

2. TGT. A cold breeze just blew in through the window and I am reminded it is enough to be alive.

1. The idea that life is living us (see #332) turns things around, “on their head” as Pema likes to say. Continuin with Pema’s line of thought, we can start by thinking “what if this were true?”, “What would it be like?”. One would be able to amass great power and great wealth but be just as vulnerable to disease and death. Hmmm. One could fall in love with someone one trusts and have the other person walk away from us. Hmmm. One could be very tired and go to bed and be unable to sleep because one’s body wanted to be awake. Hmmm. I want to play with this a bit today. I have been thinking along the lines of the body being life for us although I see the limitations of that too. Our body is going along living life and we may or may not be in sync. Being in sync is much the point of thinking along these lines. Just accepting life and appreciating it. Ah, that leads into #2 and #3.

Summer-like (#332)

5.ZRM. Reading the card talking about life living me. Life being the dancer and I being the dance.

4. F. Appreciating the fact that my head is in two places right now.

3. F. pause. I feel I ought to have more to say. I wonder why.

2. Gr.

1. TGT. Another summer-like day on the wonderful planet earth to be alive

Danger (#331)

4. F. A lovely day walking a talking. Sitting looking at rocks in the mud by the creek. I thought of PaB. The rocks were different sizes. It imagined the bigger rocks as wiser and more aware and teaching the smaller rocks. Then it occurred to me that the smaller rocks were the same except that it would be easier for them to be buried in the mud or washed away. The large rocks were more grounded. A shallow simile but it made me think about being grounded.

3. G.

2. TGT. A warm, humid morning to remember it is enough to be alive.

1. Last night was awakened from a dream in which there was a battle going on around me. Someone checked to see how we were holding out. In my dream the motel rooms were in pairs. The two next to me had been overrun by the invaders.

Reflections (#330)

7. F. End of the day. It was a day when I stopped to appreciate a number of times during the day. The following come to mind as I sit here on the bed yawning.

There was a wonderful moment when I stepped out of the woods into a meadow on a gentle hillside. The appearance of the grass, and trees around  the meadow, were a bright, fresh green, and a classic blue sky with powdery white clouds. This bright appearance made a big impression after the darkness of the woods.Then later another surprise as we tried to figure out which path to take to come back and chose one because we could hear cars on the road that seemed to come from that direction. Havinng chosen that path we went about twenty feet and turned a corner and there was a big lawn with the parking lot beyond. Since it was very warm and we were fatigued there appeared exhilaration and relief. It was a moment we all shared.

Walking down the sidewalks of this college town/city admiring the wealth of nineteenth century brick buildings. There are twentieth century buildings two. There were two brick bunalows side by side with a front closed-in-porch-like  structure connecting them and creating a long storefront. I appreciated the newness of these views to my eyes.

There was the taste of the delicious crab cake sandwich at dinner.

6. Remembering to appreciate Appearances might serve me well in the next few days. I look at myself here eating breakfast anticipating the trip, dreading the drive a little, leaving the comfortable routine…it is a relatively short trip and I am much to look forward to.

5. I have memories of another dream that also was shocking in that it included a very (possibly unduly) harsh assessment of what I am in RL by someone who knows me better than anyone. The assessment was part of a group discussion in a very matter-of-fact way. Lest I forget.

4. TGT. The sun has not yet reached my widow due to the fact the Maples are fully clothed. If I lean over I can see a ray of siunlight coming over the garage and resting on a lower branch of the maple. There is another patch of leaves also bathed in light. I am tired from the wakeful period and have a drive to do this morning. I have to remember to bring my laptop. But, I do remember it iss enough to be alive. My dream was just a movie even though it felt rreal. Where is the reality?

3. I reflected a bit more and went back to sleep. It is an hour an a half later and I just woke up from a disturbing dream. I was going to the airport with a large group and my family in a bus. My mother was going to meet me there with my baggage. The bus pulled into the airport and passed my mother in the car. For some reason it did not occur to me to get the baggage from my mother and I went into the airport witht the group. I did not notice they were carrying their bags. We got checked in and were waiting in a waiting room when I thought of my mother waiting in the car for me. Coincidently I realized she had been waiting an hbour and a half. It was a long walk back o the parking lot but I ended up in a run down part of a city. I was with someone, maybe a family member. My mother pulled up and she had lots of stuff to put in our car. She was driving a car similar to one my father had given us. It had not been a reliable car for us. Wow and he knew it too. I wonder how he felt about that and me? Anyway we exchanged the stuff. (Hmm I had stuff for her car). I realized I had left my laptop in the motel. I had to go down a good number of streets in an industrial section to find it. The hotel was a very old and run down building. It had once been richly decorated. It was not a huge city hotel but maybe five or six stories or so. There was an old telescope by the window. All the time I was worried about catching my plane and things kept slowing me down. I left the motel and then had to go back for the laptop. Then finally I got lost in the streets trying to find my way back to the airport. Panic began to set in. I found a light rail to the airport but while I waited on the wrong side, the train left on the other side. I had not yet found my way back to the airport when I woke up with the thought I had probably missed the plane so what was the point of continuing to dream. I am sitting here feeling a bit lost. For a short dream I manged to let down quite a few people.

2. Gr. I am grateful for Play as Being and my friends who help me see and to open my heart,

1. It is early morning and I am lying awake reflecting on my explorations or adventures in Second Life over the past year. I jarred some memories loose in the past few days. This may have something to do with the fact that it is getting very close to my first anniversary in PaB. As I am writing I realized I was dreaming as my avatar and there was a sunomi and I could not save all my avatars. As I was looking back over the carnage I was wondering what they were feeling…how much they were suffering. It is amazing how I how much I separate myself identities in my avatars. It is a wonder. Each identity makes an appearance and can be appreciated as such.

I realize I survived a trip mto the mountaintop with a tiger;And yes I did enjoy the view. But why would I ever want to try  my luck again? WHO wants to make a tiger a traveling companion again?

I am in a good place to take advantage of a few days away from the routine.