in five years, i see myself five years older...

...don't get freaked out by the pure light within you
no, don't let it freak you out
just go with it
because if you don't go with it
it will just take you where it wants to be
which is cool too, if you have the time

-chris robinson

as i start to turn my gaze toward graduation in May, the questions are cropping up again. no longer am i free to flow into something (new place to live, new job, new program of study) because first i must flow out. and for some reason, this means i must know the direction of my flow. or so they say.

'where do you see yourself in 5 years?' and 'what are your career goals?' seem to come up every day, and its silly really. talking to a friend last night, he had a great answer, 'i have no plans to stay and i have no plans to leave.' having no plans is what it should be all about. because once you think you have it all figured out, you are just asking to be proven wrong. in any situation. plans, while some people need the security of knowing WHERE they are going, are mostly limiting. what if my friend had plans to leave and a month before doing so, he is faced with a great opportunity? likely he will not view the same opportunity in the same light because he's 'on his way out,' likely the opportunity may not have presented itself to begin with because he's been busy planning his exit and looking to the future, no longer cultivating the same friendships, community bonds, and work bonds, no longer rooting himself to this place.

And anyway, why and for what/who do you need a plan? I suppose if you are looking to make a real impact on the world, make some kind of change that matters, then yes you need a plan, but most of us are just trying to live. So for most of us, what does a plan give us besides a sense, albeit inflated, of importance, a sense of meaning to our lives. But when you get there, to this end point in your goal, do you feel fulfilled? Maybe but I bet its so short lived because it that is how you see the world, you are already onto the next goal, already thinking about the future, never there in the present really enjoying what in reality is all we have, the now.

and while i feel uprooted and in limbo lately, i know it just means i'm staying OPEN to all the possibilities.

its like relationships and marriage...they represent plans as well. plans for a future, plans to stay loyal to this person. once you are in that spot, do you go out as often and meet new people? lets say you do, even...do you approach the new people you meet with the same openness, curiosity, sense of 'what if' and possibility? most people do not. and so you've closed yourself off to possibility. and i'm not saying possibility of meeting another mate, although that IS there, but even just the possibility of an intimate friendship, a deep rewarding bond, but now instead, there are social conventions blocking you from getting to know that person on such a level because it may be perceived the wrong way by your mate, their mate, outside parties, etc. And you assume they have nothing much to offer you since you've already found that 'person for you.' we're so inhibited by our plans and our decisions that we *think* are carved out, set in stone. burn your carvings. throw that stone into the ocean and watch it change form.
stay open.

plans usually limit you because plans are made by you; creations of only what you can imagine, and while some may dare to dream, most of us live in the realm of practicality and likelihood because its safer. you can't imagine something greater, something outside yourself, you don't imagine there are others as enlightening as those people that you've met and know at that moment. and you plan on a narrow foundation. not planning allows you to be open to a wider scope of probabilities, to all those things you thought could never happen, but somehow do (usually right around or after the time you think you've got it all figured out).

there's a quote on my wall that says 'dwell in possibility' and it doesn't mean to always be wanting something else or always be thinking about the future. at least not to me, to me it says, be open, be aware, that it is possible for anything to change at any time, for new doors to open, for old doors you thought would never shut to now be locked, you just never know.

love,

aimless peacock

can questions lie?

must a funk be analyzed,
broken down,
categorized,
justified,
explained
to be gotten out of?
because i don't want to know why i'm here.
i just don't want to be.
or maybe i do? maybe i don't want to face the truth of what i am feeling and why?

can't i just leave question marks?
and use them as a ladder?
is there an escape?
is that the answer?

home alone

I was surprised when the sadness didn't come as and when I expected.
Now I'm learning that it will come when it wants, and stay as long as it wants too, without knocking.
Goodbye to my family until Christmas, goodbye to my love until a time yet to be planned, goodbye to my dear friend until Buddha knows when...these are indeed transitory and transitional times for all of us.

off to embrace the alone time with a book...

OpenstandingHonesty

Watch as the idealist locutioneers prove it can be done
*************************************************
"You have to unburden yourself of all the theories, hypothesizes, philosophies, and ideologies that you have learned. The process of achieving the truth is a process of unlearning, it is a process of unconditioning...
When one can just watch without any judgment interfering, without any old ideas coming in, then truth is revealed. And the miracle is that it does not come from somewhere else to you, it does not descend from above; it is found within you -- it is your intrinsic nature. It is really a great revelation to know truth, because you are it and you have never lost it -- even for a single moment. You have always been it...
"Just create more and more understanding. That's what lovers miss: They have enough love, but understanding, none, none at all...Love cannot live without understanding. Alone, love is very foolish; with understanding, love can live a long life, a great life -- of many joys shared, of many beautiful moments shared, of great poetic experiences. But that only happens through understanding.
"...love accepts you. It makes no demands on you. Love does not say, "Be this, be that." Love simply says, "Be yourself. You are good as you are. You are beautiful as you are." Love accepts you. Suddenly you start dropping your ideals, "shoulds," personalities. You drop your old skin...love makes people young...Love can be the right situation in which to drop all conditioning. Love is an unconditioning. It simply takes away old patterns and does not give you new ones. If it gives you new ones, it is not love, but politics."
-Osho, excerpts from Everyday Osho

"Risk is there. If you become true, nobody knows whether this relationship will be capable of understanding truth, authenticity; whether this relationship will be strong enough to stand in the storm. There is risk, and because of it, people remain very guarded. They say things which should be said; they do things which should be done. Love becomes more or less like a duty...For the miracle to happen you will have to do something, and that is start being true, at the risk that maybe the relationship is not strong enough and may not be able to bear it. The truth may be too much, unbearable, but then that relationship is not worthwhile. So that test has to be passed. Once you are true, everything else becomes possible..So don't be afraid, go into it. If the relationship survives truth, it will be beautiful. If it dies, then too it is good because one false relationship has ended, and now you will be more capable of moving into another relationship -- truer, more solid, more concerning the essence."

-Osho, "Being in Love..."

********************************************
still rewriting this dictionary...

reality check

...quite possible...
...that its not impossible...

********************************************
"...you are suffering; you do not fundamentally enjoy your life. Your entertainments, your playful affairs...are temporary ways to distract you from your underlying sense of fear...for you they are addictions, not enjoyments. You use them to distract you from your chaotic inner life - the parade of regrets, anxieties, and fantasies you call your mind...If you don't get what you want, you suffer; if you get what you don't want, you suffer; even when you get exactly what you want, you still suffer because you can't hold onto it forever. Your mind is your predicament. It wants to be free to change, free of pain, free of the obligations of life and death. But change is the law, and no amount of pretending will alter that reality...Life is not suffering; it's just that you will suffer it, rather than enjoy it, until you let go of your mind's attachments and just go for the ride freely, no matter what happens."
-Way of the Peaceful Warrior (Dan Millman)

bears repeating...

"If they are dependent on each other, clinging, possessive, if they don't allow each other to be alone, if they don't allow each other space enough to grow, they are enemies, not lovers; they are destructive to each other, they are not helping each other to find their souls, their beings. What kind of love is this? It may be just fear of being alone; hence they are clinging to each other. But real love knows no fear. Real love is capable of being alone, utterly alone, and out of that aloneness grows a togetherness.

Kahlil Gibran says: Two lovers are like two pillars of a temple - they support the same roof, but they stand separate; together as far as supporting the same roof is concerned, but utterly separate as far as their own being is concerned. Be pillars of a temple, supporting the same temple of love, the same roof of love, yet rooted in your own being, not distracted from there. And then you will know both the beauty, the purity, the cleanliness, the health, the wholeness of aloneness, and you will also know the joy, the dance, the music of being together.

There is a beauty when somebody is playing a solo instrument - a solo flute player - there is tremendous beauty in that. And there is also beauty in an orchestra. And love knows both together: it knows how to be a solo flute player and it also knows how to be in rhythm, harmony with the other..."

hear me roar

e.e. cummings
lets see how you like it!

e
.
e.cum
mings

you piss me off
ooh! i found return on the keyboard! ain't i profound?!

but i'll give you my half smile here:
"...meanwhile my

self etcetera lay quietly
in the deep mud et

cetera
(dreaming,
et
cetera, of
Your smile
eyes knees and of your Etcetera"

and your fragments befriend and reflect recent frailty

the answers aren't in the books
i know
but they are both
a funnel
and a fertilizer
for the trees along the road
to Manifest Destiny
(light on the destiny please, waiter)
at least her law of attraction
was amended for freedom of choice
(choice as a noun not a verb)

borders
with its lack thereof
tonight, though, less than usual
were its calming effects

lack of logic? abounding obscurity? its ok
because you won't
since you already did
buoyancy leaving me less than centered
detachment leaving me less than grounded
alas, i am a female after all.

Rose's Soliloquy

"Life exists in vulnerability, it exists in danger, insecurity. There is no security, and there cannot be...The higher the quality of life, the more fragile. Look at a rose, look at a poem, look at a song, look at music -- it vibrates for a second and then is gone! Look at love: One moment it is there, next moment it is not...So there is nothing wrong with vulnerability; it is understanding how life is...So just learn to accept your vulnerability, and then there will be a very deep understanding and a deep flow of energy..."

"Be positive and enjoy more...be more cheerful, enthusiastic about small things...Life consists of small things, but if you can bring the quality of cheerfulness to small things, the total will be tremendous. So don't wait for anything great to happen. Great things do happen...but don't wait for the something great to happen. It happens only when you start living small, ordinary, day to day things with a new mind, with a new freshness, with a new vitality...One has just to go on collecting pebbles on the shore...There are a many people in the world who miss because they are always waiting for something great. It can't happen. It happens only through small things: eating your breakfast, walking, taking a bath, talking to a friend, just sitting alone looking at the sky or lying on your bed doing nothing. These small things are what life is made of. They are the very stuff of life."

-Osho

meditation

"Meditation is not something that you do. It is, only when your doer has gone and you are totally relaxed and not doing anything, in a deep state of let-go, rest - there is meditation. Then meditation flowers. It is the flowering of your being. It has nothing to do with becoming. It is not an achievement, it is not an improvement; it is just being that which you already are."
-Osho

Many people view meditation as a solution, a way to BRING happiness or relief or peace of mind, when rather it is supposed to come AFTER those things. Its backwards to be seeking meditation and almost impossible to really achieve it when you are burdened by all the things that are making you seek meditation as your solution. The real approach is actually to change your problems, issues, burdens, or at least your view on them, and find your own happiness, and when you experience that inner joy and peace, a meditative state follows naturally. You find it in all the spaces in between, in all the moments where you are only in that moment in that second, only breathing, wanting nothing more.

take a breather...

I understand that I can flow with changes in my emotions, but how do I ensure that my change is not a de-evolution?

"At this moment your energy needs to be left alone to yourself, hence the fear is coming. Fear is not always wrong, remember. Nothing is always wrong; it depends. People have such ideas that fear is always wrong -- it is not. Yes, sometimes it is wrong, sometimes it is not. Nothing is always right-and nothing is always wrong; everything depends on the context.
Right now your fear is perfectly right -- it simply says to you 'Don't get involved'; hence the fear arises. It is not the fear of the new, not at all; that is a misinterpretation. It is simply fear that if you get entangled in energy, somebody else's energy, you will lose the centering which is growing. You are becoming more centered, you are settling more in your being. You are coming to terms with your aloneness and if you fall into a relationship that will be dragging yourself out. Your movement is inwards; a relationship will take you out and that will create a contradiction. Hence the fear. The fear is really helpful -- it-is showing you not to be foolish.
Remain alone. When the fear disappears move into relationship, then it will be perfectly right. It will disappear -- when its time is gone, when you have settled, when the energy is exactly as it should be inside, then one can afford to go out. First one has to settle inside, then it is easy to go outside, it is not a distraction. In fact it becomes an enhancement of the inner because of the contrast.
It becomes a little holiday from the inner but you always come back. Then it is not destructive, it is creative. Then love helps meditation.
So simply wait. Listen to your fear and don't repress it. It will disappear on its own. When the energy is ready to go out, you will suddenly see one day that you are moving with somebody and there is no fear at all -- your whole being is with you..."
-osho

Live in Love's Now

It has been said that the highest wisdom lies in detachment, or in the words of Chuang-tzu: "The perfect man employs his mind as a mirror; it grasps nothing; it refuses nothing; it receives, but does not keep." Detachment means to have neither regrets for the past nor fears for the future; to let life take its course without attempting to interfere with its movement and change, neither trying to prolong the stay of things pleasant nor to hasten the departure of things unpleasant. To do this is to move in time with life, to be in perfect accord with its changing music...In short, it is to be detached from both past and future and to live in the eternal Now. For in truth neither past nor future have any existence apart from this Now; by themselves they are illusions. Life exists only at this moment, and in this moment it is infinite and eternal. For the present moment is infinitely small; before we can measure it, it has gone, and yet it persists for ever...

Alan Watts, "Become What You Are"

"To ask security for tomorrow means to remain in constant fear. Security is not possible, so...with desire for security in the future you are destroying the present, which is the only life available."

-Osho

"As we follow the Tao, one lesson appears again and again: trust the process...we can learn to flow...We must release our need to control the outcome. We can only do our best, then trust the evolving cycles...Letting go of our attachment to the outcome dispels our fear of failure, for success and failure are polarities that emerge when we try to control things. The Tao transcends polarities. Trusting the process, we evolve beyond old definitions, open to a new insight..."

Diane Dreher, "The Tao of Inner Peace"

"When you don't need a person at all, when you are totally sufficient unto yourself, when you can be alone and tremendously happy and ecstatic, then love is possible. But then too you cannot be certain whether the OTHER'S love is real or not -- you can be certain about only one thing: whether your love is real. How can you be certain about the other? But then there is no need.

This continuous anxiety -- whether the other's love is real or not -- simply shows one thing: that your love is not real. Otherwise, who bothers? Why be worried about it? Enjoy it while it lasts! Be together while you can be together! ... One day when you are really awake you will be able to love -- but then you will be certain about your love only. But that's enough! Who bothers? Because right now you want to use others. When you are really blissful on your own, you don't want to use anybody. You simply want to share. You have so much, so much is overflowing, you would like somebody to share it. And you will feel thankful that somebody was ready to receive. Finished! That is the full point."

-Osho