It’s the tail end of summer. The evening felt warm last night but the world felt cold.
I was walking the anxiety away. The pressure on my chest from the passage of time and the news of my mother’s illness weighed on me like a boulder.
So I whipped out what I always do in times likes these…
Pema Chödrön. One of my favorite Buddhist teachers.
I put on my headphones and listened to her calm, soothing voice remind me of impermanence. Remind me to just sit with the discomfort. “Humans don’t just feel good” she said. “Breathe into the discontent.”
I started to again reflect on attachment. How I must accept that nothing is forever. Life is not forever. I can’t hang on too tightly. Not to my youth, not my belongings, not my titles, not the people I love. I must learn to be with what is while it is and to let it go when it is time to let go.
ROAR!
I get it…I hear it. I know it. But it doesn’t make it any easier.
So let me sit with all of it. The part of me that knows better and the part of me that wants to squirm, complain, and throw a little tantrum.
—
On other news…
Lately everything reminds me of you.
There’s a canyon sized hollow without you here.
Sigh.
I am longing to soften.
To rest deeply in my body in powerful surrender. To fill my lungs with sweet, juicy air in full trust that it is all working in divine order. We are not late, we are not early, we are exactly where we should be.
Can I trust?
Can I really, really trust this time?
I am wanting to take the wild leap.
I am starting to think we live in a simulation. Or something sort of similar to it. Life’s too weird, too magnificent, too damn trippy not to lift a brow in suspicion that perhaps something’s up.
Too many strange coincidences leave my radar on alert.
I think I am ready.
I don’t know for what. But I am ready!
I can only imagine her pain…
Someone I know who I was recently smiling and taking selfies at the park with has lost her 17 year old daughter in a tragic car accident. How could we ever have predicted this moment 2 weeks ago. Don’t you wish you could turn back time and change things? Change outcomes?
GAH. The ache.
I’ve been sitting deeply with this topic of impermanence. The passage of time. Death.
I’ve come here to this space to share about it with you a few times.
Because friends, you and I are already dead.
Time and space is just catching up.
Why aren’t we talking about this loudly and wildly? Why are we walking around like zombies taking this whole experience for granted? Taking it all too serious.
Why are our systems not serving us? Why are we turning housing into a commodity to the point we labor just to generate PAPER for a structure that is already created to feed a system that is keeping our energy in survival mode?
WHY AREN’T WE USING OUR ENERGY TO CREATE HEAVEN ON EARTH?
Why aren’t we thinking about how we actually want to contribute to the planet to make it an epic experience vs how can I just make money?
Why aren’t we asking the big questions and solving the big problems?
Why aren’t we doing work that MAKES SENSE for the sake of having a WORLD WE WANT TO WAKE UP TO EACH DAY and contribute to?
YOU AND I ARE GOING TO DIE.
We need to wake up each day as if it were our last. Love like it was the last time. Enjoy our meal like it was the last. BECAUSE IT MAY VERY WILL BE.
Love. Forgive. Give. Help. Be kind. Be good. Make the art. Write the book. Post the content. Heal.
Leave the world better than you found it. It’s up to you and me. No one else.
No. Don’t point the finger at anyone else. YOU be good. You be kind. You do the right thing. ME be good. ME be kind. ME do the right thing. And if we each do this, we will see the ripple effect.
Ask questions.
Make noise. Don’t just PAY MORE RENT. Say NO to rental increases. Say NO to injustice.
—
Anyway.
That is my venting my own pain.
—
Guys, we can’t keep dancing around this subject by keeping it off the table and then getting all surprised when it starts happening to the people you know and then…. you and me.
What more important for us to be talking about than this?
My understanding is that when the body malfunctions and can no longer host the consciousness then you die. Where does the life force go? Where does the consciousness go? Can the consciousness be preserved?
It seems that our consciousness is “the sum of your learned experiences”. My name is “Laura” because that’s what I was named, but that’s not who I am. I’m nameless in reality. Names are sounds we create with our vocal cords to help us identify objects in space. It’s arbitrary. There’s nothing APPLE about an apple. That’s just a sound we agree to make to point to that thing we have identified in space. Anyway, I digress. And that’s not the point I am trying to make.
The point is…who you are is a memory bank of learned experiences. You are a particular set of memories living within a body. When your body fails it turns off your consciousness. I suppose that means the “hard drive” that holds your consciousness is then lost because the system that powers you fails. SO.. I am wondering…. can we figure out how to transfer this into a new body? A new host?
My mom is aging. Time is passing.
Each day that passes I am aware that it is getting closer to my last.
Each day that passes is like there is this clock that is unwinding and our death bed is being made. How could we not be talking about this??
I feel there are implications on this idea of preserving consciousness. It could be used in a bad way. I’m actually afraid of technology and how fast we are growing with AI and Tesla robots and whatnot. I just hope we mature also. I hope we become more loving. I hope we become kinder. I hope we don’t create chaos or suffering for each other. Sigh. I don’t know.
I keep hoping for a good God.
I keep hoping for magic over reality smacking me in my face.
I dunno.
I’m lost and venting.
But I hope we can find love and I hope we can find a way to find comfort in this impermanence. I hope we can figure something out and I hope that it is GOOD.
I suppose I’ll have to learn to live without you
No matter what, life goes on. It’s a cold reality.
This week I was walking the beach boardwalk and I felt like I was observing the moment outside of myself from above like a drone. I could see the passage of time. Everything and everyone moving on, living their life as if I wasn’t even here. Forgotten. Never known.
It made me think of the people I lost this year. My best friend, now a widow, slowly moving forward. Life must go on.
It’s been 6 days of silence between my partner and I. From “I love you” and exploring the world together to distance and silence. As if we just came and went.
I’m taking a deep breath as I write this and reflect on the coming together and falling apart. The ebb and flow. The circle of life.
I’m in the middle of nowhere on a planet that’s been flicked into space. Wow. What do I really know? A mere evolved ape. Or perhaps something other. Here for a little while. What do I make of it?
I don’t know. Try my best and surrender the rest is what I’m left with.
Pick myself up and move through life without you.
Life is bittersweet.
It’s both good and bad. And all else in between.
Everything is breaking down
It’s breaking down to let the new in
The old self is slowly dying
It’s sad, it’s scary, it’s bittersweet
I have to be strong. I have to be stronger than the loss. I have to accept. Accept impermanence. Accept change.
Time is passing. And with it is going my youth, some of the people around me, my hair line.
After many laps around the sun, you start to learn some things — gain some wisdom.
You gain a lot, you lose a lot. You build but in the end you let it all go.
One of my favorite aunts died last year. The house she bought was left behind. The clothes in her closet cleared away. The car she drove was given to her children.
This life is temporary. It’s all temporary. Some things break down and then we build them again. Yet in the end we keep nothing. So what is it all for? All this striving? All this doing? All this pressure to get it all “right”? The best hair, the nice shoes, the plump lips, the fancy outfits.
What are we all doing?
Why are we over capitalizing on each other to the point we can’t even enjoy this temporary life because we have to rush to a job just to make the payment to the banks for the ridiculously expensive mortgage loan adorned with suffocating interest.
This weekend I saw a Cheetos truck on the highway. So much gas is needed to fill up this truck to transport GARBAGE food into our groceries. What are we eating? What are we being fed?
What are WE DOING!? Is someone out there AWAKE!?
We are co-creating this God damned world here. Is this what you want? To go to debt for schooling, to go to debt to buy a car, to go to debt to buy a house and LIVE OUR WHOLE LIVES SLAVES TO BANKS and their interest payments?
So many cars on the road as we commute to work jobs we don’t even like. WHAT ARE WE DOING?
Are these the jobs we really want?
Are we happy with what we are creating? This is OUR WORLD.
We, together, call the shots. WHAT ARE WE DOING?
I’m pissed. And sometimes feel so damn powerless in the face of it all.
I hope we find a way to make it better. This experience here is temporary. I want to make the best of it and have supportive systems that create ease and peace for people. Not disease, stress, debt, depression, lack, scarcity, fear… what the fuck is going on.
I saw someone share this image below and it was the best thing I saw on the internet yesterday. So I am sharing it here with you.
^ I didn’t create the image I saw someone share it on facebook and I’m sharing it here with you…
Life is hard enough as it is — why don’t we come together to make it better? To make it pleasant?
reflectoutloud.com 