MIND WALKING

So many people i love are dying. Rose, Betty, and lots more. I find that extremely frustrating. Checking out. Goodbye! Well, right now, I am still hanging in there. So I want to write my thoughts today and wander around my mind. Lots is going on inside there. I am frustrated with the pandemic and my fears. I am frustrated with my anxiety and my difficulty walking. I want to go and see and do. And I am waltzing around limitations galore. Sigh. But things are still working and are still okay and working with me and not against me. I am forgiving and letting go every day. And I am feeling successful. YES!! So this post is for fun! If you are not interested, one day you will be. Or not.  As for me, I am interested. 

I still have resentments. I still criticize and think a lot of people and things are stupid and tacky but I persist in the day to day practice of starting over. Sigh.  

I still feel guilty about a lot of things that are in my past and gone forever.  Sigh. But I am better.

I am afraid most of the time. You name it and I am afraid of it. BUT most of the time, I do it anyway unless I can avoid it. 

I have been informed that 4 things cause physical damage to the brain- and I am challenging my brain. They are resentments, criticism, guilt and fear.

Okay I do ALL of them. And I daily stop. And I fail and succeed and fail and succeed. My brain is still working but my fear comes and goes. I am not watching much news anymore. That’s panic attacks for the present and future and some past. This is a problem because I want to be informed.  Okay maybe I don’t need to be informed. 

I am still working on my mother’s voice in my head telling me that I am mean and bossy with a mean streak down my back and nobody will ever like me.  That not true but I am having difficulty reprogramming. Each day I begin again. 

I am going to try to write an “old person’s book”. Okay I am going to try to work on another book .  This was an amazing idea a friend of mine shared on Facebook. I like the idea.  But first another thought I like 

“This body of mine will disintegrate, but my actions will continue me… If you think I am only this body, then you have not truly seen me. When you look at my friends, you see my continuation. When you see someone walking with mindfulness and compassion, you know he is my continuation. I don’t see why we have to say “I will die,” because I can already see myself in you, in other people, and in future generations. Even when the cloud is not there, it continues as snow or rain. It is impossible for the cloud to die. It can become rain or ice, but it cannot become nothing. The cloud does not need to have a soul in order to continue. There’s no beginning and no end. I will never die. There will be a dissolution of this body, but that does not mean my death. I will continue, always.”

The Spirit

The final stage of life is the spirit stage. In this stage, we realize that we are more than what we have accumulated – be it money, friends, possessions, good deeds, or milestones in life. We are spiritual beings. We realize that we are divine beings in a journey of life that has no real beginning and no end. The spirit phase is characterized by a sense of “getting out of your own mind” and focusing on what is waiting for us beyond our physical beings. The philosopher Lao Tzu proposed a question over 2500 years ago that perfectly describes the spirit phase: ““Can you step back from your own mind and thus understand all things? Giving birth and nourishing, having without possessing, acting with no expectations, leading and not trying to control: this is the supreme virtue.” 

These are concepts that intrigue me but I am still letting go of resentments and criticism and guilt and fear. I may be staying there for now.

So. About the book I am going to do,…My friend wrote, “I stumbled on a New Yorker article by my hero, John McPhee. So I kept the light on and dug in to McPhee’s Piece. He calls it “TABULA RASA volume one.” McPhee is 88 years old and, due to his age, hesitated to undertake to write a long book or begin a research effort for fear of dying before it was over. Then he realized it was a good idea to start “an old-people project”. He says: “Old-people projects keep old people old. You’re no longer old when you’re dead.” 

He remembered that Mark Twain’s “old-person project was his autobiography, which he dictated with regularity when he was in his seventies….Repeatedly, he tells his reader how a project such as this one should be done—randomly, without structure, in total disregard of consistent theme or chronology. Just jump in anywhere, tell whatever comes to mind from any era. If something distracts your memory and seems more interesting at the moment, interrupt the first story and launch into the new one. The interrupted tale can be fin­ished later.” McPhee then says, “That is what he did, and the result is about as delicious a piece of writing as you are ever going to come upon, and come upon, and keep on coming upon, as it draws you in for the rest of your life. If ever there was an old-man project, this one was the greatest. It is only seven hundred and thirty-five thousand words long. If Mark Twain had stayed with it, he would be alive today.” I am gearing up for my own old person’s project. Thanks Samuel Clemens and of course thanks to John McPhee.   P.S. If you’re old, elderly, long in the tooth, past your prime, in your dotage and bored out of your mind, you could probably use an “old person’s project”. Mine is writing my autobio – like McPhee’s. But you might have other old person’s project ideas. If so, please share yours so other people can glean ideas for their own old persons’ projects.” 

Doesn’t that sound like fun?  I have already started my project.  Untitled for now but I have some ideas.  And I also have it formatted and dumping words and memories into it.  

Best, Jay