It's Summertime

Greetings all,

I find it funny that when I started writing this blog, I knew nobody was reading it.  There was a kind of freedom in that.  I could say what I liked.  I could work through my thoughts and feelings without having to worry about anyone using it against me or projecting themselves onto what I'd written (either correctly or incorrectly).  While I do my best to not make things personal when writing, the personal sphere seeps in.  It kind of has to for my words to have any true emotional depth behind them.  So I am re-examining how much I share of my inner workings.

My faith in humanity has been sorely tested this past few years.  While I am far from perfect I strive to be good and easy to get along with.  I should explain that I spent a majority of my life feeling very lonely.  I did not really have a group of close friends until I reached my mid twenties.  That first group soured and went bad.  After coming close to death I realized how toxic that group was for me.  I excised them from my life.  Which is a fancy way to say I burned down every connection that led back to them, no matter how tangential.  I have since gone through several iterations of that pattern to lesser or greater degree (without the dying part though, I decided that part sucked).  This blog actually started after another relationship purge that was as life altering as that first one.  So here I am once more in the midst of The Purge.  I've tried to make this one a slow controlled burn, but sometimes you just have to say fuck it and get out the kerosene.

I've asked myself what particular character flaw gets me into these situations.  What I've boiled it down to is that I am always trying to not feel lonely.  I grew up with loneliness as my constant companion.  So I've put up with a lot of toxic behavior from folks just so that I don't have to be alone.    Again this is not to say that I don't have my annoying traits (I know I do because sometimes I annoy myself), but I have experimented extensively with hanging with folks that simply tolerate me.  My experiments have concluded it is not worth it.  I end up feeling worthless and believing that I am hard to love.  So not exactly what I am looking for in my relationships with others.

Why am I telling you this?  I'm lonely, and it is by design at this point.  I've cut out anyone I have deemed toxic.   What I have done in the past is to look for new folks to fill that void, but I am trying to slow down.  It's all about quality not quantity when it comes to people.  I'm over putting up with cruelty in personal relationships (or professional ones either).  So right now I am floating in my bubble of solitude.  I don't think my need for companionship  will ever go away as it is part of being human, but I want to work on evolving how I relate to and fulfill that need.   I am not living as a monk or nun this lifetime so personal relationships will play a crucial role in the shape and pattern of my life.  As such I want to get a handle on this so I can experience different journeys going forward.

How about you?  Aside from your basic physical needs, relationships will have the greatest impact on how happy you are with your life.  Do you have any toxic people dumping chemical waste into your emotional aquifers? Are you with the people in your life just so that have somebody in your life? Do you enjoy their company?  Do you feel better or worse from your interactions?  It pays to get clarity and to prune our social contacts from time to time.  It doesn't have to be nasty or showy, you can just decide to spend less time with certain folks, or no time at all.  It is your life and your time, spend it with people you love and who love you too.

Peace and Blessings,
Thomas Mooneagle

The Rage

Greetings all,

Did I scare you?  You may have been startled if not by the picture above then by my recent rants on social media.  I'll be honest, I've been in a bad mood since late 2016.  Some of this is because of personal matters, but in greater part it is the larger pattern that society is weaving.

I have watched people delight in the torment of myself and others like me, as we view what to us looks like the fall of our civilization and species.  This is quite demoralizing, and people are enjoying it.  They couldn't be happier as we continue to poison the land, sea, and atmosphere. Right now we have concentration camps for children.  We have nazis marching in our streets.  We have a surge in violent hate crimes.  We turn a blind eye when kids ask us to protect them from military style fire arms.  So I am flaming mad.  I'm a freaking vortex of rage and molten soul fire.  I also don't have a great means of redressing such atrocities.  I have yet to succeed in creating an army of mutant warrior wizard clones of myself to hunt down the minions of corruption.  Imagine that, an army of me,  I'm not sure reality could take the strain.

So the question remains.  What to do with this rage?  I've tried being a social justice warrior on social media.  I came to realize that it was futile.  I've tried speaking with government representatives, only to have them turn a deaf ear.  I've given aid to organizations and projects I thought would help the world or at least a small corner of it.  I've worked on personal projects.  The rage remains.  It remains because every day there is a new atrocity, which the sleeping souls cheer on as a victory.  It remains because for all the many problems we face there are so many solutions that are simply being ignored.

One thing about feeling anger as an empath is that it blocks out a good deal of other people's feelings.  To quote Anansi the spider deity, "Sometimes angry gets things done."  This is true and has been true in my life, but (there's always a but somewhere) it tends to get things done with quite a mess and collateral damage.  Anger can make you feel powerful if you give yourself over to it, but I am not a Spartan warrior.  (Not this lifetime anyway, you should have seen me back then though because I was BUILT!) There are some in the spiritual community that would have you kill your anger, because it is one of the so called 'lower' emotions.  I call bullshit on that.  Anger has its place in our psyche for a reason. There are others who would tell you merge with it and set your world ablaze with your 'sacred fire'.  I have ridden the high horse of righteous fury before.  I got saddle sores.  I am seeking for a 3rd way, where I don't deny my anger nor do I let myself be ruled by it.

Why am I telling you this?  Well I have withdrawn a good bit from the social arena.  I have been quite cynical towards people in general.  I've got my guard up.  Where there is rage there is also hurt. For now I am working on healing the hurt places in myself so that I don't have to hold myself apart as much.  I want to honor my feelings and protect my heart without keeping everyone and everything out.  What I need is a bouncer at the door.  For some they will be a greeter, for others they will show them the exit.  I am to the point in my life where not everyone gets an audience.

How about you?  Are you tapped into rage?  Is it personal, societal, or existential? How are you handling it?  Are you handling it?  Do you just stuff the anger down until it bursts forth like a volcano?  Does it steal your joy and direction?  Does it give you fire to keep on burning a path forward?  What is it trying to tell you?  Listen carefully and maybe a way will be found to turn that fire into the kind of passion you can use to make a better life for yourself and others.

Peace and Blessings,
Thomas Mooneagle

Falling into Fate

Greetings all,

See I have not vanished from the earth.  I live to post again!  It has been a bit though.  When I rebooted this blog and began writing weekly it was due to big upheavals in my life.  My more recent absences from the blogosphere have also been due to life changes.  So while there is still a voice in my head saying, "You haven't blogged this week."  There is another voice growing stronger of late that is saying, "Your commitment to blog was to you and you alone, you can change that arrangement if it suits you."  As such no apologies will be offered from here on about the length of time between posts.

About ten days ago I went on an adventure.  It began with the spark of inspiration back in January after a good session with a client.  I began creating a meditation based on my what has become my daily practice. At first I was simply going to record it on a conference call number and pull it into Audacity with some alpha wave surf sounds and release it on my website.  I had the glimmer of an idea though to approach some of my contacts at Hemi-sync to see if they would partner on this project.  Well fast forward a few months, and I have recorded a voice track based on the script I wrote.  Today I got to hear the sample background music that was selected to accompany it.  It's all a bit surreal.  When I started this journey years back, I never imagined it would lead here....maybe I should work on my imagination.

I should state I'm not much of a planner.  I have goals.  I try certain things.  I liken it to tossing seeds where I walk and seeing which ones come up.  Some do and some don't.  Over time I seem to be getting better at determining which seeds to toss about. To some it looks methodical and well thought out, to others it looks random, and to another group of observers it looks like I'm not doing anything.  All are correct, and all are wrong.  It seems to be me the more I let go and go with the flow, the more headway I make.  It allows me to be relaxed enough to spot opportunities without getting tunnel vision.

So why am I telling you this.  Well I am excited about recent developments, and I hope you also have something new and refreshing in your life as well.  It can be easy to stress about setting up success strategies, or to just give in to inertia and not go anywhere.  A teacher of mine once talked about the difference between fate and destiny.  A person could be fated to meet someone significant, their destiny would be what they do with that encounter.  So in the weeks that follow I suggest you go about your business with one ear to the ground for opportunities.  They may come as a bolt of inspiration, as a solution to a current problem,  or a clever refinement of something you've been doing for a while.  In other words, live and see what life offers.

Peace and Blessings,
Thomas Mooneagle