life is not a dress rehearsal

Henry Miller once said he didn’t approve of “memorials.” Memorials, he said, “defeated the purpose of a man’s life. Only by living your own life to the full can you honour the memory of someone.” [from Inspiration, or Perhaps we can start by saying what it is not]

Four years ago today, December 26, 2004, nearly 300,000 people in nine countries died in one of the biggest natural disasters in the last century. "Measured in lives lost, this is the single worst tsunami in history," says Wikipedia.

The aftershocks of that collective tragedy still ripple through my life. When I returned to the coastlines of Thailand and Sri Lanka one year later on a pilgrimage to revisit survivors and relief workers, I noted survivor's guilt -- a form of looping thoughts of stress, doubt and guilt that swing from "Maybe if I hadn't gone to the market that morning...There must have been something I could have done differently - but what?! - to save my mother, father, son, daughter, nephew, neighbor, child..." to the core "Why not me?"

Again, "Only by living your own life to the full can you honour the memory of someone.” - Henry Miller

I notice as I write this a constriction in my heart. This past year has been difficult for me. Worse yet, I've been guarded, which actually is the opposite of the one consequence of the tsunami's collective nature (compared to an individual near-death experience): how it broke open my heart.

"Be still when you have nothing to say; when genuine passion moves you, say what you've got to say, and say it hot." - D. H. Lawrence

I've silenced myself this past year from writing and speaking, both publicly and one-on-one. Can't say it hot when I myself have snuffed my fire out. Which is stupendously strange for someone that vowed to never settle in the aftermath of the tsunami, and reiterated, if not on the day I die, then not today.

"Don't ask yourself what the world needs; ask yourself what makes you come alive. And then go and do that. Because what the world needs are people who have come alive." - Howard Thurman

This quote is so often quoted that it's clichéd. Though it is not common sense.  It's a childlike notion. I've been too wrapped up in trying to do good, that I've missed the fact that what's the highest good is what's joyous to me without thought - it precedes even a flicker of thought - without an evaluation of maximizing the number of other beings helped. There is no Other being. It's not a numbers game when we are One.

"What are the most innovative, wild things you've ever wanted to do? What was your greatest dream as a child?" - Eric Francis

What's the best journey you could choose for yourself -- a journey that will educate, challenge, and delight you? - Rob Brezsny, December 25, 2008

In last day or so, I've read: Cormac McCarthy wrote his first novel while working as an auto mechanic in Chicago. John Wray wrote his first novel "while living in a tent in the basement of a warehouse in Brooklyn with no heat and no shower." Jason Rohrer fights his town council to allow his meadow to grow free in his front lawn, owns four pairs of boxers, eats lentil soup everyday to do his video game experimental art on $14,500 a year (for a family of four). They'd all be considered crazy according to the standards I was raised in.

I desperately need more crazy people in my life. I desperately need to be this crazy person that guides myself.

p.s. I can tell you the answers I've come up to the above questions, but I'd like to give you the opportunity to answer them yourself. It's also a moment by moment thing. Think young child, they don't have a grand scheme, they flow with the Tao (...which is the grand scheme.) Now, the daffodil captures their attention, next the cardboard box morphing into a castle into a stargate into neverending story on the floor, next the .... It's Mystery unfolding.

Life is not a dress rehearsal, is a framed calligraphy quote I had hanging as a young adult. It was just a slogan then.

Bonus 1: "Your career astrology is so good that you risk it going right over your head. That is to say, your astrology is saying aim extremely high, but most people have no idea what that means, even a lot of smart ones. So let me say it another way.
 
What are the most innovative, wild things you've ever wanted to do? What was your greatest dream as a child? What is your greatest vision for your contribution to the world? That is the place to start. You need to judge your career by some standard other than the job you want to get out of. You need to judge by some standard other than your résumé." - Eric Francis

Bonus 2: "When it is time to make a change, (and in these times we are making changes every five minutes as we are "morphing" so fast!) we become discontented with where we are. Our work, our living situations or even perhaps our entire lives no longer feel good. This is the nudge that is guiding us to make a change. And the way to guide yourself through this change is to do what makes you feel good. It's that simple.

If something no longer feels good to you and is not working for you anymore, discontinue it as soon as you are comfortable doing so. It is no longer working because you are no longer in that space. Something new is waiting for you. If we were to stay in the old space out of mental rationalization, the new opportunities and manifestations could not find us. If there is something you always wanted to do but didn't think it made sense to do, do it anyway. If you do not know what to do, then fill as much of your day with things that make you feel great and the new will arrive on its' own. Always, always put yourself first. Follow your heart. Make time for you and the universe will get the picture.

...This is one of the reasons why the ascension process places us in a space where we can become disenchanted with life. We are only supposed to be in our passion and in the energies that light us up. Stay in these as much as possible. We are becoming the pure gold nugget of our true selves..." - Karen Bishop, The Ascension Primer

Comments

[joely]

Deep truth in this post; I'm letting it soak in.

Namaste,

j o e l y

[AliveandCrazy :)]

I desperately need more crazy people in my life. I desperately need to be this crazy person that guides myself.

:)

thank you Eva, just what I needed to hear tonight...Today I went to see the Leonardo exhibition here in San Jose, wild and crazy man he was. I too need more of the so called far out and into the future crazy creative people in my life....... open up gurlfriend.

[Ben]

I loved this post Eva! I could relate to much of it.

I couldn't help thinking about friends asking me when I was going to write another poem as if I could crank them out on demand.

The truth is the poems write me.... and just when I think that it is totally spontaneous process, I get the framework for a poem and purposely set it aside. Then later I decide to finish it, and it ends up so much more than I originally wrote.

So, really which is it? Do I make the effort or does it write me when I get "hot". Some of both I suspect and the conditions aren't always perfect as your stories above reflect, and still it gets written and some people really like them.

So all attempts to describe the process pretty much fail. Life is bigger than the words I use to describe it which is one reason I like poetry.

So what's the problem? Well it's that voice in the head providing the color commentary about the whole process and getting lost in the drama of unprocessed emotions and trying to put a mental lid on how all this works. As you write in an earlier post...

"We are afraid that if we sit still with the emotions - the grief, the anguish, the pain, the sorrow, the emptiness - then we will be totally consumed by waves upon waves of emotion"

I sure do appreciate that because it feels a lot like going insane... except nothing is actually happening except a voice chattering away in the head from one not so friendly point of view. Worse yet, not the only possible point of view, and it is trying darn hard to be believed like the Used Car Salesman in a checkered coat.

So, I supposed I could make this about what makes me feel great and structure my outer world according to that vision; however, something seems to be telling me I will be much more satisfied facing the inner music and passing through the apparent insanity first. After all, I might as well get intimate with what is trying to run the show.

There comes a time when all the quotes, references, stories, and good spiritual advice\practices has got to go and it is time to roll up the sleeves look the tiger in the mouth, stick the head in, and be willing to find out what happens. Time to stop looking at the pointing finger, and walk in the direction pointed to.

I am guessing it is nothing like what I thought... if you get my meaning. :o)

Let's Meet On The Other Side and have a good laugh! My apologies for the length of my reply, but his post moved me.
Ben

[Michael Pokocky]

Long time since I read a post here. I found you through Twitter, which I don't use, but it is weird how things unfold everyday.

You got to be so f-----wild, crazy, curious, profound, fearless and fearful, stupendous, ridiculous, forward, kind, reserved, then wild again and so on...!

The bottom line is simple: Believe or not Believe I don't care; but Begin Again and Again and Again.

bonus 1. Stop analyzing. Start now and drop off the social interaction thing and ask yourself,"What is it that you really want?" Don't tell anyone. Align your life to what you find out period. Write your own quotes and live by what you hear. Stop reading for awhile and write a journal. Its all about you at the end of the day. You are not happy. I see you Eve and I respect you enough to tell you all this. I don't give advice. I just kick people in the a-s and shake their beliefs and stir up their emotional core and reach down into their throats and pull out their heart, beating in my hand and hand it back to them and tell them,"Look this is you." There has never been a time for you to break away from your solitude which you have defined for yourself and enter another cave of solitude that has always been there. That is where you will find you. Then you will and we will see who you really are besides the fantastic person we already see, the person you want us to see. I want to see the person who is angry and frustrated and lost and longing and how you will become who you are supposed to be. I see you. Don't be surprised what you end up seeing because it is the YOU that will be standing holding your beating heart a stranger handed to you in your hands one fine day and told you your special.

HAPPY NEW YEAR
LOVINGLY,
MICHAEL

[quiltdivajulie]

Marvelous post ~ thank you for sharing yourself with us! All I can add is AMEN...

[Gene]

Thank you for filling us in. I was wondering what happened...missed you. So true about the "dress rehearsal". Have a great New Year.

Gene

[Evelyn Rodriguez]

Thanks everyone. Thank you Joely, Alive&Crazy, Ben, Michael, Gene, Julie. And a gloriously surprising New Year to all. For once, I think I am either going to call - those I know that personally - or email back to everyone, individualized, that chipped in a comment. I'm a little backed up, but I've nothing to add in the general comment area here. And anything you did bring up as inspiration I'll fold into the blogging to come. Thanks again.

[Spiritual Reality]

Very inspiring! Enjoyed reading it. Keep up the good work.

~Shafin