PROBLEMS - A Brainz Group Offering

 PROBLEMS

American Heritage Collegiate Thesaurus, page 616.

1.     A situation that presents a difficulty, uncertainty, or perplexity. Sample case: a hornet's nest.

Informal: a bind, can of worms, tight spot. See also predicament.

2.     Something that obstructs progress and requires great effort to overcome. Sample case: complication, hardship, rigor. See also difficulty.

Informal: a feeling of uncertainty about the fitness for the correctness of an action – misgiving, reservation, scruple. See also qualm.

3.     An unfavorable condition, circumstance or characteristic – drawback, handicap, minus. See also disadvantage.

 

I AM YOUR PROBLEMS

WHO AM I?

I am the problem that defines you. I may be that sudden automobile accident, that diagnosis, that unexpected email rejection. I can be as quick as a slap across the cheek. Or, I may be one of those slow-moving crises that seem to eat away at your gut day after day. That step off the edge of the pond you were two years old and went in over your head and gave you the fear of water for the rest of your life. That poker game in which you were suddenly in way over your head. I am the panicky business investment which you have made and you're about to lose it all. The lie that came back to you.  The little mistake that now has gotten out of control. Remember me? I took your beautiful watercolor life and slopped indigo paint on it - trailed it across your pretty, youthful bright colors. I am the splash of darkness in your life – your heart attack, your cancer, the fall, the abortion, the one too many drinks, the perfect relationship gone wrong. There go your plans. Your hopes! Your dreams! Shot to hell. Fucked. And you are left with what? Broken dreams? broken idealism? You’re left broken.

 

WHY AM I HERE?

I bring you choices you would never make for yourself. I come to you and your higher self offers your weaknesses up to me, just like Father Abraham. You are the son I must slay.  I take you and I break you so you can have a choice. I give you choice, just like God gave Abraham that choice. I un-fix the fixed. I cause you to consider tightening up what’s loosey-goosey. What will you do? Will you blot up the indigo paint on your pretty colors? Pretend I never happened?  Will you give up? Cry over your broken dreams? Get corrective surgery? How will you hide a broken heart? Get ‘tude? Look for a White Knight? (You know, that indigo will never TOTALLY blots up! Everyone can tell. Everyone knows.) The memory will always be there.

Why did you get these problems? Was it something you did? Or something you ARE? Are you guilty? Have something to hide? Were you broken to let something OUT? Or to let something IN? Is being broken the end of something else? Or, is it only the beginning of even more problems? How do you respond? How will your higher-self respond?

Everyone starts with “naïve idealism.” But, once you’re broken you have the possibility to create “achieved idealism” out of the ashes of your dreams that went down in flames. “Achieved idealism - the second marriage of you and you’re disillusioned self. It’s discovery, recovery, learning, and the lesson. You and your problems are not a glossy, untouched pretty couple, not light, not bright. Deeper.  A little indigo around the edges - imagine deep dark indigo mixing with the crimson, yellow, and blue – new hues appearing stronger deeper powerful than you ever imagined. That's why I’m here. To create the new, improved, and damaged you! The unique you. Experienced.

 

WHAT DO I WANT?

I what to live, and love, in universal imperfection. Couch surf with your karmic carpool. I am in the limbless arms of another who holds you. I am the ravaged face. The blind eyes. The drooping stroke smile. The limp. The drooling happy friend.  I bring the impossible together with the improbable. I want you with me. I want you never to forget me, and I want you to carry me in your heart...  right where Abraham was aiming the knife.

 

© Copyright 2014, Jean W. Yeager

All Rights Reserved

 

 

SOLUTIONS TO PROBLEMS WRITTEN ON T-SHIRTS WHICH MAY BE RECITED IN RESPONSE TO CONFRONTING A PROBLEM

1.     “Confer Thy Querulous Blatherings Upon The Palmar Fascia”  (TALK TO THE HAND)

2.     “I Find Myself To Be Exorbitantly Superannuated For this Feculence!” (I’M TOO OLD FOR THIS SHIT.)[1]

3.     “I am not a failure! I know 10,000 things that don’t work.” Thomas Edison upon finding the filament for the electric light bulb

---

[1] Daedalus Books, Holiday III Catalog, pg. 67

REFINING FIRE - WITH AN AUDIO VERSION

LISTEN TO A READING OF THIS POST

WHO AM I?

We sit and face the fire and the sparks rise to the sky, and at our backs is the dark night of the future. The cold and unknown in the dark behind us. Our faces are illuminated by the bright orange and red that's blazing forth in front of us as the wood of our lives bursts into flames. And, we are laughing and looking across the fire at each other, and talking. That’s how we keep our attention focused on the present and not worry about what’s in the dark and probably looking at us from the dark future forest.

We are a mixed lot and grow in different climes. Some of us are hardwoods, dense, heavy, with thick layers of l’aubier, living sapwood. Strong. Bearing a lot. Occasionally showy. Colorful. You know those sturdy folk by their fire. Their fires are hot.

Others of us are soft pines. Softwood is only water and smoke. It is amazing how quickly our softwood life stories go up in smoke.. Very little heat, lots of ash. And so our life fire, if we have grown too soft, burns the uneventful which barely warms us.

We toss in our pinecones with lots of future yet to be released and planted. New forest re-seed themselves after the fire rages through and burns down the ancient trees. Sometimes I feel like an ancient tree. And when I sit with my friends in front of the fire I see that we burn our pasts. We release those seeds of the future by telling our past stories. And those are the fuel for the New Year’s fire.

Some of our stories are about our victories. Some of the stories are about our defeats. Our losses. Some of the stories are about the things which others did to us. It is good to release those stories that are not strengthening for us. We'll toss them onto the fire pit and watch them burn. Let ‘em go. Let the sparks rise to the sky. Turn them into ashes. Let them go.

WHY AM I HERE?

Sitting around the fire and telling our stories to one another is something that men do, that women do, that people do. We have been hosting fire evenings for years. We invite our longtime friends to come and sit. One would think that, after all these years that the stories would be repetitive, but they're not. Just as the years of our lives are cyclical, our storytelling to one another is likewise cyclical. We peel off the layer of one story at one time on one year on one weekend on one night there is more. Our lives are deeper than we can imagine. The hurts run very deep. In some cases there may be no end to the depths of despair that our experiences have given us. It is good to sit in front of the fire and tell those stories.

Tonight plays a special role in the process. We are held by the darkness.

How much smaller as a people we become when we can't live with the elements – fire, water, wind, and the earth. When we become too civilized we become too small too containerized. Domesticated. We need to be out. We need to be risking. We need to be standing in front of the raw elements. We need to float our lives down the rivers of life. We need to be blown about and buffeted by the winds. We need to be challenged by the snow. We need also to face the fires. Our I-being needs to be in touch with the God of the elements.

There used to be refining fires when things were melted and smelted and created by those who work the metals. Our metals in our hearts and our lives are still worked over. But many of us are not so skilled as craftsman's. When things get hot and we start getting pounded we tend to flee rather than join in the pounding. Let's take this life and pound it into a different shape. We can change, we can grow. But we must be willing to withstand the pain. Stand the heat. So long as we are the cause of our own heat and realize that we are willing to put up with it. The refining fire will burn out the impurities in our character. Smelt the iron of our selves. But we have to put ourselves into that fire we have to load that fire tray coal or our hardwood self which we want to burn.

WHAT DO I WANT?

And, of course, this year is not cold. There has been very little ice and snow. Like sometimes in our lives, we are not challenged. We are not met by opposition. Life gives us a “pass” and there is, seemingly, no resistance. But, the reality does not matter.

We will sit, and drape ourselves a bit less in jackets and the fire will seem hotter. And the stories, when they come, will blaze brighter. But the dark will be just as dark, and deep and mysterious. We know the mountains which we must cross in the future are just as high, and lie over to the East. As we ascend, there will be more snow. And, you know the snow will eventually come. Eventually.

And your future vision prepares for it. Your heart will be glad when the leaden, snow filled skies return.

And your friends return. They have been delayed. But, they have said they would be there. They will come for the fire. The New Year will come, eventually. And you will be prepared. The saws and axes to cut and split the stories are to one side.

You know it will be coming. Soon. And you hope it will arrive as will the unexpected guest.

© Copyright 2016, Jean W. Yeager All rights Reserved

INSTINCTIVE VELCRO - THE NEW AND IMPROVED YOU

WHO AM I?

Instinctive behavior is built-in, an “automatic” for you. Instinct is the way you are, the way you roll, how you do things. If you excel, then you on the easy path. If not, life is hard.An ash road.

“Choice architecture” makes use of in-built instincts to guide you through the supermarket of life. Scientists arrange shelves to meet up with behavioral patterns. The instinct that commonly motivates you is pleasure. Because it is “automatic, instinctive” behavior is that during which you are essentially sleeping, “going through the motions” as they say, “doing what comes naturally.” It is what makes animals migrate.

Instinctive behavior is the most difficult to change. “Muscle memory” – how you walk, use your hands, sit, jump, swing a baseball bat are very hard to change. That’s why few people are willing to put in the time and energy to attempt to change. That is why addiction is so powerful.

But, you can change. You can go from hardwired to instinctive velcro. Really?  Isn’t “hardwired” permanent? Forever? Nope. Depends on how lazy you are. You can re-model your heart after a cardiac blockage. You can build new neurons to overcome addiction or habitual behavior like smoking, changing your stance in boxing, or your swing in baseball. You gotta want it.

WHY AM I HERE?

Instinct says: you must always remain just as you are for this to work out for the best. Just go do the same round of golf on the same golf course with the same clubs at the same time day after day. Stay with the same group of friends. Watch TV, don’t read (you don’t read very well.) You can’t learn another language, lose weight, learn to use the computer. Stay in your comfort zone. You are still that inner 10 year old, this is how you’ve always done things. That inner child would be very afraid if you abandon them. Better to suffer the fear, shame or accept your “averageness” of sticking with the past than changing something.

When things become routine, rote – when they become “automatic” you can reach a level of performance in which you are “stuck” When you feel, “This is as good as it gets.” The “trap” of instinct has got you. Animals live in instinct which for them is permanent.

Velcro? Are you kidding me?

The first step to change is the desire to change. The recognition that you are habituated, working on instinct. Velcro gives you the opportunity to make adjustments, renew, refresh, create a new attitude, altar, adjust slightly. “Make all things new.”

WHY AM I HERE?

One must not remain comfortably in anything. One must overcome the desire to remain “good” at something. You must always find the edge of instinct, the moment when something from the past is brought into the present.

     The “Speed Bag” is how boxers change their instinctive footwork. Hour after hour they change their balance, move their feet and punch all at the same time. They re-model the neurological patterns. Baseball players re-learn how to stand or swing in the box and undo patterns learned in childhood.  “Pick and roll” exercises become instinctive for the life-long basketball player. Any of these exercises may be called a “spiritual practice” – they are repetitive, they require a certain mental attitude of expectancy, they are a preparation.

Do something like this and you will meet your worst features when you focus on changing one instinct or habit. They naturally emerge. They want you to stay as you are. This is too hard. You’re no good at it.

     When the spiritual practice you undertake gets beyond those parts of your instinctive self and eventually you do change the instinctive just slightly – then it is possible that your spiritual practice may become a spiritual experience. Surprise! A new and improved you emerges. 

© Copyright 2015, Jean W. Yeager

All Rights Reserved

TH3 SIMPLE QUESTIONS: Slice Open Everyday Life

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BREAKING PAST

WHO AM I?

     When I was a kid I loved to go to the zoo. In our zoo the Tiger lived on an island in the center of a watery river shaped pool. The island was made to appear to be some sort of comfortable place with grass, there was a fabric top to give some shade. At the back of the island was a cave – like entrance to an interior space where we presume the Tiger would be fed.

     Across the watery river in which the Tiger swam was very tall, very thick iron bars. On the other side of the iron bars was a smaller set of bars which marked the pathway for the visitors.

     The island was wider than it was deep - kind of a “show cage” and that there was no place really for the Tiger to rest or be that wasn’t visible to the crowd at the zoo.

     Then one day the zoo decided to do away with all of the cages. This was a custom and style in the 1980s in which many zoos allowed their animals to be in what appeared to be a more “natural” environment. In some zoos they totally shifted to a drive-through “Safari” presentation. I was not the case of my zoo, but they did do away with the feeling of “cages”.

WHY AM I HERE?

     I remember that the opening of the zoo and its new form was highly publicized. I was in grade school when this transformation happened and I remember asking my parents to take me to the zoo when it reopened. I made my way to the Tiger cage – or what had been the Tiger cage – and saw that the island on which the Tiger had spent so much time was still there and in fact had been expanded. The building behind where the Tiger had gone inside was changed totally. But, the little island was still there. What was different was that the side “walls” of the cage were removed. The watery river ran further in both directions. The island was no longer an island.

     But when I got to what was in my mind the “Tiger Island” there was the Tiger just like always. And interestingly the Tiger would take 20 steps in one direction, stop and turn around; then take 20 steps in the opposite direction, stop and turn around even though there was no cage to stop the Tiger.

     The only cage which stopped the Tiger was the cage in his mind which was laid down by past experience.

WHAT DO I WANT?

     This is one of the most difficult things to change about ourselves is breaking past our own inbuilt patterns of thinking which had become patterns of behavior. The past can be a cage which can block our future changes. It’s not only our pattern of thinking but the pattern of thinking which others have about us. At one time decided to leave a corporate job and become self-employed. I had to totally change myself. First I started with my own self, then I changed how I dressed, how I cut my hair, I even took speech lessons to change how I spoke, I took lessons on how to run my own business so that I gained confidence, bought new clothes, rented my office. It took over a year for people to treat me differently. 
     Then I had to break the past week-after-week as I pitched new business, won some, lost some. Once you start changing you can change more quickly. 
     It took over a year for the Tiger not to pace the nonexistent cage. Step-by-step we can break the past over and over again.

© Copyright 2015, Jean W. Yeager

All Rights Reserved