LIVING ON LONGING

WHO AM I?

A first visit to this blog lasts 15-seconds, enough to read a Tweet-length of words. If visitors don’t see what they’re longing for, they go! About now, 140 characters.

     What are they looking for? What are they not finding?

     Search Engine Optimization (SEO) says “tag” your blog with “popular” words, meaning words people are looking or longing for. Words about what they lack, words about themselves! We want a little more me in >144 character increments.

     Our heart has a 50 – 90 beats per minute systole and diastole. We drink in our venous blood, filled with the needs and longings of our body. Lungs oxygenate blood with our breath of life, nourishment from our gut. Receiving. Sensing. Longing. Revelation. Our hearts and our bodies live on longing.

     The Oracle at Delphi asked a mini-Tweet-length question spawning deep, deep introspection: “Oh man, know thou thyself!” We long to know ourselves. Who do I say I am? Wasn’t it The Christ who said, “Who do they say I am?”

We long to be sacred to one another. Even the Pope asks a total stranger to “Pray for me!” Does this mean the Pope knows that people usually don’t pray for the Pope? Probably not if we think that a Pope is perfect and doesn’t need to be on anybody’s prayer chain.

     What are we not finding? What is the missing piece we are longing for? To somehow connect in some way?

WHY AM I HERE?

We think we live our lives from past to future. We are conscious during our days and so therefore we think that our life moves from morning to night. Our life is a seamless chain of events that make perfectly good sense and appears as an orderly sequence of cause and effect.

     If you review your life backwards, starting from this present moment and going toward the beginning of the day, you will see that, every night you sleep. While you sleep, there are hours of incoherence and unconsciousness. Hours that don’t fit in the sequence of your consciousness, but, your mind so longs for consistency that it conveniently overlooks the incoherence. We do this during waking hours, too. We make up facts to fit our biases and overlook the reality that does not fit with the way we believe the facts should be ordered.

     If you think backwards and review each day in this fashion, in reverse (called a ruckshaű), you may be surprised to see that there is much more going on in your day than you are aware of when you whiz by in your ordinary consciousness.

     You might even find one of two of the missing pieces you’re longing for. Here comes instantaneous doubt. But, why not? After all, if you knew where to find what you’re longing fotr, you’d go there rather than fooling around here, right?

WHAT DO I WANT?

Our feelings are landfills of 15-second longings, fears and disappointments. We long to be touched, to find meaning, to end the aloneness, to be sacred to one another. Yet, we fear what we do not know, have not experienced. We have not trusted for so long we are weak and doubt arises instantaneously.

     But, rhythm replaces strength. A rhythm is born between writer and reader, between writer and the imaginary world, between reader and them selves.

We live on the longing for one another, you and I - even though we have never met. You wished that this blog was what you were longing for, otherwise you would not have invested 15-seconds. If you come back, you will spend another 15-seconds and then leave, disappointed in one way yet expecting nothing less. But, hang on!

Rhythm, no matter how insignificant or meaningless, might of itself be another missing piece you are longing for. Come back and fail again, do that often enough, and the rhythm may become the heart of a new relationship based on mutual longing.

“Live, long, and prosper.”

© Copyright 2016, Jean W. Yeager

All Rights Reserved

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BEAUTY AGED

WHO AM I?

Beauty born is a gift from the gods.

     Winsome is Beauty Young, innocent and yet unvarnished. Filled with themselves and life. Curious, cute, constantly in motion. Like flowers, with hints of their future potentiality beginning to arise. Exploring, exploring, and pushing all limitations set by life. Totally living at full throttle, unaware that they are being tested, judged, guided by life. Any resistance brings disappointment. A weight too heavy is quickly dropped, forgotten and life moves on. But, if it is found again it may look quite new! A fresh search for the next. Living in the next. Outward, outward!

     Beauty Young is a gift from the parents. Quickly, something from within begins. Experience. A past. I remember this. I remember you. Things get names. Dog. Doll. Mother. Father. Me. Mine. As mother does, beauty young will imitate. Love, enjoy, cuddle or fear, worry and withdraw? Is the home chaotic? Angry? Safe?

     As the family guides, Beauty Young treads – or not - the wooden steps up the monastery of the soul and creates the pathway followed every minute of every day, neural patterns in the brain laid down by baby steps toddling after Mom. Is Beauty Young laying down beautiful patterns of life? Is she becoming as beautiful within as the beauty given by the gods? Is the life on offer to Beauty Young the Good, Beautiful and True? Is the child abandoned to the freedom and chaos of life? Is there a Guide at all? Is someone there worthy to be imitated? Is there a Pilgrim? A Witness? A Voice? Or Vanity? Self-Indulgence? Or, the repetitive pathways of isolating technology wasting time and brain power?

WHY AM I HERE?

Beauty Ripe is a gift from life. Beauties buffeted, beleaguered and weathered by challenges have the eyes and the smiles that tell of lives which have experienced great testing, deep wisdom, tragedy, loss and love. Beauty Ripe's path up the monastery of the soul – or not – is a path are worn deep with the steps of the Pilgrim.

Beauty ripe tells of choices. Voluptuous - filled with herself. A wooden desk with tiny cracks, initials of affection carved in the top but re-stained later to be less visible. Cigarette burns. Glass rings. Inner and the outer paths which Beauty Ripe may tread in the world. There are many. Here are two:

     Wind-blown, the path of Nature, the home of the Wind. Riding into the storms of life, perhaps going full-throttle a time or two into a storm far, far bigger than she ever imagined, left the soul of Beauty Ripe  more muted in color, less vibrant. And a certain look in the eyes after having survived, but nearly consumed, in a storm which engulfed you and tore at your beauty from all directions at once. It sanded away your beauty and now you wonder if you are still beautiful at all?

     Intellect blown, a gift from academia, home of degrees and advanced degrees. Riding the mind into silent, narrow canyons of thought toward fountainheads of knowledge that few follow, leaves the soul packing arguments and research but vulnerable. Beauty Ripe in isolation. Intellect in winter may mean having to ford a stream and carry your clothes to save yourself from hypothermia. Hypothermia, a very wrong choice, death by intellectual egoism, believing her degrees are stronger than temperature, physiology and love.

WHAT DO I WANT?

Beauty Aged grows sweeter and sweeter. The sugar sets in the fruit. The body is a fight, tension over physiology, the sinewy and the soft. The adipose factor. The gift from the gods re-emerges having experienced what life has given us and what she has chosen for herself. And love gained, kept or lost replaces family in the path of the soul.

     Aging, an inner mellowing like wine which becomes smoother over the years. Like cheese with thick rinds and deep aroma all because the bacteria of life have been working secretly. And, fermenting in her all these years. Yeasts digesting and transforming her in-built rawness from within, releasing chemicals which mellow her psyche’s from the inside.

     Ripen and ripen and rot and rot. Beauty obeys the laws of nature comprised of rhythms of the cosmos and her spirit. Sometime she waxes, sometimes she wanes. These rhythms are the ones which makes plants grow and animals mate and migrate. Beauty eats the plants and food which gives her body health. And that health glows on the inside and outside of Aged Beauty.

    And, when Aged Beauty dies, her spirit goes into the cosmos and into the rhythms from which it was never separated. When the corpse of Aged Beauty is put into the casket and we hear the story, we know that Beauty Aged upon death is a complex thing hard to totally comprehend. However, it was beautiful to behold.

© Copyright 2015 Jean W. Yeager

All Rights Reserved

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 [JY1]

I AM JOURNEY.

WHO AM I?
    I am Journey, not destination. I am the process of living. I am not the hopeful illusion you carry in your mind, not the illustrations on the map, Journey is the reality of your experience. Hold up your compass to sight the direction, find true North, and then you and I shall Journey. You will meet resistance and reality, success or failure, it's all the same to me.
    I am your childhood dash from the house in the woods of your unknowing made of candy. I am the Multi-Level Marketing Journey. I am the slow, agonizing death from AIDS. The truth of coming down and drying out. I am the realization on the cliff that the climbing rope is 20' too short.
    I am the time going slower than ever imagined. I am the time running out. I am anxiety and fear of being late. I am the sudden, surprising collision while texting. I am the fear that comes in the middle of the night on the path. The realization in the middle of the process that makes you doubt whether or not you can actually carry this off. The looming unknown which makes the hair on the back of your neck stand up. 

WHAT DO I WANT?
    Journey wants to unfold you, carry you, blow you, flow you. Journey wants to bring you challenges to meet your weaknesses. Journey IS your unfolding your self in flame and glorious illumination - the bigger your vanity, the hotter your Flame. The lower your self-esteem, the deeper the abyss into which you will plummet. Journey is a mirror of you to yourself on your way to yourself.
    Only those who are dissatisfied with themselves take the Journey. It is a fearful journey for those who are afraid. It is a random journey for those who want to be in control. Your one-sidedness calls forth your Journey. It will be a needy journey for anyone who can't bear to depart with their most precious belonging - pride.
    Where do you least want to go? That may be the exact place where your Journey will take you. You're Journey want you to visit every place which you need to visit. If you want success, Journey can take you there, by the way of failure. If you want health, Journey can take you there, by the way of illness. If you want love, Journey can take you there, by the way of loathing. "Babe, you're the wave, not the water."

WHY AM I HERE?    
     At the end, Journey is where we all go to meet who we thought we were at the beginning. Journey is the setting out with enthusiasm. "We all look good at the staring line." Journey is also the being forced to wait for ourselves. Journey is going where you know you should go. Journey is also not knowing where you are going. Journey is going WAY BEYOND your capacities or winding up at the end of the path with parts of you which will be wasted because you never used them.
    The Comforter will not come to you unless you journey to the point where you need to be comforted. If you always play it safe, play it careful, never take a risk, avoid injury and danger, never reach out for someone else, why would the Comforter need to Journey to you?
    Are you the Journey? Are you the Way in which you should travel? Have you within you places which you need to discover, mountains to climb? Is there a deep within you don't know how to enter? Are you stalking a Beast within? Is there a blazing fire in your heart too hot for you to enter? Are you a Lover in search of a Lover who is too shy to be revealed? Are you the Doorkeeper for your future? Are you refusing to grant yourself entry?

(C) Copyright 2014, Jean W. Yeager
All Rights Reserved

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