Ceaseless Change

A friend writes:

I have been stuck after my fathers death and have only moved on kicking and screaming.  It is, as you note, not the way to go. (I suppose the dance will be over with my death, & it will come as a great relief ) 

I replied:
I know if I dwell on Frankie's death or the loss of Zoom I get lost and stuck. But I also get that not dwelling on it does not dishonor their memory or mean I love them or honor them less.

Tears are ok. Not all saddness is bad. As long as we don't "drop anchor" there - we have to move on. When Frankie died I could clearly see how easy it is to get stuck there -
in the balance between honoring and not honoring enough
and not letting go to soon or too late
quite the dance

I see life is all about moving on. Life is not static. Life does not stand still. Or Wait. Life constantly forms and reforms into myriad manifestations. I think "we" suffer when we resist this aspect of changing - physically, emotionally, psychologically, psychically. spiritually.
As the Buddha said - it's attachment that causes suffering, since the nature of reality is ceaseless change.
Yet, "form" by definition must resist change to retain the form, so there is some "tension" within the form as it maintains its "shape",  all the while it's nature is ceaseless change. So I think we as humans perceive this tension and since we're not taught to deal with it - which I would argue is one of the proper purposes of religion and spiritualism - we suffer. We have a "hole" that we try to fill that cannot ever be filled.

Life values all little lives equally, yet when all there is is life  - no one bit is any better worse than another. And one life is not "lost" or wasted -  just transforms into something else. Could just be whizzy bits of energy until it coalesces into something else. I don't know what that else is after death.
Soul? Spirit, etc? i dunno: sounds awfully anthropomorphic and human ego centered, if not abject controlling...

I see our minds as taking static pictures (filtered, of course)  of the infinite moment to reduce it to a smaller subset we can deal with to survive.
Still, everything moves and changes every moment.

yes, it will most likely be solved in death - some human problems are that way
reading a good book now and it talks to that - some problems are "how to do it" type problems, but some are more internal and aren't really solvable - or not meant to be solved until we die. I liked that.

I Need A Challenge Bigger Than Myself

A challenge like losing weight, learning Ham radio, even just managing to get through day-to-day stuff isn't a big enough challenge.
For me, I need something bigger than myself to challenge me and push me.
One might say: "what's wrong with just being"?
And there's nothing wrong with just being.

I need something bigger than just getting through day-to-day stuff.
For many years the challenge was internal deprogramming of myself.
It caused profound changes in my psychology and my outlook and my perspective. Changes which seem to persist to today.

If you've been reading the blog, you've read that over the last few years I've gotten involved with what's going on currently in the economy, ecology and energy fields,  watching as our industrial civilization collapses.
Initially I found myself in the apocalyptic view, wanting it all to collapse and just fall apart on our heads.
But that's not how civilizations collapse. They tend to collapse in steps, ratcheting down to lesser and lesser levels of complexity.

So recently I feel called to a new challenge. I'm getting interested in sustainability, renewable energy, resilient systems, farming and Echotechnic lifestyles -  lifestyles that are appropriate for current technology, economies and ecologies.

I'd like to begin shifting where I get my income from: from corporate sources to more direct local community sources.

It's a big step and I don't see it to happening overnight, but it's a start. It's a big challenge so I am returning to this blog and plan to chronicle what I'm going through and share with you as you share with me (complete with video).

It's kind of funny. This has a lot of the same feel as the internal shift: the work, the newness, excitement, intensity, depth and breadth, fear, the scary bits,  sharing with others. 

And it's natural that I wonder if I'm just not content to just be still, sit still and just be calm. If I'm always looking for "what's next"? Oh Look! Bright Shiny Object!
And there may be some truth to that. But am I just doing it to avoid where I am now? That I don't see happening.

So my goal is shifting to a more "collapsed" lifestyle. Farming, home/cottage industries, renewables, sustainable technology. A new lifestyle.

There are plans in the works. Stay tuned.