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y friend and I are into being badasses. Not the type where you make everyone know it, but the true badass of striving for your ultimate potential, realizing God through discovering a divine capacity within your own self. Perhaps even fulfilling the purpose of your life, or at least one of them. Unfortunately, though our hearts are in the right place, my friend and I don't always know what we're doing.

So we're trying. My friend, through the combination of a powerful hallucinogenic experience and a number of other factors in his life, is contemplating whether he can start to just do the work that comes to him naturally, instead of constantly trying to wrangle any opportunity into a safety net for the future. Relaxing completely into life despite fear of financial and other instability. The anti-go-getter. For him this is not just a work-related shift but one that would profoundly affect his whole life, since he's at a point where he can pretty much live anywhere and do anything. It's a risk that could go horribly wrong or lead to becoming a badass on an entirely new level.

I have a similar change in the works -- not specifically with business, though that's a part of it. No part of my life seems to be untouched by it lately, though I can't articulate it as a whole very well. And since it hasn't happened yet, I've been stewing in the tension and confusion that often precedes it. But I can feel the rumbling on the tracks.

What's most important for me in these kinds of transitions is a spacious environment - physically, emotionally, and spiritually. So it's going to be challenging heading off to Suluk for ten days and keeping some room open. Some room not to squish the ego in a misguided parental scolding towards humility, but to breathe on it and let it grow so large and so true that one little body couldn't possibly contain it. No matter how badass they are.

Posted by Satya at 8:09 PM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

ust waiting today. For M. to get home, for the mail to be delivered, until it's time to make dinner. I should be working on projects but I'm at a total loss for how to even start, and my usual tricks aren't working. I don't know what's wrong with me but clearly something is.

Yesterday I received a packet in the mail from my grandmother. I opened it up and a wad of ancient letters spilled out with a post-it note on top reading, "Inventory reduction. Love, Bubby." I got one of these from her before but this time it was the real dregs: nonsensical typed characters on a single sheet, crumbled yellow tape from where it had been attached to the fridge, still in the original envelope my mother had dutifully mailed it in. A scrap of torn notebook paper with nothing on it but a small red marker scribble. A postcard from my mother with a small area marked "message from Satya" in which I had squiggled four lines. The postmark reads 1980, when I was three years old. They all smell like her house.

I don't know how to feel that she's saved them all these years, and I certainly don't know how to feel now that she's sent them all back, preparing for her own death. She's waiting for hers, and some days, like today, I think I might be doing the same.

Posted by Satya at 4:12 PM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

et's be real here. I'm afraid of failing at my business, or even messing up on a day-to-day basis for that matter. I'm afraid of losing my best friend to a completely hypothetical situation. And I'm afraid that M. will slowly and gradually lose interest in me and never say a word about it until it's entirely too late to fix.

Those are the top three at the moment, and I don't know how acknowledging them will help except merely to get them off my chest. Sometimes I feel like a baby being set down in the crib, involuntarily splaying arms and legs as I feel the support going out from under me. And God is great but can be awfully quiet sometimes.

I'm sharing this to be perfectly clear that just because I meditate, or try to, and because I believe in God does not in any way exalt my lowly station in life. I feel this is a common misperception in my spiritual community, and in others as well I'm sure. Suluk is coming up again at the end of the month and I guess sometimes I dread looking at all the carefully composed facial portraits of stillness and wondering why I'm the only one with my eyes open.

Posted by Satya at 10:31 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)