Work A Day

OK. So, in part, reacting to the encounter with the Landmark Seminar leader discussed a couple of posts ago, my heart and mind hardened. It was not a painful development; I was not depressed or immobilized but my willingness to work diminished.

The internal chatter went something like this:

Ah ha! So the Leader is imperfect. Well, then. Landmark Education must also be imperfect. Therefore, I'm not going to listen any more. I'm going to sneer. I'll keep a correct face on but I'm sneering inside. I'm committed to sneering.

Among the several things I "got" during last night's Seminar was that while I was sneering, I was not getting any work done. When I considered why that was true, I discerned some other concurrent background chatter:

I just can't work unless I'm inspired. I can't force inspiration. Besides I can't work in this house: when she's home. I don't want her to hear me. I don't want her to come tell me she "really liked" whatever she heard. I'm not doing it for you! blah blah blah I need to smoke while I work...blah blah blah These songs aren't that important anyway; I've got other cool stuff happening in my life right now...

"Well," (I said to myself last night), "OK. Whatever. And I'd still really like to have those new songs I committed to create in my Seminar project. So I'm gonna go ahead and work on those songs while you/I sneer. OK? I'm not debating this is not the dreamed-for setting; I'm just saying I'm gonna go ahead and work in it 'cause it's the one I have right now."

And don't you know? Music came. Inspiration came. And remains solidly in this next day -- as, of course, it always does because, for me, once I begin the work, it's easier to work. I'm not facing a blank page. I have something begun before me and so I know where to put my hands.

Just before I picked up the guitar, I responded to an email from dear friend F.

I hoped to call you today but didn't commit to it
so, as the day unfolded and delivered a series of events that I called "strange" to my door step, I was distracted from the hoped-for agenda.

You are interested in "this god who visits and presences" me.

In a recent conversation with [a mutual friend], I said, "F______ is always ever the Poet." It was a comment on how I perceive your relationship to (and "use" of...dance with?) language....

It's also a comment on who I become with you.

I probably have it in me to write to you about "this god" tonight but I'm going to redirect/redistribute that vitality into music. It is late and I made a commitment tonight, to myself and a colleague in the Landmark Effectiveness Seminar, that I would show up every day, beginning tonight, to receive the three new mystical poem-songs that are part of the possibility I created and intention I set in the work of the Seminar.

So I'm going to light some candles
and pick up my guitar
and welcome Rumi
and consider the text

Keep Your Heart Awake

There are many whose eyes are awake
And whose hearts are asleep;
Yet, what can be seen
By mere creatures of water and clay?
But he who keeps his heart awake
Will know and live this mystery;
While the eyes of his head may sleep
His heart will open hundreds of eyes.
If your heart isn't yet illumined
Be awake always, be a seeker of the heart,
Be at war continually with your carnal soul.
But if your heart is already awakened,
Sleep peacefully, sleep in the arms of Love,
For your spiritual eye is not absent
From the seven heavens and seven directions.
MATHNAWI

...

We will talk soon.

I'll speak your name as I light the candles tonight.

Alex