Alex is Scary

Last night's "Six Feet Under" viewing marathon included the disturbing episode from the fourth season entitled "That's My Dog." Yikes! That was, without a doubt, one of the scariest things I've ever seen on film. My heart raced, my breathing became quick and shallow, my palms sweated. Emotionally, my thoughts and feelings veered recklessly from terror to anxiety to grief to horror... A cacophony of voices screamed a collision of messages inside me, "I can't take any more!" "Don't say that! You'll jinx him!" "Pray!" "I don't have to watch this!" "Please!"

I couldn't press "Pause" or "Stop" because I had to hang on and see a happy ending. Otherwise I would be haunted for god-knows-how-long with whatever horrific conclusions my imagination would create.

This morning I'm left with residual physical and emotional distress. (I probably should NOT be drinking this excellent cup of Starbucks' Gazebo Summer Blend espresso...but I am.) Thinking about fear and the differences in individual definitions of and responses to scary things. Thinking about times in the past when I've been told I am scary or intimidating. Sometimes, I only sense that someone is afraid of me. They don't actually say "I'm afraid" or "I'm afraid of you"; the manifestation of the fear, for me, comes as a change in the air or electrical field that surrounds and permeates me and the other person.

They might say "You're intense" or "I'm offended" or "That's inappropriate" or "I don't want to talk about this"; but what I observe is nervousness in the eyes, a tensing of facial muscles, quickening breath and sometimes mild trembling. Sometimes the display looks like anger. Sometimes it looks like sadness. Sometimes it looks like superiority.

My host here and I had an encounter yesterday. The details aren't important in the current discussion. In Landmark Forum parlance, discussing the details would be "running a racket." Discussing the details would be, at base, an attempt to demonstrate I am right and she is wrong. If you accept this viewpoint--and I do--the more compelling and relevant discussion begins with an examination of my experience of the encounter. What meaning did I make around the experience?

Within seconds of perceiving what I understood as fear in her, I ended the conversation. I saw it in her eyes, felt it on my skin and in the air between us. I felt a little nauseous and also frightened. I said "It's okay. We don't have to talk about this" and left the room.

What escaped my notice at the time but sparkles with truth today is my own fear in the situation. At the root of my "story" in the moment was "I don't want you to be afraid of me. If you are afraid of me I must be a scary person--awful, flawed, terrible...and unlove-able." The feeling was profoundly unpleasant. Definitely an experience of suffering.

To continue the Landmark translation: a "racket" consists of "a fixed way of being + a persistent complaint." Despite refraining from a detailed discussion of who-said-what in this post (or anywhere), I am "running a racket" internally. Running the "I'm right, she's wrong" scene inside my own mind, for my private "enjoyment."

Running a racket involves both payoff and costs. The pay-off is self-righteousness. The costs include losses of intimacy, full self-expression and vitality.

This morning's breakthrough is a full awareness of the costs. I think of yesterday's encounter and feel immensely isolated and stifled. I feel heavy and psychically depleted.

In the last few days, two weeks post-Landmark Forum, I have focused on abandoning the "fixed way[s] of being" and "persistent complaint[s]" of the past and creating a new future for myself, out in the vast universe of possibility. I've struggled in this project because my fixed ways of being are...well, persistent. I've been baffled by how exactly abandonment is accomplished. It's reminded me of trying to remove chewing gum from the bottom of my shoe without using my hands.

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A smile has been growing on my face for the last 15 minutes or so. A cool, fresh feeling of freedom has begun to invigorate and invade my psyche.

I am alone in the house; my host is away for the day. When I awoke to the empty house today I was relieved -- and simultaneously dreaded her eventual return. In this moment, I'm looking forward to her return because I'm no longer afraid or angry or exhausted. Somehow, acknowledging that I felt afraid during the encounter has shifted something inside me. Feeling the loss of intimacy, self-expression and vitality--actually feeling it still, hours later, in my body--has deepened my understanding of "racket running."

I "get" it. I know where it lives in me and I have stepped into another space.

My learning has been facilitated by a physical experience of the intellectual construct. It's like finally found the dress hanging in the back of the closet and put it on. And laid it aside.

I have designed a new dress and I can't wait to wear it in the world. Not in expectation of the world's approval or rejection but because I love this dress; I made it, it feels great and I know I wear it well.

A Fork in the Road

I am making my way through a viewing of the entire TV series "Six Feet Under" on DVD. Someone dies at the beginning of each episode, followed by a screen stating the name and bookend dates of the deceased's existence.

The central characters of the series own a funeral parlor and most episodes launch from their planning consultation with the survivors. We learn a little about the life of the deceased during the consultation scene and sometimes a bit more during the memorial service.

The show has sparked some consideration of my own death, specifically "What will they say about me at my memorial service?" In every version of my imagined memorial service, something is said about "Alex' search for sustaining and meaningful work." It's been the centerpiece of my adult life and close friends have gotten an earful over the years about my successes and failures and longing.

Through my work in the Landmark Forum I gained a deeper appreciation of some critical aspects of my work saga. It's always been something of a mystery to me how a powerful resume and an impressive presentation in interviews have been insufficient to open the right career doors. Beginning in high school and continuing to the present day, I have looked like a "winner" to most people -- but my real-life story has been a losing one.

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Twelve hours later...

There are no guarantees. I could die in my sleep tonight.

I want Them to say "She struggled for a long time but she finally won."

Tomorrow my work begins.

Landmark Education: What I "Got" From the Forum

Last weekend, through the generous contributions of two friends, I attended Landmark Education's Forum in San Jose. Three days plus one night of ...

Friends have urged me toward Landmark for at least 15 years. Initially I resisted because it felt like a cult to me. After awhile, I noticed there was something "special" about everyone I knew who had gone through Landmark and I wanted some of that specialness for myself. I was taking antidepressant medication at the time and had one hospitalization for depression in my past. Landmark policy at that time (late 90s) precluded participation by "people like me."

It is interesting to me that not a soul mentioned Landmark to me during my time in Louisiana or Mississippi. I have some thoughts about that but will save them for some other time.

Soon after arriving in CA this year, the Landmark suggestions started again. Sometimes they were prompted by something I said: "You know you ought to look at Landmark Education, Alex. That kind of thinking is right in line with what Landmark teaches." Sometimes they were prompted by the way I said something: "You'd make a great Landmark Forum leader!" And sometimes they were prompted by something I was struggling with. "Landmark could help you with that..."

So I decided to give it a try. It was the smartest decision of my life. Paying my enrollment fee was the kindest, most generous life-saving gift anyone has ever given me.

As with any system or organization, Landmark has its own jargon: running a racket, meaning-making machine, story, etc. Most of the concepts the jargon treats, however, were not new for me. Concepts like taking responsibility for your sh*t, the impact of personal history and beliefs on our perception of reality and the havoc that results when what we say is out of integrity with what we do.

Applicants to the Landmark Forum are asked to state their objectives for enrollment on the registration form. I was seeking clarification in my process to discern a life work. After decades of struggling to find work, keep work and financially support myself, I was running out of steam and ready for a change. My whole life, lots of other people had regarded me as a powerhouse of talent and potential -- why couldn't I see what they saw and why wasn't all that talent and potential translating into joy and prosperity?

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What I "got" from the Landmark Forum (and this is in no way an exhaustive list. It is the nature of the gift of Landmark (essentially a process of awakening to yourself) to reverberate and continue to stimulate new awareness):

• There's "what I know" and "what I know that I don't know" and then there's the vast universe of "what I don't know that I don't know" which can be thought of as a space of being or potential--and that's where I want to hang out as much as possible.
• I am a meaning-making machine and in the same way that a toaster or a lawn mower or a washing machine toasts or mows or washes, my machine makes meaning. It's just what it does. There's no problem.
• My "view" of the world derives from various sources and my thoughts, actions and feelings will always be in keeping with that view. My thoughts, actions and feelings produce "results" in the world. To change undesirable results, I change my thoughts, actions and feelings. To change my thoughts, actions and feelings, I change my "view".
• All of the above also applies to everybody else. Nobody ever sees exactly what I see because their machine and view are unique; they see what they see. Sometimes there's agreement -- this is remarkable. Sometimes there's disagreement -- this is not a problem. It's just the way it is.

The Forum leader, Jan McHenry, was awe-inspiring. He walked the talk without exception. I liked him, then loved him, then was annoyed by him, resented him...and then loved him again. He stayed true throughout, modeling the freedom that's right here, all the time, available to all of us.

Two of several shimmering moments for me during the Forum:

Jan asked everyone in the room age 25 or younger to stand up. Perhaps a dozen of the approximately 100 people in the room stood up. "These are your parents when you were born," he said. In my head, walls fell down, lights went on, my heart broke open. I "got" it. These people looked like children to me. I'd spent time with some of them during breaks in the programming and gotten a glimpse of what they didn't know about the world.

During the next break, I set about getting in touch with my parents for the first time in decades. In the process I discovered they're both ill and beset with some fairly serious mental health issues that preclude my contacting them by telephone. Doesn't matter. I'm still on task to repair and revitalize my familial connections and I owe this change to Landmark and Jan McHenry.

Second shimmering moment: Jan shared the story of meeting and marrying his wife. The journey to finding her was wild, winding and rocky. I saw myself in that part of his story -- "So I'm not the only one wandering around scarred and incomplete, looking for love..." I thought. I was touched but my resigned conviction that I will not enjoy a committed intimate relationship in my lifetime remained unchanged.

Until he spoke the vows they made at their wedding. "I will never need you. I will never know you. And I will always rock your world." In a micro-second flash, I was thrust forward in time and simultaneously saw those words written across a pristine blue sky in phosphorescent letters and heard my voice and the voice of my beloved intoning them in unison. In two seconds the sensation vanished but I WAS THERE for two seconds. And my conviction disintegrated like dust on the wind.

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What I "got" from the Forum is a place to stand in the Universe where the Future stretches wide and unwritten before me; unshaped, unblemished, unlimited and mine.

On The Walls of My Room

Shirley Temple
Audre Lorde
Carlos Santana
Josephine Baker
Bob Marley

A National Geographic map of Earth's "Population and Resources"

A Lunar Phases calendar for 2010

Two postcards: one with the caption "One of my favorite places in the entire world is wherever you are"

and the other a 50s era photo-penciled shot of 24 women in two-piece bathing suits lying side by side in a circle to form a human "sunflower"

A photo of the sculpture "Thermonuclear Family" by my dear now-deceased friend, Jean-Paul Darriau.

A small print of "The Song of the Lark" (Jules Breton). This was one of the first paintings I ever saw outside my home. It hung over my desk in first grade. I looked at it for hours over the course of that year. I remember the girl's broad, dirty feet; the rough texture of the field and the breath-taking imminence of the dawn sky.

These images hang over my desk.

Other items hang on other walls. Three original pieces, created while I was in art school, hang over my bed:

an 11 by 17 inch collage of torn images, a drawing made with black charcoal on black construction paper, and a 9 x 14 inch oil pastel abstraction on coarse paper.

Every day I consider taking them down and throwing them away.

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I have no mirrors on the walls. There are no mirrors at all in my room.

The Shirley Temple picture is framed and under glass. When I need to see my reflection, I stand so the light is just right and look into it.

Opening to Memory at the New Dawn

The other night, I was wondering "What ever happened to J______" my childhood best friend. Even though I had a vague memory of having tried unsuccessfully to find her online a few years ago, I gave it another try. This time when I typed her name into the search engine and hit "Send," the screen blinked and brought back two pages of hits.

My illustrious forrmer best friend... In the most recent Google citation, a 1997 article in Ebony magazine, J_______ was VP of a Fortune 500 company and former state's attorney general. In the accompanying photo, behind the executive haircut and dark blue power suit, I recognized my first and truest friend. My love for J_________ was intense and unconditional and fragile and I haven't known a friend-love like that since.

When asked by the article's author what it takes to succeed, she said

"...I have to set a standard for myself... independent of anyone else.... I never set out saying `I'm going to beat him or her.' Rather, I say that I want to accomplish this objective or this goal. Then the question becomes how do I get to my personal best.

...first you must define what success means to you as an individual -- not what it means to parents, family and friends. And then you have to be committed to achieving success, ... and that means sacrifice. ... The issue is your willingness to commit to and go after your objective. ... you must like what you do....If you don't like it, you'll never put the energy into it to be successful."

Discerning my "life work" is the #1 project these days. I'm reading and listening and asking questions. I accept Thomas Moore's message in A Life at Work without resistance. It is more difficult to open to J________'s words. For decades I've vacillated between nervous picking at the scar of losing her and disciplined denial, trying to leave it alone and let it heal.

It took a few days but on this day, I'm finally able to read J________'s words as part of the inspiration and information pouring in in this time of discernment and meditation.

Also on this day, a coincidence is revealed: , the day I did the Google search for J____________ was her birthday.

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I don't remember now if Pallas or Carlton first brought Landmark Education to my attention. They're both graduates of the program. In the intervening years, subsequent reminders have come from both of them as well as other voices. Perhaps a decade ago I decided to enroll -- the dynamism and intelligence of every graduate I'd ever met was compelling -- but program policies made me ineligible: I was taking anti-depressant medication at the time and had a hospitalization for depression in my history.

The policies have since changed. When our friend Vanda came through town last weekend, Landmark came up again. Vanda is also a graduate. [Note: I hope the reader follows the link and checks out Vanda's video clip.] Something in the quality of our interactions led both Pallas and Vanda to recommend a re-consideration of Landmark.

Again, scar tissue made consideration difficult. Being rejected by Landmark all those years ago had been painful. Again, it took a couple of days to gather sufficient strength and willingness to override my defenses. In the resulting "clear space," with Carlton and Pallas' generous support, I registered for the upcoming Landmark Forum in San Jose. There's residual emotional matter that feels mostly like a healthy skepticism; but there's also excitement and curiosity.

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Vanda also brought a new conceptualization of "the personal blind spot." I conceive of it now as a psychic space (that feels to be located behind and to the right of my head) where core elements of my "operating system" are stored. These elements are automatic -- no dialog boxes need to open for these applications to execute and run through my behavior and thinking. The files are stored in "System Preferences" and require a series of "advanced" steps to access and modify.

This blind spot manifests as a feeling that there's an auto-pilot "program" running through my life, a meaning-making program that limits and defines my perceptions and understandings. As I make my way, making choices based on these understandings, I experience "effects" with an incomplete sense of the "causes." To enjoy new effects, I must make new causes.

OK. I want to "go there." I'm ready to learn the steps and begin reprogramming... I think, I hope, I believe that Landmark will be a valuable tool in this process.

Against the Wall

My friend is addicted to methamphetamine. He says he is not addicted. He says there's a malevolent group of men and women who read his thoughts and eavesdrop on all his conversations. They follow him wherever he goes and they are out to kill him. Those of us who love him believe this is a delusion. He disagrees.

I've had alcoholic friends and friends who overeat and friends who could not make it through a day without coffee or shopping or several hours before a computer. I smoke cigarettes every day of my life. But in each of these cases, the "user" was/is aware that the habit/addiction diminishes the quality of their life.

My friend does not believe he's addicted. Periodically, he sees that meth use diminishes the quality of his life but he loses sight of this. He changes his mind.

I am heartbroken. And frustrated by feelings of powerlessness. The experience feels like a painful but necessary lesson in humility. I'm not nearly as smart or capable or powerful as I sometimes believe. There are limits to my imagination and my sphere of influence.

Following the Rules

In the morning (or whenever I get up) I perform a little ritual: start the coffee, make my bed; grab a cigarette and a lighter (and sometimes a book) and take them to the little courtyard in front of the house; move the chair into the sunlight, return to the kitchen to complete coffee prep and take my beautiful Peet's Coffee thermos outside. I smoke and drink, read, pull weeds, watch the birds glut themselves at the feeder and think.

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In the house where I grew up there was a right way and wrong way to do everything. It's probably one reason I am drawn to improvisation as an adult. There are lots of "right" ways to do things in improvisation and I like that.

There are rules; but the rules govern attitude rather than specific behaviors or movements or sounds.

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I hate being told what to do. When someone gives me an order, it drives a wide, white bolt of lightning down the center of my inner landscape...buildings start crumbling to the ground and trees fall and the air is filled with screams and angry shouts. As a child, I simply did what I was told. As an adult, I throw a tantrum inside my head--visible on the outside to varying degrees depending on the situation.

The psychic dissonance is even greater when the order is delivered in a manipulative or passive-aggressive spirit. The cacophony grows louder with the addition of the snarling voice of my "inner judge" as I criticize the psychology of whoever is issuing the demand.

I suffer when someone gives me an order. It's a ring of my Private Hell.

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Many spiritual and religious traditions speak to the issue of human suffering and how to minimize or eliminate it. Tonight I will attend a dharma talk on Heart Sutra. I anticipate receiving insight on the judgment-inspired dimension of my suffering and I will listen when it comes. As I make my way through the current Life Curriculum on Life Work, it is clear that my journey from "here" to "there", from mostly suffering to more joy, will involve change: change of perspective, practice, opinion, habit, approach... I am willing.

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Extrapolated from "Don't tell me what to do" is "I hate rules." This morning, I was struck by the predictability and precision of my coffee-cigarettes-weeding-and-reading ritual. I follow the rules closely in my morning ritual.

Following rules is not the source of the suffering; having rules dictated to me is the issue.

"I don't want rules! I want to improvise!" is the mantra intoned as I stamp around in my tantrum. This morning "Don't tell me what to do! I want to improvise!" transformed into "Don't tell me what to do. I want to make my own rules."

The words "improvise" and "imagination" usually operate in tandem in my lexicon. Whenever one is banned the other immediately and automatically deactivates.

This interpretation or perspective appears to me now as a possible contributor to my suffering.

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Another new ritual or habitual behavior that has developed in these first two months of return to CA involves concurrent computer work/play and piano work/play. The piano bench sits only a few inches from the desk chair in my little room. I sit at the piano and work intensely on Bach or Chopin for a spell and then slide over to the desk and answer email or play a computer game or, today, blog. Back and forth between the two keyboards for hours, with an occasional break to step outside and smoke.

The effect on my psyche? A scene of humming industry: my mind's eye sees conversations at cafe tables and gardens being watered and dogs running beneath a sky of pristine blue where wide-winged birds soar in pulsing sunlight. A steady breeze stirs gently and the lungs of everything that lives fill and empty and fill again and empty again.

There is order and beauty. Imagination and improvisation course through every moment, every action, every aspect of the scene. It is the exquisite beauty and order of chaos.

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It is difficult to allow the mind to find its natural resting place (and I do believe a river of tranquility flows somewhere inside each of us). There is so much to think about. There is so much memory to cling to and fret about. So many judgments to pass and defenses to construct. So many plans to make and escape hatches to secure.

But we do much of this kind of thinking unconsciously. Awareness of the ceaseless churning and chattering is a first step toward returning to tranquility. A next step is realizing that we are creating much of the churning and chattering--the World is not shouting at us so much as we are shouting at ourselves.

These two tiny steps "outside" place us a little closer to tranquility. Stepping outside the storm to observe it places us...outside the storm.

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When I listen for my life's calling, I hear an indistinct song about helping myself and others toward honest, humble, compassionate observance of the journeys of our souls and spirits as represented in the ways we think. And, insofar as, "As I think, so I behave" is true, to change the World by helping people to change the way they think. I want to help us make rules for living that allow and encourage imagination.

This is an important part of my life work and I'd like some company on the way.