In Appreciation of Crashing, Bliss Following, Hero's Journeying, and Practice

[Guest guest]

Here is a little appreciation I just posted on facebook. http://www.facebook.com/note.php?note_id=10150622652525790I hope there is some use in it for my fellow travelers on the list.My experience with crashing....Well, it does not look like it looked in 1985. Then it was a really gory train wreck and would last for months and months...and longer, sometimes years. Let me give you an example from about 1981. I was unemployed. I did not work much before my 30th birthday, mostly off the grid, so unemployment was my usual occupation. But this was a time when I actually had a little job working at a community center. I actually liked that little job, though I drank at lunch as was typical for me in those days. Reagan got elected and the community center all but closed down with the immediate round of budget cuts. With the cuts, I was the first to go. My baseline was dysfunctional in the extreme, but I had been doing well, for me. Anyhow, I got into this funk. My wife was working a couple jobs to keep us afloat. Some days when I was home alone, I would literally crawl into the closet and sit at the back of it with the door closed. I recall a day when my little brother came over. I was laying on the couch watching TV with a case of beer setting beside the couch. He came in and sat down and said “What are you watching?” I had no particular idea. I had just turned it on, but not bothered to figure out what was on. Just laying there staring at whatever was on that channel. “Why are you watching this?”—I shrug. I asked Dave if he wants a beer. He says “Sure” and I reached into the box by the couch and handed him one. He looks at me and says "This is warm!"—I shrug. It just did not matter. Nothing mattered. Just laying there, smoking weed, drinking beer, counting the days, waiting for the end, but fearful it would just go on and on and on. I have not got that funky in years. But do I still have down times? Yep. Sometimes they stretch out a bit—maybe even weeks. But the funkiness is different—more permeable to things going on around me. I don't stop moving, and, even when in a funk, there are times when I get engaged in things I care about and liven up. Richness can permeate—at least some. The lows and stuck spots are somehow more flexible. There are some ups mixed in with the downs. Before it was dead flat...life was a dull draining monotone. No variation and nothing leaked in. The lows are less sticky—everything that happens does not seem to get folded into the funk. And they never seem to have the duration they used to have—though some still long. Why? Well, it all started the first day of June 1985. I said yes. I made a deal with the universe that whatever was on my plate on a given day, I would clean my plate and say thank you. So if what was on my plate was depression....OK. If it was???.......OK. Not entirely coincidentally, the last drink or drug I had (except medical) was the last day in May 1985. Drinking and getting high were my major strategies for saying “No” to what life put on my plate (definitely not my only strategies, but major strategies). So the start was acceptance. And movement. I got up each day and to the best of my ability I did the next right thing. I went to work. I paid my bills. I paid my child support. I tried to do what a citizen would do—all new stuff for me. Gradually my activity increased, first work, then school, work, more school, more school, more school, and, life spread out before me. Engagement in life increased—broadened and deepened. I learned a little at a time to let go of what my head had to say to me about myself, my future, my possibilities, and the same for others. Instead, I started using my values as a guide, not my thoughts. I was watching a ph series called The Power of Myth ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Power_of_Myth ) on Public TV and was saying "follow your bliss." And, he very clearly did not mean hedonism. I spent a long, long time, and still do, inside questions generated watching that show. What would it mean for me to follow my bliss? What would my life look like, over time, if I were to do that? What would I do in the next day, morning, moment, that act would move me in that direction (even ever so slightly)? Will my next act move me in the direction of my values? Or away? If away, can I just let that go for another day? also talked at length about the hero’s journey. What might my own “hero’s journey” look like? What if I let myself dare to have what called a “hero’s journey?” (Even now, I shake a little with fear that it might sound pompous, presumptuous to call my own journey a hero’s journey, or to even imagine one.) Why has this changed over the years? 1. I have practiced coming back to this moment, right now. Heaven knows I have had a lot of opportunities to practice having strayed from it so often (present moment).2. I have practiced staying more open to what I feel and think (acceptance) without attachment (defusion).3. I have practiced being in a continual process of authoring the direction my life is taking (values), and practiced letting go of rigid attachment to particular outcomes (defusion and acceptance).4. I have practice doing the next right thing (values and committed action).5. I have practiced noticing (self-as-context) that this practice has opened up possibilities that I would never in a million years been able to dream of prior to that choice, June 1, 1985. And, I have failed and I mean failed hard, hard, a lot, a lot, over the years, AND like the freakin' energizer bunny, I keep coming back to the practice. Sometimes sooner, sometimes later, but so far, I have come back one more time than I have gone away and this morning, this very morning, this very moment, I am declaring that practice to be enough...without justification, without consultation, without approval (including my own). I declare this practice to be enough. I expect my practice to change over time. How? Can't say? Will it change? I would bet on that. But for this day....I am declaring International Enough Day. Here and now is enough. This practice, cracked and a bit leaky, is enough. I invite you all to imagine your own personal hero’s journey. I invite you to leave the end of the journey open to possibility. I invite you to let the tiniest act, this day, this morning, this moment, to be enough. my warm and good wishes to all in their practice—time for this one to head off to yoga,

G. 205 Peabody BuildingPsychology DepartmentUniversity of MississippiOxford, MS 38677ph: fax: academic homepage:www.olemiss.edu/working/kwilson/kwilson.htmalso check outwww.onelifellc.comwww.mindfulnessfortwo.comwww.facebook.com/kellygwilsonwww.tastybehaviorism.comwww.abnormalwootwoot.com