Starting Over!
Today, I am inspired by the many blogs I've been visiting that invite me into a different conversation than the "daily grind" line of thought and the totally superficial social grease of the wheel that is the weather, sports, and news in general!
Louise LeBrun's blog (www.louiselebrun.blogspot.com)latest offering caught my attention particularly. When she says: "It is not about addiction - it is about having to learn, all over again, what it is to be ourselves!"; I felt that Ah-ha moment. What moved through me was how much words like addictions, mental health, depression, and all means of descriptive code words we use to compartmentalize how we behave are interchangeable and don't mean much in the end - When we put them in the context of our "experiences". The words are not the experience! They cannot describe what's going on, they just reduce it to sizeable chunck we can digest quickly for conversations sake. Don't get me wrong - that's useful too, sometimes!?
What got my juices flowing about her comment was how another "code word" can be experienced through that consideration - man, or maleness, or masculine.
pick one and feel what gows on inside when you allow the words - It is not about maleness, or masculinity - it is about having to learn all over again, what it is to be ourselves!" Wow!
ON my holodeck of the world, in the context of a WEL-systems perspective (see www.wel-systems.com), the largest possible context in which to consider our lives and our selves, that I know of, there is alot of room to consider how to learn to be ourselves, all over again!
What would it be like if we (men) were to allow ourselves to reconsider everything that is possible for us, through a lens that allows for the deepest discovery possible, beyond fears, and egos, and our "culturally conditionned selves"!?
If this sounds like throwing the baby out with the bath water, I can understand...the difference being, through the wel-systems' perspective, that the baby never needed bathing in the first place!!! It is about looking at the water we've been swimming or bathing in all our lives and considering what results that's produced! It is about looking at who put us in that water, and why in their opinion, we needed to be bathed?!
Is it possible that discovering who we are is not a matter of recreating ourselves, but simpy discovering what's been there all=the-while; underneath the thick layers of social norms, rules, roles, laws, attitudes, and especially beliefs about who we're "supposed" to be!???
Think about it...the wider the context for considering who we are and what is possible, the more generalized and unhinged words like addictions, illness, and even "masculinity" become! what do you feel, or what moves through you when you consider and allow for the possibility that the experience of our lives, is more truth-ful than the ideas/stories of our lives, the more our human experience grows, and is less and less describable as either a male, or female experience! I don't know?! Is there more truth and similarity to be found in our human experiences, than in our singular male or female experiences?
creating at the rhythm of my breath,
Ray Landry
Saturday, January 06, 2007
A New Year...A New "Man"???
Although the concept of a new year is only an illusion (see previous blog) to me, it does send most of us into thoughts of More, New, Better, Health, Wealth, maybe even Peace and Comfort...things that flow from the supposition of the big one "change"!
And my question then becomes...to what end? Are those ideas the "ends" unto themselves? Or, are they about something else? Are they about what we want to have? Or, who we want to Be?
Or maybe even what they might allow us to become?
In my version of the world as I know it, most people do not think about what they want to "achieve" with their life. It seems to me that most people are left to think about what they want to do! (without a clear sense of what that will look like in the end...)
And it seems that those who are keen on the concept of achievement, seem to equate it with what they can have that is outside of themselves - namely, things or ideals of "measures of success" such as money, real estate, and trinkets (yachts, beach houses, cars, etc...).
I wonder what would happen to us if we were to allow ourselves to consider what it is we want to create by achieving the best possible result as human beings; as persons on this journey? I wonder what those questions or new year's resolutions might sound like.
"I want to be more honest with myself?"
"I want to speak and live my truth, about my experience?"
" I want to review and revise everything that I believe, value, and my attitudes, to determine which ones are still useful to me, and which ones aren't?"
"I want to BE peaceful, and create peace around me?"
"I want to be the best person I can be, in the context of creating for myself and around me, the kind of world I and my children would be happy to live in!"
And many more....
To my brethren out there (men of the world), I would invite you to consider these few things as part of taking on a project that you might find worthwhile - your LIFE - What does it mean for you to be a man?
Does it still mean the same thing as when you were 8 or 12 years old? Or, does it mean the same thing as it did when you were 18 or 19?
And how does that still fit into your model of the world?
Who are you, essentially, that does not fit with your own image of manliness or with your percieved version of what it is to be a man in this world? (and does that cause you anxiety, or shame or something else?)
I wonder what it is we might find out about ourselves if we were to consider that maybe we are not our historically defined selves? Or that even if we are our historically defined selves, is that still a useful definition in today's world?
My experiences of these and many other provocotive questions has led me, for now, to consider that any past definition of Man is neither useful, nor expansive enough to allow me to be all it is that I AM! NOr does any defining of me by social norms and standards allow for enough "expansion" into my potential or possibility!
I am drawn then to consider, can I be a New Man?
and in considering that, what occurs in my body, is a clunking, stopping feeling like an elevator that isn't geared right to stop at the right floor, and feels like - NO. No in the sense that the question is either misdirected or not expansive enough....What, to me, feels more inviting and expansive is this -
In this "New Year", can I Be the full expression of what it is to be a spiritual being, having a human experience, in the context of expressing myself through a male body? I think aligning that with the supportive question: " What do I want to create (results for my Self, my world, my children)"?; will provide for quite a ride!
That you find these questins intriguing or useful or not is important, to YOU! For me, the important part is that you find questions for yourself that are expansive and invite new thoughts, new experiences where you live, in your body, so as to discover more of who you already are?
creating at the rhythm of my breath,
RAY
Although the concept of a new year is only an illusion (see previous blog) to me, it does send most of us into thoughts of More, New, Better, Health, Wealth, maybe even Peace and Comfort...things that flow from the supposition of the big one "change"!
And my question then becomes...to what end? Are those ideas the "ends" unto themselves? Or, are they about something else? Are they about what we want to have? Or, who we want to Be?
Or maybe even what they might allow us to become?
In my version of the world as I know it, most people do not think about what they want to "achieve" with their life. It seems to me that most people are left to think about what they want to do! (without a clear sense of what that will look like in the end...)
And it seems that those who are keen on the concept of achievement, seem to equate it with what they can have that is outside of themselves - namely, things or ideals of "measures of success" such as money, real estate, and trinkets (yachts, beach houses, cars, etc...).
I wonder what would happen to us if we were to allow ourselves to consider what it is we want to create by achieving the best possible result as human beings; as persons on this journey? I wonder what those questions or new year's resolutions might sound like.
"I want to be more honest with myself?"
"I want to speak and live my truth, about my experience?"
" I want to review and revise everything that I believe, value, and my attitudes, to determine which ones are still useful to me, and which ones aren't?"
"I want to BE peaceful, and create peace around me?"
"I want to be the best person I can be, in the context of creating for myself and around me, the kind of world I and my children would be happy to live in!"
And many more....
To my brethren out there (men of the world), I would invite you to consider these few things as part of taking on a project that you might find worthwhile - your LIFE - What does it mean for you to be a man?
Does it still mean the same thing as when you were 8 or 12 years old? Or, does it mean the same thing as it did when you were 18 or 19?
And how does that still fit into your model of the world?
Who are you, essentially, that does not fit with your own image of manliness or with your percieved version of what it is to be a man in this world? (and does that cause you anxiety, or shame or something else?)
I wonder what it is we might find out about ourselves if we were to consider that maybe we are not our historically defined selves? Or that even if we are our historically defined selves, is that still a useful definition in today's world?
My experiences of these and many other provocotive questions has led me, for now, to consider that any past definition of Man is neither useful, nor expansive enough to allow me to be all it is that I AM! NOr does any defining of me by social norms and standards allow for enough "expansion" into my potential or possibility!
I am drawn then to consider, can I be a New Man?
and in considering that, what occurs in my body, is a clunking, stopping feeling like an elevator that isn't geared right to stop at the right floor, and feels like - NO. No in the sense that the question is either misdirected or not expansive enough....What, to me, feels more inviting and expansive is this -
In this "New Year", can I Be the full expression of what it is to be a spiritual being, having a human experience, in the context of expressing myself through a male body? I think aligning that with the supportive question: " What do I want to create (results for my Self, my world, my children)"?; will provide for quite a ride!
That you find these questins intriguing or useful or not is important, to YOU! For me, the important part is that you find questions for yourself that are expansive and invite new thoughts, new experiences where you live, in your body, so as to discover more of who you already are?
creating at the rhythm of my breath,
RAY
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