Write to Remain

Time to take stock, I think, of where I am in my last year.   Time to explore relationships between  things that appear unrelated, and check the lymph nodes for swelling.  Let's assess the situation, and see if I have any symptoms that could lead to keeling over.

Their are six pages on this blog that provide an explanation of the events,
and people, who sculpted

me.   They connect those dots to these, so you can decide for yourself whether ours is a spontaneously random universe, or one with a purposeful, conscious design.   As for me, I could not have endured my journey if I believed all of this was a hiccup.

So...... taking stock.

I'm still unemployed.  I've had 2 interviews for teaching positions that my hostage-held credential disqualified me from.  I still don't have the $3,500 I need to obtain its freedom.

I've had a half-dozen interviews for positions varying from a caretaker of the developmentally disabled for $9 an hour, to adjusting insurance claims for $45,000 a year.  The result for all was the same-  No, No, No, No, No, and No.  I'm over-qualified, lacking in relevant experience, too old, and too obvious about being desperate for money.

I've submitted resumes, or made phone calls to at least 100 job postings on Craigslist, and received exactly no responses.   Not even for the $10 an hour yard clean-up, or $12 an hour irrigation system that I have 16 years of relevant landscape experience to apply.   For a dude who's quite qualified in many areas, the area that I'm apparently not qualified is in the general category called 'work'.   I have no idea what to do.

The unemployment checks I was told to expect through August stopped coming 3 weeks ago, and I just spent the last $100 from the $1100 settlement I received when a Hummer ran over my Kia.

As I write this I have half a loaf of white bread, 1 package of spaghetti, 2 boxes of instant rice, peanut butter, jelly, 4 slices of bologna, a container of Parmesan cheese, 2 cubes of butter, a jar of mayonnaise, and thirty-seven dollars. That would appear bleak to most people, but not to me.  Not yet.

My gut has been pretty reliable over my lifetime, and it's been humming a new frequency for awhile.  What that tells me is I'm not where I belong, and the avenues I'm exploring aren't the ones I should  be.  More simply, it's like a game of Hot and Cold:
 "Warm, Warm, Warmer, Hot, Steaming! .....Cold, Colder.... you know.

I have been doing one thing consistently, and determinedly, every day.  When I'm engaged in it time steps aside.  Awareness expands, and then bursts.   When I'm immersed in it I feel myself disassociate, and enter something else, a presence.  I feel God working in me.  I feel him in the certainty I have that when I'm doing this, I'm doing the work I was made for.
For real.

I've been writing.
I've been writing, routinely, for the first time in my life.
And I'm allowing people to see it.

I don't have illusions, or expectations, that it will go anywhere beyond this.  I've said before I don't have a sense that what I write is for the masses.  It's meant for one.   I'm wondering if the doors that aren't opening, aren't meant to.

I've been in this place before,  I've been in it so often I've learned to be attentive to it.  But I've never surrendered to see where it goes.   The fact that I'm here again, now, in a year with a forecast of transformation, or finality, has symmetry to it.  Everything I need, everything essential,  is disappearing.  And I've agreed to allow it.

For me, this isn't a matter of my writing being good, or bad.   I'm not qualified to determine that.   Nor is it a matter of me wanting to be a professional writer.  I don't control that.

I am a writer, and it's a matter of embracing it.

I'm a scribe, and the universe is going to  direct me where I belong until I agree to it.  If I agree to it, I'm agreeing to live in that space I'm delivered to.

When I do that, I have a hunch a job will show up.  The right job.

The formula is simple.  If I'm happy, and engaged in the world with $30 and some crackers, the desperation I feel about my circumstance is chosen.  It's coming from a place outside of the one that feels centered, and aligned.  Authenticity has been here all along.

Authenticity is there if I want it.  I can do dozens of things to make money, and I can adjust how I live so I don't need much.  I can create a

 life that allows me more time with what explains me.

  All I have to do is put down my fear.

" Put it down! Put.. your.. fear.. down!  

That's it. 

Now lock your fingers behind your head, 

and kick your fear this way.

Thaaat's it, nice and calm. 

On your belly!  On your belly!  

That's it...."

 You have the right to remain silent.

You have the right to a life that makes you happy.

It's a matter of embodying who I am when I'm writing even when I'm not.  When I write, I enter the world on a deeper level where separation doesn't occur.  The boundary between things melts away. When I write I disappear, I become divorced from personality, and enter everything large.  I enter the space we all occupy, together.  'Patrick' isn't there.

I'm careful not to give it too much attention in conversation, or print, because it sounds like hocus-pocus.  So much so, I looked into it.  I read interviews with people who created, and listened to them speak.  I heard them describe the exact scenario, and sensation, I did.  It happens.

Knowing that it's real incites inner turmoil if you continue to deny it.  If you're aware of two dimensions in the same reality, and know one offers the experience of integrating with what offers reflection, is their really a choice to be made?

Yes.
And it's significant.

The experience of disassociation that allows an integration with spirit  demands  detachment from what anchors you in the secular world.  The creative state is entered by turning inward, and engaged best when devoid of the limitations inherent in a personality constructed, and defined, by what it's aligned with.  

The choice is between a life heavy in isolation, and solitude, or a life heavy in collaboration, and participation, with community.   It is difficult to maintain both.

Elizabeth Gilbert Speaking on "Your Elusive Creative Genius"