Mischievous Me

10 Feb 2016 1 Comment

by TheRestlessRaven in aggression, Breaking the rules, focus, hold your space, Mindfullness, Uncategorized Tags: , , , ,

 

The deviant, the troublemaker, the bear poker.

Hater of routines, defier of convention, conflict creator.

I am the one who marks on the clean walls. The one who shifts the furniture just enough.

When neglected too long, I am the one who will ruin you.

I gather strength as I am overlooked. As I am suppressed through routine, through quelling adventure, repressing creativity, or withholding expression.

That builds my power. I will come at you in a tidal wave as your “proper” side gets fatigued.

A wave that will overwhelm and wreak havok upon you.

I don’t like to be ignored. I like to play.

I must create, I must sculpt, I must write, I must paint, I must hunt.

I am the rugged individualist, who must propel through every path least traveled. Must blaze through uncharted territory with nothing but my wits and my experience to guide me.

I must be fed.

If I am not, I’m that feeling in your chest that you need to scream.

That feeling you need to flip that party switch.

I am the party. I am the alcohol. I am the drugs. I am the rage, the frustration, the search for something else. The yearning to feel fulfilled. The hole in your being.

I am your individuality.

I am fire. I am destruction. I am fury.

I am every unexpressed thought or emotion. I am every fear. I am every instance of anger.

I am danger.

Fear me, respect me. But don’t deny me. I am you. I am the self. I am but a part, but I still am.

Feed me for fear of my feasting.

Listen to me for fear of my retribution.

Live with me for fear of not being whole.

Love me bc I am you.

I must not be neglected, I must thrive or I will be your end.

Find me, cultivate me, incorporate me.

I love to be included.

Together we could make beautiful things.

 

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The Paper Man

07 Jan 2016 6 Comments

by TheRestlessRaven in Breaking the rules, energy, fear, healing Tags: , ,

The paper man, assembled from every expected aspect of the canned society. Written down and stored in a box.

A box stored in the heart of the man.

A man who does all the things “expected” of every man of the age. He goes to work, he pays his taxes, he chases women.

Doing what he can to pass the time until death comes.

But there is a dark spot in the man. A spot he fears to enter. The time between the script of his created self and the next day.

A place where there is nothing. A hole that exists in where there are no tasks to be completed. No smiles to put on. No hands to shake.

Thats where it shows itself and he dare not ever enter it.

So he fills that gap with booze, with drugs, with women. It blurs the gap, fills it with a hazy memory, easily forgotten.

For that, that is the spot where dreams lay and he dare not dream. For dreams are unwritten, unscripted.

Dreams are unknown.

Dreams could be fire. Fire could burn this paper man, leaving nothing but the horrors that live in the boundless wasteland of the imagination.

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The Great Divide

31 Dec 2015 3 Comments

by TheRestlessRaven in Breaking the rules, day to day, energy, focus, Uncategorized Tags: , , ,

Recently, I have been playing with the idea of a separating my waist and hips.

Exploring around during Qigong with that concept and how it would play out in the body.

During meditation several weeks back, I started to become aware of the tension inside my hips and was sending waves of intention down to try to let it go. As I did this, I noticed an almost sensation in my legs that felt as if I had opened up the flood gates of blood to them. The feeling went  all the way down in to my feet, which began to feel like they were pulsing.

Along this same time, during certain meditations, I began to notice a feeling of electricity building up and shooting around inside my body. Much like the blood flow feeling, it’s like it was just a trickle before and now energy was free to flow more openly through it giving sensation to the areas around it that were asleep before.

I mention that, because today a different sensation started to encroach onto my awareness. An almost heaviness, that I could shift around internally from side to side through the body, or throw around to power my motion.

After about a week and a half off, I started a practice session this morning.

After some warming up, I noticed that my hips were moving with a lot less tension then before but there was still some tension inside the inner kua and the lower abdomen. So, I sent down the intention of letting that tension go.

Instantly, that tension melted away and I was able to sink farther than I have been able to comfortably in the past. Not only that, but my movement was originating in the waist instead the hips, which were hardly moving at all, yet the waist felt like it was almost going 360 degrees around my body with no effort what so ever. It changed the entire movement, I no longer had to think about each part of my body. Instead, I was just gliding from one move to the other with all my muscles relaxed.

 

I could swing my waist from side to side and it moved completely independent from my hips, which stayed pointing straight ahead as my waist was going one direction to the next.

No idea what this means. I often find that coming back after a break I have a different sensation in my movement. It will most likely go away as I dive back in to regular practice, but it is kind of exciting to feel the increased awareness of what is going on inside my own body.

That is all the motivation I need to keep going. To keep learning, exploring what is on the outskirts of my awareness in an attempt to shine more light on it.

 

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Laying the foundation

10 Nov 2015 7 Comments

by TheRestlessRaven in Breaking the rules, life, routine, Uncategorized Tags: , , ,

Its easy for me to fall in to depression.

When I was in my 20’s I tended to have huge spikes of happiness followed by equal magnitude lows. I refused to take medication for it, often falling to self medication, but slowly started creating a routine for my life.

I discovered, through the reading of many self help books, that a routine could help me manage more consistently day to day and start to get some of the major swings under, relative, control. It took multiple years to get to a point where I was able to create a more constructive life for myself and has lead to several great friendships and life events that have created an great foundation for me to work with.

The progression of my free time has also evolved. Before I started this little routine building procedure, I was feeling overwhelmed with the minuscule  amount I was doing everyday. My day would consist of going to work, about 8 – 9 hours, making some sort of pizza or otherwise easy to cook “food”, then sitting in front of the T.V. until I passed out. That was too much for me and I often wondered how I would ever find time for anything else.

Fast forward to now, I find myself going to work for 8 – 9 hours, cooking something from scratch for breakfast and dinner, working out or meditating for an hour before work, leading\practicing tai chi after work everyday, spending up to 14 hours on the weekend studying tai chi and finding time to spend some time with the people the amazing people in my life. All that, and I am still wanting to find ways to do more.

I look back and I am amazed at how far I have come and it all started with the idea of just creating a routine.

8 years it took me to grow that. One layer at a time and just now the concrete has started to cure.

There has always been a catch, however, when I find myself in the same routine for too long it becomes stale. Being in the same place at the same time everyday doing the same(ish) thing each time tends to get monotonous and I would fall in to old habits to mix things up, usually involving drinking too much, just to make things feel fresh again and revive my perspective of my progress.

The last couple weeks have been packed with travel and a commitment to continue my practice in between. The whole time maintaining this idea that I will be able to get back to “Normal” and be able to continue on this tightly packed schedule I have. But, today as I see several weeks of full practice ahead of me, baring any other unforeseen life events, I realize how valuable switching things up is. Going in to the next couple weeks I am excited to put my whole focus back in to my practice and my studying, i will again be able to pour all my extra attention in to it all the way up until thanksgiving break. After which, there will be another pause and then an intense couple of weeks back in to practice.

I am starting to realize sometimes it is the lack of a routine that helps to keep the routine alive. It breaths new life in to it and challenges it to make sure it is still valid. My routine is not my life, it does not define me, it does not dictate my every move, but it is a PART of my life. It is the structure I can deviate from, the rules I know so well that I can begin to deviate from and create new experimental art.

Without that, I am just blindly throwing paint on to a canvas.

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