Category: Uncategorized

My final days in Texas were spent visiting long lost family in Houston. It was really wonderful reconnecting with my Aunt Margaret, such a sensible lady, and meeting my 2 first cousins once removed.

After a 28 hour-twilight-zone journey, I arrived in Bangkok greeted by beauty advertisements (including men’s foundation), sweltering humidity, and warnings of not screwing around with the Buddha image. 

I thought I would be in and out of the city but actually, it has been quite an accommodating landing spot; cheap hostel, delicious cheap food, and plenty to keep a tourist busy.

Actually, I stopped trying to correct my jet lag almost immediately and have since taken to napping in the afternoon, in the midst of the energy sponging humidity, plus there’s so much happening at night, why make attempts at sleeping early?

Upon arrival in the backpacker district, the infamous Koh San road, I had a quick look around and found my landing spot. A private room with fan and shared bath for $6 a night. Cheap and simple, a perfect combination for resting up and figuring out my next step. AC here is a luxury costing 30% – 50% more.

I dropped my stuff and immediately searched for food ending in glory, Pad Thai for $1.50. I was so grateful to not eat crappy airplane food.

One of my favorite things about Thailand and one of the reasons I chose to start my journey here is the amazing inexpensive food.

My body feels rejuvenated and not stressed out from the exertion and expense to have these nourishing foods. In less than a 5 min walk out my door, I can find young coconuts, fresh mango, fresh watermelon, fresh squeezed orange juice, BBQ bananas, and lots more. I feel like my body is in some kind of joyous sober trip. How long was I in the States for?

There are also more novel foods. (Yes, those are scorpions)

I love that just down the road is a temple I can go and sit at in the mornings.

I’ve decided to go to Laos for my climbing get away.

After hanging out with my my dad and brother at the island, I spent most of the following 2 weeks hanging out with my mom and sister.

The time spent with my sister was normally over drinks. We also crossed the border to Progresso one day to have tacos (and more drinks).

The time spend with my mom was usually at her bedside or at her most frequented destinations, Walmart and Dollar tree.

I had a chance to catch up with my mom’s family over lunch one day. That was nice.

One of our last nights together, was spent back at the island.

I spent the last evening in the valley with my siblings.

My good friend, Debbie, from high school was in town at the same time I was. We had dinner and went to this awful thriller suspense movie with themes touching on racism in America now. I find the commonplace of violence in our entertainment distressing. It’s sick and largely unrecognized as a societal influence. Why would anyone voluntarily subject themselves to these psychological states?

I also had a chance to meet up with a small group of other high schools friends who also happened to be in the valley. We talked about our passions now and what drives us in life. Common themes of ecological activism, family, civil rights, mortality, and travel came up. I love having these check-ins with friends throughout life to see where/how they are and how they work with living in Samsara. Its inspiring.

Overall, the experience of being back in the valley and spending time with my family was rich and heart breaking. Saying goodbye to them individually, not knowing when I will see them again, are momentary glimpses of death, powerful.

I find I resent this place less and less each time I go back to visit. The vastness of its space with all its content, its basically good.

I feel like Ive gone through so much in this past week in the Texas bardo.

Where do we start to make this crazy confused world better? Clean the house you are in now.

So that’s how I’ve spent the better part of today.

At one point I was wiping down the kitchen window just in front of the sink. As I was contemplating mindful object placement,
putting back 3 stalks of bamboo in a fusia opaque plastic looking vase,
dish soap,
a small artificial plant bouquet in a stubby v-neck glass vase with fake water made from rubber jelly,
a small intricately carved fragile glass piano,
a small rectangular Tupperware bottom holding what looked to be several months worth of dried lemon seeds,
and 2 aquamarine colored tiles with large shells on them, (the type you would expect to see hanging in a bathroom in a dated 1980’s beach condo)
all leaning up against the blinds, I thought how fortunate I was to do ROTA at SMC.

ROTA is a community chores system we used at SMC. It stands for Remarkable Opportunity for Transcendent Action. It mostly entails the community and dish washing. If we could figure out a harmonious ROTA system, I believe enlightened society will have manifested at SMC. The ROTA system is riddled with all kinds of inefficiencies and bias, including seniority favoritism and lacking a system of consequences for those not performing their community chores appropriately.

I feel like ROTA was one of my favorite parts of SMC actually. It normally manages to bring some kind of intensity out of people.
It really is what it says it is.
Sometimes when I was going crazy with sadness, irritation, or some form of intoxicant induced delusion, and didn’t know what to do with myself, I would go wash community dishes. It was a good grounding rock for my mind.

The first weekend I arrived here, my dad took me to South Padre Island aka “the island”, to see my brother.

We went fishing. It was good. We didn’t catch anything. The whole situation really stirred the muck  of food politics, particularly the way we treat our food or our would be food.

At one point, I expressed hesitation to sticking a hook through a live shrimp. My dad told me to “not be a pussy” and that was really like a slap in the face. It was like offending my views on animal cruelty, food, women, and sexual orientation in one short phrase.  The next day I told him we needed to talk, then he proceeded to kind of apologize in a kind of annoyed frustrated intonation and that topic ended there.

Since the weekend, I’ve been staying at my mom’s place in the Rio Grande Valley, aka “the valley”.  I don’t know why people call it “the valley,”  the nearest mountains are 160 miles away in Mexico.

“The valley” is like the perineum of the states, largely ignored. Most people don’t know where it is. Change eventually trickles down here. Its pretty conservative in a Mexican, patriarchal, dogmatic, gender-role template kind of way. All of my high school friends, save 1, left the valley after graduation and didn’t come back. Its an isolated area between Mexico and San Antonio.

Actually, I feel like I have a calling to come back here to work on establishing enlightened society in this desperate place. I just need a lot of time to figure out where to start and to stop procrastinating what seems like the dark bitter sweet inevitable.

My mom’s 2 dogs, cinnabun and puff, have been keeping me company.

My mom taught them to kill flies. Its weird.

Also, I just got my store up! Let me know what you think at dem@bodymovin.net. I welcome your feedback!

Check this out:

 

My last days at SMC were magic.

The goodbye party was epic.

The solitary retreat was also very good. I was snowed in 2 of the 3 days.

It was bitter sweet seeing the Stupa, the Kami Shrine, and the view from Marpa point one last time.

Shambhala day fell on the last full day I spent at SMC. It was pretty auspicious. This is a picture of our morning lhasang that day.

My friends Alexis and Dan joined me for a celebratory departure lunch and drive to the airport.

I am so thankful for my last 2 years spent at SMC. Its been quite a journey.

 

I was reading a Peter Diamandis blog post entitled “Tools of the Titans“. There was one particular practice that struck me. This is what Diamandis said about Tony Robin’s “morning priming” :

Morning Priming (Tony Robbins)

Tony Robbins introduced to me to morning priming years ago, and it has become a staple of my morning routine ever since. Upon waking, Tony immediately goes into his priming routine, which is intended to produce rapid change in his psychology and physiology. Tony says, “To me, if you want a primetime life, you’ve got to prime daily.” Priming with Tony’s method only takes around 10 minutes, and here are the three steps:

1.Expressing Gratitude (3 minutes): Tony describes this step as, “Feeling totally grateful for three things. I make sure that one of them is very, very simple: the wind on my face, the reflection of the clouds that I just saw. But don’t just think gratitude. I let the gratitude fill my soul, because when you’re grateful, we all know there’s no anger. It’s impossible to be angry and grateful simultaneously. When you’re grateful, there is no fear. You can’t be fearful and grateful simultaneously.”

2.Spiritual Exercise (3 minutes): Tony describes this step as, “Total focus on feeling the presence of God, if you will, however you want to language that for yourself. But this inner presence coming in, and feeling it heal everything in my body, in my mind, my emotions, my relationships, my finances. I see it as solving anything that needs to be solved. I experience the strengthening of my gratitude, of my conviction, of my passion…“

3.Three to Thrive (3 minutes): Tony describes this final step as, “Focusing on three things that I’m going to make happen, my ‘three to thrive.’ … See it as though it’s already been done, feel the emotions, etc.”

It got me thinking about the first exercise of waking up and feeling grateful for three minutes everyday. I had not considered the importance of timing in regard to being grateful or how it must feel to just be grateful for a conscious 3 minutes everyday.

I had a ride back from Fort Collins, nearest town, 45 min away, this evening, from my neighbor and other SMC peers. They were talking about the importance of having a protein shake within the first 20 min after a workout and the importance of timeliness of ingestion in correlation with its effectiveness.

I feel really grateful for my time at SMC.

Its hard to describe. It is like its own lifetime that now is coming to an end. It has been so rich.

I was in Fort Collins celebrating the upcoming departure of our AV guy, Matt. He had told me how real these last few days at SMC were and just observing the simple things like Marpa point. I thought it was a beautiful way to describe an ordinary experience here. It was a ringing bell.

There remains a little more than a month of my time remaining here.

What are you grateful for?

Nico & Vans – Am I wrong 

 

This adventure begins as my adventure at Shambhala Mountain Center comes to an end.

I have a little more than a month before I leave this magic land and head over to Texas where I will stop by to visit my family before heading off Thailand.

I’ve been reading up on the 12 nidanas in Indestructible Truth:

“The preceding raises an important question: are we as human beings condemned to move from the karmic-result nidanas, three through seven, to the karma-producing nidanas, eight through ten? Must we always be engaged in creating karma, whether negative or positive? The answer is no. Between nidanas seven and eight, there is a gap in the process of ego. Between feeling, the final karmic-result nidana, and thirst, the first karma-producing nidana, there is an open space. There is no inevitability here and no predetermination. Here is the point at which we have freedom. Whether one takes the next step to thirst really is a matter of choice, though it is a step we habitually take without acknowledging that choice was present. Why do we do so? Because it is more comfortable and less painful , more robust and fortifying to our sense of ego, to ignore the gap. Like the Pied Piper’s rats, it is easier to run with the pack, on to nidanas eight, nine, and ten.” -Reggie Ray

I’ve been contemplating that moment when a craving either remains a static situation or when it starts to become acted upon and pursued. I feel like this moment is at the heart of so much hesitation.What are your thoughts?