However, I fluctuate in my practices, at times abandoning organic foods for the immediate gratification of the service and richness of the restaurant experience, or forgoing movement practices in order to focus on employment or entertainment goals. Even now, my practices are not infallible, and I still experience extreme moods and attraction to intoxicants now and again. But more so now than ever before, I am able to witness and moderate these fluctuations, and herein lies my faith in my movement towards balance: in the past, I felt a victim to happenstance, unable to control or buffer my shifts in mood or desire. Yet with a continued commitment to a spirit-based lifestyle of service and practice, I continually feel more at home in my bodymind, able to sit in silence and meditate.

I keep my mind engaged, eager to seek out new experiences to learn from, and am not particularly plagued by foggy thinking or profound laziness. I have a fit and healthy body, though it occasionally experiences Cold and Damp and Yin Deficiency. I am able to maintain healthy relationship with others, and when I find myself being insensitive or selfish, I am usually able to take responsibility for my feelings and communicate my desire to find mutual contentment. My commitment is to a path of service based in the concept that all beings and things are interconnected, and the one true purpose is Universal harmony.

I believe that the most effective course of action for me to bring myself closer to total balance is to continue to apply the principles I already have: deepen my commitment to a diet of fresh and local organic whole foods as the foundation for a practice of mindful living, seek out teachers of medicine and the Tao who I can respect and learn from, and perpetuate relationship as a practice of service, supporting the people in my family and community.

Like last summer, I’ve been slightly exposed to poison oak, leading to a systemic reaction.  This photo is of what I hope to be the pinnacle of the reaction, since I received a steroid shot at the Redwood Clinic in Redway yesterday morning.

Since I arrived, in fact.

I ought to have told you earlier in our relationship, but I’m not the type to settle down, and no sooner do I arrive than I am already looking at the exit door. It’s a pattern I need to work on, I know. Because we started some things together. Things that when we started, I thought I was ready to commit to. A real career, a real community. I took on a lot of responsibility for our growth together, and I saw early on that I got in too deep too quickly. That happens sometimes when we meet again after a long time apart, and the new traits make even the old familiar ones exciting again.

An adage I use often: the more things change, the more they stay the same.

I’m not sure exactly what that means, but I suppose figures of speech become so because they speak to us on many levels, sometimes eluding us with simple complexity…

Anyway…

I got in too deep too quickly, and I tried to correct for that. I noticed you notice me withdrawing, and even as I did so, I was really intending to come back with fervor, stoke the coals and grow back stronger, but, well, that just didn’t happen. And I left you hanging.

I’d like to say, Reno, that “It’s not you. It’s me.” But it is you. You left me hanging, too. I thought you’d pick up the slack in our relationship, see that the distance I was creating was for my own protection, realize that you could keep us both safe by stepping up to the challenge of taking care of your old friend. But that didn’t happen. You stayed needy, quietly, and I just couldn’t keep feeding you all I had.

Reno, you’re a Gateway place, some intersection of laylines gives you purpose. The last place between lush free Pacific and desolate, barren dystopic desert – just look at all the “Burners”, those transhuman souls desperate to re-create the excitement of cosmic life who pass through you in droves on their annual pilgrimage to the psychotic other-land of their imagination, forced by the tight white collar of this doomed culture to flip out in the opposite direction, Reno is their gateway to that land. Also between the hot south Vegas Angeles and the cool north Portland Seattle, while not a pit-stop for most, Reno, you are the fulcrum.

Even more, Reno, you are a portal between above and below, the reality of the living and the realm of the discorporeal. I meet as many disembodied beings as embodied ones, searching for the warmth of connection with another soul, able to envelop and protect them from their own limitless hunger.

Take a look at yourself, Reno: you exist as transition fixed, progress frozen at each step. You amaze me with your progressive stationaryness. A lot of people, well, they need to spend time on the threshold – from here one can look forward and backward through time, peer at the notion of the soul, obsess over sureality – until they become ready to tip the balance of their own destiny in the controlled repetitive falling of walking forward.

Reno, I’m sorry to leave you. It makes me sad.  It does. I’ll watch you from afar, and check in, but I’ll miss all the games we started that we didn’t quite finish. Or really, even quite begin.

But it isn’t you, it is me.

I am thrilled for the future! One can only stand on the precipice of destiny for so long before being drawn in. Not that I believe in destiny, necessarily, or karma, but with observation the patterns of life are undeniable. Not sitting still says something about me: I am not complacent. I am not waiting for something better to come along, I am beckoning it. And consequently, my life continually improves, quality of life gets richer, growth and learning accelerate.

When I reunited with you, Reno, it was meant to be only a short time. That short time extended, and extended some more until I didn’t know for sure when we would separate. (I hope you didn’t get too comfortable during that time – I didn’t.) So the last half a year has been borrowed time… I hope you can understand.

I’m leaving you to be with Heartwood Institute again. Heartwood is a village, a school, devoted to healing arts. My students are here and there, but my teachers are waiting for me there. Accelerated growth, deepening of practice is the hallmark of that kind of life. For all of our amazing projects, I feel stagnant where I am.

It’s time for me to move on.

It’s both of us.

Let’s try not to have a drawn out farewell. I ain’t one for no emotional goodbye…

My mind, perhaps this entity holds some key. It does indeed seem to function rampantly, on its own, and the reigns I put on it can merely guide the stampede of thoughts. I am aware of feeling good, of feeling bad; these things influence – but don’t define – me, whatever “Me” is. There is more than one aspect of the concept of this “me” thing, processes and subroutines that run parallel, concurrently, influencing one another, condensed and broadcast through a body, face, and voice to be received by other humans nearby, each of them their own “me” structure, complete with receptive capability and filters, compiling information to co-create a version of reality that more-or-less works for everyone.

I stub out the slender roll of tobacco before it burns my fingers and throat further. Slip on shoes, other layers of dark color and symbols, shapes that define and contain physical parameters and transmit messages, and step out of the warm and dark and solitary room into a bright cold morning. I don’t hear my neighbors. Walking an unpaved trail through trees, I have in my mind the voice of a new friend, a good friend, conveyed through time and technology and headphones.
The music she has written and recorded and printed and distributed sings of love and self in ways I haven’t thought of in a while, having defined myself through celibacy, relationships indistinct and transient, but now I am in the present with this mournful and hopeful melody guiding my thoughts, considering what I would feel like to have another in my life, sharing a small reality. And I think of her, since as I listen to this music, I think not only of my relationship to it, but also her relationship to it, and my relationship to her. The music, the moment, alone, yet with her voice in my mind, takes me away, and I realize that I have reached the end of the path before I have reached the end of the moment.
I take the headphones out so as to be more aware of the environment I am entering. A lodge crowded with people inside from the cold. I make simple conversation, people accessing only the outer-most layer of the personality-complex, which finds it acceptable to give superficial answers to perfunctory questions. I fill a bowl quickly and leave again. The cold doesn’t bother me. It seems suiting.
I set the bowl down outside to turn music back on. Walk to a spot where it is likely other people will pass by, but unlikely that they will try and speak to me. I look out and down into a landscape of rolling hills. The morning sun pulls moisture up from the earth, and mist begins to rise, becoming low clouds, diffusing the light. In another two hours, the moisture will burn off, and it will be a warm afternoon. I breathe deeply the dense air while it lasts.
And I’m savoring breakfast and staring into the fog and absorbing the music and contemplating gently and I realize why I can’t give a straightforward answer to a straightforward question: there isn’t a cohesive “Me” to give an answer in the first place. There are many “me”s that all want to channel a genuine response through a single source of output, and the transmitter gets confused. Short circuit.
“I” am not limited to a personality-construct that interacts with others and has many techniques to establish itself as a dominant and cohesive unit. There is also a deep and vast existence that underlies all that. This manifestation of conscious energy is stunning, and it is doing very well. It is healthy and expanding and perceives love and beauty in all things. It is the personality subroutine that suffers from weakness, fear and doubt, desire and loneliness.
This explains why I feel so present and capable of offering nurturing and compassion to others who feel suffering, yet rarely feels safe with another person when it is my turn to be vulnerable. The energetic aspect of my existence can hold safety and awareness, while the fragile ego feels that it cannot be related to.
Tears stream down my face into my bowl of miso, and I am vaguely aware that I haven’t eaten much. I try, but food has no taste, so I set the bowl aside and cry quietly to the heavens at the realization of my self-imposed limitations. A person walks past, and I do not know if they see me.
I listen to the music, and hear her words:

Darkness can go on without me, because I no longer fear to face what is coming in it’s place.

I am able to compose myself, contain again the fission reaction of my soul within a rapidly deteriorating sarcophagus, finish breakfast, and move my body. Align my spine, encourage the movement of synovial fluid and cerebrospinal marrow. Stretch the tight muscles of my legs, working daily to reset nerve spindles within the muscle structure, extend the capacity for movement that this machine affords.
Tears have dried on my face, and I don’t expect others to notice. I don’t want to talk about it. It is time now to enter the disorganized training hall, make some part of myself available for learning, continue the expansion of thought and capacity. A new inlet has seeped through into the lagoon of my awareness, adding a fresh source for contemplation and nourishment.
I will hold on to this, gently

I am attending the Heartwood Institute for nothing short of personal transformation. This is the calculated process of using my knowledge and experiences up until this point of my life, combining them with a chosen path and direction, and submitting my whole self to a rigorous training program with the intention of becoming the person that I want to be. The Heartwood Institute offers a multifaceted and immersive environment that will give me the opportunity to make dedicated and intentional change in myself.

In this document, I am establishing my intentions:

Physical and Mental Purification
Destruction of Old Habits
To cleanse the body is to cleanse the mind; as the mind clears, consciousness is able to expand, which facilitates the process of purification. Drugs, alcohol, and poor diet all contribute to a toxic physicality, and thus a poisoned mind. In addition to ill health and disease, depression, self-doubt, low motivation, and lack of creativity are all brain-chemistry related, and can be addressed by the quality of what I put into my body.
At Heartwood, I will live in an environment with the cleanest air and water, organic vegan and macrobiotic diets. I will be away from the chaotic lifestyle I have existed in for so long, and the destructive tendencies that come from that lifestyle. Without constant social pressure, as well as long standing patterns and habits, I intend to break away from drugs such as caffeine, nicotine, alcohol, and marijuana. I will quit smoking and drinking. With nine months living in this environment, I will develop a clarity and peace of mind that I will take with me into the outside world. While I will not make a statement that I will never touch tobacco, marijuana, or alcohol again, I can state firmly that I will break my attraction to these drugs as habitual behaviors and emotional crutches that I stumble with as I react against a world I feel ill at ease with.

Positive Attitude
I am a fairly articulate communicator, and I am effective at explaining and understanding issues and problems and work to find a solution agreeable to all parties; I can facilitate and mediate conflict situations. However, I have the feeling that my day-to-day conversational style seems smug and pessimistic, perhaps even superior and arrogant at times. In this process of transitioning into life at Heartwood and the rigorous education I will undertake there – especially considering the small community of individuals I will be living with, sharing a small room with another person, and the general positive and healing environment – I intend to practice the subtle attitude of humbleness, and cultivate a more sensitive ability to listen and understand, and to give all people the space to communicate freely without passing judgment. I intend to take these new communication skills with me into the outer world.

Development of Discipline
The work gets done. I push myself to study and learn. I stick with most projects I begin, and I don’t abandon a situation when it gets difficult. But discipline is more rigorous than these. I also don’t start new projects because I lack the motivation; I don’t develop creative ideas because I don’t see the point. I hate exercise even as I enjoy being physical. To have discipline means to be able to function through my insecurities, inhibitions, laziness, and overly self-critical attitudes. I will develop discipline at Heartwood in a variety of ways. One is to study the coursework rigorously; this will be the most intensive educational experience I have had to this point, and I will need to apply myself with dedication in order to graduate with Honors. Also, I will participate in Yoga and QiGong exercises, which develop both the physical self and concentration. Perhaps the most difficult will be to chose to function smoothly in a social community environment; I don’t know how I will respond in a community so small and close, since my tendency is to keep to myself. It will take a new kind of discipline for me to extend myself further in all these directions simultaneously.

Meditation and Concentration Techniques
Meditation is a process that seems so simple yet so elusive at the same time. I have practiced occasionally, and perhaps have slipped into a meditative state more often without realizing it – or taking advantage of the peace. Meditation is a powerful technique for calming mental chatter while simultaneously expanding the brain and mind’s ability to process information and emotion. Ironically, I find it very difficult to calm myself enough to make meditation a regular part of my daily life. At Heartwood, I will receive direct instruction as well as live in an environment highly conducive to contemplative thought. Like Yoga and QiGong, it will take a new type of discipline for me to meditate nearly daily, but the time I will spend will increase the level of discipline. With nine months at Heartwood, I intend for meditation to become an integrated part of my life.
Essentially, I will be breaking bad habits immediately, and establishing new, life affirming practices in my daily routine. Over nine months, this will allow my neural circuitry to re-map itself, and when I leave Heartwood I will have a new set of mechanisms for dealing with the stresses of chaotic urban life.

Energy Sensitivity
Chinese medicine is only one philosophy/modality that considers an intrinsic relationship between physical well-being and the body’s energetic makeup. Indeed, the energy systems of the body, documented as meridians and chakras, are but one example of the nature of physical reality – which from a certain perspective, matter and energy are indistinguishable. It could be said that what we perceive as matter is in actuality a complex webwork of energy relationships.
A principle of Zen Shiatsu is that an individual can detect and manipulate the bio-electro-magnetic field of another person’s body to facilitate healing, and this concept is repeated in similar forms in Polarity Therapy, Ayurveda, and the Martial Arts.
My intention in training at Heartwood to become sensitized to the detection of the energy fields of the body, and move my education in this philosophy/science from the realm of academic to experiential.

Health and Healing
Not only am I going to cleanse myself and establish and reaffirm powerful skills for healthy living, I am going to study this process as well, and study it in a way that I can take these and share them with other people. What makes Heartwood such an effective school is that students live in this immersive environment and learn by experiencing the process within themselves.
Traditional Chinese Medicine is an effective modality for a variety of reasons. It is detailed and specific. It functions on many levels; for example, I will learn about the value of whole-foods nutrition. I will also learn about the energetic properties of foods, another layer. And this, combined with Five Element theory and Shiatsu energy and massage techniques create a dynamic and fluid way to approach the subject of healing with a wide variety of people.
There is more to it than this. Why I decide to focus on health and healing is also a question with many answers.
We live in a society where we are inundated with propaganda and imagery designed specifically to influence what we think. Much of this is in regards to perceptions of health as distributed by massive corporate structures who have much more concern with profit than with health. I quote Inga Muscio:
“Loving, knowing and respecting our bodies is a powerful and invincible act of rebellion in this society.”
We must unlearn the disinformation distributed by profiteers so that we can re-learn how to live in a wholesome and healthy way. Attitudes about food are some of the most deep seated suppositions I have encountered, and yet are so basic to survival and quality of life, and – as I mentioned above – are directly related to mental functioning as well. It is here that the process of deconstruction and reeducation must begin.

Personal Transformation
In all of this, my intention is to unlock my inner potential. While Chinese Medicine and bodywork are a set of skills I can use, the experience at Heartwood is about clearing myself to get a better look at my Self, becoming a more complete and integrated person.
I am attending the Heartwood Institute for nothing short of personal transformation. This is the calculated process of using my knowledge and experiences up until this point of my life, combining them with a chosen path and direction, and submitting my whole self to a rigorous training program with the intention of becoming the person that I want to be. The Heartwood Institute offers a multifaceted and immersive environment that will give me the opportunity to make dedicated and intentional change in myself.