I forgot about the following entry, I think from a book from John Eldredge ‘The Sacred Romance’, and surprised how it resonated today.

The Sacred Romance
“There are only two things that pierce the human heart, one is beauty, the other affliction.
We cannot deny the Arrows have struck us all, sometimes arriving in a hail of projectiles that blocked out the sun, and other times descending in more subtle flight that only let us know we were wounded years later, when the wound festered and broke.

What will we do with the Arrows we’ve known, or what have they tempted us to do? But to say we all face a decision when we’re pierced by an arrow is misleading. It makes the process sound so relational, as though we have the option of coolly assessing the situation and choosing a logical response. The heart cannot be managed in a detached sort of way. It feels more like and ambush and our response is at gut level. Our deepest convictions are formed without conscious effort, but the effect is a shift deep in our soul.

There was a girl I loved but couldn’t love, intimacy requires a heart that is released and mine was pinned down with unknown arrows of fears and grief and so I let her go. I place that last Arrow in my heart that day and shoved it cleanly though. I did it to kill the tears of mourning inside that would have insisted that there was something I had lost.

I had no one to help me understand the ambivalence created by the messages of the arrows. So I became my own author and killed the one to control the other. I broke my engagement. I gave up the mystery of the Romance for a story that was much more predictable – which is to say, aloneness. Yet there was still an ache and longing for something and someone, I couldn’t quite define and felt agitated and betrayed b such feelings, I pushed them down refusing to be healed. I lived those years in a tangled web of fantasy divorced from present living and reality. The outer story became the theater of the should and the inner story the theater of needs, the place where we quench the thirst of our heart with whatever water is available – sexual fantasies, alcohol, violent videos… The heart deadens and the arrows win.

The things we do to protect and preserve our hearts usually end up hurting us more. To choose to shut your heart to love – so that you won’t be hurt – is to deny the very thing you are made for. To demand perfection of yourself so that no one will ever criticize you again is to lay an intolerable burden on your back.

We must renounce our childhood vows. They trap our hearts, pin them down. They destroy us by getting us to agree with the lies. The pain makes the message of the Arrow seem so true, so deep inside; we believe the lie and make the vow. It is important to break the vow so it may not have a strong hold on our hearts.”

The things we do… my heart cried again when I re-read those words. I’d like to say that when I read them the first time some 20 years ago I was able to heal the wounds and break the vows I made… was in the possess of making after being hurt… I didn’t though, I held on tight. Today I wonder how many remain and how they have shaped my experiences.

At the time when I added my thoughts to the authors words I noted a memory of my 10 year old self making a vow to not be hurt again. I wonder if it was the moment I became a Enneagram type 5. I don’t recall the circumstances only how lost the young boy was.

Read a novel over the holidays –

The Borrowed Life of Frederick Fife

by Anna Johnston. The author asked herself if someone could redeem another persons life and then wrote her book. I love the book, funny and poignant, definitely worth reading.

Redemption and forgiveness, second chances and Found Family…. I wonder about the lost young boy making vows and the now old man.

Prayer
Somewhere deep inside my heart is wounded within me. I fear to even open up these places, and yet I long to be free. So come, take me by the hand, and lead me into the Arrows of my heart. Only do not leave me there but lead me thought to the fields of gladness and joy. – John Eldredge

Thanks Anita.

Merry Christmas Everyone. May we all find space to pause and be content.

I am a dream made real by virtue of the world touching me. This is what I know.
I am spirit borne by a body that moves through the dream that is this living, and what it gathers to keep becomes me, shapes me, defines me. The dreamer I am is vivid when I fully inhabit myself – when I allow that. Meditation is not a isolated act of consciousness. It’s connection to the dream. It’s being still so that the wonder of spirit can flow outward, so that the world touches me and I touch the world. It’s leaving my body and my mind and becoming spirit again, whole and perfect and shining. – Richard Wagamese – Embers (one of my favorite books)

Richard life was not a easy one, his painted canvas contained many difficult and dark bush strokes. Richard had to climb the mountain a few times. I feel he was someone who got to where he was going, realizing the mountains as mountains and was content, Transparent to the Transcendent.

Hi Anita

On the contrary I found it quite ‘enlightening’ to have someone reflect my thoughts back to me. The way I communicate can be… confusing, and you were kind enough to read what I wrote from a place of compassion. I felt that we were both trying to, get at a something…articulate what maybe can’t be articulated..

You seemed concerned when I expressed disappointment in the events of the day wondering if it was disillusionment. That surprised me and still pondering that. As in the other conversation with Jana, I don’t think the experiences of anger or disappointment are ‘wrong’ in and of them selves, or to be avoided. They just are and can be useful in getting us to act. Its the energies (and where the energy comes from, often emotions) we feed those experiences that matter. I’ll need to take some time to see if I’m been honest with myself as it concerns disillusionment.

I also feel selfish for engaging in analysis that I find so enjoyable, without fully considering how it came across to you.

LOL you may have some type 5 in you. 🙂 FYI the supper power of a type 5 is detachment and not taking things personally… detachment sadly is also its kryptonite.
You might notice I tend to stay away from the post asking for advice, especially relationship advice. To be candid I tend to post when I’m trying to make my own thoughts clearer and or see if I can express something I’ve experienced. More often then not what sounds so good in my head/heart doesn’t come out that way. The Tinny Buddha is I feel a safe place to do that

Hope your having a good weekend.

Hi Anita

I posted about “The Life Impossible” by Matt Haig as I felt it fit the topic of Blank Canvas
The student character does indeed seem stuck, depressed and maybe suicidal. I thought that the way he expressed himself would resonate with a lot of people.
The response the character gets from his old math teacher is a story of the Teachers struggle with similar feelings and then experience of the impossible possible. The book is worth a read for anyone that has had similar thoughts the student has.

I liked that the Teacher didn’t judge his thoughts or try to take him out of them, but through story suggests… what I’ll call the eternal now view of connection.

What strikes me about these stories is that the characters find a contentment even as they still at time experience disappointment or concern for world happenings. Here language begins to fail as it returns to silence…

“Before one studies Zen, mountains are mountains and waters are waters; after a first glimpse into the truth of Zen, mountains are no longer mountains and waters are no longer waters; after enlightenment, mountains are once again mountains and waters once again waters.” Dogen

I don’t know what enlightenment is. I have had peek experiences that brought ‘colour’ into my world. And there was a time I might thought/hoped that those experiences would have change the world some how but such hope was… unskillful. Still I am grateful for the experiences, just… not in how I then measured and so tried to control them.

I know if I say that I don’t believe or hope… that many will find that scary and maybe even label that as depression. But its actually quite freeing. There is no need to hope or believe when the mind is still – Love comes into being when the mind is naturally quiet, not made quiet… – The suggestion here is that all belief and things like hope are constructs of the mind and all constructs constrict. Let the constructs go and everything opens up. This is the blank canvas.

Reading ‘The Life Impossible by Matt Haig. Matt has been candid about his tendency towards depression and suicidal struggles, which make his stories very much worth reading. He fascinates me because its clear he ‘knows’ the experience of all things connected and that the answer to Life as it Is, is a authentic Yes, yet this ‘knowing’ has not kept him from his depressive experiences, though it seems to have helped him move through the experiences.

The Life Impossible starts to with a young person letter to a math teacher asking for help, which very much resonated with me.

…
At times I have found it very hard to carry on. It feels my life is already written at this young age and everything is known. I sometimes can’t breathe with all the pressure.
I am in a pattern, like a number pattern, a Fibonacci sequence – 0,1,2,3,5,8,13,21… – and like that sequence things get less surprising the further I go on. But instead of realizing the next number is found by adding the two before it, you realize that everything ahead of you has already been decided. And as I get older, as I pass more numbers, the pattern becomes more predictable. And nothing can break that pattern. I used to believe in God but now I don’t believe in anything. I was in love but I messed that up. I hate myself sometimes. I mess everything thing up. I feel guilty all the time… and I feel guilty for that too..
I look at what is happening in the world and I see that our whole species is on a path to destruction. Like it is programmed, another pattern. And I just get fed up with being a human, being this small tiny thing that can’t do anything about the world. Everything feels impossible…
Matt Haig – The Life Impossible

(The novel is the response of the math teacher)

I suspect a lot of people can identify with those questions and thoughts, especially in this digital age where everything including ourselves is becoming a algorithm.

The experience of the blank canvas, beginner mind, Eternal Now… hasn’t and won’t make things different. The patterns remain… (My suspicion is that only forgiveness can change a pattern. Perhaps the only tool we have to influence life)
Still realizing the Eternal, their is a change which I can only describe as bitter sweet, which is a kind of contentment?
I suspect Campbell had it right when he said – “Realizing the relationship of the temporal moment to the eternal—not moment, but forever— is the sense of life.”

Richard Wagamese says it better

–
From our very first breath, we are in relationship. With that in-drawn draft of air, we become joined to everything that ever was, is and ever will be. When we exhale, we forget that relationship by virtue of the act of living.
Our breath commingles with all breath, and we are a part of everything. That’s the simple fact of things. We are born into a state of relationship. Relationships never end; they just change. In believing that lies the freedom to carry compassion, empathy, love, kindness and respect into and through whatever changes. We are made more by that practice. – Richard Wagamese

Hi Anita

You have a knack for writing. You ask a good question,  how this is changing your experience of life, of which I’m not sure how to answer. Language is surely troublesome.