Fascinating...

Hello again.

I have been away for 1.5 years.  A friend asked if I still created meaning in this space.  His simple prompt brought me back.

I re-read the last post.  How much does lyricism mean to most people?  The words I wrote feel more lyrical than comprehensible.  Much of the meaning with which I imbued them resides in their feel and flow.

How much does logic matter to most people?  Sure, language aims to convey meaning, but what type of meaning most moves people?  If you read that word "moves" and answered "logical," I would contest whether you've observed people very closely.

People seem to construct a bubble of logic, through which they view a reality that will forever remain distorted. Distortion is simply the nature of perception.  We all move through individual worlds, rubbing up against each other often with surprise and confusion.  Philosophers have noted this to various degrees of depth for millennia; I'm not making a new, or even very vehemently contested, point.

Due to this, I feel that logic cannot last.  It is useful, of course.  Without logic, we could not make scientific sense of the world.  However, logic does not yield the deep soul flow states of faith, love, trust, or loyalty.  Logic does not give us a reason to live.

So, ultimately, meaning does not reside in logic.

Ah, but here we encounter a lovely paradox, especially for writers.  To invoke in people a purely sub-rational, beautiful response, we must walk the logical path of language.  We accurately, almost artfully place commas and periods, and strive for few misspelled words.  Deviance in syntax and word form often causes more confusion than enlightenment and inspiration.

So, we must use logic to dismantle logic and inspire its counterpart.  I find this interchange between thought and feeling endlessly fascinating.

~Ryan

Comments and 'We' Creation

For most of my life, I was a person who never comments. If I suspected my words would become overly visible, I would avoid baring them.

I chose, still choose, to speak one-on-one. I can test the outer limits of eloquence, exercise verbal agility, embrace fragility. Only one other consciousness vies for psychic space. We can share, reflect, not too fast. Silence between us is soft, supple, easily woven.

In the last 8 months, I have learned extraordinary strategies for reaching people. If I chose, and trusted, I could expose these words to the eyes of millions.

We hesitate.

Why "we?" At that point it's no longer about me. To greet the minds of many, I must embody unity. I must speak from a position of pure empathetic understanding, of we.

Can I trust I'll achieve an accurate, inclusive message? That I'll fill the "we-space" with kindness? There's the key, "trust." I can't guarantee. But I can believe.

At least now, I'm no longer frightened to try.

You are my inspiration. Your eyes, the mind from which they derive the flavor of their gaze, give my words validity and vibrancy. You are the other half of a writer's mind. You lift musings from the realm of self-gratification to meaning.

How many yous do I need?

If I grow deeply bold, or perhaps by carefully crafted accident, millions, whom I'll never know, may see this.

But why or how does "seeing" matter? Millions can spare a glance, and never connect. Two people, who after seeing this acquaint themselves with thriving, may flourish. Perhaps they will fulfill the ultimate meaning: to choose to carry this seed, to embody the echo.

So clearly it's not about seeing. It's only partially about believing.

Again, how many is enough?

I used to tell myself, "One, only one. If I can reach and inspire one person, I'll have made a world of difference." Now I don't think "how many" is the right question. Numbers matter little. Connection matters more than greatly. Connection, laced with sharing, matters all.

You can reach one or millions. Most will never say. Most won't even know how to say, and may not even know until years later they've been reached. You will never know how many, no matter how visible you are.

The goal: reach. Only through reaching will our hands meet.

~Ryan

(lengthy) PS. If you see these words, I greet you! You are, as I said in the very first post, always welcome. If you believe in these words, invite a friend or acquaintance to share the experience.

If you connect with these words, invite ten. Or print and post them in visible places (but be spare; we don't want tree waste). Email or share, broadcast, them far and wide. Allow your words, your connective belief, to accompany them, as this for those who do not yet connect will validate them. Or riff off these words, make them your own, mold them to match your life and experiences. If they inspire you, filter them through your creative funnel and use them to inspire others. Your presence has made them possible, so don't feel you have to, though you may certainly and freely, give credit.

If you are unsure, don't feel you're ready, or otherwise need more time to think, feel supported in taking it. From the cosmic angle, there is always time. And from the human angle blended with the cosmos, the time you take, even years, will seem as a fraction of a blink.

I am beginning to understand

For a while at least, I think this will become my new mantra.

Climate destabilization. A solar-based life system. Perfect gratitude to the ultimate life-giver, the sun, creator of winds, granter of warmth, gravitationally generous.

Five pounds of trash per person per day. Seventy times this from industry. Conversion to biodegradation. Endless reuse. Ingenuity. I can choose. I can change (any and everything around me).

A food system in crisis. Biodynamics & grass farming. How seeds sewn and sung stir echoes.

A world in which open space shrinks daily. I can learn to live near those of unknown tendency and perspective. I will thrive and lay aside preference. I will dream in tandem. I will elevate the personal to the universal.

Our vast responsibility. My ability to grow evermore responsible. Everyday I learn to better live my proof.

The expanses of my brain. A lifestyle symbiotically attuned to muscle power. The fusion of feet and brain. Neurons in my intestines & heart. Through understanding, brain and body unify.

Internal energy systems. I work towards change to activate my surroundings. I learn to maintain my balance, to superimpose the serene over a wired world. I can master the middle space.

My infinite adaptability.

Running through it all: the extraordinary super-conscious union with loved ones. I am able to always expand this number. Someday, loved "manys" will prove more common.

The world of knowledge spreads before me, vast, previously impenetrable. Speckles of clarity begin to glow. Tentatively, I commit to a rare, new knowing: what is truly important.

I can't help repeating it: I can choose (when to act, how hard and far to push, reasons for committing, whom to ignite, how to articulate).

When will I?

~Everyone

(ghost-writer/sub-speaker: ~Ryan)

A note to a dear friend

Regenerative conversations mean to me the co-composition of serenity.

Maybe that's a little arcane. When we speak of life and bright motion and glowing and pure focused joy, something somewhere grows more aligned. What are we aligning? I hope the following note will make things a little clearer:

Affirming the vitality of nature, I lovingly held, lightly, a tree branch a step off a trail near here. When I saw someone coming, who had clearly seen me, I jumped a bit and turned back to walking. Maybe that was a little silly, but I just felt ...silence... in that branch. The whole, open, internal depth whoosh through my spirit silence.

A kind of silence that never actually falls into soundlessness. In defining silence, the dictionary falls short. I don't think of it as a lack of sound.

Silence understood yields, and thus may claim as definition, an abundance of calm.

~Ryan

P.S. Do you know what it means to seek non-rational clarity? I'm not sure I do myself. I wonder if that's the point?

Rewiring situations - a conversation with culture

Another of my chief fascinations: figuring out what the human brain is truly capable of. I feel that people do a fantastic job of stretching the brain's processing power. But what about its capacity for emotional redefinition? As humans, are we bound to anything? Is any reaction inevitable?

This story comes in countless forms, and plumes tireless tributaries. I chose conversational and instructive. I also enjoy poetic.

Culture gets the quotation marks. I'll take the quote-free flow.

Sometimes things go sour. I never fail to feel astonished when delving into my culture. When things suck, it tells me to feel bad, annoyed, disturbed, sad, broken. But what if I don't like feeling those things?

"Too bad," states culture. "Things went sour. You have to feel emotionally disjointed."

So I'm bound to respond with fire and fracture? The situation controls me, not I it?

"If that doesn't work for you, look at it this way. You have a right to be angry. You know that flash inside, that jangling, chemical upthrusty feeling, the rush of popping fizz? Those are the angry bees. They buzz inside, stinging. You just can't do anything about them."

But what if I like bees? What if I choose to welcome all sensations, no matter their nature, no matter how I react to them initially? What if I learn to love the hated?

"Oh no, don't do that! It's... not natural! Plus, you're human. You will feel anger. It's what humans do. Get over it, and don't try to mask it with niceties."

I know, and I won't. But I do not fear anger. I welcome it. I am human, and thus capable of any reaction. This can mean angry bees, or it can mean windswept flowers. I choose.

"Pssh, it's not so simple! You can't just say 'okay, nice anger, good anger, that's a fine trick! Now I'm just gonna set you aside for now and be happy.' It is what it is, and you won't expel it so easily."

Consider the nature of choice. When you choose to go vegan, is it as simple as "I'm a vegan!" and there you go? Of course not. This is true of all choices. When I choose happiness, I do precisely this: commit to cultivating all perspectives and actions that will maximize happiness in every moment of my existence. I don't ask for perfection. I ask for sustained commitment, for belief that it's possible. And then I go out and get it.

"If only it were so easy."

Does that really sound all that easy? Just because it's packed into so few words doesn't make it easy. What if I say, "Climb Mount Everest?" That's only three words. Few would assume or assert ease here. Here's the important part about climbing Mt. Everest, though: you can imagine the difficulties. We're all far more attuned to physical limitations and challenges than emotional. Moment-by-moment happiness and scaling the world's tallest peak share surprising facets, though on different planes.

"Then elucidate us, if you're so smart."

Now now, culture. Or should I call you ego? In this issue, you are one and the same. No need to get snippy. What role would you have if I no longer got angry?

"I can't tell you that. It would give you far too much control."

Okay, fair spoken. Allow me to guess. You would disappear. I would no longer need your voice. Something a fair sight more ancient would guide my choices and actions. Do I feel I can name this guide? Humans have the depthless ability to label, so certainly I could, but I don't need to.

I trust.

There is always more to this story. What would you add?

Hand-in-hand, we dance.

~Ryan

Trees, walking & we

I've identified one of my greatest wishes: I hope our future, 100 years hence, knows trees.

(A brief note: I use the word "my" as a shortcut, a convenience. Everyone understands it. But I do not adhere to its claims. Ultimately, I own nothing.)

From my apartment balcony, I can see hills at times misted, fully clothed in trees. Since I've set car wheel, more regularly foot, in Fayetteville, I've longed to walk among them. One day soon, I will move miles, from here to them in more than spirit.

Four years ago, I looped for countless miles along tree-lined winding paths in Australia, following the sounds of bell birds like wind chimes and sparkles made aural. I still remember the thick, rough-cut gravel; the distant sight of a city in the throes of progress; a discarded couch; a froth of cattails pluming from a pond; singing solo in a long tunnel, giving heart and welcome to reverberation.

What will I find on the outskirts of this town, where most tend to look with curiosity and control rather than fervor and wonder?

I hope I won't first find trash.

Though, that's the perfect moment to pause and consider. Humans live on land, rarely in land. Trash stains land's surface, but fails to blemish its essence.

A Buddhist class I had years back compared the mind to the sea. Prey to winds and torrential currents, we grow preoccupied with the surface, its thrashing, crashing waves. That's where we find most people's form of action, the blinking and flashing and explosive energy. But some sections of the sea reach depths of ten miles. Beneath the waves, all holds calm and steady. The highest tidal wave reaches 100 feet. The lowest deep, 50,000. If essential we are as sea, troubles of life are to us as drops in a rain shower.

I always liked that. I felt in it a form of truth no rationale could craft.

Challenges do arise, always. Even when they hurt, once I work through haze and see them clearly, I like them as well. Rest well.

~Ryan

Learning & Living

I considered learning to live or living to learn. Both felt inadequate, somewhat antiquated, maybe even cliched. But that's all right, if they're true.

Not quite, though. Neither defines the other, though both augment each other. I could play a lot of linguistic games right now, but I'll resist.

Here's what I mean to say: I'm learning so much lately, I scarcely know what to do with myself. Except keep diving for greater, clearer knowledge. Allow me to give a few samples.

1) It is not only possible to live well in America without owning a car. It is preferable. It will almost certainly make your life better. Search for Chris Balish. Please.

2) I am atoms that like each other so much, they've decided to remain close knit for as long as my physical form flourishes. I fail to fully represent my gratitude when I thank them.

3) I am at once a small fraction and the ultimate source of love.

4) Zooplankton, the ocean's smallest organism, now feast on plastic, closing the cycle. All creatures' innards across the globe are working to find a solution to humanity's greatest, most durable, lavishly abundant polymer.

5) No matter what they've held, or how hard they've striven, your hands are delicate. I only see this when I listen deeply.

6) I feel closer to trees than monkeys. Monkeys are closer to trees than me. On a level of pure kinship, I'm not sure how this can be.

7) Humans are transitioning. Is primality compatible with intellect? Can the drive to survive, seek, & copulate, alongside perfect energetic neo-cortical existence, co-create global unity?

8) An act of passion or sincerity, no matter its substance, breeds change. Everyday, every moment, every action, I do the world a favor if I select a smile.

9) Non-profits need systems of management. I am creating a membership plan for the OMNI Center.

9 part 2) The most supple organizations lack leadership, and thus any form of rationally understood "organization." With this fundamental defiance, they are unstoppable. But how do plans work for the undefined?

9 part 3) The definitions of rational and irrational are rapidly changing. "Organization" is far more fluid than I could have ever imagined.

10) I may never see you again. That's okay. Let's hold together, just for the while we share, and shine.

Learning is an arresting process. It always involves you, me, and everything else. I only hope that, when faced with the powerful immediacy of you, and the presence of me I am blessed to welcome always, I do not forget everything else.

I know nothing with greater certainty: tomorrow will be wonderful.

~Ryan