Magic in the Sunrise

I was walking in the greenbelt behind my house this morning when I saw the sunlight color the clouds on the eastern horizon crimson. The silver and gray clouds came alive with color and promised wonders and possibilities for today. The sky behind the glowing clouds gradually lit up, as the blue in the sky became lighter the little flecks of cloud scattered around the openings in the crimson draped billows began to glow white, like doves heralding the coming day.

I wasn’t imagining that today would be special in any way. I had planned to go food shopping this morning, buy another network cable and work a little on my web designs. But the magic of the sunrise sharply contrasted with my low expectations, shaking my patterns loose. Why not imagine that miracles are immanent! I know that I perceive my reality only as big as I can imagine. If my imagination is limited or my expectations too small, there’s not much room for the miraculous.

I was always drawn to magic, interested in the possibility that ordinary reality was just a covering over an exciting, creative and wondrous world where wishes were granted and miracles were commonplace. I didn’t find this reality in the realms of scientific knowledge, although I have to admit there are some wondrous and imaginative possibilities in the physical universe. I didn’t find it in religions or spiritual practice. Surprisingly, I found that world inside myself, the last place I thought to look.

I am still exploring the miraculous and the magical, yet feel more like it reveals itself to me as doors in myself opening. I thought there was a place I had to discover or a competition I had to win to prove myself worthy before I would be admitted into the company of gods, orators, inventors, artists, healers and writers, the creative people who’ve added their touch to the fabric of human possibilities. Instead, I am finding that the more I know myself, the more I know what it is to be human and the better able I become to bring my dreams into play in this world. What more wonderful, magical reality could I possibly want!

Avoiding Others and Losing Sleep

This morning, I awakened into my immediate world. I had projects on my mind, I had ideas about web designs running and thoughts about trips and household projects running. All these ideas and projections are unusual. It's as if these ideas and projects had suddenly become the most important thing in my life.

At first, I thought I had become present to the opportunities and challenges of my current life in a new way. It seemed like they had just moved into the foreground and replaced another set of interests and concerns that now seemed selfish and small. Then, I remembered my dreams last night.

I slept soundly until about 2:00 am, then I was awake. This has happened for the last several nights in a row, reminiscent of the sleep challenges I had a while back. I took some GABA to see if it would help settle me and relax me. It did, and I went back to sleep a little after 3:00 am. I dreamt I was traveling with my brother and his wife. We were staying at some sort of resort and we walked out into a beautiful deck area that was adjacent to green meadows, with large bodies of water surrounding it, ringed by high mountains with some interesting, repetitive patterns in them. A certain light colored rock made up a number of the mountains scattered among darker ones.

I became aware that I was naked, although it seemed to be acceptable in this place. However, I was very uncomfortable. I sat on the deck kind of huddled over, sitting in the direct sunlight without sunscreen in the hopes that no one would notice that I wasn't wearing anything. More people were coming out on the deck to enjoy the view and the water, most of them wearing bathing suits and the others fully dressed. I felt more self-conscious. My brother and sister-in-law encouraged me to join them, but I wasn't sure they had noticed I was naked, so I went inside, trying to avoid as many people as I could.

I found a bench in an out-of-the-way room and sat down, hoping to avoid being seen. As I sat there, I finally had time to look at myself and, to my delight, discovered that I was wearing boxer shorts. Although the shorts could be revealing, I was relieved that I was wearing something after all. No wonder my brother and his wife, as well as the rest of the people, hadn't seemed to notice that I was naked.

When I began writing this dream, I was thinking that it simply represented a kind of stress in my life, a concern about what others think about me, which could explain the alertness in the middle of the night and my awakening this morning with projects on my mind. However, as I was typing the dream, I noticed the feeling of the dream, a sense of being an outsider, trying to avoid being seen by others because it will bring trouble, looking for out-of-the-way places to be where I won't be noticed. These are feelings that I've experienced much of my life. I live a quiet, out-of-the-way life, and mostly keep to myself. I've wondered why I don't spend more time with friends or be more social.

My dream reminds me of the history from which I've emerged, a history of fearing what others think of me, believing that I'm weird and defective so that I need to hide my true self to avoid disaster. That's a deep insight into waking up with projects on my mind, ready to please everyone with whom I'm working, ready to get interested in things that others like. Maybe that's the stress that has been waking me too early from my sleep at night.

Letting Go of Old Dreams; Nourishing Today's

The rain and snow predicted for Santa Fe yesterday did not materialize. There were a few snow flurries but not more than a trace or moisture fell. It's amazing to watch the unfolding drought conditions; Santa Fe has not had any significant moisture since last October or November. To say that conditions are dry is an understatement. The trees, shrubs and grasses are like a tinder box waiting for a spark to set them ablaze.

If I had the power to call the rain, I would. In fact, I have tried. I would love for the plants and animals to have their fill of water, but the storms continue to go elsewhere.

There is likely significance to having these drought conditions where I live. It's like a parched feeling, a dryness that lives in me. If I assume that this condition expresses something about me, I might venture onto aspects of myself that are parched and dry.

I don't believe that drought is always a bad thing. One way to stop unwanted plants from growing in a garden is to quit watering them. During wetter days in Santa Fe, I watered my back yard weekly just to keep the native grasses alive and thriving so my children would have a hospitable place to play outside. However, alfalfa managed to get a footing in the yard, and thrived, taking up a lot of space and choking out grasses that might have grown in its place. I quit watering the yard when the dry years began, and the yard has reverted to high-desert grasses and cactus like the surrounding area. There is still some alfalfa, but it doesn't thrive on the low volume of water and moisture that comes its way.

This is the gift of a drought. It eliminates the living things that cannot survive dry conditions. And there must be plenty of sprouts that I carry inside me, dreams and goals that attached to me over the years from many sources. Perhaps a teacher encouraged me to consider being a priest or I imagined I wanted to be a poet while reading Walt Whitman during a journey. I don't want to be a priest or a poet, now, but have I ever released the dream or the energy tied up with them? Maybe having a drought in my world is a symbolic way of cutting off the supply of water, life force, that nourishes old dreams.

There are, of course, many programs in me that are attached to words like "should," "must" and "ought to." I did not choose to continue my career in physics but the dream lingers in the misty realms inside me where I was so strongly influenced to follow other people's hopes and aspirations. If I quit watering it, if I let it die now to conserve my energy for the things I choose now, I can let the drought work for me. So, I'd like to let go of all those irrelevant and distracting dreams/hopes/aspirations that no longer have meaning in my life. I want to use the resources of my life more efficiently to nourish the dream that I want to realize.

Putting Myself First

I had to vary my routine this morning to help my son decide whether to go to school this morning or stay home for another day. He was very sick over the weekend with a fever above 104º, headache and other high fever symptoms. He began taking antibiotics on Sunday evening and was feeling much better yesterday. He spent a lot of the day catching up on homework, trying to get ready to go back to school today, but he didn't feel as well this morning as he had hoped. When I asked him how he felt, he told me he had an intense headache but had taken an Ibuprofen and was still planning to go to school. I encouraged him to consider not going or going to school late and not taking the Chemistry test so he has more time to recover. We consulted with my wife/his mother and he decided to stay home another day.

He's confronting the pressures of life as scheduled and regulated by a school. I still struggle with the same pressures when I am faced with a deadline. I was happy to help him put himself first in this situation. This is not something I knew how to do when I was a young man. I believed that the deadlines and rules were more important than I was, so that seeking exceptions to the rules or postponing deadlines rarely seemed an option for me.

I'm glad I was able to support my son in making choices that support his well-being. I am able to do that for myself, now, as well, although I had to work hard to break the spell that my childhood programming created. I still have a tendency to make rules and deadlines imposed by others sacrosanct, but I don't like the way I feel when I ignore my needs and my dreams to adhere to someone else's timetable. If I don't choose for myself right at the beginning, I usually notice that I don't feel well or right somewhere down the road and make the necessary adjustments, then. Either way, I am better able to enjoy my life and make my dreams more important in my life than anyone else's.

Why Take the Most Challenging Path?

I can tell that my immune system is a bit compromised. Yesterday, I had a slight headache and last evening my throat glands became swollen, as I felt tired and a bit feverish. I took some herbs last evening and went to bed early to give myself a rest. This morning, I feel better although I can tell my immune system is working something out.

This has inspired me to consider how I am compromised in my life. Where am I working too hard and in what ways am I putting unnecessary pressure on myself? As I think about this, I immediately think of my website design work. I am working on a site for a local chorus and am trying to learn CSS so that I can create the site using the most current design elements. However, this creates a lot of pressure for me, since they want their site finished by April. Instead of experimenting with various layouts and content configurations, I'm reading manuals to figure out how to do even the simplest layouts using CSS.

I would like to learn CSS and apply it to my web design work. This seems like an inopportune situation in which to learn it. Yes, it does motivate me to learn CSS if I try to use it to build the new site. However, I am also working on other projects and this adds pressure to what could be a simple project.

I've just decided that I'm going to drop the CSS requirement for now and get into designing the site in old-fashioned, but familiar HTML. I want to create an elegant and practical site, but I don't want to burden myself with learning CSS before I can do it. I am dropping the CSS to a lower priority so that I can finish the site easily and have some fun doing it. As I learn CSS, I can apply my skills to redesigning the site, if I have time and there's a reason to do it, then.

I see that my inner child wants me to know and use the latest design elements, so he insists that I must use it to build any new sites that I do. It's interesting to note that I still read that not all browsers can handle CSS. If the board who is making decisions about the site design and how to pay for it moves slowly enough, I will learn the CSS as I work on the site and can apply it as much as I want. If they are efficient in reaching their decisions, I won't have to learn a new language before building their site, so I can complete it simply and with more pleasure.

I'd like to note that I don't have to take the hardest path every time I do something. My inner child still wants to prove that he can, but I have different priorities and value my health and well-being more than proving I can learn CSS. I hope to catch any other ways I'm adding unnecessary stress to my life so I can eliminate it to enjoy my life more.

Bringing Focus to the Morning

I want to discuss the way I let my energy and focus scatter in the course of a day. In the morning, during meditation, I usually am able to focus on me, being myself, experiencing my energy and feeling moved to do certain things during the day. That sense of myself and doing what I want to do often doesn't last very long. I often lose my focus sometime after breakfast as I scan my email accounts and clear out the spam.

It may be that interacting with scores of email each morning distracts me and I get pulled into considering the various subjects of those emails and, unwittingly, the headline news, the business concerns and the spam subjects. It is quite a distracting force.

It might be that I lose my focus partly because my wife and I share comments about orders, emails and other online subjects while we're going through our email and Internet news. As I listen to her responses to items she comes across and share mine with her, I can imagine my inner child filling my day with activities that are sure to please her and others who emerge during the morning discussions. I am sensitive to what's important to others and my inner child immediately wants to do anything that will make others like me and respond positively to me.

I would like to see what happens if I proceed differently with the morning. I want to try scheduling a business partner meeting at 9:30 or 10:00 am, after we've each had time to clear our email accounts and get going with the business of our day. That way, when we come together, we can bring individual focus to the table. I would like to imagine that I can stay focused on my agenda. I seem prone to getting scattered and losing my concentration. This is inefficient and not satisfying to me. Maybe this will help.

Stress Less

I notice that I feel stress this morning. I'm not sure how long I've been feeling stress but I want to focus on my stress this morning to find a way to let it go. I don't have any real reason to feel stress, but I want to understand its source.

I have several projects that I'm working on right now. I have two website projects that are ongoing that I work on periodically, although one of them is for a friend who doesn't pressure me. In fact, he often gets involved with something else and doesn't contact me for a week or two, so that I don't proceed with the project until I hear from him. Right now, he's out of touch so I'm waiting to hear from him before I can proceed. The other website is for a chorus that wants their site up by April before their next concert. Depending on how quickly they give me information, I may or may not be able to meet that deadline.

I realize that the uncertainties surrounding both of these projects leaves me unsure of whether I can meet the expectations of these two clients. I can handle this problem by telling them what I can and can't do. For the chorus, I cannot proceed until they give me all the data and I may or may not be able to complete the site by April. I don't need to do this site. However, I am interested in doing it on my own terms. That means, I will work on the site but I can't promise I will finish it by their concert. I can get something up there by then, if they can provide information, a credit card number to pay domain name charges and hosting fees, and make decisions by then. I feel confident that telling them what I am willing to do for them will help me feel better, at least.

The music projects are moving along slowly, although I finally got back to reviewing my Logic Pro books to get myself up to speed on the software. It's amazing how much I have forgotten from my first two passes through the book. In each of the first three chapters I've reviewed, I've found at least one important item that I had totally forgotten which is extremely important. I'm also happy to note that this time through, everything feels familiar and makes perfect sense. I want to finish my review as we move along with the project, so I can be sure I'm using the software optimally.

My son is ill. That seems an area of concern where I feel uncomfortable. I'm not a doctor but my inner child thinks I have to do something to make him better (as if I could). I am confident, in spite of my inner child's fears, that his immune system can handle it. My inner child is pressuring me to do something, which is another source of the stress I feel.

I don't think that any of these projects or my son's illness is the cause of my stress. I believe that my inner child approaches everything in fear. He's afraid I won't learn the software. He's afraid that I won't complete the website by April. He's afraid that my client who is out of contact for the moment will be upset that I haven't finished yet. He's afraid that my son will miss another week of school and be punished for not getting his work done on time. Having just written that last sentence, I realize that this area is pretty charged for me. I don't think it's about my son, though. I'm guessing this refers to the fears and pressures I felt when I was in high school. Who knew that was still there?

None of this is realistic, but the fear in my inner child is a constant and looks for ways to find expression. I am not afraid of these tasks or any of the people with whom I'm working, so I can let it go. I am not afraid to take responsibility for what I can and cannot do. I would like to release the old stress regarding my school experiences which are not relevant to the current situation. I feel better already.