TAGGING TRANSCENDENCE

It occurred to me this morning that I have been an unwitting participant in my own life.  I don't recall ever asking to be here or reveling in joy once it became obvious I wasn't going anywhere else; at least not in the foreseeable future.

Oh, I'm sure my ever-loving soul has a handle on the larger picture, but what good does that do my conscious mind?

Okay, okay....meditation can lift me out of my body and enable me to commune with my spirit guides or my angels or whatever other disembodied entity feels compelled to take the floor; but honestly, am I willing to believe all that?  And what practical application can there be if I do?

I am no newcomer to the whole philosophy of consciousness expansion and transcendentalism, which is really seriously messed up given my present attitude towards much of it.

Since the age of fourteen when I stridently liberated my beleaguered psyche from the nuns and Catholic school, I have heavily perused, plumbed and, in some cases, propagated every belief system and metaphysical arena of thought that I could get my energetic forcefield around, with the only exception being all realms of obviously dark, satanic or just plain disturbing connivances.

 I spent untold hours in my teens and twenties twisting my limbs into yogic postures a white girl with knock knees and a D-cup has absolutely no business undertaking and totally messed up my inner ear chasing after my inner being with all that inner breathing.

And lets not forget the time I tore all the ligaments in the ball of my right foot while hoisting my top-heavy body through some yoga routine that was intended only as a meditative salutation to the sun; not as a preparatory drill prior to handling an assault weapon.  I was supposed to be finding God; instead I spent the afternoon looking for crutches.

Clearly, enlightenment was not to be found through my body.

In high school I was big into yoga and theosophy and the teachings of the ascended masters.  In college I took my turn at Transcendental Meditation.  During the initiation process (which came only after the two-hundred and fifty dollar fee was collected...a fee that has now risen up to $2,500!) I was given a mantra.  My mantra.  My SECRET mantra.

This was the sacred word that would lead me deep into those inner-space bubbles of cosmic thought; that would catapult my essence into the cosmos where I would unify with the Divine.   My mantra.

I was told that everyone was given a mantra unique to them; one whose supernatural beams were so imbedded in the soul that only God could void them.

I was instructed to repeat it to myself at the onset of meditation and strictly forbidden to share it with another living, prana-sucking soul or my vow of allegiance to my guru and ability to convene with the transcendent would be divinely revoked without any refunds.

For years I kept this evanescent blessing to myself; long after I had abandoned that particular avenue towards enlightenment.  I knew the power had gone out, or perhaps, it had never been fully plugged in;  but for whatever reason, I respected the directive of silence.

 At least until I began to understand that the only way I was going to charge my soul would be with a battery of illumination that came strictly from my heart and by freeing myself from the shackles of theosophical and dogmatic restriction wherein each doctrine and practice claim nirvana was best reached by swallowing their particular manna.

Eventually, I abandoned the notion that I could not become a more enlightened, holier person unless I became a rigid adherent of a specific belief system or placed my incomplete understanding in the Lotus-positioned lap of a highly-paid guru; someone already claiming to have tagged celestial base and is now home free.

Perhaps the first indication I had that there were more areas of separation than there were epiphanies of oneness came at the realization of one single deficit that every religion, belief system and formal, spiritual convention had in common:  The Us and Them factor.

From my early years of Catholicism to my years donning the theosophical garb of everything from Transcendentalism to Tarot cards, I found the singular thread of self-righteousness weaving a heavy garment of insolation throughout all of them.

Obviously, there were some outstanding and holy individuals within all of these churches and organizations who clearly understood the concept of humility and love and proved to be the exceptions.

 However, not in numbers enough to convince me that one way excelled over another.  In fact, I'll go out on a limb here and say that I witnessed far more examples of feint sacrosanctity within these hallowed halls of meditative plundering than ever I did at the mall or the pizza shop.

Once I removed myself from the metaphysical shackles of those esoteric rituals that seemed so foreign and out of sync with the daily confrontation of cosmopolitan artifice, I was able to finally understand unity in it's fullest sense.

 Suddenly, there was NO difference between me and them.  I had finally come within reach of grasping the blessed truth that I was, indeed, ONE with the heaving masses of pedestrian thinkers just trying to cope with whatever awaited them at the next sunrise.

I smiled with them, cried with them and reached deep into my reserve pockets of compassion to know them as I solemnly rejoiced at the fact that I AM them!

I am not begrudging anyone else the right to seek clarity by a specific path that resonates with them.  I am not implying that there is not great good in all forms and fashion of worship or that ritual is not a valuable technique in which broader doors of thought and understanding can be nudged open.  I am not even suggesting that everything, once it is confined within a regimented platform, is all smoke and mirrors.

Where God is sought, there He will be found.  He has no favorites.

However, for me, I find it best to canvass the world for greatness armed with humility and acceptance; particularly an acceptance of the fact that I am just a poor schlep like everyone else and one who claims no special edge, advantage or understanding of the game but only an unbreakable resolve and a willingness to try.

And so, when I at last spoke out and questioned others about my sacred and secret mantra, I was not at all surprised to discover that nearly everyone I asked had the same one that was given to me.  Upon further inquiry, I found that everyone of a particular age group at the time of initiation is given the same one!  At eighteen years old, my mantra was AING.

The way it unrolled for me mentally was A-ing.   'A' followed by ing, like the suffix forming verbs from nouns.  In retrospect it would appear that even then in my sincere but fickle quest for God and goodliness I was thinking like a writer.

I do find it uplifting and centering to attend mass on Sundays, and there was a period of years when I attended every morning.  There is something to be said for the tactile ignition of clean scented sanctity as it falls to earth in the devout gestures of sacred rituals, and I won't deny that transcendence is more easily glimpsed from an inviolable pew than from a gum-laden bench at a bus stop.

But easier is not necessarily better, nor is the experience always genuine.

I think that by graciously straddling despair as we steadfastly negotiate our daily truce with disappointment and struggle, we stand to yield far more redemptive graces and everlasting wisdom than could be gained from any mantra, mudra, meditation or surface investment in sanctified ritual.

So, for now, I'd rather seek God by mixing it up in the streets.


 Aight?

Tagging transcendence in the masses, yo......  Se la vie,  Aing.

DREAM ON THE SKIDS

 I've hit the fantasy skids today and am disheartened and pissed off.  At the moment, writing is the last form of distillation I want to apply.   But in the misbegotten cache of time it seems to be the only recourse founded in dignity.

It is, in fact, a sulking attempt to resurrect my heart after a life-threatening stoning by the indifference of fate to the fragile promise of happiness.  At least in a relational sense.  You know.  The kind involving bone and blood, touch and sight; the scent of hope with a kiss of heartache.

Normally, I would cry.  Or perhaps disappear for a time into the lucratively maddening crush of music and those blessed strains that pull gloom out by the throat until it wails in tune with survival.  But there is little normal about me and even less that would imply a standard reaction to a predictable end.

Are you confused yet?  Good.

Speaking in abstractions has two benefits:  For one thing, it protects the innocent and beguiles the clueless.  Secondly, it has profoundly lyrical potential.  One can vent and be poetic at the same time.  As an inveterate word whore, I can think of nothing else more satisfying.

But I had to relinquish a dream today.  Not that I didn't see it coming.  Not that I didn't know from the very beginning that there was an ending so radically apparent that it could light up the eyes of the blind.

However, denial can be one of my strong suits when I choose to favor dreams over reality, and as is always the case when facts are not fearlessly acknowledged, denial lets you know you've been had by delivering an even more brutal kick in the ass in the end.  Or maybe a kick in the end because you're an ass.  Same results:  muddled thoughts, cracked sensibilities and chipped optimism.

So, I live and learn; love and live; learn and love.  The combination is flawed but, apparently, recurrent.

Fortunately, my best ally is the unwavering application of hope as it can be handily dispensed in every life circumstance.   What am I hoping for now?  I haven't gotten that far.

My writing is going over well.  That is the one hopeful slice of my segmented aspirations.  I pick up three or four new people every day who add me to their list of favorites, and I've been told by some of the best and most respected writers on Open Salon that my writing blows them away.

This kind of praise is my drug.  It drives me to hit the streets of internal thought and turn linguistic tricks for the paying customers.

Okay.  They don't have to pay.

They just have to say, "Good writing, baby." and I'll give them all I've got.

At the moment my laptop pimp is telling me to lay off for the night, so I'm going to comply.

I can't afford to piss him off.  He's my sole hookup to the longed-for eventuality of landing in a better day.  On a safe street with lots of trees and soft vowels rounding out sentences of higher light and deeper joy.  But first I've got to finish paying my dues.

I'll write again tomorrow.  It is moving towards one o'clock in the morning.  Long past gloaming.

Even word whores have to sleep sometime.  Kiss-kiss.........

VIRTUAL VALIDATION

Yesterday morning I woke up to what I thought was going to be another semi-bland but open-ended band of hours that more than likely would not add up to anything terribly memorable by the time I couched my brain on my pillow again that night.

I was mistaken.

It would have been that kind of a day, if I had only stuck to my initial plan to clean out my closet.  I tend not to do that very often because I seldom fill it with anything new, so what is the point?

I am, what I consider to be, a very low-maintenance woman.

I don't follow fashion with any reliable interest; I don't color my hair and I wear it long, thereby eliminating routine bondage to hair salons; and as an artist, I work with my hands, which are predictably nicked and bruised from working with metals, have an uneven but curiously provocative assortment of broken nails and whose nail beds are often displaying the faded remnants of whatever inks or paints I exposed them to that day; so I don't get manicures.  In fact, I've never even had one.

But I made a strategic misstep yesterday as I was eyeing the over-sized, faded blue shirt I often wear to work in, trying to decide if I was woman enough to let go of the years of comfort I felt being artsy in the thing and get rid of it:  I checked my laptop for Open Salon updates.

When will I learn to stay on track?

It was there that I learned from Joan H., another writer on OS, that my post from yesterday had been selected as an Editor's Pick!  I was beyond ecstatic!  It had been a long-awaited moment (try fifty-four years!) for this kind of validation and was so incredibly freeing that my soul said to me, "It's okay.  You can cry now." And so I did.  Obviously, tears of great joy.

I had been told by many of the contributors that my rise in popularity and rankings on OS within such a short span was fairly impressive; that it can take writers eight months to a year before they get much notice at all from other writers and that most of them never find themselves chosen by the Open Salon editorial staff for the homepage as an Editor's Pick. To have become noticed and favored with EP within a mere three weeks was no mean feat, or so I heard.

That is all well and good, but my satisfaction comes at being recognized and valued for my writing efforts; plain and simple.  To have worked hard and earned the respect of other writers who have held the bar high is like being reborn....in an intellectual's body.

However, my free-fall into bliss was significantly tempered by my next move, which was to read all the comments following the post.  All but two were happily supportive and encouraging and that should have been enough to provide me with an escape from the sodden knot of concern as it slowly lodged itself in the middle of my throat after I read the couple comments that were not as forgiving nor as favorable.  I think it was because I really didn't see it coming.  Not in the slightest way, so it hit me hard; like being sucker-punched by your favorite cousin.  But then again, they were attacking the content of my post; not the writing.  I was good.

Still, it was upsetting because that is not how I see myself; as someone who rocks the apple cart just to watch the worms fall out.  I'm more the one who coaxes the worms out and then finds them all a new home in the potted geraniums.  It is important to me that everyone is happy.  At least on my watch.

But as much as I felt a bit stunned and, certainly, wounded to a degree; as the day wore on, those feelings had melded into an entirely new sensation so that, as early evening staked its claim on the hours, I felt grateful.  I also felt enlightened.

I had even stepped out and debated my detractors.  One was easily settled as a misunderstanding.  The other, well, she just kept on coming like a feral cat at a cheese convention.

  Actually, I went to this woman's page to discover that not only does she never post anything herself, but that I was the only one she was commenting on.  At least until another blogger wrote about beauty pageants!  Then she sharpened her claws and took off down another trail of harassment.  There will always be those for whom nothing matters except being right.

Perhaps the most salient lessons for me were that:  1.) You can't please everyone, and 2.)  It is much more difficult than I previously believed to convey honesty and humility when people think you have a better gig than they do.

The contentious blog had been the one written weeks ago about my experience growing up as a child/young adult of indistinct physical presence surrounded by the genetically graced beauty of my grandmother, mother and only sister.  (Repost and re-edited)  It was called Relative Beauty and was an attempt at understanding the role beauty played in their lives and to reconcile the childhood I knew with the emerging recognition I have gotten as I merged into my fifties.  I call that gesture of superficial recognition "shallow esteem" because it is nothing I earned and has little bearing on the person I have been fitfully crafting for over five decades.

Quite honestly, I remain confounded by all of it.

Yet I have become obsessed.  All that matters to me at this point is growing as a writer.  As and artist?  Sort of.  But not really.  I enjoy that gig but only in that it is another challenge.  I loathe redundancy and boredom.

The ramifications could be severe in terms of how my rabid pursuit of this end impacts my personal life.  But, hell,  aside from being a mother to my children, (all of whom, as of August 1st, will be out of the house) my personal life leaves something to be desired.  It could probably do with a good purging.

I've become quite good at that this year.

If anyone reading this would like to follow the thread of comments under the blog that ornamented one of my best and also, most interesting days, just look me up on Open Salon.

I'll be there honing my skills in anticipation of lift off.
Ten, nine, eight, seven, six...........

WHERE HAVE ALL THE BLOGSPOTS GONE?

If anyone wonders where I've gone, I haven't gone far.

Well, that is not entirely true.  I have.  Just not logistically.

A couple of weeks ago I was trolling through Google looking for what, I can't even remember.  In my search I came upon a link to a blog that must have had something to do with what I was looking for, I suppose; so, I clicked on it and was brought to a writer's blog site and forum called Open Salon.

I cruised the layout on my cyber wheels for about an hour and was impressed because it was so interactive.  A writer would put up a post and other writers would read and comment on it.  Immediate peer feedback!  What could be better.....or more terrifying?

I decided to give it a go in spite of the hard knot in my solar plexus and the caustic refrain, "You're no writer!  Are you nuts?  You don't belong there!" that circled the inside of my thick skull like a noxious vulture of cognition craving another morsel of despair and regret.

I listed my first post on May 10th, and I was so hungry for connections that I was cutting and pasting two posts a day, which I have since learned is not terribly smart.  There is so much on O.S. with so many, many contributors, and because there is so much there to read, they tend to read only what is headlined on your page without scanning down for earlier efforts.

Of course, unbeknownst to me at the time, this meant that half of my blogs were not getting any recognition, and the one featured was up for such a short time because of my quick turnovers that it, too, was hardly garnering more than a glance before it was replaced.

But in spite of the apparent lack of interest in my blogs, I was happy to be there and absorbed myself in reading the excellent writing of others as well as making some whose writing I particularly enjoyed, my 'favorites.  That is another benefit of this particular site.  You have the ability to select and then to follow and comment on other writers who appeal to you.  And if a comment needs to be made that is of a more delicate or personal nature, you have the option to send a 'PM', personal message.  That is also a method used to connect more deeply with another OS writer when camaraderie is evident.

But on May 13th I received my first comment and made my first OS connection.  It took a few more postings over the subsequent five days before I finally found myself receiving more than one or two comments per.  One contributor in particular was impressed enough with my efforts that he sent an email to all of the OS'ers he knows introducing them to my work.

That was on May 19th, and this same contributor notified me a couple of days later that I had done what is virtually unheard of in that I landed a number three ranking in 'popularity'; something, he informed me, that usually takes a 'newbie' a minimum of eight months to a year to achieve, if they achieve it at all, which most do not.

I read that message just after consuming the whole of a Saturday morning and half of the afternoon writing, "Hello, My Name is Susan and I am a Word-aholic" and burst into tears.

I have waited my whole life for validation like that.  Okay.  Not my 'whole' life, but certainly since my 7th grade English teacher informed my mother and father that I had a gift and was writing well above high school level.  It was the first, and basically, the only, positive endorsement from the halls of academia ever to grace me and I clung to it with the ferocity of rabid animal.  It was the only positive, the only gift, the only good that I could then honestly associate with myself.  Without it, I was invisible; with it, invincible.

The double-edged sword there is the unexpected but very real, deep fear of loss that it ignited within me.

As long as that ability went unchallenged and unrecognized, there was little risk of failure, and without failure to dim the gift or disprove it, it remained true and it remained mine.  No matter how badly I failed in all the other areas of my life, (and there is a vast array of them) I could, and did, say to myself, "But I am a really good writer."

Of course, the only ones aware of this were those I corresponded with via letters or email or the smattering of those who stumbled upon a poem I'd written here and there via those connections.
But it didn't matter.  It was my gift and it made me acceptable  to myself, and on days when I needed it to, it let me believe I was above average and special, at least in this one area.

I protected my ability in order to retain it.  Talk about backward logic.

Art was a different matter.  I have no innate talent in that area and have had to work hard to get even this far; much harder than I do with the words, which come effortlessly and need only editorial attention to craft into something halfway unique, compelling and worth reading.

I am not a natural artist.  In fact, any legitimate artist will tell you I suck at it.  Oh, I have ways of injecting enough dazzle into it to make it somewhat interesting, odd or appealing, but nothing spectacular.  My work is mediocre at best.  At worst, it is confusing and primitive.

But the bottom line is that I don't care about it.  Not in the way I do about my writing, and if someone were to say to me that they find nothing of value in my artwork, I wouldn't lose any sleep over it.   I don't see anything of value in it half the time either.

However, if I were to be faced with indifference or repeated rejection with my writing, I would have to leave civilization and go live in an abandoned bus in the Alaskan wilderness.  I would have to become fiercely religious, change my name to Shanti and give up all worldly attachments.

I don't really look like a Shanti.  It would be very awkward.

Happily, my experience exposing my words and, really, my soul, to the intelligent readership of OS has exceeded my wildest dreams in terms of positive response and validation, and I am so relieved I don't have to live on that broken down bus.

Just yesterday another OSer informed me that a group of editors had anonymously submitted my latest post ( a repost taken from this blog site and written in April) to the OS Editor page, which is a page of recommended reading.  But apart from that, the comments I have been receiving are well-beyond mind-blowingly supportive, and my mind is duly blown.

Apparently my ascension from obscurity to highly-praised visibility on OS has been abnormally swift, and while I know that life is full of flukes and that nothing, even the things that temporarily seem to place us at the top of the heap, lasts forever; I am working it as though my life depended on it and as though rendering my words immortal is all I am here to do.   In many ways I believe it is.

I know that this is just a first step.  A baby step, at most.  But it IS a step and one that is encouraging in me a great run up another flight.  I can't describe it and already feel awkward and self-aggrandizing relating this much.  I have no one else to tell.  So I transcribe my joy in this blog for whomever is listening or even vaguely gives a damn.  Believe me, no one in this house does.

But I will likely continue submitting my writing efforts to OS indefinitely.  I will do as I have done, which is to compose the blogs here first, then just cut and paste them onto OS.  The reason I have not been as consistent in writing here is because I've been cheating and doing a cut and paste on pieces I have already written here then reposting them on OS.  Obviously, I'm not going to post them again in this blog spot, which means that sometimes nothing new gets posted here for a few days.

However, if you would like to go to Open Salon and type in my name, Susan Creamer Joy, you would have access to everything.  Even the comments, although I don't think you can leave a comment there unless you sign up as a site member.  It is free, but it still might not be for everyone.

So, that is where I have been.  Still right here, still attempting to craft a wordy bridge from my subjective reality to one I don't naturally trust and barely understand.  Nothing has changed.  Except that everything has.

For the first time in my life, I think I can break out of this corroded, beleaguered, hard shell surrounding me; the composite blend of everyone else's life but my own with its jagged outer layer of my  compendious regrets and failures sealing the mix tight against my soul.

Fear is not an option.  Neither is restraint.

I'm all in.

And if anyone would like to join me, please do.  But as I said, I will still keep posting the new things here as well as there.  However, during those stretches when I cannot be found slamming out prose and poetry here, just go to:   http://open.salon.com/blog/susancreamerjoy

You will likely find then, a repost of something I wrote here initially, but odds are it will have been edited and tweaked a bit.  The bar is much higher writing in plain view of the excellence on Open Salon.
It forces me to reach into pockets of possibility for the odd bits of perfection and gum wrappers I might have stashed in there.

I am sure there is the chance I may not find you there, but one thing I is certain:  I will find myself.