Blog 54 The Quality of My Death (Gary)
I walk the hill alone today. There is gusting rain and fog on The Hill. I must go. I am pulled by The Hill and I must respond. I ignore the blacktop leg of the hike to the trailhead, and look forward to entering the sanctuary of the open space.
I brought my iPod, which quite normally I would judge as an intrusion into Nature, but to me it's a new toy that I must play with. I am listening to David Deida (The Way of the Superior Man, 2017) lecture on love, passion, and heart. It is an intrusion on the soul of Nature, yet it blends by subject.
I am wearing Levis and a rain jacket. My pants are buffeted by wind and rain, but that's okay; I am warm enough on the inside with a long sleeve pullover and a Polartec top. There is no one on the trail, and I am loving it: the closer to the summit, the more severe the weather and the denser the fog.
I feel a sense that I would be an unconscious easy prey for a mountain lion as I am cocooned inside my rainwear. I hear only gusts of wind and rain outside of my iPod lecture hall. I reach into the outer pocket of my fanny pack and pull out the scabbard containing my razor-sharp knife with its ten-inch blade and molded grip that I carry for safety, and place it in my right rain pocket and keep my hand on the handle. I am totally contained now. I am safe and “snug as a bug in a rug,” as my mother used to say.
I have another realization in the writing of this that I pulled my knife less for safety and more for not wanting to risk embarrassment. I feared being killed only if I didn’t protect myself. This was akin to the situation I was so chagrined to realize in Vietnam.
I was put in a possible attack situation where I was alone and couldn’t really protect myself against what I understood to be overwhelming odds. I didn’t want to die a fool or in shame. Believe me or not, I wasn’t afraid to die in a fight but I had some pride in how I died. Dying was a given; dying alone in shame and embarrassment was not acceptable: a BAD feeling believe me especially having experienced abandonment as a child. This was my worst moment. At least on The Hill I had some control over the quality of my death, here and now.
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Blog 53 Men of Fire (Gary)
At this moment I am sitting on a hilltop waiting for my Men of Fire group to arrive, a heart centered group of men that I have led for eighteen years. I have a slight ache in my side (still trying to cleanse my liver) but I am comfortable in my inflated camp chair, sitting atop a slight mound of gravel and moss between two large oaks, with a view down into dry grasses and a forest of mostly pine.
Ah, smell the clean air. Life is good. I don't need no stinkin’ fantasies. I am HERE, and my wife says I am important. How about that! I have actually prided myself on being unimportant. I have to laugh a little. Somehow that is a funny part of my journey, another piece of the past that no longer serves me. I choose to let it go and accept (perhaps) that someone really loves me and thinks I am important. Okay, so I am still absorbing that possibility. Big inhale. It's good to be important to someone. I just don't want it to go to my head. I've had practice at this so I think I am good. I wish I could smoke a cigar here and maybe have a glass of champagne, a little celebration of self. Why not? No fires or smoking, high fire danger. Darn, I had to bring that up. Maybe in another place like this soon. That would be good, HO! I don't know why it was so fun writing this today, but it was.
I've been reflecting, and I've come to see the trail as no longer dirt and stone, but ironically as a mirror, flattening my illusions and countering my false beliefs.
Find ways to practice experiencing and, even better, seeing and feeling. It has been a big part of finding my way home.
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Blog 52 Completion (Gary)
I notice a slight pant as I edge up The Hill, and in just about the center of The Respite I let out three big sighs as if on automatic. It has been a heavy day in my private practice, and I recognize the sound of my own grief, like carrying a heavy emotional load. One man has threatened suicide, one told us last night he may have cancer, and another didn't show up for his appointment and may have relapsed, again, into his alcohol addiction. No sooner do I realize my grief than I see a hummingbird slip its tiny beak into a pretty red cylinder of a flower. Everything is okay now. I leave The Respite and begin the steeper climb. Ah, life is good, and I take in the air. I notice this week that I am feeling good without my usual fantasy wonderings. There has been little thought given to cars and real estate. I am enjoying each moment there is to enjoy. I occasionally ask myself how I am feeling, and when I stop to answer it has been to just notice that I am very comfortable.
How often do you allow yourself to “just notice” where you are? It’s a way, with practice, that you can know yourself, or you can become a “human-doing,” as they say, rather than a “human-being.”
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Blog 51 The Hawk Comes Home to Die (Gary)
There are little saplings everywhere here on Gurian’s land, and I am listening to the creek. Again why do I cry here? Now I look at the meadow and I cry some more. It is tall green grass and a forest of trees just beyond. But why do I cry? It feels so sweet; I have missed it. My heart hungers for this so much my head cannot know. A white butterfly wings past. My heart seems to sing behind it until it disappears. The wind opens the trees to more sun, and it feels for a moment as if I am in heaven. The sweat lodge is fifty feet away. Perhaps I am home again.
Michael tells me this is where the hawk came to die a couple weeks ago. Mike was coming to his meditation spot on the creek, and this old beat up hawk didn't move from his spot only a few feet away. The next day Mike saw him sitting in front of the mountain house, and in the morning he was dead. He had come here to die. It is a good spot to die, or die into, as we all will or could.
Butterflies continue to visit and the sound of the creek is soothing. This is similar to the place I grew up, years before I started my walks in the clouds. It was there on logging roads that I hiked and became lost in marshy creeks with skunk cabbage abounding. And water skippers who hopped around in the water. This was where I learned to explore and hike. My friend and I would go to the war surplus store to get our gear. Our packs were WWII vintage. My brother did the same but his were WWI vintage. Ah, the smell of the fresh cut trees from the lumber camp, and the smell of the chain saw oil. You could smell it from a distance. I realize more than ever why my hikes in the hills of Los Gatos mean so much to me. Even fighting off the flies in the hot sun brings me back—back home. This is a respite.
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Blog 50 A Sacred Object (Gary)
My mother before she died would often say, "What does it matter?” In her depression, nearing the end of her life in convalescent care, she gave up. I now understand what she said at a different level. I see the value not of giving up but of surrendering to what is. I like the Alcoholics Anonymous saying, "Let go; let God." She could have been at peace by letting go, but instead she was angry and bitter that she wasn't getting what she wanted and that her life was over. The point is it doesn't matter. Nothing really matters unless you make it matter. In a sense she was right. Even then there are often times when you do so much better by surrendering and letting go. Just like it is on The Hill. Some days I just have to surrender to the heat, the rain, or the fog, and I love it.
Since the fire trail has been graded recently there is little if any glass or garbage to pick up. I consider it my duty to keep this trail pristine. It's a sacred trail, and needs to be respected. Yet there are years of broken pieces of glass that litter the way. I will say much of it is gone, thanks to me. To me it breaks the spell to find a shard of green glass sticking up from the ground where there has been peace. Peace: that is a good word to describe this for me.
I now connect the dots. The Hill has become another sacred object, like the ducklings I loved and cared for with my aunt, and like my uncle’s hat. They all have given my life a sense of stability and meaning: a true grounding.
What grounds you to or in right action? Without something to ground you, you will spin, moving as fast as you can. Thus is born the “Addiction to Hurry” (Jones, 2003).
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Blog 49 Looking For My Tribe (Gary)
Most certainly one of my heroes in this regard is one of my clients who after much personal pain, abuse, and abandonment by his father, and twenty-three years of recovery became an incredibly loving man. He didn’t graduate from high school yet has a very successful contracting business. I don’t know about you but I have worked in construction and most contractors have a hard edge. John can have that edge; however, he greets his men with a hug. Sometimes they don’t know what to do with that. Those who have known him for a while will stand there and wait until he is available. He also spontaneously engages strangers, one of my favorite things to do. I call it “not being a victim of circumstance.”
The lesson this man has taught me is to lead yourself into the life you choose. Wait for no one or for any thing, validation, acceptance, encouragement, or sign.
I know now that when I accepted Michael Gurian’s invitation to visit his 105-acre country estate north of Spokane I wept there because I felt accepted. At first I thought it was my response to his total acceptance, but that wasn't all of it. It was the embrace of the alder trees that surrounded me, the warmth of the sun, the gentle cooling breeze, the butterfly that landed on my shoe. There, as well as here, I am not alone, and I am blessed with total acceptance. So where does this hunger for benign acceptance come from?
I remember the first indicator. It was first grade. We were supposed to draw something for some kind of art project. It seemed we were all trying really hard to get it right. Somehow it was challenging. I remember giving it my best, but Johnny next to me wasn't taking it seriously. I remember now he was drawing a duck. Wow, that just flashed into my mind (the value of writing from a “let go” position). He was fucking the duck, so to speak. I loved ducklings as my aunt and uncle had frequently taken me to the park to feed the ducks and I had a string of toy ducks to pull around on the floor. I loved ducks. How could he do that with no respect? It was so wrong, and so awful, I took his drawing and ripped it up. I got in trouble for it, but I knew what he was doing was bad and wrong, and now I reflect that I must have had a fear of destruction of beauty, which for me may have been the equivalent of abandonment.
I think it had something to do with security because I had found something beautiful and sweet, and I treasured it. I was so emotionally bereft, so insecure and fearful of abandonment, that little things meant a tremendous amount to me. As a child I guarded my little treasures with a passion. That fuzzy yellow duck must have been an anchor of sorts.
There was another time when my uncle’s brother came to the house, and I thought he was wearing my uncle’s hat. I got really upset and adamant that he couldn’t be wearing my uncle’s hat. It was actually part of their shop clothing, but I didn’t know that. Everyone evidently thought this was cute, but actually it was another example of me trying to maintain a sense of security, a knowing that sacred items would stay as they were; if they did it meant everything was going to be okay and I would be safe.
I know as an adult that what anchors me or makes me feel grounded is being or doing what my mother initiated in me: my father was dead when I was three years old, and I was to take care of her. Thus the hero was born.
What anchors you?
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Blog 48 Neighbors on the Walk (Gary)
I recently met Corrine and Bob, who have a home at the trailhead, and made immediate friends with them because I took a liking to their old dog. I think it was because the dog took a liking to me as well. They showed me the house that was for sale across from theirs and even invited me to come up The Hill with them while they changed the community water filter. What a treat. I didn't go with them but instead took their suggestion of a shortcut down The Hill along with information regarding a closer and legal place to park. Wow, it certainly pays to extend oneself. I always say to my clients that everything happens out of relationship, so here it is. What a pleasurable return on investment. Sometimes we can get a little selfish in how much we interact with people because we become consumed with our full minds. Yes that includes me.
Speaking of others on The Hill, there is Hanna the Akita whom we pass on most hikes. She is there to bark at us, as that is her job, and occasionally when she is lazy, she just ignores us like we are old news. We were blessed to have her on the trail with her master, a delightful lady and her new baby, one day last year. I took their picture and emailed it to her. That was sweet. Most times I would just say hi and keep moving, but this day Mark and I took a minute and I made the offer of a picture. Now she has a pleasant keepsake of herself and her baby in Nature with her dog. Simple gifting can delight the soul. It was Bianca, Hanna, and Jessie, and now, a year later, it's Bianca, Hanna, Jessie, and Paula. Another picture, another email. We now seem to have a ritual of doing this twice a year by running into each other by chance.
Another time I made a good attempt to get what seemed to be a lost dog back home. Initially he startled me a bit—okay, a lot—as he came around the corner. I am always hoping to see a mountain lion so when I saw him come around the blind bend it was a relief to see he was a dog. You know how that is: Watch out for what you ask for. I read his name and the phone number off his tag, and called the owner to rendezvous at the trailhead, but the dog took off again. I had to let him go. I called the owner and that was it. Then I ran into a biker and asked him to assist. We ran into each other on another hike and he said the dog had followed him to the top and he seemed to have found his way home. We now share that little saga every time we meet. That's another sweet story from The Hill.
I got it. This is all about proving myself. The climb, the hardship, the heat, the cold, the pain; I get to keep proving myself on a regular basis. There is no moment lost. And maybe I will make a connection along the way. Maybe that is why I notice whether Diane, or whatever her name is, and her daughter notice me at the end of the trail because they have seen me before. Sandy, who lives on The Hill, talks to me. Then there’s Corrine and Bob who say hello. I am seeking validation of existence. I have always known that but not known that. Ah, the value of connection and not feeling alone.
I have found that life is much fuller and richer when seen as a series of shared experiences and a validation of the value of each other. Sometimes it’s a simple smile or nod. I get just a little high from the smile or nod back that tells me I am not alone.
I encourage everyone to reach out to the small spark of life that passes from one soul to another as it energizes and lifts the spirit. It’s also a reminder of your humanity.
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Blog 47 “I have a Responsibility to Make a Difference” (Gary)
Mark took off a couple days ago for Germany. He said he was spending a few days in New York with his niece and nephew before going to Europe. According to his plan he must be in Germany by now.
I drove home after work and changed clothes to do the hike up The Hill by myself. I was overdue and had to go. I don’t like to have moe than four days between hikes. I was a little concerned about the air quality as I hiked but it seemed to be ok. I checked Spare the Air and it said the air quality was good. I was still suspicious. I found myself making pretty good time and I passed the Hill of Cruelty quite easily.
Here I am again with feelings coming up. I thought again of all those people who died in the concentration camps, for what? Somehow I feel I have a responsibility to make a difference. I just know I felt bad for a brief moment and felt a responsibility. The rest of the hike was a joy and I exchanged appreciation of the day with a group of bikers on their way up The Hill.
I look at myself and think of the sacrifices my ancestors made that have made my world just a little bit better than theirs. What sacrifices will I make and have I made that will make life just a little better for those I love and the generation to follow?
I advise you to look beyond yourself. How or what sacrifices did your ancestors make that helped make your world just a little bit better? What sacrifices will you make for the sake of the generation after you?
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Blog 46 “Don’t let those people have died for nothing” (Gary)
Mark and I were supposed to walk The Hill today. He called and said he couldn't make it. That was a big disappointment for both of us. However, he just moved, and was down because he had to downsize into a marginal neighborhood. His wife is suffering from anxiety, and he is clearly stressed. He is packing for Germany to speak at a conference on forgiveness. His presentation is based on his dissertation about the unique posttraumatic stress of the grandchildren of survivors of the Holocaust. Heavy shit.
I grab the picture of The Respite off my office wall to give to Mark. I am very attached to the picture but I know its better service at this time. It is also a token of my affection for him, and a sign of support for his mission. I drive to his house to send him off. He pulls up to my truck and I take out the picture. We both admire the detail offered in the watercolor paper I used to reprint the picture. He seemed detached, but I understood and allowed it to be.
We hug, I wish him well, and am motivated to say as I choke back emotions, "Don't let those people have died for nothing”. I didn't expect that to come up. I will think of him and his journey for his twelve days. It will be a strenuous trip to do alone with a wife who is in the middle of setting up a new house after a tough move. I tell him I will check in with her.
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Blog 45 A Different Hill Today (Gary)
This one I climb by myself, and wind through the dry blond grass to the top of a small mountain a short distance away from a major mountain artery. There is some traffic noise but I enjoy this piece of isolation. I am sitting amongst old oaks in a barren space. The ocean breeze whips around me. I can look toward the ocean, but smoke from a forest fire keeps me from seeing beyond a distant ridge. It's warm, about 72°, and few bugs to bother me, although they usually don't anyway. I find the more you relax in places like this the more they leave you alone.
I am here early, waiting for the men in our Men of Fire group. What a gift to be able to do my work here. It's a dream fulfilled to be able to meet on a mountain. Usually we meet in my garage (although I call it my barn for another desire). We have been meeting here once a week for about a month. Life is good.
Today I wear my new wedding ring (I have lost two). I am determined to keep this one. My wife gave it to me for our thirtieth wedding anniversary. I guess I am a keeper. I asked for this design—an elk in front of a mountain. The name given to me in a Native American Naming Ceremony is Quiet Elk, which I changed after my New Warrior Weekend to Wild Elk. Maybe it should be Crazy Elk. You can decide that.
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Blog 44 Silence (Gary)
So often I forget that my creative juices moisten in the quiet rather than the business of life. Somehow I have been brought to believe that I am more creative if I am busy. In that state of being busy, thoughts and ideas come up and they only occasionally stick. But in the quiet, when I am still, I create an idea and act on it. It becomes substantial in the stillness. It's like most of these words. They have made it to the paper because I have been quiet enough to hear them. So the truth is that I am more liable to implement a change or creative idea if I spend time in silence. I certainly like the idea of more silent time. The author Carlos Castenada called it the "do nothing" time. Most importantly, it is a time to feel. The one time I saw him, his departing words to everyone were, “Remember the most important thing you can do is to be quiet for one second a day.”
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BLOG 43 Connection (Gary)
When I walk The Hill I am often taken back to distant memories, fond memories of walking the logging roads in Oregon as a kid or walking the sand dunes in North Bay, Oregon, with my brother. When we cross a sandy part of the trail I always think of the time my brother and I walked a great distance until the sand dunes seemed to run out and we turned around. It was warm, it was an adventure, and my brother was leading the way. When I was walking the lumber roads it was with my buddies. We borrowed single-shot .22 rifles, bought a box of fifty rounds for fifty cents, and were off to explore and see what we could hit. My friend David Zimmerman (where are you David?) was a great shot. I watched him shoot the cigarette out of our friend Thorold Simpson's mouth. Those two were tight buddies and now I can't find them. Anyway, this is just one reminiscence out of many when I walk this trail.
Sometimes I want to smell those logging-camp smells of fresh cut wood and chain saw oil again. Sometimes I want to recapture the moment with my brother and my friends. This is about connection. I feel most alive when I am connected.
Find the energy that makes you feel most connected and that is the best medicine. What from your history fuels you? Uncover what it is. Pay attention to what has meaning to you. No judgment; just the truth of what is.
For me it’s like the moment at this morning’s coffee meeting (tea, for me, actually) when my friend Barry taps me on the shoulder and says evenly, “Shut your mouth.” I used to be a mouth breather and he knows I am trying to break the habit. His simple act of caring means a lot to me.
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Blog 42 Why Can’t People Love One Another ? (Gary)
My liver (I guess it's my liver) is hurting (or at least my right side is) so I slept in today and have hung around the house doing simple chores. I noticed a thought that I simply wanted to know why people couldn't love one another and I felt very sad. I think that was a twelve-year-old’s voice. I think that has been my quest for most of my life. Why can't people simply love each other? Why not?
Again, in the quiet I find much revealed. I know I must fully love my wife and risk trusting her without fear, resentment, judgment, or reservation in order to do it. I am also aware that the ego is the enemy of relationship.
Do you allow yourself to love? I mean really love someone. What would be the cost? Are you afraid that would mean you would be responsible for them? What stops you from loving fully? Fear? Judgment? What are your stops?
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Blog 41 The Bond with Nature and Pain (Gary)
Time to round up my equipment; Mark is on his way. Got my heat socks on, my water with Emergen-C, stop watch, camera, StingKill, sun screen, sunglasses, knife, note pad and waterproof pen, cross training shoes that I have to replace every three months, and lastly my special pack for minimal gear. This is part of the fun, having the right equipment is de rigueur. I grab it and head for the door. It's uncool to be late so I am in Mark’s old BMW convertible within a minute of his arrival. It gives me a sense of relief to know that I am ready. It’s a warrior and leader mentality and it also serves the magician part of me that makes things happen (see King, Warrior, Magician, Lover by Robert Moore, 2013).
This day we talk about why we process so much and come to realize both of us were restricted as children. Mark's mother was always afraid he would get hurt so kept him from many normal childhood adventures. He, like me, spent many hours watching others go and do things from the window of his home. We each recognize a large part of the source of our bond: a bond with isolation, frustration, and pain.
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Blog 40 Home (Gary)
I have decided today to stay at “home” and spend most of my time in the back yard. I have watched the ants, played with my dog, had my wife take a couple pictures of me for an application, helped her bathe her dog, cooked a fresh organic vegetable dish for myself, read, worked for ten minutes in the yard, and I am now laying in the sun with my shirt off writing this.
I observe that I am not waiting for anything nor am I anxious to do something. I am not missing anything nor forgetting something I "should" be doing. I am at home. My mind is blank and that is okay. Am I home yet? I don't know. Let me just "sit a spell," as they said in the old west.
Sadly this isn't Essie and Alan's. My mother used to board me with them during the week because of her work. They had a wonderful place with more of a country feel. It was about four acres with apple trees and a swing between two giant redwoods, a dog, and great cooking. I fondly remember the after-school date nut bread and the tapioca pudding, the essence of which I cannot put on the page. Yes, I feel the sadness.
The part I didn’t want to write was that they initially scared me with their fights over Alan’s drinking. I had nightmares and developed a stutter. I remember Essie finding a bottle of Four Roses bourbon under my mattress. Then one day all the fighting and drinking stopped. I am grateful. God knows what I would have been like if that had continued.
Now I am really sad. I remember digging a hole in the ground there just to see what I could find. It was my hole and my sacred adventure no one else knew. I also found interesting old stuff in their old burn pile. Why do I cry about that? I have to guess it's because I felt I had something that was mine and in my aloneness I found cool things to do and adventures I could create. I no longer have that. Was it a sense of home? Can I create it here? Maybe what I most miss is allowing that kid the freedom to adventure.
I have to recognize that The Hill is a large part for my child. My fantasy of bushwhacking through the brush and sitting under a tree no one else can reach, or has even considered getting to from the trail, really appeals to me. I often look off the trail and toy with my desire to cross the high brush to get to an old tree at the top of a hill, to a place where, maybe, no one has ever ventured. Maybe there will be a relic from the past there: a mountain lion’s lair; a drug dealer’s pot farm; the skeleton of an ancient mountain man.
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Blog 39 Just to BE Where I am (Gary)
Just to Be Where I Am (Gary)
I find a lot of my writing happens before I get to the page. So this morning I find myself writing. In absence of myself I go somewhere else in my imagination. Where is that? Can I not just be here? I don’t accept or like where I am, so I travel outside myself. It’s an example of my old childhood habit. I struggle to be here. It’s actually very sweet when I allow myself to just be where I am. I relax and meld into this place. I am present. I find it so difficult to just be still yet my creative mind is at its best when it is free of distraction.
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Blog 38 The Hungry Kid Within (Gary)
As we walk I am aware that I am processing out loud. I talk about my deprived inner child, and how he watched and listened to other children describe their trips to the beach, Hawaii, New York, skiing with their families or trips to Europe. I always felt deprived, and perhaps never knowing what it meant to have “fun.” Now that I have the fortune to allow me to do almost anything I want, I find my little kid often dragging me around the world.
When I was a teenager I also spent a great deal of time looking at magazines and fantasizing. My world of fantasy was helped along by movies, Sears and Montgomery Ward catalogs, eventually TV, men’s magazines describing wonderful places, and most certainly Playboy. (I was interested to learn that part of Hugh Hefner’s journey was stimulated by being left by a woman during his time in the military.)
It didn't help that my first friend in high school was enthralled with Hillsborough, California, and what money could buy. He was also into stocks and educated me on the "possibilities" in the market. My little kid's fantasies went wild. The fantasy train was not only running but reinforced.
Now I find that the kid frequently takes me away from reality. I have to stop him and I think that is already in process, as sometimes I don't want to do anything or look at anything. I rarely watch TV or movies anymore because I find them so loaded with bullshit fantasy.
So what is real? I am escaping my child's fantasies more easily every day. Now, in the moment, I am desireless. I wonder if it is okay to be desireless. Of course I have to watch out for that little kid who is always waiting to go for a ride (yeah, maybe like the Sunday car rides my aunt and uncle would take with me when I was three years old). It doesn't take much stimulation from outside or inside to activate his unfulfilled desires or “hunger.”
What if life was as simple as helping people, working on the house, playing with my dog, reading, and spending time with family and friends along with an occasional fun activity, or an adventure? What would it take to be still, to be present? I believe it will just take practice.
Tomorrow is another day of not walking The Hill and yet The Hill is with me wherever I go. It maintains me.
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Blog 37 Examining What’s In The Balance (Gary)
It’s easy to convince ourselves that spending time in excitement is the answer. If we can feel really alive then we must be alive. It’s how we define this feeling of being alive that starts things off. We can get excited about possessions, expensive toys, and that is not where our relaxation lives. We appreciate the way the world goes away when we truly relax. Somehow we need to pay for this relaxation. It often comes to us after a day of strenuous labor, or a challenging day on The Hill, a good sweat, a hot shower, a moment to regard the outcome of the effort. We ask if that’s what it takes to make material desires leave our minds. Monks of every persuasion doing the work of a sacred place come to mind. It makes us wonder if there is a “stressless” desire, and if that is what it means to be without desires. Apparently not, as we can easily find the word stressful and yet stressless is not in our dictionary. How can we hold on to this “desirelessness” (also not in the dictionary), this basic concept of Buddhism.
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Blog 36 The Echo of the Hill (Gary)
Here I am at an ocean bluff vacation home and continuing to think about The Hill and what it means to me. It's amazing what it continues to stir up. I just finished reading the touching story of Skip Conrad in the October 2007 issue of Backpacker Magazine (“Vanishing Act,” p. 68), and how Nature touched a lost man's soul. I know that feeling. I can understand how, when his life was at an end, he hiked to the place he loved, where he was totally accepted, and died without a trace. He was a victim of alcoholism and the resulting pain. Generational wounding can leave you lonely no matter what you do to try and fill the space. When you aren't given love and acceptance you can be lonely no matter what. I know for me (yes, there was alcoholism in my family history as well), the mountain—The Hill—feels like a friendly spirit that is always there.
Maybe it's the dirt we all come from and return to. It always feels like home. It feels safe. That is why I go back again and again. I feel I belong there. It is safe because there is no judgment. It is totally accepting. I don't feel alone.
If you feel lonely give this a try. Find a place in nature you love, truly love, not too far from home, and go there as often as you can. The place can become a friend.
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BLOG 35 Being Alone and Belonging (Gary)
Alone.
Learning a way of being.
Just being.
I ask what is natural?
What is real?
Questions that have been a part of my life for so long.
The hardest thing in the world for me sometimes is to just be where I am.
When alone as a child I always kept my set of toy army men in a special corner of the living room and I would spend hours playing with them around the room. My mother was okay with that as long as I always put them back in that special spot. It turns out another man in our men’s group has pretty much the same story, and he tells me how he had collected over a thousand pieces of an army set similar to mine. It makes me sad writing this, but so it was. The army we wish we had so we wouldn’t feel alone. The sense of belonging to something larger than our selves is sometimes comforting even if the belonging is an illusion of love and connection.
What have you joined that you project the fantasy of belonging onto? What sports team or corporate identity have you taken on belonging to out of a need to belong?
I have seen a number of men who drink together in a work or after-work situation as a way to self-medicate and feel connected. One of my favorite stories is of a high level corporate guy and ex-special ops academy graduate. He was in sales where drinking was part of the protocol. He got a DUI and it woke him up. I coached him and he began his recovery process for himself and for the sake of his family. He was a drinking buddy to a lot of other men. One of his first concerns was how he was going to tell them. How was he going to not drink in front of them or not join them in drinking? I supported him to man up and lead those men. I suggested that he and he alone had the courage and balls to do that—and he did. Last I heard he was doing very well in sobriety and had gotten a number of his colleagues to either stop drinking or at a minimum brought them into a greater awareness of the damage it was creating. “How do I quit? Everyone I know drinks like I do.” I have probably heard that one a thousand times. It was extremely gratifying to have him call me over a year later, as traffic to his work diverted him by my office, and he thought to call. I had been thinking about him and he called just to let me know things were great for him and he was continuing his life of sobriety. What a gift!
Our culture is so very fucked up due to shame and guilt and too many medications to deal with it.
This Walk, This Journey, This Process (Gary)
I know now that I had to do this walk, this journey, this process. (I always say therapy is a process, not a product). Before I could go on to the next chapter of my life I had to come home. I had to grow my values. I had to learn them the hard way. I am thankful for the people around me who gave me a new meaning. These include the quality people I worked with in law enforcement, the Sterling Men's Weekend, my men's teams, my professors, and my new wife who would not settle for a lack of value. I also give credit to Native American wisdom, my children, and the men’s and women's spirits I worked with in therapy. They all helped me create new values. They gave me a foundation of hope and a sense of belonging and self. They brought me closer to home.
But I hadn’t come home yet.
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