Inspired by a Conspiracy

My friend, Blessing Conspirator, has been going through a rough patch.  See, her mom just died, and there's a whole buncha stuff in that package for her to unpack, soert, and place.  She's had to leave our lovely home in the woods to brave the wilds of Las Vegas with its screaming lights, buffet of human experience and constant onslaught of tangled energies.  It's not her favorite thing.

Even though she's in Vegas baby, she's here with me.  I took a look at her profile her on Gaia.  I haven't done that in a while.  hell, I spent part of yesterday asnwering messages that have beein in my inbox here (which I'd forgotten I had) for over 2 years.  Some "Zaadsters" are going to get a surprise email.  :)  So I read her proflie, and I look at what she's done.  It's an impressive resume.  This shy, delicate, loving woman has woven the threads of compassion together into a life of service.  She's given herself to something, and I hear tell that the secret to happiness is to find something more important than you and then give yourself to it.

Which is what I'm trying to do.  Thing is, I'm not yet convinced that the thing I want to give myself to wants anything to do with me.  It's kinda like having a crush on the love of your life and having them set your emails of love and devotion to the spam fileter on their hearts.  I never really saw Blessing Conspirator as partiucalry brave, other than the fact that she actually managed to get out of bed every morning and face a world that's always felt like snadpaper on her soul.  I didn't understand what she was doing a decade ago.  I do now, and I am humbled before it.

I realize that no matter how I present, no matter who I manage to get people to think I am, Who I Am is embedded in my actions.  I'm compling my CV at present, as part of my grad school application process.  In my opinion, it doesn't look like much.  I know where I say I'm interested, but when I look at my own resume it forces me to examine where it is I've actually put my chi, my ruach, my spirit.  What it that's easy for me, the natural extended doing that comes from my beingness?  What is my work that is not work?  And why do I have this sinking feeling of despiar that I'll never make a living wage or have a financially comfortable life doing what I love?

Carolyn Myss says that god [insert your term ofr the Divine or wahtever you call it here; I like god cuz it's easy to type] loves a verb.  I think god loves nouns, too, hbut a noun is being, and a verb is doing.  How I spend my chi is proof of what's really important to me, becuse it's what my verb self does from my core of being, no matter what delusion of self I might be operating under.  Who I Am becomes observable in What I Do.  Sometimes, when I look at that, I feel sad and ashamed that I haven't done more, been more.  On my better days, I have a lot of compassion for the self that never got told that life is changeful, and who you think you are will change many times over the course of a life.  I got a late start.  :)

I've never had to take such a good hard look at that self.  It forces me to seriously consdier who I really am under all the doings and saying of who I am.  I find that I have a well of insecurity and self doubt that seems to be bottomless.  If we could figure out a way to power appliances and vehicles with my self-doubt, there would be no energy crisis.

Some friends assure me that they feel this way too.  But I see them in houses, with stuff, and I can't compete.  I live very, very simply.  Most of it I don't mind; some of it I really love.  But damn--sure would be nice tohave living space big enough in which to swing a flogger or do some yoga without needing to go outside!

Then I think of BC again.  I don't know that you could say she's done anything extraordinary.  She's raisde kids, went to school, had some jobs.  But that's the whole thing, right there, right under my nose where I'm most likely to miss it.  She's living an ordinary life in an extraordinary way, and she inspires the crap out me becuase of that.

On the surface, there's a big gap between my decade as a Professional Pervert and going to grad school in Religious Studies so that I can become a professor who teaches religious literacy and by so doing creates an intterreligious dialog that can foster peace in the world.  Underneath, I'm not conviced the leap's all that large. 

As a ProPerv, I went around talking to people, encouraging them to use kink as a way to get to god--though often infar less direct language than that.  I've managed to get god into the room during a fisting class, or a roleplay class.  It isn't hard, since the presnec eof the divine is in all th ings, and it's only an adjustment in perspective that allows people to see it, like those pictures with an image that only emerges once you see it "right."   I got to wear a lot of balck leather, fancy frocks and finery.  I got to meet tons of fascinating people--some locked into the symobism and externalia of peviness, some actually walking the pervy path to Paradise.  I'm rather extreme in appearance, by most normative social standards; that lent me a lot of chacet in the leather world, and may prove to be an impediment in my adventures in academia.  So, really, from my perspective at preent (subjec to thcange without notice), going to grad school with the idea of becoming a PhD so that I can teach is one of the singularly most perverse things I've ever done in my life.  It's easy to be on the fringe for me; it's comforatble.  Academia isn't.  It has its own language, its own way of being, and a loud, foul-mouthed, belching, opinionated pervert might not be welcomed into the hallowed halls.

A man I admire, Randy Pausch of belessed memory (see below for a link to his must-watch Last Lecture), said that obstacles or walls that we find in our lives are what help us tell the difference between tourists and the people who really want it.  I am pretty sure I really want this whole grad school teaching thing.  If someone came up to me tomorrow and offered me a spot in a program, I'd leap at it.  Seems like I'm afradi of a little hard work.  I tend to give up too easy when daunting challenges come my way which is entirely a self esteem issue.  Some deep part of me doesn't think I'm actually good enough to walk those hallowed halls.  Some deep part of me is convinced that I'll be rejected out of hand.  My saboteur uses this agasint me, covincing me that even so much as trying will be a painful exercise in futility.  Another part of me says that it's selling out to even want 'those things."

"Those things?"  Like what?  A comfortable home and a vehicle that doesn't eat a gallon of $4.50 gas every 10 miles?   The financial stability to travel, to donate, to create things that might help bring peace to the world?  A new pair of yoga pants or, for that matter, enough money to support the yoginis who teach becuse it's their bliss, too?  A new pair of shoes for my beloved, magnificent partner who always seems to have the grace to put other things beofre his onw needs?  A life in which I can face some upper-chakra challenges becuase I'm not stuck in the lower 3 dealing with maya issues???

It isn't the stuff, it really isn't.  It's the idea of flow and accepting abundace.  It's the idea that my dream is within my reach, and that if I am rightly alingned with self and what this self can/must do in this world, then it all just rolls.  The idea that my thread in this tapestry matters as much as any other, and that I can use my superpowers as a force for good in the world is one I'm trying to accept while I dismantle the notion that succes can only be measured in very specific, material ways and that I'm going to be a lonely, old blue-haired lady eating cat food during my twilight years..

I have gifts.  I can take complex notions and translate them into a variety of huma dialects in cler, concise, understandable ways.  I serve my fellow humans by being a thing against which they can hurl themselves in the attmpt to figure out who they are.  I'm a fair artist.  I'm great with getting people to open, expand, try new things.  I can write well enough, and I have a quick mind that can syntesize information, presneting the result with clarity.  I am abundantly creative even though it seems that I've not had enough courage to create to my fullest cpacity.

Maybe that's what this whole grad school thing is about: finding the self-esteem to be able to create at a level comnsurate with my innate creativity.  Maybe I'm being called to step up in a way I haven't been ready for til now.  Maybe, as I release my need for external validation more and more fully I get to beocme that which I truly am, and move through the world with compassion and loving kindness.  Maybe I desreve to be part of a community of like-minded people, who see a blending of bliss and 'success' in the world that I have yet to actualize.

Or maybe it's about humbling me so that I can see the miraculous conspiracy of belssing all around me.  Maybe it's to get me to see how much insipration I have in my own backyard.  Maybe it's to get me up off my lazy cracker ass and be a verb in a way that conrtibutes something to this aching, heartsore world.

Or maybe--just maybe-- it's an extraordinary conspiracy of belssings that conceals itself in an ordianry life.  I had always envisioned myself as some sparkling glittearti, no matter what world I was moving in.  I think it's time to see me as I really am, and get on about the busines of beocme a conspirator in my own right.  Thanks, Coop.