Archive for April, 2006
Patrick:
The thesis: The motive behind is always Love.
The experiment: To live as if this were true ( this part of the experiment is still under development,but letting go of who I think I am is central to the methodology).
Sarano:
I must concur that letting go of who I think I am is central to understanding that “the motive behind is love”. For example, I do not love the cancer in Jon’s body, I do not love my “inauthenticity”, I do not love those parts of myself that I deem “shameful”. My love is neither
objective nor encompassing, my love is specific and subjective…at the core of my subjectivity is the simple fact that I somehow believe that I know “what is really best” for everyone, that things are good only if they go the way “I think they should”. It is this notion of myself that
extends itself into “knowing” what is best for others, then the world and ultimately leaves me “questioning” the master plan rather than feeling the motive behind it…the ever present love underneath it all. Is it wrong for cancer to love itself and hence to replicate itself, do not all things seek to grow, is it wrong for me to be “ashamed” of myself, is not my shame a desire to “do good”. How do I unravel this knot at the source, how do I let go of who I am without coming from a lack of love for who I am? Perplexed?
April 28th, 2006
Sarano Kelley
April 27th, 2006
Sarano Kelley
April 24th, 2006
Dhrumil Purohit
GB: As this thread continues other patterns seem to emerge. There is anger. There is fear. Knowing you–these things are melded together. Is your fear due to your fear of your humanity? Is it due to your anger in the knowledge that you can not cure Jon? This is not the role of the Hero is it? Yet your life is led with the role to lead the masses out of the darkness and into the light of their own realization—however in some things you remain powerless. Is it the fear that you must be a fraud, not good enough—people will see you for who you truly are—a man, with flaws, with love, with concerns, with compassion, with anger, with fear? How can you lead like this when you are one of us? You can’t save Jon—that is out of your hands. He will live or he will not but you can not effect the change to suit your needs. The Hero would be able to save him. You want/need/must be the Hero—but in that there is duplicity and condemnation (self imposed). What do you seek? Better yet —what is important about the thing you seek–to you?
Sarano: Now we start to get to the bottom of this…what is it that we seek and more importantly, why? Why seek? What does one hope to gain by seeking? These are great questions. My experience is that people like myself like to hide behind answers because we cannot deal with the uncertainty, the lack of control, the arrogance of “I know”. Let me see
how long I can tolerate your question before I have to allieviate myself by “acting” like I have an answer…shall we?
April 21st, 2006
Sarano Kelley
Jason: A constant theme continues to run through times when you are experiencing pain… you have a sense of “loss.â€
Loss of Mom’s love with the birth of your brother…
Loss of personal security with the event where your blind spot was formed…
Loss of the kids in the fire…
Loss of relationship… fear to engage personal relationships because there is fear of potential loss…
I don’t know if any of this is real and it is certainly not meant in a negative manner… just curiosity about whether there is anything here around this idea of “loss.â€
Sarano: It seems to me that you are getting warmer. Is not all fear, fear of loss. Is not all insecurity fear of the threat or loss of identity. Is not my identity itself based on fear, the fear that I am “I am Bad and I am Ugly”.
The part that goes unseen is that fear always derives it power from love. What is fear of pain but love of pleasure, what is fear of loss but love of gain…ultimately, to fear something you must love something.
Of course the most nasty little one of all, the one that creates all of these problems is “the fear of fear”. Without the fear of fear none of this would be a problem…it would just be. No for me fear is not just fear, fear is wrong, loss is wrong…the only thing that is not wrong is wrongness itself…of course this leaves me in the painful and predictable trap that says “it is wrong to fear”, in fact “it is wrong to be wrong”…”quickly Sarano we must hide these things or people might laugh at us” and so I go from fear of loss, to fear of fear, to fear of being wrong, to the fear of being embarrassed…so it all ends in shame and then I go hide and pretend as if nothing has happened or better yet overcompensate in some other area of my life…in fact, I think I am missing an important episode of some amazing reality television show even as I am writing this.
I feel you are close, very close, I feel you breathing down my neck…this is a good thing…let’s continue to look at ourselves for as Socrates says “the unexamined life is not worth living”.
April 20th, 2006
Sarano Kelley
Jason,
Once again you have found the key to the lock I am struggling with. I just got present to the fact that I am very angry that Jon could die. This has been hidden from me by myself. That I am attached to him living and that the result for me unconsciously is a level of pain. I can see from this pain the need for liberation…not just from this situation but in life…”desirelessness is indeed the highest bliss”.
This is the ongoing struggle with The Game for me, how to play without attachment. How to give something your all, to give your best as if everything matter and to then leave the field of play (life) as if none of it mattered.
How to play powerfully even if I know that I can’t win, that I won’t look good…to play for the sake of playing, to play to honor those who have gone before me. Jon even asked me “why do you play games that you know you can’t win?”, “why do you try and do things that you know can’t be done?” My answer was that I do not want the “likelihood” of success to control my life. That I did not want to be controlled by what was probable. That I wanted to play my life for what is possible and impossible. That I want to play for love playing.
Thank you for your words of wisdom cited below:
“You continually face the fear…
A few thoughts from M:
Q: Still, you are angry sometimes.
M: With whom am l to be angry and for what? Anger came and dissolved on my remembering myself. It is all a play of gunas. When I identify myself with them, I am their slave. When I stand apart, I am their master.
My friend, you see it. Whether you like it or not, while relevant to how you feel is irrelevant to that simple fact that you SEE it. It truly means that all hope is not lost… just postponed…
Q: But the child (the mind) kicks. When it is unhappy or denied anything it kicks.
M: Let it kick. Just look at the kicking. And if you are too afraid ofthe society to kickconvincingly look at that too. I know it is a painful business. But there is no remedy — except one — the search for remedies must cease.
If you are angry or in pain, separate yourself from anger and pain and watch them. Externalization is the first step to liberation.”
As I said to Gordy one of the superintendents from the Capitol Region Game that is launching on the ABC TV affiliate next Tuesday “I have a lot to learn”.
April 19th, 2006
Sarano Kelley
I got back from Mexico and being with my partner Jon (who is fighting cancer) and his wife Robin for my upcoming Game 31 and I feel like I descended into hell. I am avoiding writing in my blog.
I am upset, emotional and depressed. I feel alone and am having deep feelings of resentment towards myself and my life.
I wasn’t home from what little break I could get and my family in Brooklyn is going through crisis, my business partners call me in crisis and then last night in my personal relationship I started going through crisis. In the last 48 hours I don’t think I have had more than 6 hours of real
sleep.
I am in the midst of a massive pity party that begins with “no matter what I do it’s never good enough” and ending with “no one gives a damn about me and it doesn’t matter if it kills me as long as I get the job done”. It is a nasty, nasty and familiar place to be. Sarano the self proclaimed martyr…God I hate this part of myself.
To make matters worse I can’t even vent or be honest about my problems because people around me would be hurt or because I am more concerned about hurting them than the damage it does to me to live a lie or better yet there are the well intentioned people who want me to feel better by getting rid of my painful feelings…at the same time don’t I always want to allieviate the pain of others in truth because I don’t want to have to deal my discomfort with their pain…my self centeredness runs deep, very, very deep. Please don’t die because it would be too painful for ME to have to miss you…so please live so I can then go on being busy while
taking you for granted…but you can count on me to be at your funeral with a tear in my eye all upset about how I will miss you…I could throw up.
I know this will pass but my two greatest enemies depression and despair have me in their grip and it is my fear of them that gives them power over me. I can’t handle pain, suffering…my own or others. Of course, I know it is upseting to many people to even get that I have these feelings.
I despair that I will ever reach a place of “detachment” that I am too busy liking parts of myself and life while making the parts of myself and life that I don’t approve of wrong…who died and made me Boss. I may never reach the place where I can be objective to myself. As a result I live in a self imagined world tossing and turning in my sleep and will likely die in that sleep…dreaming all along that I was alive…dreaming that I was somehow doing “good”.
I want sunshine but no rain, I want life but no death, I want to look good and not have to work for it, I want to help but not if it’s too painful to me. I want to have a deeper connection with God as long as it is pleasant, easy, acceptable in my eyes and doesn’t cost me anything I am unwilling to pay. I am a child…a child who refuses to grow up.
I am going through post game trauma and it is nasty…and I hate that I shared this with anyone and am ashamed of myself for feeling this way. I want to run away and hide.
April 18th, 2006
Sarano Kelley
My fiancee Brooke and myself just ended my Game 30 spending the last several days in Mexico with my new Game 31 partner Jon. Brooke wrote at the website about the experience and has the courage to face some emotions that I am having difficulty expressing. So here it is in her words:
John says that his throat cancer is from years of holding back pain…he said, “you know when things hurt and you get that lump in your throat…I ignored that lump and fought back tears so many times that it manifested as a lump I would have to face” As you all know, one of my game goals is to raise $21K for John to receive the treatment necessary to heal his throat cancer. This last week Sarano and I took him and his wife down to a holistic, cutting edge medical facility in Baja, Mexico.
John and Robin have been married for 10yrs and have a 7year old son, Hunter and a 3 year old son, Ben. Being there with them was more than life changing or soul searching…it completely changed my relationship to God, to any and all of the goodness that is my life, to my health, to
all the love that I have been blessed to have in my life, and most difficult to say…my relationship to people in my life that might leave… We spent 4 days together…Sanoviv is a very unique enviroment…all raw food, completely organic enviroment from the clothes that you are required to wear to even the fact that they do not have flourescent lighting because it is too abrasive. Over our 4 days we shared every meal together and we all actually stayed together and told stories during some of John’s treatments. You would be amazed by his resilliance and spirit…because of his throat cancer and the pain meds that he is on he had the hiccups the entire time we were together and his throat was so raw that he could barely eat the food that is so important for his bodies healing right now…none of the circumstances kept him from making friends with the older ladies that were there (mostly as a last effort before their own death), laughing and making jokes when he had his oxygen mask on and several IV’s in his body, or simply reaching out to tell his wife, “it will be ok, we have too many memories to make”…he even wrote out his game with us…he plans to learn how to play the guitar, learn to meditate, and deepen his relationship with God as well as Robin…these are not the words of a man who plans to die despite the fact that just hours before he was told that he had one of the single fastest growing forms of cancer the medical world has seen…still he plans to learn to play the guitar over the next 90 days so that he can play for his family at their upcoming weekly family nights…he also has big plans to wrestle with his son Hunter when he returns to Michigan after his treatments in Mexico. In the last 7 mos John has lost about 55lbs due to his cancer and rather than lament the change in his body he has decided that now is a good time to get “washboard abs”…the stories around his positive outlook are endless despite the medical reality that his days are numbered. . . and if you met him…which I pray you will all have the ability to do…you would know that this is not a man in denial just a man with a will.
Even as I write this I feel there is no way to convey to each of you all the moments we shared…how do you recap precious moments when they are just so tender…sometimes I think I fight with my memory…I knew that when they were happening that I wanted to remember them in detail with perfect clarity and yet because there are moments that I fear he may leave this place I think I choose to keep them hidden…somewhere in my heart but not in my mind because it is just to hard for me to accept that Hunter, Ben and Robin might be John-less in a few months. It is just too hard because I also fell in love with Robin. I saw her fight to hold his hand and be with him every moment and yet tell herself what is the big deal, why am I acting this way i know that he will not die…he can’t die. By the way she also created a game for herself…she recognizes that as she left Mexico this morning with us to return to her boys at home while John is still in Baja for another 2 weeks that SHE TOO NEEDS TO HEAL…it is so interesting how when someone you love is suffering from something it is often necessary to also heal yourself as they heal what to the world appears to be more obvious.
Robin must go home to her boys and be both mother and father…hopefully also find time to be just Woman…seems like that might be a longshot…but access to that femininity may also help bring her strength…I know that i have completely digressed from sharing about our time and i feel that i have done a poor job of recounting…i trust that each of you get the essence and maybe can recall a time in your life when “WORDS” are simply not the access to the essence of a moment…some things are just God’s gift to our soul,I think…they cannot be recounted just felt! Thanks for letting me share…it hurts to even think about…and yet I do believe that he is in the most capable hands and that despite any prognosis…a person’s WILL is the greatest predictor of outcome.
April 17th, 2006
Sarano Kelley
April 11th, 2006
Dhrumil Purohit
Just finished up Consciousness Camp and I have had one of the best weekends of my life. There is so much synchronisity showing up in my life here at the end of Game 30. Before even going to camp I met this incredible woman who is was an inspiration from the moment I laid eyes on her. It turns out that Sandy ends up taking the same personal development course as my business partner and friend Paul and the two of them meet and discover that they have me in common.
This weekend at Camp as part of the Saturday night pajama party we watched the movie Crash and my teacher Sensei Ron was there. In the movie the guy who plays Matt Dillon’s dad was also played Sensei Ron’s dad in the first movie role that he did before staring in Karate Kid.
I had prayed for a miracle at the end of this game and got two things that I did not expect…a Godson and my Sensei asking me if I would perform the wedding ceremony of him and my other teacher Sensei Stacy June 30th. I would say that between these two interactions and watching
a frighten little boy transform before my eyes as did all of the adults and everyone of the children I had the best weekend of my life. It is hard to convey in words how powerful the experience was and it may take me a long time to process it but I absolutely fell in love with every person there with not a single person left out.
Patrick also gave me feedback on how much he appreciates this blog and what a difference it makes which was both the pat on the back and the kick in the pants that I needed.
My mentees had a chance to clean up and solidify their relationship to each other. Luch and Sara two of my team members showed up with their 6 week old son who has such a peace about him that it affected us all.
Here in the final hours I have still to reach my college friend Mike whose dads health is failing and my best friend from high school Fred. At the same time I just got finished with a weekend that enlarged my heart and my sense of family all at the same time. I expect the same will be the case with the young people in Albany for the tv show and my next daily partner Jon as we go through his health assessment at Sanoviv starting Wednesday.
April 10th, 2006
Sarano Kelley
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