I should be sleeping right now. I already slept all of last night and then napped for six hours today, but it's not yet enough. See, I made a promise to myself at the start of this quarter: I'm going to make the most of every moment. That means committing to getting the most out of every class, choosing to be more active, more social, more involved. It means, to provide an example of a typical day, biking from class to yoga to class to get groceries to the beach to dinner to lab to back home finally to sleep.
As you can imagine, I'm incredibly happy and incredibly tired, and once a week or so I have to cancel something and take a massive nap. And that's okay with me.
Unfortunately, this doesn't leave much time for blog posts. I'm formulating a plan to carry a camera around with me and let pictures do some of the talking, especially since the weather here in the Cruz is beautiful right now. I say "beautiful" because that is how I typically think of 80 degrees and sunny (the summer child in me is brimming with happiness), but it's impossible for me to ignore that this is far from normal for January in Northern California.
To provide a bit of relief from the wall of text, check this girl, Remi Wolf, out. Our families have been running in the same crowd since we were all wee kindergarteners, and now she's on American Idol! I remember her when she was tiny and performing in our elementary school talent show. She's got a certain something, hasn't she? Evidenced by her hair, the depth of her voice, the fact that she's 17 and singing a Marvin Gaye song...
xoxo
Juliana
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Saturday, January 18, 2014
Monday, January 6, 2014
The Same Place
After the honeymoon is over — it’s after the desire systems that were dormant in the relationship that have the attraction in it pass and all of it passes — then you are left with the work to do. And it’s the same work. When you trade in one partner for another, you still have the same work. You’re going to have to do it sooner or later when the pizzazz is over. And it just keeps going over. And you can’t milk the romanticism of relationship too long as you become more conscious. It’s more interesting than that. It really is. And people want to romanticize their lives all the time. It’s part of the culture. But the awakening process starts to show you the emptiness of that forum. And you start to go for something deeper. You start to go to meet another human being in truth. And truth is scary. Truth has bad breath at times; truth is boring; truth burns the food; truth is all the stuff. Truth has anger; truth has all of it. And you stay in it and you keep working with it and your keep opening to it and you keep deepening it. Every time you trade in a partner, you realize that there’s no good or bad about it. I’m not talking good or bad about this.
But you begin to see how you keep coming to the same place in relationships, and then you tend to stop because it gets too heavy – because your identity gets threatened too much. For the relationship to move to the next level of truth requires an opening and a vulnerability that you’re not quite ready to make. And so you entrench, you retrench, you pull back and then you start to judge and push away and then you move to the next one. And then you have the rush of the openness and then the same thing starts to happen. And so you keep saying “Where am I going to find the one when this doesn’t happen?” And it will only happen when it doesn’t happen in you. When you start to take and watch the stuff and get quiet enough inside yourself, so you can take that process as it’s happening and start to work with it. And keep coming back to living truth in yourself or the other person even though it’s scary and hard.
-Ram Dass
Allow me to present a hypothesis.
Love is accepting the truth; embracing the process; deciding to put in the time and the effort. True love happens when, as the name would suggest, one understands and accepts who one truly is, and is secure enough to share it with another who has found that same truth within themselves. It's when, after discovering what piece of the puzzle you are, you find another puzzle piece, also aware of itself, that fits you.
Yet, conversely, you are unlike a puzzle piece in the way that you yourself are a whole. You complete yourself. You do not need other pieces to define you.
I think that only when I stop wondering what other piece will fit me, what being will become aware of its truth and mine, will I become whole and true. Only when I let go will I be able to, perhaps, link myself with another in a way deeper than that which I've known.
You come to the same place in each relationship. The excitement and the bliss will eventually reveal, beneath them, the same work. It is only when I and another understand this, accept this, and commit to sharing reality together that love will evolve and endure.
What I don't know is whether this analysis is a sign of growth or being stuck in a pondering rut.
But you begin to see how you keep coming to the same place in relationships, and then you tend to stop because it gets too heavy – because your identity gets threatened too much. For the relationship to move to the next level of truth requires an opening and a vulnerability that you’re not quite ready to make. And so you entrench, you retrench, you pull back and then you start to judge and push away and then you move to the next one. And then you have the rush of the openness and then the same thing starts to happen. And so you keep saying “Where am I going to find the one when this doesn’t happen?” And it will only happen when it doesn’t happen in you. When you start to take and watch the stuff and get quiet enough inside yourself, so you can take that process as it’s happening and start to work with it. And keep coming back to living truth in yourself or the other person even though it’s scary and hard.
-Ram Dass
Allow me to present a hypothesis.
Love is accepting the truth; embracing the process; deciding to put in the time and the effort. True love happens when, as the name would suggest, one understands and accepts who one truly is, and is secure enough to share it with another who has found that same truth within themselves. It's when, after discovering what piece of the puzzle you are, you find another puzzle piece, also aware of itself, that fits you.
Yet, conversely, you are unlike a puzzle piece in the way that you yourself are a whole. You complete yourself. You do not need other pieces to define you.
I think that only when I stop wondering what other piece will fit me, what being will become aware of its truth and mine, will I become whole and true. Only when I let go will I be able to, perhaps, link myself with another in a way deeper than that which I've known.
You come to the same place in each relationship. The excitement and the bliss will eventually reveal, beneath them, the same work. It is only when I and another understand this, accept this, and commit to sharing reality together that love will evolve and endure.
What I don't know is whether this analysis is a sign of growth or being stuck in a pondering rut.
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