the mind prison's mantra making machine

i watch reality built before my eyes

I am the least talented person in this room.

Nobody here really cares about me.

I am a challenge to like and unskilled at making conversation; everything I say is boring. I’ll never make true friends.

I have very little to contribute here. None of my skills are particularly useful or wanted.

My body is weak. Ill. Frail. In pain. It will always be this way, or worse.

I can’t feel spirit. I can’t feel magic. I am stuck in this dimension of density and opaqueness.

i just don’t think animals have these narratives, like we do. look at her. submerged in the juice of the present.

Some of these are internal narratives I’ve heard from other people. Some are narratives I’ve heard my self offer to my own mind prison’s mantra making machine.

These narratives can live like chants on endless loop, marching to the rhythm of an internal drum beat located so deep within, the drum player lives in unseen layers, hidden under folds and folds of storytelling and myth and invisibility cloaks. In the right setting, with the right cue, the drum player roars awake, strikes the base, and cues the chanters. Boom. They’re off. Enlivened by a strange new group of people, or a family reunion, or a song circle, or a walk in the woods, or a work presentation. Incredible.

Dum, dum, dum dum dum de dum.

Dum, dum, dum de dum de dum.

I, am, not welcome here. I, do, I do not belong.

Recently I attended a retreat in a place I had never been with people I had never met to celebrate Shavuot, a Jewish holiday. This is not uncommon for me: I am used to travelling the world alone, finding farms, retreats, projects, or events, and immersing myself into unknown spaces with unknown people. Sometimes it feels like spreading warm, whipped butter over fluffy bread -- smooth and rich and delicious and addictive. Other times, it’s like running soft flesh over rough, bumpy metal -- painful, awkward, and undesirable.

In the times when I’m butter, I feel so clear about how lovable and loving and functional and adaptable I am in this great big world. In times when I’m soft flesh on rough metal, I wonder if any of that was ever true. If actually, my true self is a stoic, mute introvert who has no idea how to make conversation with fresh meat.

At this retreat, I found myself surrounded by people who knew one another, or at least a couple other people, who knew prayers and songs I did not know, and who made get-to-know-you conversation that was often profoundly hard for me to grab onto and build upon.

I walked around for a couple of days, introducing myself to people and trying to get closer to a real connection, but found myself getting more despondent each day. Maybe there’s no one here for me. Maybe I’m meant to be alone in this place. Maybe I’m not meant to find connection to a Judaism I love. Maybe everyone is boring and lame. Maybe I’m not good at meeting new people. Maybe I’m a stoic mute hermit with nothing to say. On and on and on.

I’m sure at least 90% of those chants were connected to a wounded child self.

I’m sure she was at the fireside, stoking the flame, feeding the spells to the drum player right as he struck the opening beat.

As I finally lost hope in meeting someone I could really connect with, I found myself on the second to final day walking up to someone to ask a random conversation-starting question. This led to meeting several other people. With this group of four, I found myself deep in provocative conversation - exactly the type of speaking style and topics I long for. We sat by the lake for hours, diving deeper, exploring mysteries and longings.

The spell broke in that moment.

A new spell was cast.

I felt lighter and more myself, able to pull people into easy conversation with whom I had spoken before during that retreat, but with whom I had been unable to find the light. I clearly became more approachable, and was more fluid with my approach. I found people who had more interesting things to say. I ended up at a lunch table where a young man was talking about the relationships between Torah, ecology, and a people who shifted to stationary, agriculture-dependent civilization and had a lot of disagreement and fear about how to do this. Love to hear it.

I wonder about the drum beats that played in my head as I descended deeper into hopelessness the previous days. I’m not enough. They’re not enough. This place is not good.

I feel the cheekyness of the timing of these things, especially when they play out with this rhythm. Especially when life makes me wait a good beat until revealing the connections and opportunities that will stick. It’s almost as if she wants to see if I might have the strength to trust before handing me the gift.

Often I lose trust, but maintain some shred of hope that enables me to stay open to possibility. But the real loss I want to work on here is holding onto some trust even when all signs indicate otherwise.

The time I spend in the hopeless place, the downtrodden mantra place, is its own time lost to exposition-building of a reality that need not be real.

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All of our interaction with a “reality” is shaped by the stories we tell about what is happening around us, to us, and through us. There is no fixed reality in this earth crust surface dwelling place. The things we experience with other people, with ourselves, and with the greater life around us start first and foremost from the exposition (scene-setting) of the narrative we tell ourselves about the story we are in.

When authors build exposition, they tell us about the place the characters live, what the characters look like, how they act, how their personality functions, what their fears and dreams are, and the challenges and strengths of their culture. Without a proper exposition, we are barely able to follow a story at all. Who are we? Where are we located? What is going on?

The stories we tell ourselves about who we are, what our strengths are, what is happening, and how it all works really truly shapes how everything dances in this world.

When we walk into a room with the exposition-building mantra of I am unlikable, I am boring, I do not belong, we really construct a living shape into which a reality may birth itself. With these mantras, we will inevitably build a reality where our conversations are stunted, the people we talk to are impatient with us, and the vibes are too uncomfortable to get any deeper.

There are absolutely aspects of reality we cannot control. But our lived reality of how we experience it is. And our construction of the reality within our control is wildly malleable. We influence it all.

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I am particularly struck by the power of these exposition-building spells when I observe them carried out in other people. The vantage point seems so clear from all the way over here.

Watch as others move through the world, and get curious about the narratives they’re weaving for themselves. How is this affecting the outward ripples of their lived reality?

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These stories live in all of us. What are the stories living in you, shaping your reality?

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We are living in times of apocalypse: times of a great unveiling, revelation, disclosure… times of insight, vision.

All is shifting, changing, crumbling, renewing, and sprouting as the cogs of our civilization’s machine choke on their clogged wheels and move jerkily through their motions, inevitably meeting their match with the laws of the earth.

What a time to get clear about the orders we march to within ourselves. What a time to re-learn how reality shapes itself through us.

If we are to make way for sacred births, beautiful deaths, and creative ways to love and gather in these times, I’m not sure how we can manifest this future without learning how reality shapes itself. We cannot respond fully to the truths that reveal themselves in this great apocalypse unless we are able to collaborate with the dance of life. She steps one way, we step back. We twirl her in a circle, she spins with delight.

In order to collaborate, and not simply be dragged along by the forceful mantras of our unripened subconscious child selves, I suspect we need to get close with the marching orders we want to respond to, and with the orders we would like to rewrite. This is the ripening of maturity. This is the movement into adulthood.

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I wonder for myself: what are the stories I am telling myself that keep me trapped in the self-creation of a reality I want to move beyond?

What are the stories I want to adopt, the ones that will help me shift, expand, and deepen?

I have some ideas, for sure.

Do you?