Category: Uncategorized

The Body’s Sensations

I stopped therapy a couple weeks ago (I think I’ve worked out most of my major traumas?) And I thought I’d plug into my weekly calendar a Buddhist meditation instead. Tonight I went to this group which I was excited about and it was a total *disaster* as I experienced the most social anxiety I’ve had in probably 12 to 14 years.

For years now I’ve proudly said, “My anxiety is 10% of what it was in my thirties,” but tonight it was 100%. I didn’t even know all that was still in there! So intense.

On the plus side, I was meditating during the arrival of the most intense part of the social anxiety and for the first time I felt the sensations of extreme social anxiety in every inch of my body. It feels totally terrible. It was like every cell of my body was on fire and all screaming “Get out!” (Which I did!)

Buddha teaches that we do not react directly to what’s happening in the outside world; we are actually reacting to our body’s sensations which are themselves reacting to what’s happening in the outside world. When we get more in touch with our body’s sensations we gain the ability to choose how we act next. Oppositely–in our default human setting–when we are asleep to these sensations then we are at the mercy of our choice-less reactions.

So with that said, tonight was a bit of a success. Even while I decided to also give in to the anxiety, and got up and walked out after 20 minutes. (I have long had a policy of not giving in to anxiety.) An older version of me would have judged me awfully hard for leaving. So even while old patterns surprisingly came up, I also know that progress has been made.

Grampa Walter

I was a psychic medium skeptic until I met my friend Felix years ago on a date. He made me a believer in his abilities. This week Miguel and I shared a session with him. My Grampa Walter came thru for me.

My Grampa was born in 1910 in a small Québec village. When he was five his family moved to the US from Canada. I was born on his birthday in 1981 and given his name as my middle, which I later made my first. Because we share a birthday I’ve always felt connected to him, even tho he scared me while he was alive. I only have a handful of memories of him, since he died when I was six. All but one are negative. In the positive memory, I sat on his lap while he taught me “three blind mice.”

On my altar sits his ring with our birthstone—a large fake ruby. A week and a half ago, I picked it up and thought of him. I probably haven’t held it in my hand like that for years. While on the topic of my Grampa, Felix asked “What’s up with a ring?” I said, “I have his ring.” Felix replied, “He’s showing me you picked it up recently and thought of him. He wants you to know he was with you when you did that.”

Felix reported what you’d expect: my Grampa loves me and is proud of me. He also added that the two of us are a lot alike. That surprised me since I’ve mostly thought of him as being mean. Felix explained, “You’re both very sensitive, but you’re able to live it out while he had to suppress it. You’re healing what he wasn’t able to.” Knowing the cultures we grew up in, say no more.

At the end Felix added, “He’s showing me making sausages in the traditional way, with the casings, and they’re linked together?” One of my earliest memories was the production of blood sausages in my grandparents’ farmhouse. This food was a favorite, and it mostly disappeared from the family after he left. Along with the ring, this quieted the still skeptical part of my mind.

What I love about these sessions is how my nervous system feels ironed out after. I feel calmer, more at peace. On some level it doesn’t matter if it’s real—as it speaks to the soul, not the mind.

This photo is from my Grampa’s naturalization papers. Last month on our birthday he would have turned 115 years old.

Winter is working its wonder within me. Major emotional blockage showing up today. The arrival of a tired pattern reveals itself again and I find myself asked once more to contend with it.

This morning the pull of staying in bed was so great I didn’t go to my Quaker meeting, a rarity for me. Yet my brain rationalized it so well I hadn’t yet noticed it was the beginning of the old procrastination and shame spiral that grabs me from time to time.

By 4 or 5 this afternoon I sat in wonder of having not left my room, having not gone to meeting, having not done my laundry, having not gone on a walk, and yet still having no motivation to do those things. It was then that I realized I was once again stuck in that ancient vortex of powerlessness; that wild force which robs me of joy, motivation, and clear thought.

And then, some texts from a friend. Which I knew at once to be grace. A welcomed rupture in the pattern; a call to write new lines into the play and work out a new ending. And then a short phone call wherein my friend gifted me her prayer. And getting off the phone, an immediate, major cry, with snot and tears and wailing. A great obstruction of grief, nearly as old as me, loosened itself from my body and left.

I grabbed my hapé, an Indigenous medicine, and settled onto my bedroom carpet for a quick ritual. Administering the medicine, I said the new prayer in my mind: God, please show me your will for me. Allow me to accept your path for my life. I surrender my will to you now.

A few years ago, these words would have stirred distress, and now they’re a release, an ease, a freedom.


I sit with my eyes closed as the medicine does its work. A long ago and tired memory comes to mind, and like lucid dreaming, I use the opportunity to rewrite it. My young self—who in this memory also sits on his bedroom carpet, but frozen—now hops up, flies from his room, bursts out the back door of the house and runs into the summer field. He reforms the whole story with the kind of righteousness and vigor Jesus used to flip the Temple tables.

Yes, winter works its wonder in us, yet spring is on the horizon and calls us to new life.

Owl Friend and Winter Check-In

Today’s long walk concluded at the beach, and in the dark a big owl swooped down in front of me and then flew in a tight circle around me rather close to the ground. It’s the 6th owl I’ve seen since starting the walking project two years ago.

The day’s walk was a bit of a pilgrimage. I knew I wanted to walk to the ocean from my house, and I wanted to stop in the Haight at a shop that I heard sells hapé, the South American snuff and plant medicine used and made by the Indigenous communities of the Amazon. I’ve only worked with it three times, most notably 3-4 years ago during the peak of my phase of panic attacks where a friend administered it to me and the fiery shock of the experience snapped me out of my blues for a week. The winter blues of the last month called me to finally take the step of acquiring my own medicine and administering it to myself.

At the shop they sold about 12 varieties. They all have native forms of tobacco in them and are mixed with other sacred plants. The experience of them ranges from mild to intense. The mild ones can bring about a light rush and nicotine buzz and some calm feelings whereas the intense ones are truly physically intense, with burning sensations and drooling snot, and some visionary elements in the mind, before finally settling into a deep calm after a few minutes. I selected a mild rose-tobacco blend and another “intense” one suggested for grounding strong emotions like anger.

I’ve had some strong feelings of anger lately, so I’ll keep that one in my back pocket.

I associate roses with my Grammy Velma and that one called to be used today. When I reached the beach I watched the sun set and then blew a little hapé up each nostril. The burning sensation was fairly light, and I saw in my mind my Gram hugging my young self, and then I settled into some light-headedness that encouraged me to sit on the sand and really enjoy the diminishing daylight. Moments later I began walking again and the owl swooped down for one last bit of magic.

Both today and yesterday I walked about 12 miles, probably walking 1% of the city’s streets in just two days. This diving temporarily back into the intensity of my early walking days leaves me feeling accomplished.

Prayers for the American Future

A gay friend of mine in Hollywood shared a flyer on Facebook, warning friends that a wave of MAGA supporters would soon flood their gay-friendly neighborhood—a place where they’d find little support. This reminds me of the early 90s, when powerless queer activists, many of whom were dying of AIDS, flooded into suburban malls to hold “kiss-ins.” These protests demanded that straight people see them and know that they existed. Of course, the difference is stark. The activists in the malls were without political power and facing death, and the MAGA movement is close to holding power in every branch of our government.

What do we know about movements that emerge out of anger and frustration and sweep into power? What do we know about movements that are born out of high inflation, undervalued labor, the inability to purchase a home, and the hardship of simply trying to live comfortably? What do we know about these movements led by charismatic leaders who promise easy answers? We know that these movements can go off the rails. These movements, once with power, can create great amounts of suffering. History is full of examples of this on both the left and right sides of the political spectrum. We can look Italy’s fascists, Russia’s Bolsheviks, Germany’s Nazis, China’s Red Guards, and Iran’s theocrats. Power, without the guardrails that protect humanity, can be dangerous and inhumane.

What I want my Republican-voting friends to know is that those of us Americans who are scared right now are reacting to an imagined future based on these historical precedents. The reality in this moment that the MAGA movement is not there. In this moment what is true is that our democratic institutions are still standing, our free press is still standing, and our ability to voice our frustrations is still standing just fine. We must all work together to ensure that it stays this way.

My fears stem from the words coming from the head of the MAGA movement, Trump. He speaks of there being two sides, and not a single American people. He speaks of his desire to retaliate against perceived political enemies, instead of hearing everyone’s concerns. He scapegoats powerless demographics such as immigrants, instead of doing the hard work of governance and working with all parties. His words divide us, and are meant to divide us, instead of unite and heal us.

If we draw conclusions based on Trump’s words we can imagine a future like those from history’s darkest moments. For example, Trump says he wants to deport all of our undocumented immigrants. Mass deportation of 10 million people is not just unrealistic, it would devastate the industries that keep communities stable—from agriculture to healthcare—and lead to scenes that echo the horrors of the historical movements I mentioned above. All of those movements had their own internal “enemies” and their governments used camps, deportations, and prisons to reach their own ideas of national purity.

History shows that unchecked power can gradually erode democracy, often through small steps like weakening independent courts, silencing the free press, limiting other political parties, and chipping away at civil liberties. Over time, these steps accumulate and create irreversible changes.

Overly simplistic solutions like deporting our country’s lowest wage earners by the millions will create suffering that impacts everyone. In addition to harming the lives of those directly impacted, it will dramatically increase the labor shortage already impacting all American communities, drive inflation to heights we’ve never seen, and further destabilize our economy. I ask that we recognize the complexity in our economic situation and do not take comfort in simple solutions. Solutions that do not consider all perspectives will always be false.

Here are my prayers for the days ahead:

May Republican voters and Republican politicians not be blinded by political power, and may they work to protect the elements of our democratic system, which includes the free press, an independent court system, and the civil liberties of all people.

May Democratic voters and Democratic politicians notice when they’re caught in the imaginations of the future and stay grounded in the present moment, which is the only moment where true power lives.

Instead of looking to earthly powers, such as economic and political power, may Trump discover the true power, which is born in the spiritual depths, that can guide him to become a true leader that seeks to unite all people.

May we all focus more on the health of our families, our neighbors, and our immediate communities, and focus less on national politics.

May we also keep one eye trained on our elected politicians, keep in communication with them, and hold them to the highest standards of integrity and leadership.

May we all stay firmly anchored in our senses of touching, hearing, seeing, tasting, and smelling, which keep us rooted safely in our earthly reality, and which bring joy and pleasure to our lives.

May each of us prioritize our mental, physical, and spiritual health, and seek support from our friends, family, spiritual communities, and mental health professionals when outside support is needed.

May we all remember that anything that divides is false, and that that which unites supports life.

How can each of us, with our words and action, contribute to our nation to ensure that our future is compassionate, wise, and protects the freedoms that make our culture unique?

May we all remember to breathe deeply.

Threads of Happiness

I spent $300 on an outfit for this month’s two weddings. My newly-married friend told me I needed to wear something nice! I spent a lot of emotional energy and time thinking about what to wear. I wanted something that was nice enough, that’d help me feel comfortable, and that wasn’t fancy. Ties, jackets, and dress shirts were out. I wanted everyday clothes. I bought expensive vegan Doc Marten’s shoes, a nice solid-colored flannel shirt, and a nice pair of pants and new socks. I felt great about what I found and marveled that it seemed both nice and in my style.

A few days ago, a day before my buddy’s wedding, I re-read the invitation and at the bottom it said “dress code: semi-formal.” Confused, running to ChatGPT for answers, it told me semi-formal meant a suit and tie, with a matching belt and shoes. Panicking, I looked at more websites, like Wikipedia, and did some Google image searches, and they all confirmed it: my comfy new outfit did not make the cut.

It’s hard to describe the spiral that happened; the anxiety that swept in. I could see the oncoming disaster crystal-clear in my mind: walking into the wedding as my schlub self, standing before a sea of men in stylish suits with matching leather shoes and belts, silk ties to their waists. I, alone a mess, standing before them. Maybe some whispering. Maybe my friend, embarrassed.

I’m not exaggerating. I came close to canceling. My anxiety was an 8 out of 10. In the hour before the wedding I spent 30 minutes with ChatGPT having it help me explore ways of explaining why I wasn’t dressed appropriately. It suggested, “I tend to dress simply, it’s part of my Quaker values to focus on the essentials and keep things plain.” I thought, “That might work!”

The evil genius of this anxiety was how un-insane it felt. It seemed perfectly rational. Not going to my friend’s wedding? Reasonable.

I walked into the wedding venue and my story fell down like a house of cards. Almost no one wore a full suit. And another gay guy paired his jacket and tie with daisy dukes and cowboy boots! The humor of these short-shorts pointed to the insanity of my story, which moments before felt as real as concrete. Now all that remained of it was disbelief and the laughter coming from my face.

But to go from intense anxiety and stress to laughter left me with more than relief. It also left embarrassment. How’d I allow my mind to make such a crazy story, and how’d I believe it so devoutly? How did I spend 24 hours as a mess, for nothing?

The emotional whiplash of going from insanity to clarity in an instant, that’s what I explored in therapy tonight. I told the story with a lot of humor, and I was caught off-guard by the intensity of the emotions that started to come up. The complete unnecessariness of all that anxiety and worry became clear. The invitation card wasn’t the source of my emotions. The suffering came from me! I made all that stress up. And I didn’t need to.

And I could see that the stress was much older than this wedding. I could see the same fear throughout my high school experience. Every day, for four years, I went to school marinated in the same stress and drenched in anxiety. And I could see how high school wasn’t the source of my misery any more than the wedding invite was. My mind made the suffering then, just as it did last week. I made it all up, out of love for myself, to keep me safe.

I sat quietly in therapy with my eyes shut, and in just a few minutes my mind seemed to re-record every high school memory. I saw them plainly, without all the anxiety, stress, and fear for my life. No filters or stories piled on top. Grief and relief poured out in tears.

Now, somehow changed; woven through my high school memories are some threads of happiness that I couldn’t see before and that I had forgotten all about.

Basest Instincts

Some years ago I was punched in the face by a stranger while waiting for a bus at midnight across from City Hall. These two guys came up, drunk, and one slugged me in the jaw. I stood up without a word, turned, and walked away while the dude was held back by his friend. I’ve thought about that night often. One takeaway I believed was that my deepest instinct was one of non-reaction in the face of crisis.

Today I was walking in the new Mission Bay neighborhood and exploring another newly opened park. I was listening to a podcast about Buddhist meditation and “transcendence.” The waterside park was gorgeous, green, and full of folks. Over the earbuds in my ears I heard a thunderous roar and looked up to see the Giants stadium ahead with thousands in the stands!

And then a large dog bolted at me, barking ferociously, flashing its teeth, and snapping at my legs! And I find myself kicking at this dog’s face to keep it from sinking its teeth into me! The dog continued growling, barking, and dancing back and forth avoiding my foot. The animal of my body went instantly from zero to fight mode. As I watched the dog’s moves, and kicking again to protect myself, in the periphery I see the owner rush over but make no attempt to grab the dog. In this dystopian reality the meditation podcast continued in my ears as I yelled “Grab your fucking dog” and he yelled “Don’t kick my dog!” Again, with my awareness squarely focused downward to keep me from getting bit I just see in the corner of my eye the owner move at me. In full instinct mode I assumed he was going to hit me and I lunged toward him and tried to punch him first. He said “What the fuck!” and I shoved him away by pushing against his throat. At last he grabbed his dog and dragged him away.

The encounter lasted some 12 seconds. I felt crazy, enraged, my body, hijacked by adrenaline, my pecs puffed out and my jaw clenched. I imagined I could have killed that guy had he hit me. I felt both murderous and unsafe, and I continued fearing the dog as I walked away. For two hours I felt like I could pick up a car and toss it. My mind raced trying to justify the actions this body took to protect itself. Quakers being pacifists, I was in turmoil over my identity and confused at the speed and willingness of my body to turn into a murderous machine.

Ah, but breathe Walter.

The real torture was the mind’s non-stop attempt to justify my actions. “But the dog…” “Then he…” “He could have…” “I was just…”

I tried again and again to quiet the mind and justification rushed back in, and in, and in. I could also feel the fight-energy clinging to my body and unwilling to let go. I shook my hands, waved my arms, and beat my chest, trying to shake it off and move it out. I tried to feel the Earth underneath my footsteps. I broke off some leaves, and crushed them in my hands, and inhaled their scents to ground me. After an hour I called a friend who helped me process. And some three hours after the occurrence I finally felt mostly back to normal.

I also made an effort to view the situation from a non-dual perspective. If we’re all one, if there’s no black and white, no good guy and bad guy, and if there’s no separation between myself, the dog, and that man, then what lessons could be learned? It’s hard to explain but with this query I could feel my perfectionist inclinations softening. Even with my actions being imperfect, and my basest instincts emerging, everything turned out ok.

I continued walking Mission Bay and Potrero Hill neighborhoods for several miles, this time without any podcasts playing in my ears.

I felt an intense and intuited pull to get home and take a shower. And as I stood in the hot water I imagined being re-baptized into innocence and it came to me to send metta to the man and his dog. The Buddhist practice of metta meditation is when you imagine loving kindness and goodwill emanating from the body and being sent out to be received by other beings. I wish for myself and that man no harm.

The Darkest Dark

After leaving other retreats I generally feel light for weeks. On the contrary, our Vision Fast guides warned of the “inevitable depression” that can follow and mine’s rushed in.

I said to my boss today, “I don’t know what happened but I think out in the desert I dragged up something real dark from the depths.” I’ve been irritable at work. Everything’s annoying me. There’s a part of myself that knows “shadowy” aspects of my ego are at play. I warned my boss I might need a mental health day and he encouraged me to take tomorrow off. I look forward to a long walk and my midweek Quaker meeting.

At our Death Valley base camp the night before we headed into the desert we sat in a circle under the stars sharing final thoughts. As people spoke a wildly intense fear swarmed into my body and my hands began shaking uncontrollably. Until then I hadn’t had nervousness about heading into the desert alone and suddenly fear was 10 out of 10!

When I closed my eyes to check inside a familiar image emerged, an image I’ve shared in therapy time and again, my childhood self, on my childhood bed, fully saturated in fear of the dark. I’ve heard of the spiritual path taking a spiral form and we revisit the same issues on new levels as we go along. This time the dark was back, and so intensely I was shaking. I closed my eyes, connected with the little boy, and cried. The fear passed and a deep calm came in. Out in the desert the fear never returned.

Today, talking to my therapist about the rage, irritability, and depression, imagine my surprise when I closed my eyes and inside was the dark again! I’ve connected the fear to actual nighttime, but never to personality traits before. Behind the irritability was the darkest dark I’ve ever witnessed inside myself. Within me lives an inky blackness that’s scary as hell. And I sat with it, and again I cried, and again it passed. I feel so much lighter than hours ago.

The guides warned us that the desert won’t “fix” us. They said “the experience may make life harder and not easier because you can no longer deny aspects of yourself.” I didn’t believe them until now.

And Jesus was supposedly out there for 40 days, eh?

Vision Fast with School of Lost Borders

Last week I returned to San Francisco after 12 days of a School of Lost Borders “Vision Fast” in Death Valley. This event had 12 participants and 4 guides. Subsequently I wrote two posts about it and both are post below.

Post 1:

The Vision Fast was powerful, but I’ll only know how powerful with some time. It’s surreal to spend 12 days with 15 others pouring our hearts, lives, and memories out to each other, and then this pop-up community suddenly ending. Right now I’m waffling between “That may have changed my life” and “Did that fever dream even happen?”

For the first few days we got to know one another and honed our intentions for why we were there and what we wanted to get out of it. For 2 days we sat in a circle and one by one were interviewed by the guides. They helped each of us take our large unsharpened intentions and boil it all down into a single, memorizable “I am” statement of our own choosing; a mantra of sorts we could repeat in the desert. I went in with a mess of ideas and was not alone in finding myself surprised by the “I am” statement I ended up choosing.

On day four we relocated to Death Valley. We drove miles down a wild, rocky road until we got to our spot, Lemoigne Canyon. There we spent a day each finding our spot, trekking water to it, sharing a last supper, and receiving wilderness training. The next morning the guides smudged us out and we each silently headed to our respective spots where we spent the next four days and nights alone with little to do and no food or shelter.

On the 2nd night gusty winds of 40-70 mph blew in a freezing rain. I sat for hours inside a trash bag wrapped in a tarp, being rocked back and forth by the wind. It was a long night that found the clouds parting and the storm leaving suddenly. I sat under the most beautiful moon and stars with the deepest serenity and gratitude. Somehow, not one of us quit.

In short I came to see that I already contained all that I was looking for. For the final days we shared our stories in a circle and the guides “mirrored” back to us their own understanding. Most of the deepest healing happened in the circle during the retellings. Our guides’ vast experience helped move the mountains within us. I came away understanding the power of the story, of sharing, of listening, and witnessing.

Post 2:

Before Death Valley we spent days sitting in circles sharing our stories. I shared a rosy childhood picture of before my grandmother died. Her farmhouse was our community space, where my larger family came together to eat lunch, pick up mail, and share gossip over coffee. In the summers, a dozen mud swallow nests lay under the eaves of the house. The birds darted after us as we played outside.

One year, around when Gram died, the old farmhouse got vinyl siding. When the swallows returned their mud nests fell from the newly frictionless house. The birds left and never came back. I shared that I’ve thought of my childhood as “the time of the swallows” and after Gram died as “after the swallows were gone.”

The next day we walked to the meadow where we did our group work, and as we entered, a swallow like the ones from my childhood flew overhead. I hadn’t seen one in years and I was the only one who saw it. I interpreted it as “you’re in the right place.” Later I shared with one of the guides that I saw a swallow; he replied calmly, “You do know the swallows are going to return, right?”

On the 3rd day of the fast, as I rested in the afternoon sun, I sat watching over the valley in the shade of a blooming creosote bush. And then a swallow came up and darted past my face, and then some 20 more followed right behind. They circled me clockwise and counter-clockwise. They flew laps in a tight column of some 30 feet. They kept circling around me until the happening left the realm of making any sense at all.

At first I thought, “what a wild coincidence,” but then 5 minutes went by, and then 10 minutes, and they kept on. Some time in my scientific-inclined patterning left me and grander ideas about Spirit came in. After 15-20 minutes any ideas about coincidences abandoned me and finally I exclaimed, “Ok, enough!” and at that the swallows finally broke formation. For 15 more minutes they flew more loosely around me doing aerial acrobatics.

It’s hard to say what I experienced that afternoon and to draw conclusions. What I can say for certain is that I will be sitting with it for a long time, that something shifted deep within me, and that the swallows indeed returned.