Liminal Journal: Crystalizing Symbols

My liminal mind, the in-between-state-mind, is essential for effective listening. Wiping your mind of dark or recursive thoughts, called ruminating, is a habit or twich of your brain muscle, like a leg cramp. Your brain is spasming. It’s a loop. In the early days of what would become to be known as recovery, we called them tapes. A thought would trigger a tape, which would play and rewind over and over like a micro-cassette recorder with 3% battery life.

Traumatic thought. Run the tape to overload. Rewind. Run loop again. Here are a couple of things I do when my brain becomes a runaway freight train bound for anywhere.*

a. Silently say the Serenity Prayer

b. MMMM – managing my magical mind (notice the active tense)

Write until you’ve exhausted the emotion. Write to yourself. Burn the notes if you have to, but let your soul rip your mind and heart to shreds. This is writing on the emotional level. To recharge you need defense postures and deep relaxation techniques, probably beyond the scope of this book, but I enourage you to look into Aikeido, Tai Chi, and Qigong. Tennis. Swimming. All activities and exercises associated with clarity of mind, patience, and a fierce eye on your attacker.

I arrived at zen and then tai chi after enrolling in a martial arts class while in college. Master Yi, Austin, Texas, and Korean legend. He even introduced me to acupuncture that summer when I twisted my ankle.

“I’m think you need Tai Chi in your heart. I see much sadness. Hard form is good. Tai Chi is more for mind. You lack clarity of thought. Too much ghost anger. Very dangerlos! I’ve asked Vincent to stay after today and talk to you about train. No charge for extra class. My gift.” He bowed to me and went back to teaching class. The conversation was over. The conversion was about to begin.

I was in Tai Chi class now.

c. Martial arts, cardio-lifting exercise habit/ritual.

d. A spiritual practice of your choosing. A moment to remind you that you are not the center of the universe, just your personal universe.

e. Self-regulation through meditation, breathing exercises, or mantra/chant/gratitudes.

f. Writing daily gratitudes. Like prompts to God and your active angels. Gratitudes sting the eyes of your devils, so keep that in mind.

g. Walk in nature. Rain or shine. Put on your shoes, or take off your shoes, and go for a walk. 5 minutes can reset everything. 15 minutes and you may decide to take the rest of the day off.

Then, and here’s what this section is all about: The Liminal Pages™**

Goal of the daily writing ritual: reconnect your inner voice as a positive influence, navigator, and futurist. You begin to have conversations with your own mind. This is a zen concept known as YES:self vs NO:self.***

One voice, the one we are cultivating in the liminal pages, is the YES:self. In tennis, your YESS knows how to hit the perfect forehand, serve, volley, whatever. The second voice, is the inner critic, coach, self-sabotaging self. NO:self. NO tries to overmanage the tennis experience. “racket back more on the backhand… and…” fuck “toss the ball higher and keep your fucking arm up” and “fault!” “you’re not doing it right. clear your mind. take a breath and hit it like a man.”

In your liminal pages each morning when you wake up, just start. Write. Don’t think too much about what you are writing. Capture dream fragments, if they were interesting, to-do lists, if that’s on your mind, sadness at the state of the world (natural human emotion across our divided nation).

The writing begins to bond your inner voice with your cognitive and focusable mind. The sad loops of rumination are harmful as well as painful. If you interrupt your sad loops of emotions and math, you can pull your eyes up from the mud and back to the stars. Perhaps even star travel.

just a city boy, born and raised in south detroit

I’ve got so much to tell you today, but right now I’ve got to go to the daily hover meeting with Jesus and Judas. We’re Agile here in not-quite-heaven. We used to have standup meetings at the end of our shifts too, but some showoffs never took any time off, zero, nada. Full-time asshole angels. An Angry Angel, as Alanis Morrisette sang about, is one that never takes time off. No downtime angels, are what we call them. Like meth addicts in celestial form, no less irritating than they were as humans. Go go go. Agendas, practices, memorials, killings, riot, soothing the victims. NDA. No-Downtime Angel.

Do not fuck with the NDAs. You are not prepared for the firestorm these autistic angels can wreak.