Loving People | Leaving People

The marriage I've left behind was the result of confusion within a complex of excitement, change and desires as well as fears. Something I realized about the experience is that one ingredient of my confusion was something very beautiful though it led to some pain. I had reached a place of feeling love and compassion toward people in a way which I never had before. This was a product of my personal evolution which I had been nurturing much of my life. This expansion of my capacity to love happened at the same time in which I met SleepingGuru, whom I later married and have now separated from.

I felt love so much more deeply than I ever had and this led me to the assumption that she was somehow integral to that. This wasn't true and I realize that now. The truth is that I was never in love with her, but I loved her. I had no meter with which to tell the difference in my expanded state. That relationship taught me the difference and gave me a meter.

As I consider the action of karma here I see with new clarity. I am sad to have hurt SleepingGuru. As I reflect I see what is most crucial. The part of me that fears some cosmic retribution, or the onlookers who predict it would see that occur in my life if I did not learn the lesson. By seeing this in full clarity, looking directly into the mechanism, the lesson is fully integrated and the karma is broken.

I think this is interesting for people who come from the west to consider. We are deeply conditioned by guilt and punishment ideas in our culture. Karma is not punishment, it is action. When we have expanded beyond the level of the action, by encompassing all aspects, like being on both sides of a coin, there is a release. Or in other terms, the thing that makes a mess of people is continuing to do something, which creates inertia and causes the sorts of rebalancing phenomena that bring about more pain.

The universe has no need nor mechanism with which to cause pain once we stop doing the thing that hurts. Conversely, if a relationship ends and one person continues to labor in pain while the other is joyous then this is also a karmic lesson. (I do not know that SleepingGuru is in continuing pain or no) Understand that Joyousness is a divine spiritual state not an emotion. One who has acted without compassion must resolve this in order to be joyous. The one who is in pain is in a process of remanifesting the same painful experience. This pain is not a result of something that was done to them. The true karmic lesson is that this person is allowing their mind to use theirself, they are in fact asleep and dreaming. They are causing the pain which they are experiencing to theirself. When they take control of their mind, the pain will stop.

This pain cycle will be deepened and lengthened by blaming the partner for the pain. This is because the pain is not under their control once this happens. Then if other sleeping people tell the one who is suffering that they have been in some way wronged and encourage this blaming aspect, the whole problem becomes a kind of distributed agreement and reinforcement to continue to be in pain.

As I left the situation I asked myself how I got into the thing to begin with. This has been an incredible wellspring of wisdom and transformation for which I am deeply thankful. I am also Joyous. I feel I've had to take some huge risks which have delivered me into a life I had never imagined. I would not be who I am if I had not had that experience and I don't think those lessons could have been learned any other way. In retrospect I feel like we were handed a perfect package, custom made for us to learn everything we needed to become ourselves.

I don't know how SleepingGuru is processing things now. I know when we were together she lacked the skills to move through pain and work with herself in such a way. She had trouble loving herself and in discernment generally. From her notes to me I know that some of what I described above regarding "the partner in pain" was going on in her. This is her journey and what she must gather from what we did.

There are a lot of things that went on which people around us will never understand and probably couldn't until they've developed the faculty of seeing. I do not blame her. Part of the reason I have left and my life continues to expand in joy is that I don't use my energy in that way. I don't have it in my world. I thought about it as I was being blamed and realized that in fact I felt hurt, abused, manipulated, undermined; All sorts of blamable things. But I made a decision. I feel love, I am creating the most amazing life anyone has ever lived. I am ready for the world.

Karma and Love

As I listen to the discourse in my head with the various voices and opinions regarding my leaving behind my previous life I hear one that comes to ideas of karma. What my reflection yielded as I sat in silence is the following; Karma is not a mechanism, the function of which is to make us suffer. It is a flawless mechanism by which we can learn the truth of ourselves without any other instruction.

Sanguine: Varously described as very happy or bloodthirsty

I love it. Kampeki! If I had 17 yen I would go and get a Big Mac.

Starbucks, I swore I'd never speak to you again But I'm back with tail severed and inserted in my empty eye socket....

What the Fuck is going on?

I'm going to tell you. But FIRST!!!

Crumbling Empires! Burning Effigies! Rotting Corpses of financial institutions and their lackeys.. Any Direction is Misdirection. Nowhere is a place I've heard of but they say you can't get there from here! Curses! Screeching Invective! Inspiration and it's Loss! Now I relieve some pressure from my root so's I can give your ear a proper thrashing!

Getting Married, Getting Unmarried, Getting Remarried. I'm eating rice grown by nuclear disaster zone farmers. Being in perpetual on-the-road-ness puts one in a special frame of consciousness and gives a different set of concerns. The word is infected. Burn this message as soon as you read it. Burn this message before you read it. Too Late - Shikaku! Send money. Money won't mean much for much longer.. I'm a gypsy... so is this crazy Japanese lover. Now we just need to remember how to play all the wild-oold-world dance love and drinkin' songs.

Ysitta! but Her secret name - Prize and Penance. So perfect. Creative, beautiful, forceful, selfish, cruel, demanding, visionary, spirited... so nourishing. We make love twice a day. She asks me permission for things even though she's going to do what she wants anyway.. just giving me a chance for scorn.. for punishment or forgiveness.. Everything so different when there is this much passion driving everything. The dream manifesting. Go with the heart or just go.

Pressure building up slowly from underground. I think therefore you don't have to.. I recommend sending love letters to people you barely know. You can sign my name if you don't feel up to it. But I'm going to take the credit. I'll dress up like you when I show up at the grass and mud cottage on the hill where your lover was born. Get there first or I'll give'r the Guerilla Love - there's no going back!

20 Yen short of a Big Mac

That's it. I want to eat a Big Mac in Hiroshima. I'm really only 17 Yen short.

Well.. yea it is possibly crazy

I'm sitting in my apartment in Hiroshima, Japan. It's really a vacant commercial space in the heart of the commercial district, the Hondori. This is a very precious bit of space, valued at some 300,000 yen per month, it is owned by the father of my Japanese fiance, Miss guerilla. It's empty as of now.. except myself and Miss Guerilla who, through her artifice and my disregard for people's opinions, have occupied and created an improviso kitchen and sleeping space via a borrowed tent and various camping gear which we were using on island beaches in September.

The father, Yukinobu... not impressed with me. We had a great time when I first arrived. Something happened which neither I, nor Ysitta are aware of. There are a lot of possibilities which I've given up on calculating. Tadashi, the gay, inarticulate, but concise 40 year old brother described my meeting with her father as, "It seemed like he found his other son". I'll find a way to bridge the gap. Making love to his daughter in a consistent, ongoing manner being part of the core of my plan. These sorts of things always work! It's simple though. Her family is crazy. Really. So I've stopped worrying about it. It will work, they don't have a choice and the will of Ysitta and I is volumetrically more powerful than that of her parents disgust, or any other detractors from the cause. And our likely half-Japanese child is sure to draw some relaxing of barriers.

I've been drinking a live ferment sake and wandering the city. I stopped through the Peace Park with a guitar and played under the bridge. This is an amazing spot where at night it is lit like a stage and the acoustics are fab. Another musician, young Japanese, stopped through and showed a fair amount of amazement at what I was singing and playing. So I was playing a little show under a bridge in Hiroshima. I love it. I also realize I have most of what I need to put my music career together. What is left is competent folks to write and play with. OK

I'll take my drunkish ass to the watering hole.

Poop-Eye the Ninja Sailor

Mcdonalds on Hondori.. 2^nd floor dining area.
Taigee! Hiroshima-ese for debilitating exhaustion.
Highschool students, mostly chics
passed out and strewn like wounded band of knee-socked Samurai
I wish I could ask them more about it,

I'm tired too. Long evening in conversation with angry Polish backpacker and young female Doctor. We had a drink at Molly Malone's Pub. He didn't like other people at the hostel on account they stayed in for the night. Some calculus he makes where they aren't “carpe diem” enough for his tastes. Takes me a little while before I realize my battery is being drained in this foray, but I escape relatively uninjured.

Slept 5 ½ hours at Popeye Media Cafe. I call it Poop Eye in my thoughts.

Windowless, concrete container room, prolific Manga library in print and digital media,

game and video stations, private booths for singles or groups.

Wireless and direct network connections, dual widescreen monitors and fully reclining faux-leather game chair with poly-fur blanket. I wonder about post-masturbatory cleaning policies with minimal visualization. Dull electronic hum and whir of 200 PC Tower-power supply heat fans, overhead air circulation, heating and cooling supplies ambient vibration. No air supply to outside that I can see. Counting on nature of gases to distribute themselves evenly for oxygen resupply. Complimentary shower. Hot water, instant ramen, tea and slushie drinks for sale at the desk.

Slept some, woke up to counter clerk shaking me as my alarm was blaring APHEX electronic dance music, from some album where the titles are just serial numbers. New software, not intuitive to half-sleeping, bleary eyed people, couldn't turn it off for at least a few long minutes. I was deep in REM, always leaves me with sense of discontinuity to be interrupted.

Going to meet Miss Guerilla very soon.

I love her

I never bet on her punctuality,

I will be punctual nonetheless.

Out to the country by van.

Macrobiotic foods, miso, local farm greens tasting.

Lunch, exceptional quality and care in the food and event. I like these people.

Feelings of welcome, openness and interest.

Understanding more of the language, enough that I'm encouraged,

Motivated to develop my strategy for learning. I want to be in this conversation.

I imagine a child must feel like I do now, but without the commentary.

Gratitude,

J.W. Starr

President of the Society For People Who Don't Give A Shit About Convention

What Does a Guerilla Love Artist Do?

I remember listening to Osho speak about life and whether you want to live your truth? I was in a rental house with a film crew, in San Cristobal de Las Casas, Mexico eating cacao beans lightly toasted and dipped in honey. While I listened, I reflected on a moment with a fiery, talented lover of Chinese/Trinidad decent from the year before whom I will call AOI. She proclaimed with vehemence, "I have to live my truth". This came out of the dynamic of AOI breaking her engagement to be married in the process of our becoming lovers. Lying in bed with me, looking for some way to feel OK with everything. Probably I offered my light, but still useful sentiment like, "If you're not committed with everything you've got now, you've just saved yourself and him a lot of heartache later by jumping ship."

My My, I love how our own words can become so prophetic with a little bit of fermentation. But, her words at that moment sounded so forced and built up. They were covering pain and disbelief in an attempt to find some truth out there, which in my observation, like closure, we create for ourselves in here. Looking for it and trying to weave masks of it seems like a way of driving ourselves into cycles of self-torture. And so Osho came with the idea, "live your truth? Why do you want to do that? If you think you have truth, then you have to protect it, defend it, get other people to believe it so it doesn't fall apart... Live your art instead". What a moment.

It was the quintessential element of what I felt when I saw AOI pushing so hard while I felt so at ease. I saw it again in my own life as questions arose while I exited my marriage to SG (Sleeping Guru). Maybe if AOI had shown up at the right time I never would have been married? Perhaps. And perhaps, one incredible series of learning and transformation would not have had its vehicle? Perhaps I did AOI a favor by creating that clarity in her life, while I needed to go through my marriage to learn what I did? My perspective informs me that we've each gotten the medicine we need and it is up to us to be sure it is integrated. There won't be truth, there will be ongoing unfoldment, artful evolution of life and learning.

One of the things that has been fascinating to me throughout this and so many of my previous experiences is the intractable nature of the continuum that to me is heart, art and will. Once my heart informs me there is nothing that can be done to edit it or uninterpret. The art will come in an act of will and things will happen. It is almost terrifying until I realize that it is simply various aspects of my own "only partially knowable at any given moment" Self making themselves apparent in different ways at different times.

The important questions in my perspective are: How do I really feel deep down? How long will it take for me to correct course? How can I do this with best results for myself and people I'm connected to?

I see that an AOI did come for me in the form of Miss Guerilla. I call it, "waking me more fully to myself". The seed of an entirely new life was planted in a single moment of eyes locking and penetrating each other without fear or veils, or words.

This incubated itself for months while simultaneously my marriage dismantled itself. My feeling is that there wasn't a failure but a great success. It may seem counter, but here is Voltaire, "if Columbus in an island of America had not caught the disease, which poisons the source of generation, and often indeed prevents generation, we should not have chocolate and cochineal". I ask myself the question, "how long should we suffer over perceived missteps before we look at what we've gained from any experience?", "and reap the benefits?".

An aside I've been chewing on this morning; What is the name, in any language, for a gift that is given with love and intention and that can not be received, perhaps not understood or identifiable to the recipient? Yet it is still there, still imparted and still working. What if the giver does not know what they've given?

If you have a word for this, please send it!

Love and Light,
J.W. Starr - Henshin Operator