I haven't been writing because I've been struggling with identity. I'm not sure who I want to be on this blog, which me wants to come out and play. In part I want it to be a way for me to engage the parts of myself that don't often get airtime elsewhere--being in a queer relationship, being part of a BDSM relationship, practicing some blend of Wicca and Buddhism with a little Judaism and Catholicism thrown in, writing and reading eclecticly, struggling to engage my own wants and needs and goals. But I also want this to be a space where I can process the parts of my life that are known, where I can complain about students or about a fight I had with Ms. P or the work I'm doing for my second degree initiation.
I worry that somehow, in some way, it will become not-anonymous, and then all of this very real me will be laid bare, laid honest, for everyone to read. It makes me very uncomfortable.
And so this morning I've been challenging myself with two things. The first is what Ms. P and the Tree call radical honesty. They had a conversation once where one of them said that no one wants full and complete honesty all the time, that it would destroy relationships. The other disagreed, and thus was born the Experiment: what happens if we are radically, completely honest all the time with one another? This doesn't mean saying true things in order to be mean, of course, but it does mean being straightforward and forthright about true things. I've been challenging myself, in my life and here, to participate again in the Experiment.
Second, I've been reengaging the Enneagram, my favorite personality indicator. It divides all personalities into 9 basic types, each of which have a whole range of levels of health with differing behavior as well as descriptions of how we are when we're integrating and disintegrating. I like it because it's not simplistic, because it's dynamic and accounts for change, because it has a spiritual dimension, and because it is a tool for self-examination and self-development more than a description.
In the Enneagram, I'm apparently a 9. We've had trouble typing me; for several years we thought I was a 6. But I'm a 9. And characteristic of a 9 is the tendency to disengage, to step away from the self and the self's needs in order to create or maintain harmony. So much of my reluctance to be truly present is constitutional and not really a rational evaluation of reality. Harmony is good; disengagement is not. So I'm challenging myself not to disengage.
I keep reminding myself of the story, which I've heard as both Catholic and Buddhist, where a head monk enters a kitchen and asks two monks what they are doing. One monk holds up his knife and says, "cutting carrots." The other monk smiles, keeps chopping, and says, "falling down and getting up again." I'm trying to be the second monk, always falling down and always getting up again.