"Change is coming. Now is my time. Listen to my muscle memory contemplate what I've been clinging to." ~MJK

A year ago, almost to the day (take that as you will), I wrote a blog entry about spirituality (view it here: http://constructivecompulsion.blogspot.com/2011/02/to-see-beyond-what-can-be-seen-and-be.html), and my need to embark on my own quest.
And a year later, I still haven't really delved into it.

Wednesday night I went to see TOOL in concert. I hadn't seen them since July of 2007. I was hanging a lot of importance on this show. I always view their concerts as more than just going to see a band I like. Their music has always resonated with me on a much deeper level. It inspires and centers me.

Wednesday night I focused on the show. I never touched my phone. I went to the show with my cousin, and we exchanged few words. I willed myself to connect to what was happening in front of me, the power of the music, the meaning of the images and videos on the screens that are meant to amplify the experience. It's almost like solving a puzzle or a riddle at TOOL shows: watching the videos and images and making the connections to the music. I released a lot of tensions, frustrations, and things that have been causing chaos within me.

January was a rough month. I was sick several times, my boyfriend was sick several times, and we couldn't get ourselves on a good schedule and healthy regimen. I faced more frustrations with my impending divorce. I'm frustrated that I gained some weight and couldn't get myself back on track. I've been battling chronic head, neck, and shoulder pain. I've been struggling to get a handle on everything around me. I recognized this spiral of feeling out of control of my life, and that in and of itself gives me great anxiety. It's all tied together.

It's all tied together.

Universal energy. The power of our own will, the electricity that is within all of us. This is what allows us to overcome, to change, to evolve. This is something that I have lost sight of in the past few weeks. I allowed adversity to dim my lights, burn out a few bulbs. It got the best of me. I'm certain that most of my frustration was not with the external circumstances, but with my response to them.

I've been kicking these ideas around for too long. I treat this need to expand my understanding of these concepts like a toy that I love one day, but then it accidentally gets kicked under the bed and forgotten about. And every time I find myself in this ebb and flow of positive and negative feelings, I immediately come back to this idea of universal connectedness and higher consciousness. But its base level is no longer enough. Once again, I find myself in this starving place, needing to learn more and expand my understanding of this phenomenon that I believe with relentless certaintly will answer my questions, will quench the spiritual drought, and will cultivate the growth that I very clearly crave.

And so today, I say officially that Constructive Compulsion will no longer serve as a simple dumping ground for the musings of my brain, nor the home of the Friday Five. (I'm not saying it won't continue, it just may get its very own home.) CC's purpose was initially to be, and will now be, the place were I chronicle what I am learing, experiencing and grappling with. A place where I can share revelations, but also pose questions and receive ideas and answers from all of you... a think tank, a chat over coffee, a heated debate... all of these things are possibilities.

I don't expect it to be easy. I don't expect it to all be positive. I expect to be confused. Frustrated. Challenged. Inspired. Enraged. I'm sure I will read things that don't make sense at all, or that contradict what I thought I knew. I expect to be wrong. But that means I will grow. I will expand my ideas, I will learn new ways of perceiving what is around me. That, my friends, is evolution.

"I choose to live and to grow, take and give and to move, learn and love and to cry, kill and die and to be paranoid and to lie, hate and fear, and to do what it takes to move through."