Enlightenment

eye of the hurricane

2009-05-27T18:05:00.000-07:00

Today one of my co-workers, looking strained and arriving late to the office, told me that her neighbor committed suicide last night. She seemed pretty shaken up about it. Then in the afternoon we learned that somebody had just been fired and two other people had given notice.

Tomorrow we are supposed to be told about new austerity measures that almost certainly will result in having to take unpaid days off. This is all on the heels of previous layoffs, firings, and distant rumblings indicating plans being made for those of us who, for the time being, remain.

I took all of this in stride. But I don't mean I coped with it, because I didn't. It's like being in the eye of a storm. It's all swirling around me as I stand untouched in the center of it. It's not that I don't expect to be affected by any of it; I just have little concern with whatever is happening. There isn't much of a self left to be worried about things anymore. What do I care what happens to me? It all seems without real consequences. There's just an awareness of all that is happening without concern for the impact on a particular self.

Ravi

2009-05-26T18:12:00.000-07:00

My friend Ravi, whom I know only through e-mail and a few phone calls, asked me for a picture a couple of weeks ago. I finally got around to sending it to him over the weekend. Right after I sent the picture, I started agonizing over it and how Ravi, crushed by disappointment, will never talk to me again.

The way I look has been an issue for a really long time, and I was reluctant to send the picture. I don't like being photographed and the whole thing was unpleasant. But after getting pretty worked up, which lasted for a few hours, it's pretty much gone now. I don't really care if Ravi likes the picture or not. Ravi's opinion is none of my business, as it doesn't have anything to do with me.

This isn't the result of rationalization or trying to talk myself out of being upset about the picture and Ravi's opinion. I just let the reaction go and it pretty quickly ran out of steam on its own. Interfering with it, which means trying to stop or modify it, would have strengthened it and I would still be upset. As it is, I quietly watched it and it lived out its little lifespan. Whatever happens now is fine because I'm not depending on a positive reaction from Ravi anymore.

boredom

2009-05-14T18:17:00.000-07:00

I've been profoundly bored with work. I've been really tired of driving the same way, going to the same office, doing the same work, riding on some senseless and apparently eternal merry-go-round.

The boredom extended to home, too. Every night I would stay home alone, watch TV, and drink. There is only so much sleep-work-then-drink-while-watching-the-boobus-toobus-alone you can do before something has to change. I knew that, and I also knew there was nothing I could do to actively change it.

The other morning while I was waking up I became aware that my brain already had the thinking in overdrive. Not even fully awake and I was already subject to a moronic, endless commentary and speculation on nothing. At this point, I got really, deeply, completely sick of it, the whole damn thing. I wasn't willing to live this tiresome, disgusting existence for one more minute.

I no longer pretend that suicide is an option or that some future state of enlightenment is going to release me. This is my life and I have to deal with it as it is, right now. I'm no longer bothering with boring escapes like drinking, overeating, or ceaseless TV watching. It's all a stupid postponement and I'm not doing it anymore. I'll do anything to end this nonsense, even deal with reality.

I got out of bed, assuming this was just another of my hopeful announcements to myself that it's over, it's really over this time. . . but something seems to have actually happened. The urge to drink is gone. I keep looking for it, but it's not there. I imagine drinking and it seems like it would be all right, but I'm not going to do it. It's totally not worth the consequence, which is staying mired in a deadly, lifeless rut. Ferget it, I'd rather give up whiskey than put up with this anymore.

Also gone is the overeating and the compulsive TV watching. I just don't need them at the moment, and being quiet or engaging in one activity at a time is quite nice. I don't even care if the cravings come back. It's not me or my problem anymore.

desires

2009-05-07T19:25:00.000-07:00

Lately I've been getting closer and closer to living without internal conflict. I've given up moving in any particular direction as much as I can right now. I'm not interested in perpetuating any delusions about myself. If I feel like drinking, I drink. If I feel like sitting at my desk at lunch instead of going for a walk, I sit. If I feel like spending an entire sunny day on my butt watching the boob tube, I watch it.

Probably the most clear example of no longer trying to manage myself is that I've taken the vegetarianism down to part time. I still don't eat meat at home, but if I go out I might get something with meat in it. In fact, I'm working my way through all the stuff I haven't been able to eat for the past two years.

Why haven't I been "able" to eat meat? Because I had an idea that I "should" be a vegetarian. I still think it's important to minimize harm to others, but having an idea about being a vegetarian is a pain and if you actually want to eat meat, it's a downright harmful idea. It causes inner conflict, all to fulfill an image, a should. I no longer care if I should or shouldn't eat meat. I do what I want in that regard and if it tips over into runs to McDonald's every few days for Double Cheeseburgers (ahem), so be it.

It's really nice to simply enjoy eating something without the vegetarian hangup. I'll probably go back to exclusive vegetarianism at some point, but it'll be free of the idea of being a vegetarian or any other idea. I just won't eat meat. That's a lot simpler than avoiding gyros, pepperoni pizza, and goulash when the desire to devour it all is really eating you up, so to speak.

2009-04-20T18:14:00.000-07:00

A couple of weeks ago I was at McDonald's- what I was doing there is a topic for another post- and something funny happened. I was wandering around the restaurant trying to find a good seat and, spotting one, I began to move toward it. Some guy saw me heading toward a relatively clean booth by a window and he actually darted in front of me to get there before I did. I changed course and sat in the booth next to the one I was originally going for.

Before I sat down, I looked the guy in the eyes, which was involuntary. I've found myself doing this before, looking into people's eyes without meaning, or even wanting, to. When one of my co worker's mom died, I gave her a hug, told her I was sorry, and silently looked into her eyes for what became a socially unacceptably long time. Apparently, though, it had some kind of positive effect on her because when she later got laid off, she specifically sought me out to say goodbye even though we normally didn't interact much. I didn't want to look at her like that and I wasn't purposely doing anything. It just happened.

A similar thing happened with this guy at McDonald's. After I looked at him, he stared back at me and I began to wonder if 1) he was gonna pull out a gun and shoot me; 2) he was wondering why I wasn't pissed off; or 3) he was waiting for me to pull out a gun and shoot him. But I just sat there and talked to Jamie, totally emotionally unaffected by this display of childish behavior. Dude, if the window seat is that important to you, be my guest. I didn't come to this crummy restaurant to engage in races to window booths. Relax, man. It was a funny demonstration of ridiculous competitiveness and self centered, conditioned action.

near death experience

2009-04-19T20:19:00.000-07:00

Next month, I'm going to the Canyonlands to be part of the support crew for a 100 mile bicycle ride my brother is doing. I'll be driving my Xterra off road for two days, hauling equipment. Even though my Xterra has the Off Road package, I haven't had it actually off road very much, so I need to practice driving and have been going out on practice runs to prepare for next month.

Last Tuesday evening my brother and I drove up to the mountains looking for a place to practice, and we found a Forest Service road that looked pretty good. It was pretty good, at least until we turned off onto another, smaller trail and rapidly got into trouble.

We drove through a little snow and mud as the road narrowed, and before long we found ourselves on a narrow, treacherous track more suited to a little Jeep Wrangler than my relatively large Xterra. It quickly became apparent that we were in over our heads, but there are few places to turn around on such roads and we just kept pushing forward. I started to get apprehensive, and then we went up a bit more and came upon a spot where the trail was merely a sloping patch of ground between a sheer rock wall (unhelpfully painted with the words "Danger Keep Left"- obviously, thanks for nothing) and a dropoff, covered with loose rocks from recent rock slides. The trail was barely wide enough to accommodate my truck, so my brother got out and stood in front of me, arranging rocks to form a little "staircase" for my truck and pointing the way forward to me. A smidge to the left, a bit to the right, now straight on. I was giving the truck just enough gas to keep it crawling over the rocks, right up against the rock wall and an incredibly inconveniently located tree stump to my left, and trying to follow my brother's directions.

After driving just a couple of feet, I turned the wheel the wrong way on the loose rocks and my wet tires caused the whole truck to lurch and slide to the right. . . toward the dropoff. The truck only slid a few inches, but I only had a few inches. My apprehension turned to complete fear and I thought I was done for. I've never been so scared in my life as I was at that moment, inches away from a cliff, balanced on a narrow, loose trail. My brother later said that my eyes were HUGE.

I righted the truck and kept going, driving extremely slowly past this most dangerous of spots, and right on to the other tricky spots that also scared me to death. We slowly made our way over jutting, slippery rocks, with the cliff just to the right all the time, my brother frowning down at the ground and waving directions at me, and the sun began to fade. We had no idea where this awful Jeep trail went, if anywhere, and the very real possibility of it petering out at an old mine or box canyon loomed. The thought of doing what we had just done again, and downhill to boot, was unbearable. I never wanted to do it again, much less the very next morning. I was determined to spend the night up there if we had to, even though my brother was actually contemplating trying to get down in the dark. Insane.

My brother got back in the truck after we'd negotiated the worst of it, and we continued to drive in silence, the only sound the truck's engine. We were both thoroughly terrified, but on another level, we both knew what we had to do and we just did it. No choice. We had to try to get down and flipping out wasn't on the table.

I think of this now as one my finer Carlos Castaneda moments, which is what I call any impossible situation in which you're faced with your imminent death if you do not perform some feat that you are actually not capable of. Somehow I pulled off advanced technical driving in the face of overwhelming fear, and the very real possibility, mere inches away, of losing my life.

The most interesting part of this terrible situation, which I brought on myself through sheer stupidity, is that I had nearly no thoughts while it was happening. I could feel acute fear, yet my body was totally relaxed and I was nowhere near panic. I fully recognized that I was in a bad situation and I could very easily be killed, and I was desperate to get the hell down the mountain, but I clearly, calmly, and patiently did what had to be done. Usually when you think you're going to die it only lasts for a matter of seconds, but this went on and on, probably for about half an hour. The fear was nearly unbearable, but there was nothing to do but go on.

Just as it was really dark we finally popped out onto an actual road. I've never been happier to see a crummy, narrow little dirt road in my life and I stuck my head out the truck window and screamed. Then I put the Xterra in 2 wheel drive and drove like mad for the interstate and back to town.

Nothing happens without a reason, and given that stupid people have special guardian angels, which is the only explanation for why I'm still alive, I recognize that this situation was presented to me so I could feel death for the duration, and see what my reaction was. I was undoubtedly more scared that I'd ever been in my life and I didn't want to die on that stupid little Jeep road, but it had the effect of clearing out any self pity and self indulgence I'd been engaging in, which is always quite a bit. I've been in a good mood since then and it had a serious impact on my outlook. Death is your best advisor and it has a way of quickly establishing what is real and what is important. Thank you, Forest Service Road 23756.

outburst

2009-04-06T17:50:00.000-07:00

Lately, as a result of not trying to change myself, I've been a lot more relaxed about showing what I really feel or think. This is hardly always an advantage.

Today in a meeting at work we were discussing the calendars we have in Outlook to keep track of who's in and out of the office. I'm easily provoked on Mondays, and after spending ten agonizing minutes speculating on how the billing department might want us to complete check requests, I was already grinding my teeth.

During the calendar conversation I became visibly agitated as my supervisor began to explain why we do the calendars the way we do, citing "logical reasons". This helped only to piss me off more and I interrupted him, saying that I was sure there was a logical reason, there always is, but that I was "sick of this crap." The silence that followed was punctuated by a few uneasy snickers as I sank down in my chair. Did I just interrupt my supervisor in front of a roomful of people to announce that I'm sick of this crap? Shit. Shit!

I have even less tolerance for putting up with garbage than I used to, which is saying something, and I find such remarks coming out of my mouth with a natural ease that is unsettling. I've already beaten the adjectives "stupid" and "ridiculous" to death, so there's really nowhere left to go, and I'm left biting the inside of my mouth to get myself to keep quiet. It won't work, though.

Having to spend precious time and energy on such trivia makes me resentful. During our meeting, a fire truck and an ambulance pulled up to the front of our building and I had a bird's eye view from our huge conference room window on the ninth floor. I muttered "poor bastard" as they loaded up some stressed out wage slave who'd probably just suffered the infamous Monday morning heart attack. Either that or he'd just been laid off and had a meltdown. I settled back in my chair, satisfied that my contention that work is deadly had just been confirmed.

totally over it

2009-03-25T18:29:00.000-07:00

A couple of people asked me today how I was doing, because yesterday was such a hard day at work and I seemed to have taken it pretty hard. I was happy to report that today I was feeling fine.

If you fully acknowledge and express, when necessary, emotions, they dissipate very quickly. You don't remain upset or stressed. If you get upset the next day, it's all new upset and has nothing to do with the earlier emotion. It might look worse to let the feelings be, because we're conditioned to suppress them, but you're a lot more emotionally healthy if you let them run their course and not store them up, which causes mental and even physical problems.

feelings

2009-03-24T19:00:00.000-07:00

This morning I woke up with a plain sense of how much I really dislike having to go to work. I generally have trouble getting out of bed on time and I'm a little late to work quite often. This is obviously a childish reaction, but I haven't been able to do much more than worry about it.

We're really busy at work right now and are under a lot of pressure to complete a big project by the end of the month without working overtime. We've had consistent server problems all month, there have been big last minute changes we have to cope with, and I also have things besides work I have to do and I just don't have time to deal with them. Yesterday it finally all caught up with me and I got crabby. I also wonder if I didn't realize on some level what was going to happen today, and that's largely why I felt bad yesterday.

So I woke up today feeling overwhelmed and resentful and I already felt pretty shaky by the time I got to work. There was an unsettled feeling at the office, and then some of us got an e-mail that said people were getting laid off today, but if you got the e-mail, you weren't one of them.

This was it for me, and I burst into tears. We'd been struggling to cope with too much work and dealing with obstacle after obstacle, not to mention the perpetual conflict between disliking work yet fearing losing my job, and this announcement was the final straw. I tried to get myself together to attend a meeting about the layoffs that we all had to go to, and when I left my office, I saw one of the people who'd gotten laid off. She ran over to me and said she wanted to say goodbye to me but my door had been closed all morning. I gave her a big hug and told her how sorry I was, and that got us both going with the crying again. Then I stumbled off to the meeting, red-eyed and snuffling.

I told Jamie about it and she was horrified, because she was convinced I've just been paranoid and nobody was going to get laid off. She tried to comfort me, which I appreciate, but I'm not interested in feeling any different than I do. It even surprises me when people offer coping suggestions or tell me not to worry because trying to change my feelings is so far off my radar now.

If I feel stressed out, upset, or scared, I no longer try to mitigate it and I'm pretty expressive of my feelings. This tends to freak people out as they're used to people being stoic or pretending that things don't bother them. But these days, if something's bothering me, you're gonna hear about it. Everyone else feels the same way I do, they just have an investment in not expressing it and they're at a loss when someone else just lets the feelings be. It's probably not the best idea to be that way at work, but I don't care. My life isn't about what looks good at work.

surrender

2009-03-23T18:33:00.000-07:00

A couple of times recently I've started to wake up in the middle of the night and I could feel that I was extremely close to total surrender. It was as if there were only a thin barrier, like a Japanese paper door, between me and no me. The ultimate was about to happen, and I could also feel my self's utter refusal to let it happen. This, the last teeny little bit, the self insists on keeping. Better a scrap of something than complete nothingness.

I'm not worried about the situation, which is actually part of surrender. I don't care if it happens or if it doesn't happen, and I also know damn well it will happen. But none of it has anything to do with me anymore. I never really did anything about it before and I'm sure as hell not going to do anything about it now. I'm past the point of trying, which is action of the self. Awakening is not my affair. It's something totally other and whatever happens is in tune with the gigantic, universal order and it certainly doesn't need my help.

Surrender goes against the grain of everything we ever learned or knew, and actually going through with it is like performing surgery on yourself without benefit of anesthesia. Any takers? I didn't think so. That's why this blog has so few regular readers. Nobody wants to hear it, much less do it. Can't blame them, I wouldn't be doing it myself if I had a choice. Surrender is destruction of the self and everything you know, and nobody does that unless they have to.

the universe

2009-03-18T19:18:00.000-07:00

Last night I was sitting quietly on the couch thinking about how the physical universe came to be. There was probably a Big Bang, granted, but where did the stuff that exploded come from? That's where thought cannot go. It's a point of speculation that I've spent many, if brief, moments thinking over, without getting anywhere.

But last night I thought about that again, that somehow there is a universe, and as I did I realized just how incomprehensible it is that things actually exist. We're used to existence and take it for granted, but, shit, do you really realize that things exist? That there is really, truly, something rather than nothing? It's incredible, I tell you! This realization washed over me with a gigantic impact and I knew the unspeakable majesty and sacredness of the universe which is, if you care to know, Consciousness itself.

It seems funny after this realization that people fuss over the existence of God when 1) the physical universe all by itself is awe inspiring enough- its very existence is already an incomprehensible mystery and 2) getting past thought makes it totally obvious that Consciousness exists and is responsible for the entirety of existence.

dreaming

2009-03-11T18:22:00.000-07:00

I had kind of a rough night last night. At some point I woke up and there was a strange smell in my room. I thought something was coming in the window but when I finally got up to figure out where it was coming from, I couldn't smell it anymore. It was an unfamiliar smell and I can't even describe what it smelled like. Totally weird.

Then I had a number of vivid, emotional dreams that all involved being late or unable to get anywhere at all, my teeth falling out which is really unpleasant, people being inexplicably obstructionist, and so on. Needless to say, I was pretty tired when I finally got up. Still had all my teeth though.

I don't know what the unidentifiable smell was about, but I have a long history of having vivid, powerful dreams. I'm pretty sure I brought them on myself because at one point I was very interested in altered states of consciousness and I experimented with shamanic states, lucid dreaming, and the like.

I think I did something to my brain because ever since, I've had really lively dreams. They're never pleasant, always full of not knowing where I'm supposed to be or an inability to get there, and vague threats and untenable situations. Yuck. The only good thing about them is that they clearly demonstrate the state of my ego, which is obviously not good.

Things are different at night. It seems that the internal censor, the part of you that insists that most things are okay and you're not really as scared and helpless as you feel, disappears when you're not in waking consciousness. Then it's just full on ego and the results are troubling.

selfish

2009-03-10T19:14:00.000-07:00

Jamie's been having some fairly serious anxiety problems lately. She's hardly calm at the best of times, but she has a foot problem that's prevented her from walking to work all winter and the built up energy has gone to manufacturing fearful thoughts, apparently. She finally had to go to the doctor to get anti anxiety pills and now she's going to therapy sessions.

She told me in a serious tone the other day that the anxiety was only the first stage of her upcoming total breakdown. I heartlessly snickered at this. Anxiety sucks but I've seen a lot worse. Besides, fearing a nervous breakdown seems a lot like a paranoid, anxiety-fueled misconception to me- another symptom of anxiety, which is nothing other than fearful, unrealistic thoughts.

Still, it's a real problem that's affecting her, so last night I called Jamie to see how she was doing. After a few minutes she asked me why I was calling and I said just to see how she was feeling, and she asked in a squeaky voice full of surprise, "Really?"

Uh, yeah. Really. Haven't I ever done that before? Apparently not. She couldn't hide her obvious surprise and we had a good laugh about it. I don't really like talking on the phone so I hardly ever call people without a concrete reason, so I guess calling just to talk was unprecedented.

It's part of the different way I'm acting these days, and it's going to take some getting used to. I was never totally self centered, but that was just relative and now I'm a lot less so. People aren't used to it yet, and breaking in my new way of living will probably be good for a lot more laughs.

big mouth strikes again

2009-03-09T19:33:00.000-07:00

At a meeting at work today, some of my coworkers were discussing which method of FedEx delivery to use on some paperwork we have to send out that has to be there exactly on time. In ponderous tones, my coworkers discussed the pros and cons of each possible way to send the paperwork, what the clients might think of each method, the likely outcome if we did it this way or that way, etc. etc. etc.

Later somebody asked me my opinion of how we should do it and I told her my preference, adding, however, that we should just do it whichever way the clients wanted us to so we didn't have to explain otherwise to them or waste any more time on such meaningless details.

Needless to say, this didn't go over too well. I was informed that the issue was, indeed, an important one. Oh. But I don't see how it's important because no matter what we do, it won't have a material impact on the cases, and, more to the point, in a world of trivia, this is one of the most trivial matters I've run across. Sorry, but did you think this was important? Where did you get that idea? It was almost funny the way everyone was taking it so very seriously.

Clearly, the next thing I need to learn is keeping my fool mouth shut. I used to wonder why Jesus didn't just shut the hell up, look where his constant truth telling got him, and now I know why. When you see something, you're compelled to point it out. You can't just sit there and watch the pointless stupidity go on and on around you, unchallenged. FedEx methods aren't important, and the fact that everyone is taking them so seriously is troubling. It points up a total lack of any sense of proportion. I'm all for doing a good job at work and I like to think I work to a high standard, but it ain't my entire life. Pick a delivery method and forget about it already.

cryin' eyes

2009-03-08T21:06:00.000-07:00

Today I spent a lot of time with my little brother. He graduated from high school last year and so far he's somewhat at loose ends. He has ideas about what he'd like to do, but he has a lot of time and money consuming conditions on them so that none of them are happening. Giving advice is pretty fruitless because even if you know what somebody else should be doing, which is highly questionable, they won't listen. My brother has reason on top of reason why it just isn't possible for him to make any progress.

I had a chance while we were driving around today to introduce what, to him, are new ideas about how everything anyone ever told him was wrong and he couldn't listen to anybody else about what life was about or what he should do. After badgering him for a little bit and asking what he was going to do next after every statement he made, he finally got exasperated and told me he didn't care and he'd given up. I just said "So what're you gonna do next?" again. I was probably lucky he didn't try to punch me.

It's actually a good sign that he feels pretty hopeless about fulfilling the life plan that society's laid out for him, because it's bogus. Life isn't about trying to live up to some pointless crap that's been drilled into you since day one, it's about figuring it all out for yourself. Whether that ever leads somewhere, whatever the hell that even means, is totally beside the point. Only you can live your life, which is why it's your life. It's not the church's, it's not the office's, it's not the institution of marriage's, it's not your parent role's, or anything else's. It's totally yours and you're the only one who knows how to conduct it.

After I talked for a few minutes about the hopelessness of going along with the program and what a giant fraud the whole thing was anyway, he started to cry and told me all about his myriad frustrations. It's pretty hard to make an 18 year old aspiring Marine cry, but I managed it.

I told him what I could even though it's a very hard point to get across, and he seemed to feel better by the time I left. I'm not interested in influencing his decisions or trying to guide him toward a specific goal, but I do hope like hell he gets some of what I was saying and doesn't become yet another dead-eyed conformo robot. We're full up on those, thanks anyway.

rough week?

2009-03-06T18:53:00.000-08:00

This week has been full of incidents. A lot of it is just being busy at work, but some things that happened toward the end of the week really just topped it off.

Most affecting was that one of my clients got arrested by Immigration and Customs Enforcement. I won't go into the details, but it seems that the fact that he's from Libya has very much to do with it. This caused me to go a little bananas for a few hours. But I actually surprised myself at how quickly I calmed down. After attempting everything to get away from the shitty feelings and trying to figure out what thing I could've done that was so gigantically stupid it actually got someone arrested, I finally just sat there and let myself feel shitty. The feelings then quickly dissipated and I was able to get a good night's sleep.

It's funny, too, that a lot of my being upset had to do with how the incident might reflect on me, the last person anybody involved was thinking about (except me, of course). This ties in to something that happened today. I had to tell an overly demanding client who was micromanaging my every move that I wasn't going to do as she asked, which I hate to do. I hate to say no, but sometimes you have to. So I spent all day wondering if she was going to tell my boss about what a creep I am, or if perhaps she was busy rallying her colleagues to rise up against me and force me to do the stupid things she was asking. Of course, my real concern was her not liking me. It sounds really stupid out loud, but how many of our actions are dictated by trying to get people to like us? What're we, all in grade school or something? Sheesh.

Finally, my assistant has been constantly screwing up at this, the most critical time of year for me, and I finally popped my cork and got mad about it, to wit: "All of the work you gave back to me today is still wrong. When I ask you to make changes, please make sure the changes are GLOBAL. PLEASE be as thorough as POSSIBLE because it's CRITICAL THAT THIS BE ACCURATE. GAAAAAHHHHHH" as I flee the office. Poor kid, she was very apologetic and vowed to get it right. I probably freaked her out because I never speak sharply to her and I don't need to because she usually doesn't mess up like she has been recently. And now I have to deal with the emotional blow back of being "mean" to my beleaguered assistant. Who am I to have an assistant, anyway. I suck. I really, really suck.

Plus today I read that an estimated 27 million people live in slavery. I don't know if that's true, but even the fact that we live in a world where it's possible to estimate that 27 million human being are enslaved is depressing.

It's all been a good opportunity to notice how all of this is really about me. Endlessly me, me, me, no matter what the situation. It's very revealing.

the view from Saturn

2009-03-05T19:30:00.000-08:00

Once in a while I buy astronomy magazines. I love pictures of space and all the awe inspiring stuff that's in it. Looking at photographs of clumped galaxies spanning thousands upon thousands of light years, fields of incomprehensibly gargantuan numbers of stars, and the desolate surfaces of other planets gives me a wonderfully creepy feeling of personal insignificance paired with a sense of the unspeakable meaning and sacredness of the cosmos. Cool, man.

A couple of the magazines I have feature shots of the earth from Saturn. In case you haven't seen these, from Saturn, Earth is merely a tiny smear of light that you have to look for. Oh... my... God. Seeing a dim dot through the rings of Saturn, then realizing it's our very own little Earth, makes you say "Oh yeah, I nearly forgot how teeny tiny and inconsequential even the hugest event on Earth is. And was I really worried about looking stupid at work or whether I look like a dork in this outfit? Never mind... just never mind.

peace

2009-03-03T17:50:00.000-08:00

Things appear to be going south at work. It's our busy time of year and last year at this time I was working ten to twenty hours a week overtime. This year we're forbidden to work overtime, and one of my coworkers was told she was a "layoff target" because she tried to order a box of pens. What?

Today all the higher ups showed up for an impromptu meeting. God only knows what schemes they were hatching, and I largely don't care. Part of me is worried about getting let go because there is still an ego here, but another, larger, more important part of me doesn't care. Their little meeting about their little firm and the little economy doesn't really impact me at all. I say that now, but we'll see what happens when I get laid off.

I have tons of work to do and need to work overtime to get it all done while still maintaining a semblance of quality, but apparently that isn't going to happen. I have doubts about whether I can complete all my work by the deadline, but I'm just not worried about it. I can do it or I can't do it, and speculating about it is wasted energy. I'll deal with whatever happens when it happens, including if I get stressed out, lectured, or fired.

It's strange not to feel impacted by such a potentially stressful set of circumstances; in fact, I wonder if I'm just suppressing my stress. I don't think I am, because I recognize that there is some fear and anger there, but the peace and unflappability just won't quit. My new baseline is an easy acceptance.

The Final Frontier

2009-03-02T20:08:00.000-08:00

Last week I gave up trying to become enlightened. Trying to become enlightened is the final obstacle to actually being in the enlightened state. It's because trying to become anything, much less enlightened, is the essence of conflict- you're this but you want to be that, and obviously that's a conflict, and it also causes hope and fear, past and future. All of these are what enlightenment isn't.

I clearly realized last week that I've spent pretty much the last couple of years trying to change my self into an enlightened self, which is preposterous. There's no such thing as an enlightened self. It's really hard for enlightenment to happen because the self is extremely subtle and clever, and it'll grab on even to this last little bit of self motivated action- trying to become enlightened. You can spend years, even a lifetime, thinking you're spiritual and on your way, while you're actually spinning around in a circle, revving your little engine on a journey to nowhere.

Giving up on enlightenment resulted in no longer repressing any tendency of the self, which means I quickly reverted to my old judgmental, snarky habits. I spent all weekend with Jamie making mean comments about other people. But as soon as I made a nasty comment, I'd start laughing because I immediately recognized what was going on. The ego can judge all it wants, it has nothing to do with me anymore and it'll stop soon in any case. It's just the last bit of ego energy that will naturally dissipate.

When I realized that I'd really have to give up the idea of enlightenment, which has long been my most treasured possession, I felt frightened. The self can't understand acceptance and silent awareness, but it does recognize that it won't survive that and will do anything to prevent it.

trouble

2009-02-24T18:33:00.000-08:00

This blog has mainly been about conflict and problems, because that is the state of your reality if you're not enlightened. So it's been hard to think of anything to really blog about lately because I haven't been feeling conflict too acutely. In fact, I've been in an ever deepening state of ease and peace nearly all month. I just feel good, better than good, and that's not very interesting to write about. It's impossible to really express this, because it's not a simple lack of stress, but an entirely different way of living that doesn't have anything to do with thinking, words, or typical ways of interacting with other people or the world around you. Sounds weird, doesn't it? Told ya it was hard to express.

The way I've been perceiving things has totally changed. I wouldn't even say that I've been perceiving things, but that perception is happening, unclouded by anything. It's simply awareness with nothing additional. Consciousness. Period. But it's not shallow or featureless, a blank state of receiving. I don't know that much about it yet but it's endlessly deep and the essence of creativity and power, that I do know. It doesn't matter at all if I know anything about it anyway. Knowing about things doesn't do any good.

There just hasn't been much interference of the self these days, which accounts for the total difference in my life. The death of the self is well underway. In fact, death is your best friend and walks beside you all the time. Death is your guide and advisor, and there is nobody better equipped to help you navigate life.

perception

2009-02-18T18:25:00.000-08:00

I've been sick the last few weeks, which has caused me to spend a lot of time being quiet, eyes closed. The other day I was sitting hunched over on the couch with my eyes shut, and when I opened my eyes, I realized that pure perception is sacredness. Pure perception is not a sacred act, it is itself sacredness. But I didn't really realize anything. There was just sacredness. This is one of those things that sounds stupid when you say it out loud, but it's really important.

The implications are huge. What does it mean if you sense the world around you without thinking about it and you recognize that as sacredness, and it's you?

This ties into my rapidly increasing suspicion that the universe is, in fact, a perfectly orderly place; therefore, I'm not a random mistake and everything is just as it should be. So when I sit around worrying about my weird life and all the things I think are wrong, I realize that it's all the way it's supposed to be. That feels a lot better than running around trying to fix everything you think is screwed up. Maybe it is screwed up, but so it is, and I'm done arguing that it shouldn't be. It's not a bunch of random screw ups, it's one big deliberate screw up. So be it. Nothing better than a life-sized mishap to get your attention and give you a real chance at waking up.

relax

2009-02-06T18:17:00.000-08:00

Today at work I got an e-mail from an upset client. He's been cranky lately and complaining about nearly everything. I guess he finally had it after my latest phone call telling him things he didn't want to hear, and he basically told me he thought we were money grubbing screwups. I told him I'd talk to my boss about it, and to have a good weekend.

I was totally emotionally unaffected by the situation. In terms of work, it'd be better if he didn't think I was an incompetent ripoff artist, but he does, so that's fine. He probably also thinks I'm either an automaton or a simpleton because despite his consistently combative stance, I'm strangely calm and polite.

It's because I have absolutely no personal, emotional attachment to the situation. What he thinks of me, even if justified, means nothing. At this point, it's gonna take a lot more than angry dislike to piss me off. And it's so liberating to realize that despite somebody being angry and critical of your professional performance, you just can't muster up giving a damn. Today after he let me know, fairly politely even, what he thinks of me, I sat at my desk grinning because it had no impact on me whatsoever. I'm not angry, resentful, or frightened. Just happy as a pig in shit that I'm free of excessive, childish concern over what somebody thinks of me.

nosferatu

2009-02-04T18:24:00.000-08:00

I watched Werner Herzog's Nosferatu last night. It's sort of a remake of the 1922 movie, which is also excellent. I've watched it several times, but it's been awhile. I wouldn't watch it for a long time because I thought I "shouldn't" watch horror movies. But now I no longer care what I should do. I just do things without the shoulds.

Anyway, watching it was a great idea. It's a fantastic movie on its own terms, and I thought it particularly applied to my situation because the vampire story is obviously a tale of the self. Maybe the extreme self, but the self nonetheless.

I won't go into the gruesome details and point out all the awful parallels between the vampire and the self, but I watched the movie with rapt, horrified attention, noting every one. Some selves are really, truly, monsters, and this movie is a one of a kind demonstration of what they're like. Ever wonder what it's like to live with a dense, unexamined, damaged self? Then buy this movie.

This thing has to be the creepiest film ever. It's just mega creepy, man. Makes you realize how imperative it is to displace the self from the center of things, pronto. Otherwise, you have a lifetime- or at least as long as you can stand it- of this to look forward to.

stress

2009-01-28T19:57:00.000-08:00

I went back to work today after taking a couple days off because I have a cold. A lot of stuff piled up while I was gone and some other stuff happened that ranged from mildly irritating to kinda bad. I found out about everything before 9 a.m., and I had to spend half the day on an emergency case that I didn't really know how to deal with.

Despite feeling tired and not being able to breathe terribly well, I slogged through all the crap all day long without being too affected by it. It seems that I'm practically incapable of becoming angry or frightened these days. Stuff happens and I just watch it or deal with it, whichever is appropriate.

This even goes for dangerous situations. I seem to have lost my ability to drive in the snow and I keep sliding around. On Monday I took a corner onto a major street apparently way too fast and I ended up gliding gracefully, yet completely without control, across three icy lanes. I very easily could've taken out anybody else who was around, but, incredibly, no other cars were in the path of my automotive ballet of stupidity. Once I came to a gentle stop, I just resumed driving as if nothing had happened. I didn't feel any fear at all. Stupid, yes. Stress, no.

It makes me laugh to think of all the dumb, scary, and even important stuff that I'm involved in, yet it doesn't tip over into my becoming personally attached and upset about anything. I just watch it all go by and wonder how the hell I ever could've taken this so seriously.

"Where's Jebus?"

2009-01-27T18:25:00.000-08:00

Tonight's rerun of The Simpsons was the one where Homer ended up being a missionary in the South Pacific. In the episode, he claims he "doesn't even believe in Jebus"; then, a few moments later, he's shouting "Save me, Jebus!" Might work better if you knew his name. . .

But maybe not. There is a very religious person at work, or, rather, there used to be a very religious person at work, for whom being religious doesn't seem to have done any good at all.

She suddenly dropped out of sight a few weeks ago, and her husband relayed to us that she'd had some sort of health crisis and wouldn't return for several months. This followed an earlier episode where she had a mild stroke and some heart problems. She herself attributed this to a very stressful work environment. She also claimed she loved her job, but I'm not sure how to square that with the fact that she thinks it gave her a stroke.

If you really thought that an omnipotent being, the Creator, in fact, of All That Exists, knew you personally and even had an interest in your very own personal well being, how worried would you be about your crummy little job? I vote for "not too effing worried". Stress is fear and I don't see how you could be scared of anything if you thought an all powerful being cared for you. Episodes like this reveal the foundation of religion, which is self centered fear.

drawing

2009-01-24T19:17:00.000-08:00

I started drawing again a few weeks ago. I've been creeping up on the idea of drawing for a while, but I didn't really know how to begin. I finally realized I needed a starting point, so I went to the art store and looked through a bunch of "how to draw" books. I started drawing when I was a kid, so many of the books were too basic, and others just didn't ring my bell. But I eventually found one that looked good and bought it, even though it seemed kind of expensive.

Once I got it home and looked at it more closely, I saw that I'd managed to pick out the one book in the entire store whose main point was "don't think, just draw". Right up my alley, since thinking has practically ruined my life. The books in the bibliography include Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance and The Tao of Physics. So it's gotta be good, right? It is.

I eagerly sat down with the book and my new big sketch pad and worked my way through the first chapter, learning to draw what I actually see, not what I think it should look like (awesome), drawing while looking at the subject, not at the drawing (awesome), and "restating", which is drawing a new line but not erasing the other lines (really awesome- so-called mistakes have just been eliminated).

It's not all fuzzy, feel good drawing; there is plenty of technical advice and learning to be precise, but not letting that take over. The book largely makes the point that mental chatter and negative judgment regarding the quality of the drawing will only interfere. Obvious, perhaps, but those were my main drawing techniques in the past, which is why I quit. I just couldn't take the self criticism anymore. It ruined the joy of drawing for me.

But now drawing is mostly just fun, the way it should be. The book I got is a good balance between not being too basic while providing useful teaching to someone who still has a lot to learn. It's amusing to realize that I somehow managed to find the one drawing book that tosses overthinking, comparison, and focus on outcomes out the window and just gets on with the process of drawing. I'm no longer going berserk over my weirdly out of proportion hands- I always sucked at hands- or overdone shading, or any of the other stuff I used to obsess over that ruined the whole thing for me.

Drawing seems a little like riding a bike, in that I was able to pick up pretty much where I left off and go from there, so I get to do new stuff without having to go back to what I learned in junior high. And a couple of my new drawings aren't even terrible.

Just this afternoon I went into my closet and found a box of the few art supplies I kept, and I found some pencil sets I thought I'd thrown out and such cool little goodies as kneaded rubber erasers, strange pencils I bought just out of curiosity but have no idea what they're for, and nice pencil sharpeners- I really love a good pencil sharpener. I also found a couple of little sketch pads with really toothy paper which I like, even though the pads are too small. Part of my new drawing technique is letting loose and drawing a lot bigger, with much less focus on details, at least at the moment.

Drawing is really fun again, and cheap, too. Basically you need some paper, a no. 2 pencil which you can get for, like, a quarter, and an eraser. You can collect a bunch of other stuff, but this is pretty much all you need. That and no thinking, and you're off to the races. There's a lot to be said for not letting thinking run your life.

quiet

2009-01-22T15:01:00.000-08:00

Several weeks ago I decided I had to take the plunge and stop distracting myself with constant TV, iPods, Internet, etc. etc. etc. I deliberately put the kibosh on such things for limited periods of time when I was home alone in the evenings, but despite the short duration of just being quiet, the consequences were huge. Warning: Don't do this unless you want your life to erupt into violent chaos.

I sensed that simply being quiet was the final frontier, so to speak, the last thing I had to do to really put the final nail in the coffin of my self. And this is exactly why I was so hesitant to do it. The ego will not go down without a fight, and fight it did. It's been hellish, which is why I haven't posted anything for three weeks. Too busy feeling my self thrash around like a wolf trying to get out of a leg trap.

I was pretty surprised at the force and persistence of the ego's reaction to what were pretty limited periods of quiet watchfulness. I've been watching my thoughts and reactions for quite a while, which had a lot of impact, but really just sitting and being quiet, especially when there's much inner turmoil, was what I really needed to do, despite not wanting to. I put it off as long as possible, but I eventually had to do it.

As soon as I started with the being quiet, I became terrified. The fear was pretty much nonstop until late yesterday, so much so that on the drive in to work yesterday morning, I started to cry out of sheer terror and cursed my idiotic persistence in pursuing this stupid, stupid course of action. I've never been so scared in my life as I have been these last few weeks. Scared of what, you may ask? Oh, nothing, merely the ever present specter of death or, at best, insanity, which I was starting to think was just around the corner.

In addition to being scared the last few weeks, I was highly irritable, which was in turn punctuated by horrible episodes of suicidal depression. Some days I thought nearly constantly of death and feverishly tried to think of ways to make my suicide look like an accident, which is the only way I would be willing to do it. Have to think of the family, you know.

Luckily, those spells were fairly brief, lasting only a day at a time. But they were concentrated little self expressions, the core of my ego after all the defenses, excuses, rationalizations, and justifications were torn away. The only reason I'm willing to even consider what at times appears to be this path to certain insanity is that there is no way to live with a violent, morbid ego whose only real interest is suffering unto a self-imposed death. There's just no compromise possible there. The only way out of the self is through it, and the self is by nature highly dysfunctional, nearly crazy.

And having gone through this harrowing time, everything around me looks a lot less important. Yesterday at work, for example, I ran into an client making irrational, rude demands. Was I troubled by this? Other than a short-lived flash of conditioned anger, no. I couldn't care less. Today another client referred to me and some of my coworkers as "fuckers", which I also could care less about. After you come through something like I've described, someone who is still laboring with the burden of personal self bullshit just doesn't have much of an impact anymore. It's hard to have an impact on someone who has virtually ceased to exist, in any case.

patience

2008-12-31T20:09:00.001-08:00

Since I've been driving Jamie's car, I've been keeping my access card for the parking garage at work zipped up in an inner pocket in my bag. Before, I just had it in a cup holder in my own car and I could just grab it and quickly get into the garage.

Having the card zipped up inside my bag has made me notice a new dimension of patience in myself. Usually, I pull up to the access gate of the garage and somebody pulls in right behind me. As they sit there waiting, I open my bag and try to find the interior pocket that holds my card, but I can't see it with my sunglasses on. I remove the sunglasses and then attempt to unzip the pocket, but I can't do it while wearing gloves. So I take the gloves off, get the zipper undone, and finally remove the access card. Success! All without worrying about the no doubt impatient guy behind me.

I'm not being inconsiderate when I make the guy behind me wait; if you asked impatient people why they're in a hurry, they wouldn't have an answer. They're just programmed to rush around all the time. I might even be doing them a favor by making it possible for them to consider why they're in such a hurry to get into a garage, for chrissakes.

The patience doesn't just manifest itself in this situation; even my handwriting has changed as a result of slowing down and not racing through things as much anymore. Previously, my handwriting was painfully cramped and featured missing letters because I was writing so fast. And trying to go back and put in the missing letters made it look worse, and definitely defeated my senseless attempts to speed along. Now my writing is still kinda small and cramped, but at least all the letters are there. Another success!

little pitchers have big ears

2008-12-28T19:45:00.000-08:00

On Christmas Eve I went over to my dad's with my brothers. My brothers and dad started talking about gambling, a subject I'm not interested in.

I sat a little way off by myself, looking into another room, while they discussed the most efficient way to count while playing blackjack. I was doing my "sitting quietly, doing nothing" thing, which means I was listening carefully to everything that was going on around me. After some time discussing blackjack, I heard my dad say ". . . you'd think that'd be a good hand, but it's really a pretty bad hand for the dealer. . . right, ghostfoot?" in an attempt to trap me into revealing that I wasn't listening.

But I immediately answered "Yes, Dad", to which everyone laughed, because I'd appeared lost to the world for at least the previous fifteen minutes. It was pretty funny, and a great demonstration of pure awareness.

Jimmy Corrigan

2008-12-22T15:00:00.000-08:00

I first read Jimmy Corrigan (this link goes to Amazon, check it out) several ago and reread it recently. This is a heartbreaker of a book. It's what the kids today call a "graphic novel" and is actually physically pretty hard to read- go ahead and get that lighted magnifying glass- but it's totally worth it.

If you have childhood neglect/abuse issues, serious self-esteem problems, are unbearably lonely, or the like, this is your comic. Also if you're interested in art, you might like it just on that level. The drawing is clear and detailed, a strange and compelling combination.

The book can easily feel like rubbing salt on longstanding childhood wounds, but the second time I read it, it was more like a soothing Epsom salts soak. I'm in a different place, no question, than I was when I read it before, and while it still stung, it was easier to take the book as a cautionary tale of where you'll end up if you don't get a hold of yourself and realize that even generations of familial dysfunction can't disable you. Anyway, it's not for the faint of heart, but if you care to, please give Mr. Chris Ware a chance and buy his comic book literary masterpiece.

random weekend

2008-12-21T20:57:00.000-08:00

Nothing of note happened this weekend. It was just a lot of small stuff. Now that I think about it, though, the only reason I consider it small stuff is because I'm getting used to stuff happening. I take absolutely nothing at face value anymore. Every single reaction, all thoughts and emotions, no matter how clearly they seem justified or normal, are on the table for examination. When you do that, things start happenin'.

I've practically moved in with Jamie. By the time I came home yesterday I was hoarse from ranting all day. All kinds of stuff started bothering me and I spent a long time loudly explaining to Jamie why so many people are malicious idiots. She seemed surprised at my topics choices and even said "I didn't think you cared about those things!" I almost never talk about specific political or social issues because I usually don't much care, but sometimes something sets me off and I go on a rant. It was a little painful, especially for Jamie, but I feel a lot better now and probably won't bring anything up again for months.

My housemates unexpectedly went out of town today, and I momentarily worried about being alone in the house again. I considered it on the way home tonight, and I had to admit that the real problem is that I cannot stand the thought of being alone, really alone, with myself. No people, no iPod, no TV, no books, no internet sounds like a shortcut to insanity. I wonder how long I could stand to just sit here in silence by myself. It's pretty strange and probably unexpected that somebody who spends all day watching their thoughts can't spend five minutes without headphones glued to their ears while watching the TV with the sound turned off while also being on-line.

My ego is very stubborn in this regard and has drawn a definite line that cannot be crossed. It's likely because it realizes how dangerous it would be because things have already moved substantially toward no-self. So I sense that this is the last frontier, so to speak, and I'm getting ready to ride out into it because I'm extremely sick of living the ego's life. I'll give up spending most of my free time at Jamie's, whiskey, TV, and, God help me, even my iPod. That's how serious I am! I'll do it, dammit!

A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to Enlightenment

2008-12-18T21:02:00.001-08:00

I might use this title for all of my posts from now on. It's funny and suits nearly every one.

Anyhoo, the other night I downloaded a certain book by an author I've read before so I know his message, but apparently it struck a nerve and I got pretty agitated by it. The book concerns so-called spirituality and the fact that nearly everyone involved in it is laboring under the delusion that they're actually doing something about enlightenment, when, in fact, what they're actually doing is sealing themselves off against it.

I experienced a mixture of fear, trepidation, exhilaration, and excitement reading the first sixty pages, and then I went to bed, still filled with the contradictory feelings. When I woke up, I felt really irritated and resistant. I stomped off to work where my mood slowly improved, but the late afternoon brought an annoying incident that knocked me right back to severe irritation.
That night I went to bed early in a bid to avoid the irritation which, frankly, felt pretty shitty, but it backfired and I lay awake in bed for a couple of hours, helplessly alone with my hectic brain.

I was able to watch the irritation without personal involvement to some extent, which shortened its lifespan, and certainly its seriousness. I'm irritated, so what. It feels crappy, so what. I wish it would go away, so what.

freedom of choice

2008-12-16T18:00:00.000-08:00

The problem with choice is that it's based on an isolated entity with little or no useful knowledge trying to decide what's best for itself. As if there were really a decision to make, or anyone to make it in the first place. Trying to figure stuff out on your own is the road to hell- to conflict and fear. But why try to explain it when Devo has already done a bang up job:

In ancient Rome

There was a poem

About a dog

Who found two bones

He picked the one

He licked the other

He went in circles

He dropped dead

-Devo, Freedom of Choice

'Nuf said.

Where's yer sensa humor, man?

2008-12-15T18:06:00.000-08:00

That's one of my favorite quotes from Bart Simpson, even though I wouldn't usually advocate the Bart philosophy. Still, sometimes it applies and it's not good to be too serious all the time, so hopefully this post will provide a little seriousness relief.

This morning when I left for work it was around fifteen degrees below zero and everything was frozen, natch. I didn't drive yesterday so the Jeep really groaned for a few seconds before it reluctantly started. I sat in the car with the windows rolled down because it was really fogging up, and I was trying to give the poor car time to unfreeze a little. But after a few minutes I got bored and decided to leave, whether the car was ready or not. I began by blasting the stereo out the open window, the crucial first step to a positive driving experience. I guess I was in high spirits, because then I gunned the Jeep away from the curb and onto the icy street, cutting off a red pickup that I didn't really see until it was too late. Excuse me, please. I have foolish hot dogging to get done before I go to the office.

Tires spinning almost uselessly as I left the curb, I continued to gas the hell out of the car and fishtail all over the street, music blaring, engine roaring, tires spitting ice. A neighbor sweeping her driveway actually stopped what she was doing and stood there blatantly staring, openmouthed at my sudden, loud, and irrational lurching out into the street. I would've waved at her as I cruised by, nearly sideways, if I thought taking my hand from the steering wheel was advisable. As it was I started to laugh at the look of disbelief on her face, broom hanging forgotten from her frozen mitten.

Once I got to the corner, I cranked the wheel and hit the gas again, causing the Jeep to nearly spin out as I took the turn. The red pickup sedately drove straight on in a depressing example of responsible winter motoring.

I straightened the Jeep out and drove the rest of the way to work like a grownup, although I did start laughing again every time I thought of my neighbor's shocked reaction. Where's yer sensa humor, man? Just because I could've crashed into any number of parked cars or otherwise caused a stupid accident, it was fun, dammit!

I love hot dogging around in cars. It's just about the only thing that can delight me and make me laugh helplessly, like a little kid on an amusement park ride. Especially the stick shifts are good for goofy starts, peeling out, and spinning the tires while mercilessly gunning the engine. Last time we had icy conditions, I spun the wheels noisily at a stop sign, barely moving, until a guy shoveling a sidewalk finally looked up. Satisfied, I grinned at him and proceeded through the intersection.

It all reminds me of my last kayaking trip; on the way out of the parking lot, I pulled my old "peeling out in slow motion" trick and crept out of the dirt parking lot while the dirt and rocks shot out from the spinning tires, the rear of the Jeep swaying. When I looked in the rearview mirror, a giant cloud of dust was slowly enveloping the entire parking lot, including my brother, who was still fooling around before leaving. I howled with laughter while Jamie yelled at me to knock it off.

All Jamie did when we were in the Sierra Nevadas driving a rented Mustang last fall was yell at me to slow down because she didn't want to die in a senseless car wreck. I told her all things considered, that was probably a pretty good way to go. She must've been thinking of the time I wrecked my motorcycle. Sheesh, can't you forget about that? Really though, it's a good thing I don't own a Mustang, my dream car, because I'd be dead in a week.

Jamie's poor Jeep has suffered much under my irresponsible hand while I've been driving it these last few weeks- this is the same car my other little brother nearly turned over while practicing driving a standard transmission. I hope she's taking better care of my beloved Xterra, the Official Vehicle of the Jerk, which reputation I strive to live up to.

Here's a picture of the hapless Jeep, complete with kayak, from a happier, warmer day. If you see this vehicle careening around, it's probably me. Just don't tell Jamie.

attempted depression

2008-12-14T18:59:00.000-08:00

Attempted depression. . . the name of a postmodern art piece? Well, maybe in a way.

Anyway, this morning I woke up and realized that my ego had been making a valiant attempt to get depressed while I was asleep. Concurrent to its attempt, it was frightened that it would succeed. This is among the strangest things that has happened to me for a really long time.

I don't remember having any dreams just prior to waking up, which is when you have a lot of dreams and the ones you're most likely to remember. Dreams are expressions of the self so it's as if, no longer needing to communicate in symbols because nobody's listening anymore, the self resorted to a desperate attempt to otherwise impose itself.

So I woke up, totally undepressed, and realized with a mixture of uneasiness, amusement, and wonder that I'd been aware, while asleep, that this was happening. This place just gets weirder and weirder.

Perhaps not unrelated, a few days ago I spent the evening at Judy and Rick's. I related an incident from about fifteen years ago where I taught myself lucid dreaming. My ego did not appreciate this, and when I finally became aware in a dream one morning, the many other dream characters present all fell completely silent and turned to regard me with palpable hostility. I sensed the importance of immediately exiting the dream and yelled at myself to wake up.

Wake up I did, but without the framework of the physical world, without my body. There was consciousness, but absolutely nothing else- no perception, no referents, no ground, just total nothing. It was like suddenly, unexpectedly finding yourself floating alone somewhere on the other side of Jupiter:

Of course, this scared my ego more than anything else ever had and I went into full blown panic, and a few seconds later I popped back into the world. Whew.

I told Jamie about my lucid dream and she asked me, apparently seriously, if I'd become enlightened then. My behavior the last decade and a half resoundingly indicates NO, which I said while somehow keeping a straight face. In an attempt to put something into the nothing, Jamie asserted that I'd still been asleep (no), then that I just hadn't had time to notice anything (no again while trying not to laugh). Nice try, but sorry, it was just nothing.

Rick seemed very affected by my tale and mentioned it several times during our evening. He told me about a Sufi friend of his who told him people need guides on spiritual journeys or they risk "losing it", and Rick thought the episode indicated a near psychotic break. It seems to me that remaining in everyday, so-called normal consciousness runs the greatest risk of going insane, and if I haven't flipped out fifteen years on, it's probably safe to say it ain't gonna happen. It's just the self, and as long as you keep your eye on it, it's harmless. And it was pretty fun to be suspected of psychosis and enlightenment in the same week.

mother nature

2008-12-10T19:23:00.000-08:00

Last night, right before nightfall, I glanced out my office window and saw a beautiful sight. High in the sky was a nearly full moon, brilliantly, luminously white in the just fading daylight. The craters looked especially black against the bright white.

The sky itself was baby blue, and the eastern horizon displayed a uniform soft pink that blended seamlessly into the blue. A vertical, insubstantial pink line of cloud floated south over and past the almost glowing moon.

I stared dumbfounded out the window at this heart wrenching scene, hardly able to bear it. It was miraculous.

drama

2008-12-09T18:12:00.000-08:00

My friend Carrie often laughingly asks me to teach her to live without drama. I have the lowest level of drama of any person who isn't actually dead. I specialize in no drama and have perfected the art over decades.

It's really a choice. I have little tolerance for unnecessary carrying on and shenanigans, and have pared most sources of them off my life. Of course, sources of drama include not only situations and circumstances but also friends and family members. Probably a lot of the problem for people lies exactly here, as many people seem willing to put up with silly behavior from their relatives. I'm definitely willing to let people be themselves, but when they act unremittingly like a jackass, you really have to decide whether you want to have a relationship with a jerk who never changes.

I quickly remedy situations that I deem dysfunctional or dramatic, as I simply can't tolerate them after living with an unpredictable father who ruined my childhood with needless dramatic bullshit. Display consistent signs of being a drama king/queen, and you're out the door. However, this is subject to later changes in behavior. For example, after writing him off at one point, I currently have a relationship with my dad, which is contingent on his no longer passing out drunk in the car a block from the house, getting arrested while carrying a .357, or destroying furniture in a fit of rage (Disclaimer: These are a sampling of actual incidents that took place while I was a kid. I'm not being dramatic).

There is only so much of this kind of thing you can take before you have to get away from it. But I have plenty of internal drama of my own, and my ego loves to play up its imagined status as a tortured, misunderstood spiritual savant.

Eliminating drama involves eliminating a lot of other stuff in your life. I don't have the energy to deal with it or I might be more like Carrie who works double shifts most days and runs around taking care of her family and friends and numerous household pets. As it stands, I spend most of my time by myself dealing with my own stuff, which keeps me plenty busy on its own. It seems that other people would much rather focus on self-made external problems and not deal with the giant problem of themselves.

surrender

2008-12-08T17:45:00.000-08:00

Last Friday, I got irritated at work right before I left. By the time I got home, the feeling had developed into depression.

The funk was still there when I woke up on Saturday, and that made me unhappier still because I had a lot of stuff to do that day and I didn't want to have to trudge through the day feeling like crap. But while getting ready to go, I suddenly realized . . . something. I don't know with any degree of certainty what it was, but something happened and the depressed feeling immediately evaporated. I remember feeling excited about the discovery when it occurred, but I don't really remember much about what it was, other than it being a surrender to what was happening. It was very clear and decisive at the time, but mere minutes later, I couldn't recall what exactly had happened. Whatever it was was supremely effective, though, because the depression is totally gone now.

Something similar happened yesterday at Jamie's. I was going on about how I didn't want to go to work today and how I dreaded driving in the snow, because for some reason I've lost confidence in my ability to drive in adverse conditions. Jamie obviously didn't want me to continue down this track and told me to either shut up or do something about it.

Fair enough, but I was surprised by her reaction. At no time did it occur to me to wish I felt different- at that moment, I felt negative about work and driving in the snow, and I was expressing it. That's all. There was no irritation about feeling irritated, which is usually a large part of the perceived problem.

By the time I got home from Jamie's, those feelings had also disappeared. Such emotions no longer have anything to live on and so quickly expire, although they recur again and again, which can be depressing in itself. But there seems to be a new level of surrender to it all, a major decrease in wishing I wasn't feeling it/won't ever feel like that again, or that I was a different, normal person and none of this was happening- this is the funniest one. There's just no chance on that one, sweetheart.

Another thing I've noticed is how insignificant this kind of thing sounds when you write it down. No matter that it feels like a rather large and previously fundamental portion of your psyche just collapsed and you're now peering through the settling dust to see what's there, it just sounds stupid when you try to talk about it. I think it's related to why it's hard to recall what really happened on Saturday morning; there are no words, no thoughts that can express this because it belongs to another order of consciousness, another state of being. It's just not related to the everyday level of understanding.

reality

2008-12-01T17:28:00.000-08:00

There has been some talk at work lately about layoffs. We had a big meeting recently where the big shots told us they wanted to maintain the firm as it is, but if things didn't pick up after the first of the year, they would have to lay people off. Originally I wasn't anxious about it as I hate to work anyway, but then I started to worry.

I'm even in a better position than most because I'm not responsible for anyone else- I don't even have houseplants. And the idea of getting laid off at first seemed attractive because, free at last, I could do something new like finally move to the desert, get a crappy job with no responsibility, and spend all my free time kayaking. But now it's starting to seem pretty threatening. Now it seems like if I got laid off, I'd just end up scrambling around with thousands of other people looking for some shitty job I wouldn't even really want.

It occurred to me some time ago that I don't really depend on my job for support. I just think I do. The idea that I need my job is probably the result of being completely out of touch with reality and not understanding how the universe works. I'm probably more nervous about getting laid off and having the resultant struggle confirm my belief in an indifferent universe than I am about anything else. If I really understood that I don't actually need a job to get what I need, I wouldn't be worried about losing my job at all.

afraid

2008-11-29T18:16:00.000-08:00

The people who live upstairs are out of town for the week, so I've been alone in the house for a few days. Last time they left, I was fine for almost two weeks but I finally got paranoid and woke up one night convinced someone was sneaking around outside. I couldn't wait for my housemates to come back and decided that when I moved into a house of my own, the first thing I was doing was getting a big dog.

This time I got scared pretty much right away. Jumping at unexpected noises, worrying when the motion detecting lights come on, staring at the window wondering if someone is out there and the like have been my activities at home this week.

Today I went to lunch with my friend Carrie and told her about it, and she offered to let me stay at her house until my housemates return. I told her thanks, but I was going to stick it out.

I've been sitting around feeling nervous and even downright scared about an imaginary break in. I don't know why I'm so concerned about it- part of it is probably that I lived in apartments for so long and am used to people being around all the time. And the self has a long list of perfectly sound reasons why it's okay to sit around in a state of fear. In fact, it would be irresponsible not to be scared! What if something happened! You'd be stupid not to worry! And so on.

Since I turned down Carrie's offer to stay at her place, I've been feeling better and I'm not presently worried about being alone. I no longer feel paranoid or threatened over an imaginary future event. It took me until last night to even realize that feeling scared was not reasonable; there is no point to fearing something that isn't even happening, no matter what could happen. If something did occur, then I'd have to deal with it and maybe it would be terrifying, but sitting around getting anxious about a nonexistent situation is pretty silly. Once it dawned on me that my fear isn't normal and there is no need for it, it began to lessen and, for the moment, is gone.

This is connected too to my reluctance to be alone lately. I've been staying away from home for longer than usual, dreading returning to the empty house. When I am home I try to think of some reason to go somewhere or call somebody, but I recognize that trying to get away from loneliness and fear will only prolong it. That's why I didn't go over to Carrie's. If I don't deal with this now, it's going to come back again and again. Facing it is the only chance to change it.

cessation

2008-11-27T19:27:00.000-08:00

Yesterday I got off work early because of the holiday. After I got home and made cranberry sauce for today, I realized I was out of Diet Pepsi, which was practically an emergency and required immediate action. I was also out of cash, so I decided to walk up to the bank and the grocery store. I hadn't taken my walks all week, so I was glad of the chance to get one in.

My neighborhood is pretty quiet, and it was even more so yesterday. I guess most people were busy getting ready for the holiday, because during the hour it took me to get up to the store and back, I saw only a few cars and one other person on the sidewalk.

There were the usual noises of distant dogs barking and the soft whooshing of cars a street or two away, but the overwhelming sense was of silence. The few quiet noises served to actually accentuate the underlying total silence. It was very nice to walk quietly, surrounded by the deep silence.

After I walked back home, still in a state of complete silence, I realized that I hadn't had a single thought about the bank teller or the store cashier. I'd interacted with them in my usual polite way, but no thoughts about them entered my head. I just saw them, talked to them, and conducted my business without forming an opinion of their character, deciding whether I liked them or not, wondering if they liked me, and all the other things that can go through your mind within seconds when you meet someone.

Not thinking is like the cessation of pain. While you have pain, you think about it, try to get rid of it, wonder why you have to feel bad, wish it would go away; almost all of your mental life is taken up with the pain. Then, you suddenly realize it's gone, and has been for some time. You don't even notice when it goes; its absence is not remarkable. Not thinking is the same way. It takes a while to realize that it hasn't been there.

relief

2008-11-26T18:11:00.000-08:00

The main result so far of my little experiment watching myself is a gigantic sense of relief. Simply observing your thoughts and feelings yields the relief- it's huge, though, as if you've finally been allowed to put down all that luggage full of bowling balls that you thought you had to carry with you at all times. The sense of relief is so extensive that it even tips over into exhilaration.

In equal measure, though, there is still the fear that started this whole thing. It's probably even increasing, as I'm getting very tired holding onto my little ledge, and pretty soon my fingers will slip off. Part of me is pretty sure I'll just splat onto the ground, just like everyone would predict, and is determined never to let go. But the relieved part isn't concerned about it- whatever the outcome, when I let go, the fear will be gone. It's not worth living scared. Clinging to a slippery, cold ledge is no life at all.

just another day

2008-11-24T17:49:00.000-08:00

Today was one of those days that makes you wonder what it's all for. . . I mean, more than usual.

I wasn't feeling any real degree of my usual Monday depression this morning, but once I got to work, things rapidly deteriorated. No sooner did I enter the kitchen to heat up my oatmeal than I was ambushed by a coworker who told me to immediately call one of my clients, as something was wrong.

Turns out somebody, very possibly me, made an astoundingly stupid mistake that resulted in said client not being allowed to come into the U.S. over the weekend. Uh, oops. Sorry. Really sorry. I had to spend all day running around trying to fix the mess and wondering how such a dumb mistake happened.

I spent most of the day resenting that I had to deal with this, resenting that I have to work to survive in this steaming trash pile of a civilization we've created. I have no desire to contribute to the garbage heap, yet I'm compelled to do so. My problem is that I see that things could be very different and very better, but we're not even looking in the right direction, much less moving in it. I don't know how to resolve the problem, and when things don't just flow along and I have to make a real effort, I get angry and resistant.

Short of enlightenment, I can usually count on my iPod for a little relief:

"... I want to know my fate
If I keep up this way
And it's hard to want to stay awake
When everyone you meet
They all seem to be asleep
And you wonder if you're missing a dream"

-Death Cab For Cutie
Bixby Canyon Bridge

it's a gas

2008-11-23T17:45:00.000-08:00

Today was one of the funniest days I've had for a really long time. I was giving my little brother another lesson driving a stick shift. He's taken to it pretty good, as our family seems to have a "drive anything under any conditions" gene.

This afternoon we ventured out into traffic, taking a route that involved a stop light on a pretty steep hill. My brother nervously noted the guy behind us pulling up too close and asked for tips on not rolling backwards into him. I advised him to give it a lot of gas.

The light turned green, my brother killed the car, started it again, and then stomped the gas. Naturally, this caused the Jeep to rocket forward and take the required left turn at a highly unsafe speed, tires squealing loudly. We got mostly around the corner when the Jeep began to rock, and for a couple of seconds I thought it might actually turn over. I remarked, "Okay, you're going a little too fast" to alert my brother to get off the gas. He answered, "You told me to hit the gas!" Yeah, I did, but I didn't mean that much gas, Jesus Christ! Anybody witnessing this, and there were plenty of horrified drivers gaping at us, surely thought this was an act of maniac recklessness.

Once the Jeep straightened itself out and we were safely motoring along a straight line, I collapsed into helpless laughter, which continued for a few minutes. Luckily, my brother isn't that sensitive so he didn't deliver a well-deserved punch to the kisser. I've been due for quite a while, as I laugh at nearly everything and people take it personally.

Later we faced another hill, and while this one didn't result in a near death experience, we did noisily burn more rubber, which set me off again. I spent much of our lesson either laughing or transparently trying not to laugh. Having a driving instructor who has relatively little fear of death is probably the best situation. As I told my brother through gales of laughter, it was better than screaming, and he had to agree.

unusual

2008-11-21T20:34:00.000-08:00

I've been having some unusual feelings lately. It started with the boredom I mentioned a few weeks ago, and since then, I've been having more feelings I don't usually have. Nothing too strange about it in itself; people have all kinds of different feelings at different times, but that a number of unusual emotional states have occurred one right after the other made them noticeable.

After my unusual episode with the anger last week, I then started to feel really insignificant. This was sparked by reviewing a case at work for one Mr. Important at some company, and after reading all the impressive stuff he's done and is doing, I started to feel pretty ineffectual and trivial. That lasted for a couple of days.

Now I'm starting to feel lonely, although this one isn't as unusual as the others. It's still not typical, though. Unlike depression, which has been my m.o. for decades and is a mental state I've long identified with, these other feelings are relatively unfamiliar and nothing I ever took to form a real part of my personality. They're not personal and I don't think of them as a permanent or substantial part of myself, so they're relatively easy to look at without becoming entangled with them. They seem like a slide show of general, nonpersonal human emotion, just a demonstration that they exist as part of the overall human condition, and, therefore, of mine. But they don't form a real self.

angry

2008-11-19T21:02:00.000-08:00

Last week, for the first time in a long time, I got really angry. I was pretty mad all day Friday and Saturday. I certainly had provocation, but not enough to justify the extent of the anger.

On Saturday night the anger quickly drained away after I talked to my brother on the phone about his attempt to stiff me (see previous post). Then I was okay until today, when I got mad again.

I'm not used to feeling mad. I'm far more accustomed to feeling depressed, which I comfortably settle into like an old, familiar armchair. But the anger feels strange and unpredictable. I even feel vaguely sick.

I generally feel desperate and trapped, which is the source of the anger and depression. I'd rather be dead than continue to live like the animated corpses that surround me, that I am too, shambling off to work every day to perform the same programmed functions over and over and over, then home with everyone else in a honking herd to perform the same programmed functions over and over and over. By lunchtime today I was visualizing gruesome suicide scenarios, or alternatively, going to live under a bridge.

But such episodes are less powerful and persistent than they used to be. If you can allow them to be, simply watch them without becoming upset or concerned that they're going to harm you, then they lose their force against you. In fact, such high levels of energy, stripped of their personal content so that they're no longer co-opted for egoic expressions of anger/depression, are necessary to break away from the apparent, programmed human world.

new personality?

2008-11-16T08:25:00.000-08:00

Last week events conspired to show me some changes that apparently have taken place. It was pretty noticeable because the situations came fast and furious and I spent much of the latter half of the week dealing with them. Mostly it was people either making inappropriate requests and/or acting obnoxious, or having to deal with things that I've put off for years.

It began on Wednesday when I finally dragged my sorry ass to the eye doctor. It's been three years since I had an exam and I was on my last pair of contacts, and I'd been wearing my lenses for many weeks longer than indicated. But I just showed up for the exam, fully aware that I'm an irresponsible idiot and not trying to hide the fact. I dutifully reported all of the above, totally defenseless and not caring what the doctor thought.

This was a pretty easy one, despite it touching on my strong dislike of anything even vaguely medical. But a couple of the other things happened at work, where you have to consider not only yourself, but how your boss is going to react. That concern didn't even cross my mind at the time, though; again, I didn't care how my boss or anyone might judge what I did.

A couple of clients really overreached professional boundaries last week and I had to act quickly and decisively to make sure they knew this was not allowed and I wouldn't deal with them on such terms. I won't bore you with the details, but I had to immediately terminate their behavior, which I did effortlessly and without fear of any consequences.

It was weird because I don't feel like I actually did anything. Rather, I sat at my desk witnessing with surprise and some dismay the words coming out of my own mouth. Not that I was rude, not very, anyway, but generally I'm not as direct and loud as I was last week. I simply announced what the deal was and what I would and would not do, regardless of what the client might think about it. There was no ghostfoot doing it- the actions were just happening. I didn't have to think about what I was going to say or worry about it at all; the action simply acted, all by itself.

And finally, on Saturday night, my mom, my brother, and I took my brother's wife out to dinner for her birthday. For some reason my brother didn't pay anything, probably counting on us not saying anything in front of his wife. But as soon as I got home, I unhesitatingly called him and the conversation went something like this:

[Ring, ring, ri-] Hi, what's up?

Hi. Why didn't you pay for dinner?

[Momentary pause] Uh, because I didn't want to pay with three different credit cards. I didn't think they could do that.

Uh huh. Well, I just wanted to find out what's going on. So how about I subtract your share of dinner from the money I'm going to reimburse you for for the present.

Okay.

Okay, then.

It's not so much the handling of minor situations in a competent way, nothing too spectacular there, but it's more the fact that the way I behaved was unlike me. I've never consistently acted like that before and it's extremely noticeable to suddenly, inexplicably, have a different personality. It's really not personality but true right action, totally devoid of self, of any self-concerned motivation or conditioning, and so it's correct, global, and constructive.

flipout

2008-11-09T17:05:00.000-08:00

Recently there was a local news story about a school bus driver who left home one evening to return some movies, but never returned. Apparently he drove the family minivan to the public library to return some DVDs, leaving his wallet and everything else at home. The guy has two kids, one of whom is only three months old, and a fairly crummy job, and he lives in an overpriced, elitist college town near my larger metro area. I actually went to college in this unbearable town, so I feel his pain.

My empathy for this poor guy goes deeper, though, as it wasn't difficult for me to see clearly what had happened- he simply couldn't take living a life of pointless drudgery anymore, and the second kid had him sinking even deeper. No escape now, at least not short of having a freakout and disappearing. I fully expected to learn that he had simply taken off, no foul play involved, to California. It's almost always to California, the American Avalon, destination of every person in a state of fugue, amnesia, desperation, or running from the law.

Safe guess, and one that was confirmed when the guy showed up again near his home with a bottle of booze and a loaded gun, incoherent and disoriented. He was quickly packed off to the hospital, where it was determined that he didn't remember a damn thing and didn't know where he'd been. . . but a few days later, they found his minivan, complete with stolen plates, abandoned somewhere near Los Angeles. I admit to feeling pretty smug about my spot on assessment of the situation, especially after I'd told one of my coworkers about my little theory and she'd looked at me blankly. She had no inkling of why it had happened, and I quickly gave up on explaining it.

No doubt the people at the hospital are working diligently to patch him up and send him back to his shitty, shitty life with a wave and a hearty slap on the back. He'll be back to mowing his weedy lawn and wondering what the hell it's all for in no time, thanks to the wonders of modern psychiatry. Too bad he still won't have a clue what happened to him, and neither will the mental health people.

It's really a terrible shame, because incidents like this are based on an awareness, however dim and clumsily expressed, that things are not as they seem, and you are so much bigger than your conditioned little existence indicates. Everyone's in a hurry to put a big bandage on it, just get it out of sight, and make him fit to conform again, instead of using it as the road out of hell that it could be.

blog conflict

2008-11-08T10:00:00.000-08:00

This blog causes me a lot of conflict. I hadn't posted much in several weeks and after I finally wrote something again, I spent the rest of that evening regretting it. When I wasn't posting anything, I didn't think about the blog much and it was one less thing I had to ruminate on. But since posting again, the blog has been on my mind.

I often regret what I write, second guessing my interpretation of events, worrying how others might perceive it, how I wrote it, how it makes me look, etc. etc. ad nauseum. It's tiresome. It's one thing to have something in your head, but when you say it or write it, then it becomes objective and you may be called upon to defend or justify it, which I can't do very well even to myself. I usually think that whatever I wrote was stupid, pointless, and/or delusional and I wonder why I even thought of having a blog.

But the conflict is causes will be beneficial in the long run because I have an opportunity to look at concern with others' opinions, motives for writing things other people might read, and assorted other conflicts that otherwise might go unexamined. Also, admitting that something is actually happening and that it's real is hard for me. It sounds ridiculous when you try to talk about it, and to me that means it is ridiculous.

fear

2008-11-06T18:18:00.000-08:00

Somehow it all comes back to fear, doesn't it? Not really much of a mystery there, as the self is basically fear itself.

Over the last couple of days, the depth of my self's dysfunction and inability to do a damn thing about it has become perfectly clear. One of the main features of my self is a stubborn, irrational procrastination. There is a host of things I need to take care of right now, but none of them are getting done. Such things include important stuff like going to the dentist, getting my eyes checked, and, God help me, quitting drinking. Yet I sit around day after day not doing them while agonizing over not doing them. Jesus.

The procrastination has even increased because whatever's going to happen as a result of all that I've been doing is probably about to happen, and my self is getting pretty frightened. It's either insanity or freedom right around the corner, and either way, the self loses. And it isn't going to just quietly trudge off to the graveyard. It's putting up a good fight and is becoming increasingly terrified. If you're not scared witless, it's likely not happening.

interest

2008-11-05T18:28:00.001-08:00

Thanks to the commenters on my last post and their feedback; good ideas. I like to go outside too, and I've been doing more of that lately. It's almost always a good idea to go outside.

My boredom has yielded to more of a lack of interest. Unlike the boredom, disinterest isn't new and I'm more used to coping with it. Actually, it doesn't even matter very much anymore because, as Bill suggests, I just ask myself why I think I should be interested in doing anything- and maybe just being is doing enough sometimes. The disinterest seems less like the tired, defeated state that it used to be and more like a pause before something that's about to happen.

I haven't blogged much recently because things have gotten more intense in terms of presence or whatever you call it, and it's really hard to talk about. I was talking to my friend Judy, one of the very few people who'd even know what in hell I was talking about, and it was one of the stranger conversations I've had.

It was hard to find words to discuss my recent experiencing of complete surrender, meaning I've given up on trying to be or feel different- without, though, being resigned. There's a huge difference between clearly recognizing your self as it is, and resigning yourself to it for the rest of your life. It's a subtle and really important difference.

Judy, being an existentialist, actually had a pretty good grasp of what I was trying to say. She told me that the day before she'd been telling Rick, her husband, that she knew I saw through her put ons and defenses. This surprised me because I didn't realize that she knew that. I didn't even try to deny that I saw through her, as would have been polite. I'm past the point of pretending that I don't know that the superficial appearance and personality of everyone you meet is not their authentic self, especially if somebody else brings it up. So instead I told her that I now have few defenses myself, and I've been living without much pretense. And once you stop protecting yourself, it's naturally clear when others are doing it.

As Judy and I talked about being genuine and my recent lack of acting from the self- they're the same thing- I found myself looking into her eyes almost without being able to help it. It went on for a little too long and for the first time, Judy looked away from me. It was a strange moment because I knew that I was happily witnessing the real, unadulterated Judy, and it's hard to be looked at like that.

I guess the thing now is that whatever I've been mucking around with all this time is starting to show, and it's probably disconcerting to people who know me to see these inexplicable changes, and I have no way of explaining it. It feels pretentious and silly to talk about it.

boredom

2008-10-21T19:04:00.000-07:00

I've been getting really bored lately. I used to be perfectly content to come straight home from work every night and do close to nothing until bedtime, but recently I've been feeling acutely bored and restless in the evenings. My usual activities hold little interest for me now. I'm no longer interested in reading and I'm ready to throw my iPod under a train.

It would probably be a good idea to do something, despite my theory that nothing's worth doing. I've been considering volunteering to see if I really want to go back to school; I'd do something at a mental health center or something similar to see how I felt about it, and if I had the energy to maintain it. I'd launch right out of here and just do something, but I'm concerned that I'd quickly become exhausted and regret the whole thing. But I have to find some alternative to sitting alone in a basement all the time. It's getting really old, even for a virtual hermit like me.

I'm not much on action, but it makes sense that we're here in the world to do something. Either that or there's no reason for existence, and in either case, the logical conclusion is to do something. Anything, for crissakes! I'm worried about my low energy and endurance levels, but I suppose I could find something that could accommodate that. I don't have to go overboard on it. I must be desperate to be actually considering doing things. It's a first. I've never been bored in my life, believe it or not, and I don't really know what the problem is or what to do about it.

It's Just Your 19th Nervous Breakdown

2008-10-17T20:16:00.000-07:00

I know, I know, long time no blog. If anyone's still reading, sorry. I started a few posts the last few weeks, but lost interest after a few minutes each time. I'm not sure I want to do this blog anymore, because things are getting repetitive. It's the same thing all the time, which is something you notice when you watch the self for a while. Same old patterns, same old reactions, again and again. Yawn.

The last few weeks I've been haunted by that old ghost of mine, depression. But, as I've mentioned before, it's not like it used to be. The depression used to be all consuming and long lasting; I remember the worst episode ever, when I was in college. I blogged about it before so I won't go into the gruesome details. Suffice it to say it was really terrible.

I've been feeling generally off center for a few weeks, with some days a lot worse than others. Just a couple of days ago, I felt just about as bad as I did during my worst periods. But there was, apparently, enough detachment and awareness to make it different this time around.

After a few days of feeling like crap, during a walk which I somehow forced myself to take, I became aware that I was constantly looking down. I would try to look around when I realized this, but after only a few short seconds, I found myself looking down again. And the thinking was totally out of control, like a brick was on the gas pedal. There was simply no stopping it. I would become aware of it for a brief moment, only to be drowned by it again nearly immediately.

It reminded me of The Look Down Lady. The Look Down Lady is a person who lives in the condos across the alley from my former apartment building downtown. She used to have a dog that she would take out to the alley and around the building several times a day, and her head was always bent down at a sharp angle, eyes perpetually earthward, as if her gaze was riveted to the pavement. It was like she was hoping to find the Secrets of the Universe down there, among the puddles and oil stains. She never, ever looked up.

I felt a lot like that. I just couldn't stop looking down at the sidewalk, which is a dead giveaway that the person is overwhelmed by thinking and is not present. But even the tiny moments of awareness of it were enough, because the day after I realized how compulsive and overpowering my thinking had become, it diminished quite a bit. I was able to be much more conscious.

In another boring, recurring pattern, my ego had a reaction against the consciousness and awareness, and I felt pretty depressed again the day following the thinking's diminishment. But I went to bed late and got up early, a little trick I picked up that'll sort of jolt you out of depression. It's like you just need to do something to gently push your brain out of the horrible, decaying loop it's gotten trapped in. Physically, depression displays such nasty characteristics as shutdown of serotonin uptake, which is critical for not being crazy, as well as shutdown of the limbic system, which accounts for the emotional numbness. There are also substantial effects on the extra important frontal lobes, which interfere with motivation and rational thinking. Bad deal, man. Very bad.

Once I remembered all the physical stuff about depression and became aware of how out of hand things had gotten, that somehow took the wind out of the sails of the whole thing, and it slowly creaked to a stop. Simple, pure awareness of the situation somehow had a powerful beneficial effect on my brain.

I also wasn't concerned with not being depressed, in the sense that I was blaming myself or thinking I should be able to prevent it. Whatever, I get depressed a lot and that's the facts. Can't and don't want to fix it, because desire to change the self is, obviously, just self! Awareness is of another order of reality, not concerned with or impacted by the self, so either there will be no more depression, or it won't matter too much anymore. As Krishnamurti said, I don't mind being unhappy.

watching

2008-09-30T18:34:00.000-07:00

The other day while on my daily walk, I could clearly sense the interval between perception and thought. There is a space, however brief, between a sensory perception and thoughts about that perception. It sounds trivial, but in that gap is purity, silence, stillness, all the stuff you hear about in spiritual circles.

It's engaging, even fun, to watch the interval between perception and thought. Its duration varies; the almost involuntary comprehension of your native language is practically instantaneous, while even something as familiar as a tree takes a bit longer to register as thinking. Fascinating!

Generally so tiny as to be undetectable, and nearly never mentioned, much less experienced, this itty bitty space is where your sense of being, your true nature, lives. It's exhilarating. It's freedom to live between perception and thought, and between thoughts. These three things, perception, thought, and sense of self, once disentangled from each other, no longer fog the mind. It's free now to perceive and think clearly, and your nature as silent, still being is free to realize itself.

Jesus Built My Hotrod

2008-09-24T17:07:00.000-07:00

I just spent a long weekend in California. I had to go there for my brother's wedding. I don't like plane travel or weddings so I wasn't looking forward to it, but it turned out pretty good in some ways. I just might have to add California to the short list of things I really enjoy (see below). It's awesome. Nature really shows its bounty and power there.

One of the best things about the trip was that my rental car turned out to be a Mustang, my favorite car ever! Along with excessively loud music, fast cars are on my very short list of things I really like. So spending the weekend hot dogging around California in a sexy Mustang blaring Jesus Built My Hotrod was my idea of a super good time.

But even while squeezing the Mustang around narrow mountain curves as fast as possible without shooting the car off the road, there lurked the background narrator commenting on how this wouldn't last: The Mustang isn't really yours and soon you'll have to go back to your drab little non-California life. The narration went on and on like that all weekend, and I got that disconnected, frozen feeling that ruins everything.

Today I was able to get some distance from that feeling. This resulted in a great lessening of it and I'm feeling a lot better. The self is so conflicted and grasping that even when it's in the middle of enjoyment, it's thinking of the end of it and how it might get more later. But today I was able to surrender to the fact that my self is just that way. That's the way it's always been and as long as this self exists, that's the way it will continue to be. Denying it or attempting to change it only intensifies it, increasing its negative effects on everything else. Simply allowing it to be is freedom from it.

It's a love affair. . . mainly Jesus, and my hotrod.

harassment

2008-09-17T17:52:00.000-07:00

Yesterday during my daily walk, some guy verbally harassed me under the guise of saying hello as I walked past him. But I didn't experience any reaction to it. If his intent was to intimidate or embarrass me, it fell totally flat. I kept checking throughout the rest of my walk, but the incident consistently registered a big fat zero. It was just as if nothing had happened.

A couple of years ago while I was walking on the same path, someone on a bike smacked me on my butt, rode in a semicircle in front of me, then took off. That was way more of a big deal and upset me. But this time, a mere verbal assault just rolled on by. I couldn't have cared less.

Both of these incidents were attempts to victimize me as a woman, to intimidate and shame me. But being female is merely appearance; it's one aspect of a superficial outer covering that allows me to interact with the world, but has nothing to do with my essential nature. I didn't feel threatened whatsoever by the incident because I knew this person had mistaken me (and himself) for the external appearance. My integrity remained unaffected by meaningless words.

Of course, nobody should be subject to attempted harassment and intimidation on the street, and it's unacceptable that these incidents occurred. If I could stop them, I would. But they have no personal emotional impact. Somebody else's verbal attempt to reduce me to a sexual object will go exactly nowhere if I don't identify myself with a female body or persona, or assume the other person is, in actuality, a man. Neither is ultimately true, and I'm at least somewhat aware of that, so there is no resulting psychological wound.

it's just not happening

2008-09-09T19:16:00.000-07:00

I think I'm getting down to the psychological basics, in terms of stripping away all the defenses like denial, rationalization, and explanation. What's left is just the bare problems. It seems like you'd get depressed if you were faced with a host of undisguised problems that you can't do anything effective about, but that's just not happening.

A few weeks ago I had an experience where it was as if I was going through the motions of a depressive episode, but my heart just wasn't in it. I spent all day in this state, and when I got home from work, I was able to let loose and I cried it out. It felt somehow different than usual, and the next day was gone. It felt like the remnants of that old energy pattern had been dispersed.

I've been curious as to whether future circumstances would bring on more depression, and I'm not ruling it out, but this latest bout with the facts hasn't caused the routine self pity, fear, and anxiety. I'm not jumping for joy about them, but they haven't put me out of commission, either.

It's strange to recognize certain highly undesirable, seemingly intractable, facts about yourself and not have the typical reaction of struggling to change them or getting bummed out about them. I might be spending more time wondering about that than about the facts themselves.

I Know Now What I Must Do

2008-09-08T18:32:00.000-07:00

A few days ago I became convinced that I have to go back to school. I heard someone mention Rogerian therapy and how it involves mirroring to a client what they're saying, so that they can get a clear view of themselves and have a possibility of changing. When I heard this, I was struck by the conviction that I had to get a Master's degree and practice this therapy.

A couple friends of mine are in a Master's program that I've been investigating, plus I need to learn a lot more than the few sentences I heard about Rogerian therapy, so I've been busy looking into what would be required to do this. First and foremost would be money. Piles and piles of money.

I was shocked at the cost and that's a main point of concern, plus the many, many hours of practicums and internships, plus supervision, I'd have to complete while holding down the job I have now. It's not that I don't want to do it, but I just have a very limited energy supply.

Still, it's really exciting to be, well, excited about something. I haven't actually wanted to do anything for a pretty long time. Despite the horror the thought of my being a therapist might arouse, I used to work in human services and was a pretty good counselor. My undergraduate degree is in Psychology and I have a fair range of experience in the field. I didn't like what I was doing and I couldn't live on the low salaries, so I had to find something else to do. But if I were to get a Master's, I could start my own practice to do what I really want with my preferred population and I could work an unrelated job if I needed to.

It's thrilling to consider that I could do something I actually wanted to do instead of picking the least obnoxious alternative for making a living, which is what I did last time I went back to school. My job is okay and there are even some really good parts to it, like the people from all over the world I get to talk to all day, but it's not my passion, if I may use a grossly overused term.

Of course, I've spent the last few days second guessing the whole thing because it would be a huge time and money investment, and what if I didn't like it once I went through all that? I want to be sure before I do it. But I've never been sure of anything in my life. I don't know if this is just some stupid idea or if it's something I really need to do.

radical

2008-09-03T19:51:00.000-07:00

It is my humble opinion that few people understand how radical enlightenment is. What's required is so far beyond the pale that even if people generally understood it, they wouldn't be willing to do it. They're not even willing to do it now, for goodness' sake.

Life has to become absolutely unbearable so that you'll do anything, even end the self, which is the only thing you and everyone else has ever known. Diddling around the edges and engaging in "self improvement", stress management, and even "spiritual" practices like meditation or yoga don't even come close. Everything, without exception, must go. Cherished ideas about religion, spiritual practice, and even enlightenment itself are actually most harmful aspects of the self. They're the last and most subtle trap of the ego.

Short of a catastrophe, people aren't going to board this train. It's just too frightening and extreme. The only reason I'm doing it is because the fear and pain became overwhelming, and nothing helped. It was either no self or self destruction. It has to get very bad before you're willing to do what's required, to face that there's no answer in the world, and nothing in it can heal your spiritual wounds. No workshop, book, or method can help; such things are of and for the self, which is the problem. Only total abandonment of the self will do, and it's apparent that practically nobody accepts that.

the death of me

2008-09-02T18:45:00.000-07:00

Lately things have been so strange, yet so subtle, that I've been having a hard time finding a way to write about it. But I'll give it a shot.

Today on my walk I was able to quietly observe my thoughts and feelings. I wasn't able to label them very well, though, and they seemed to directly contradict each other for the most part. Most of them concerned the recent development of my not caring about anything anymore. By not caring, I mean that I'm no longer interested in personal goals, including the goals of happiness or spiritual realization. I've nearly completely ceased involvement with such concerns.

Walking along, realizing that I actually don't care that much about the self anymore, I observed feelings probably best described as relief coupled with grief. Realizing that your treasured ideas about yourself, about your life eventually working out, being recognized for the wonderful person you really are, finally achieving a sense of worth, etc. etc., aren't important seems like it would be depressing. But it can also be a gigantic relief- no more pointless struggle against reality. It's not settling, not resignation to feeling defective or worthless, but a simple recognition of your self as it actually is. You can't deal with facts until you know what they are, and once you do, they take care of themselves. Stress doesn't exist here.

My self is being exposed. Its masks are falling away, and it's not a pretty sight for the most part. The most basic, discomfiting, unattractive issues that have been fueling this freak show are now unavoidably on display. I might feel a moment of two of despair, revulsion, and/or desperation, but instead of them taking over, the feelings quickly disperse.

Even if none of this ever goes away, I'm going to live my life as it is without constantly brooding on how it should be different. Most striking about the whole thing is that the fear that previously was eating me alive is retreating. I no longer fear the future as much.

In fact, I feel better than I can remember ever feeling before. Recognition of your self requires a whole other state of awareness that feels joy at its own existence, and isn't troubled by the little self and its constant concerns. The awareness is way bigger than that.

I knew it

2008-08-30T18:53:00.000-07:00

I'm reading a book about quantum physics and consciousness right now. I'm a big fan of quantum physics. It's utterly fascinating. When I read stuff in this book about the key role that consciousness plays in certain quantum events, I think, I knew it. It's all just confirmation of what we already know. It even seems ridiculous that anybody ever thought otherwise. It's obvious!

My experience reading about quantum physics, the experience that I'm really being reminded of something and not learning new information, recalls my first exposure to the Upanisads. Upon reading them, my first response was, again, I knew it.

Before I read in the Upanisads what I had previously considered to be my very own private ideas about how things really worked, I thought those ideas were childish and stupid; otherwise, somebody else would've mentioned them. If they were good ideas, they'd already be known. I certainly never heard anything similar to them in any of the Protestant Christian churches I was forced to attend as a child, or anywhere else for that matter, and I'd never even heard of Hinduism at that time. Where these seemingly singular and strange ideas came from, I didn't know. I suppose I thought they were just my own peculiar ideas that I'd invented to make myself feel better.

My reaction to my initial reading of the Upanisads was tearful shock, then confusion, and finally, exhilaration. I could not believe that everything I already thought, but had never been able to fully form, was all right here, on public display for anyone to stumble across: Unbelievable. These people from thousands of years of ago, from a culture nearly wholly unlike mine, are saying what I always thought was true. And nobody's laughing. In fact, they seem to be taking it quite seriously. Wow. . . I mean. . . wow. . . and why in hell didn't anybody mention anything like this to me before? It would've been super nice to know I wasn't a spiritual freak about fifteen years ago.

Unfortunately, nobody else around me was aware of such things either. It seems that I have to do this on my own. Actually, if I already knew all these things, it indicates I'm not really doing it myself, or at least that I have everything I need to do it myself. We already all know the truth.

conflict

2008-08-29T14:53:00.000-07:00

Lately I've been feeling really good. My baseline is feeling fine, punctuated with frequent bouts of out and out joy. Weird.

More than just feeling good, there is a new sense of being highly aware, for lack of a better description. There are still lots of thoughts, but often each one seems more discrete, clear, easy to distinguish as just a thought, nothing more. Especially, anxious, angry, or fearful thoughts really pop out and act to bring the strengthening awareness to the fore again. I even feel exhilarated when there is a negative thought, because it wakes me up, and the awareness feels really good. It's not that "I" feel good or that good feelings have been added to my self. It's something completely new, and it's hard to find any coherent way to express it.

I realized the other day that the peace and serenity arise because the inner conflict, the internal wounds caused by self-reflective consciousness, are healing. Conflict is pain, and a lessening of pain indicates less conflict. I've wondered before about why there would be less negativity and upset in a case like mine, because I still don't consciously know anything about a transcendent reality, God, or whatever you want to call it. I thought knowing about that was what caused the peace other people talk about, but apparently not, or at least not completely. I'm totally ignorant of the reality of God and I feel great. So the resolution of internal conflict is enough, at least for right now.

"I Just Didn't Feel Like Messing With It"

2008-08-28T19:17:00.000-07:00

A couple of days ago Jamie told me that this quote should be on her tombstone. This came up after Jamie didn't want to go outside to smoke while we were at the cabin because she was worried a bear or mountain lion would drag her off, leaving only her pack of cigarettes and lighter behind as her "legacy", as she described it. We then got onto the topic of what our lives would sum up to by the time we died, and "I Just Didn't Feel Like Messing With It" came out the winner for both of us.

When Jamie said that, it sent me into helpless laughter; but when I looked at Jamie through watering eyes, she wasn't laughing. I managed to calm down somewhat and told Jamie it really wasn't funny, really, even though it definitely was. Jamie said that she wasn't upset that I was laughing, but upset because she was pretty sure it was actually true.

I didn't take it as hard as Jamie did; I've realized for a while that so far, my external life isn't adding up to a lot, due to my own lack of energy. But laziness, which is one of my most basic traits, probably will actually save the day. If surrender is the way to awakening, then I have it made, because I'd much rather surrender to life than make the effort to vainly attempt to do something about a bunch of problems that don't actually exist. You have to work with what you got, so I'm putting my inherent laziness to good use.

Nature

2008-08-27T15:58:00.000-07:00

I just got back from spending a couple of days in a cabin in the woods. It offered an abundance of peaceful silence, accompanied by a plethora of animals, insects, birds, trees, grass, tiny flowers, mushrooms, clouds, and lightning.

This morning, just as it was beginning to get light, I slowly became aware of a strange noise. As I woke, I recognized with a happy thrill that it was a coyote howling. The sound travelled for miles across the mountains in the pure morning silence; even the birds were still quiet. The few minutes of hearing that beautiful coyote voice were joy itself.

Later this morning, as I sat in front of the window, I looked up and saw a procession of three wild turkeys making its way toward the cabin and then past. They were so calm and purposeful in their own little turkey way, just walking around looking for food or anything else of interest that might arise.

In the wee hours of the first night at the cabin, I heard a strange clopping sound. I realized it was probably the sound of hooves on the road when I later saw two little deer at the side of the cabin, eating grass as they moved around and away. They made another appearance today at the back of the cabin, where I also saw two fairly large gray birds land on the deck railing, see me sitting mere feet away, then fly away again.

It's calming to think of all the creatures going about their business in the woods, seemingly unconcerned with your presence as long as you leave them be. Hearing the unfamiliar or nearly forgotten natural sounds and seeing actual animals up close, in real life, made me realize how disconnected humans are from the workings of nature, which, after all, we totally depend on. The very purpose of life, of consciousness, is in the animals and the trees, not just in what humans busy themselves with in cities.

release

2008-08-21T18:53:00.000-07:00

Something strange happened to me the day Ulrich, my supervisor, tried to force me into going to that awful baseball game. He couldn't have picked a worse day, as the following will demonstrate:

As anyone who has known me for more than half an hour realizes, I'm susceptible to fits of depression. The day of the baseball drama, I felt pretty bad for no real reason, but it was different than usual. The negativity felt somehow unclouded, pure in a strange way. It seemed like it was just pure depression, without any of the personal associations and fears that not only previously accompanied it, but appeared to be its very basis. So it was pretty weird to just have this almost free floating depression in my field of awareness without thinking it was me or mine.

Probably due to its purity, it seemed unusually strong and raw. I spent the entire day at the office fighting back tears, not always successfully. At the end of the day, finally freed from putting up with suppressing it, I ran home, where I simply burst into tears. The crying lasted for a relatively long time. I'm not much of a crier, even under the worst of circumstances, so this was attention-getting.

Finally, red-eyed and snuffling, I stumbled off to bed, and in the morning, the feelings were completely, 100% gone. I don't know about anybody else, but I never felt that level of depression, then shortly had it wiped off the face of the earth, as if it had never happened, as if I weren't even capable of getting depressed.

My theory about what happened is that it was a major release of a long-standing energy pattern that's been trapped in me for decades. The depression felt decidedly impersonal and was so pure in a way that it definitely was not just an ordinary bout of depression, no matter what else it may have been. It's humbling to realize that a negative energy pattern has been the mainstay of your personality for nearly your entire life, and a bit scary too because now that frozen energy is free, and you should probably figure out something new and a lot better to do with it- made harder by not knowing who you are, actually, because you were depression for so long that you lost sight of everything else.

detachment

2008-08-20T18:20:00.000-07:00

Most of the reason I haven't blogged much this month is because I'm losing interest in the blog. I don't care so much about it anymore. It's not just the blog that's fading for me; the lack of engagement is really spreading to everything.

It's not the kind of lack of caring where you do a crappy job or ignore things. It's just that you're not looking to satisfy yourself through things anymore. Once you stop doing things for gratification, you realize how nearly everything you're interested in is exactly for that reason- you're using it for self-satisfaction.

Freeing up the energy you were blowing on trying to get satisfaction can now be used to do the things you have to do with new care and quality. But the issue at this stage is motivation. You do what you have to, like going to work or taking care of chores around the house, but actually wanting to do things becomes less and less of a motivation. I suppose doing things for enjoyment, without attachment to it making you feel better, is the way things work from here on out. But the lack of self-motivation, which is the only reason you ever bothered to do anything up to this point, leaves a gigantic hole that you're constantly aware of, and even a little nervous about. Wow, what the hell am I gonna do now? What the hell am I now?

In particular, the whole field of spirituality is becoming distinctly less interesting. It's more obvious to me than ever that "spirituality" is merely a category of thought, just like any other category. It's purely thought-, therefore self-, generated and is not the reality. Trying to be more spiritual, striving for higher, better states, seeking after spiritual experiences, even trying to get rid of your self is all still the self motivated to act in the interest of its own satisfaction.

It still might be interesting to read or talk about spiritual topics, but working towards anything in that sphere is off the table. I don't care about so-called spirituality at the moment, because the state of enlightenment, whatever it is, has nothing whatsoever to do with me. I can't achieve it as a self, and I don't care about it as much as I used to. The diminishment of the self through detachment, which again, though, is not anything the self can accomplish, would be the only way enlightenment could enter this world.

poverty

2008-08-19T19:18:00.000-07:00

Over the years, I've managed to reduce my debts to a couple of student loans and a pretty recent car payment, after driving my previous car for ten years. I rent someone else's basement for dirt cheap, and other than my cell phone and broadband, I don't have any bills. So my monthly income pretty far exceeds my expenses. I haven't even noticed the gas/food price increases.

It took me years to dig myself out of debt- I even had to go to night school and change careers so I could pay my bills. Now I don't have too many wants, but I can afford to buy the few things I do want.

Growing up, we lived in a state of voluntary poverty. Voluntary on the part of my dad, that is. We had sufficient money, although we were far from well off, but somehow we always ended up living in bad neighborhoods and cheap apartments, and we never had more than one pair of jeans and a few shirts, all from thrift stores, of course. Forget going to restaurants or movies or taking trips. It was pathetic, and it was totally needless. We had a lot more money than appearances indicated. My dad was (and is) so convinced that he was poor that no amount of money could ever change that perception.

Living like that caused me to have a lot of issues with money, but I figured most of them out and now live fairly frugally but comfortably, driving a used car, renting a cheap place, and not spending a lot of money otherwise. My only real fear about money these days is that I won't have it in the future- I'll lose my ability to earn money, the economy will tank, or whatever.

Poverty/prosperity isn't just about money. I recently realized that it pervades your whole life. If you have a poverty or a prosperity consciousness, it effects every aspect of your life, not just money, which is only the most obvious symbol of your state of mind. Poverty consciousness leads you to be tight not only with money, but also with your ideas, feelings, and creativity. The fear it's based on stains everything, and your ability to give in any arena is seriously compromised. Conversely, being truly prosperous means you have money to share, and appreciation, gratitude, and love as well.

Don't Take Me Out To The Ballgame

2008-08-18T18:41:00.001-07:00

Last week at work we were all supposed to go to a baseball game as some sort of "team" activity. I couldn't imagine going as 1) I'm profoundly bored by sports and 2) I've always been extremely resistant to being told to do things that seem pointless except as an attempt to make me conform to something. This personality feature caused me to hate school, and the inability to get with the program, after years of resentful resistance, culminated in my expulsion from school. I'm fine if left alone, but if I think I'm being pushed to do something I don't want to do, I feel that my personal integrity and individuality is under attack and I react.

So when we were told we were going to this enforced fun activity, like a busload of grade schoolers going on a mandatory field trip, I was right back at school and refused to go. This came as an unwelcome bit of news to my supervisor, Ulrich, who'd been in a bad mood all week, and when I told him I did not like baseball, and would be quite upset if made to go, he got mad and informed me in a snooty tone of injured superiority that it wasn't supposed to be an ordeal, but a fun team building afternoon.

But I knew my supervisor, whom I normally get along with very well, was already in a bad mood and his pissy response had nothing to do with me. When I told him I didn't want to go the the game, I was polite and non defensive, simply stating my position. I didn't act angry at all, even though part of me wanted to trash his office.

After the ballgame, which I spent all by myself at the office wondering how much trouble my act of apparently irrational rebellion was going to get me into, my friend Judy called me from the ball field. She was excited by reports that I wasn't at the game because I'd announced that I was going to stay at work instead, something nobody had previously done. She called me a "revolutionary" (this made me laugh, but I admit it was kinda fun to hear it) and even though changing anything was the last thing on my mind, that's exactly what seems to have happened.

The day after the game, my supervisor sent me an e-mail that read: "When you have time, please come to my office or let me know when I can come to yours (here my eyes widen and my chest begins to heave with fear) so I can apologize to you (eyes get even wider, this time in total surprise)." I didn't see that one coming!

I immediately got up and went to his office, and he duly apologized for the whole thing, explaining that once or twice a year, "Crazy Ulrich" emerges and this kind of thing happens. I wasn't really upset with him as I recognized his reaction wasn't to do with me, but I was glad that we could resume our previously good relationship. He further told me that my not going had opened up a discussion about doing something other than going to a miserable baseball game, so my lone stand against the madness that was everyone unwillingly trooping downtown to the ball field has resulted in possibly not having to go anymore.

If my outer response to the mandatory "fun" had been angry and defensive, the pushback from my supervisor and other higher-ups at work would've been in kind. It would've resulted in more anger and resentment all around, and an erosion of the normally amiable relationships. As it was, I ended up getting an apology and the exhilarating suggestion that I'll never be threatened with going to a sporting event again! And it looks as if a shift has happened, and the situation will peacefully change.

All that stuff about nonreaction, nondefensiveness, and forgiveness actually works. When you meet force and anger with calmness, the energy of the whole interaction changes, and unforeseen, positive outcomes become much more probable.

shut down

2008-08-06T18:34:00.000-07:00

I've noticed an interesting phenomenon: when you speak to people about the fundamental wrongness of how we're conducting our affairs as a species, they shut down. It's not like they're merely disinterested; you can see that you've pushed some sort of button and the automated response is a defensive shutting down. Input is no longer being received. Some people even begin to get angry, and it's immediate.

Today my friend Judy described this reaction as "cultural denial". I haven't found anything else that makes most people so immediately uncomfortable than the idea that things are just not okay. Judy and I both know this because despite ourselves, neither of us can keep our mouths shut for long and we inevitably make some comment that alarms people.

I think most people sense that something isn't right, but facing it is not an option because they can't see anything past it. I can't either, but I'm willing to look, because the apparent is spiritually deadly. The only other way to survive the spiritual desert we've created is to shut off (see above).

Admitting the extent of the problem is potentially devastating and almost nobody will do it. It does feel pretty bad, as any existentialist can tell you, but that's not the end of the line. There is something beyond the dysfunctional and inhumane systems we've set up, and I want to find out what it is. The only way, as in the first step in AA, is to admit there is a problem. A gigantic, unavoidable problem that we all have to face and deal with, or we won't make it, spiritually or physically.

my wildest dreams

2008-08-05T10:53:00.000-07:00

During a meeting at work yesterday, my supervisor told us that business really went down the dumper in June. July is looking a lot better so it was probably an anomaly, but, frankly, it got my hopes up. Happy visions of getting laid off danced in my head as I stared dreamily out the window.

If I really did get laid off it would scare me, but I dislike work so much that I can't help fantasizing about it. . . the freedom. . . the lack of pressure. . . no more contributing to a dehumanizing system. . . maybe I could get some part time job with no responsibility, making just enough money to pay my bills.

I don't get personal satisfaction from work. I work to get money. I do a good job at work, and always give my best effort, but given a choice, I would not do it. I began to suspect a few years ago that work only apparently supplies me with money; it's really the universe that supplies it, work being only the vehicle. But I'm so attached to the idea of work being the only possible way to support myself that I can't get away from it. At this point, short of it getting ripped away from me, I'm not going to let go of work and the security I think it provides me. Imagining getting laid off is my only relief.

My Dinner With Andre

2008-08-04T17:58:00.000-07:00

Have you seen the movie My Dinner With Andre? Judy, my existential friend, lent her DVD copy to me a couple of years or so ago. I remember liking it, but I pretty much forgot about it due to information overload.

Jamie has a satellite dish and had recorded it recently, and I watched it again over there last night. It's such a good movie. It's fun to follow the content of the conversation between the two characters, as well as their relationship. It doesn't sound like two people talking would make much of a movie, but somehow it really works. There aren't too many movies that deal with philosophical/spiritual topics on this level or that do it this well.

It reminded me too of my conversations with Judy and Rick. Like the movie, such conversations ultimately don't go anywhere, but that's part of what makes the movie so insightful- it seems to recognize the ultimate futility of talking about it. Apparently, the movie is based on actual conversations that the two actors had in life. It's art, and it's real. Nice.

pettiness

2008-08-03T19:44:00.000-07:00

One thing that's always bothered me about the suburbs is people's irrational attachment to the parking on the street in front of their house. I had a problem with parking in the suburbs before that turned into verbal racist attacks directed at me. Now I find that it's again an issue.

A couple of months ago I moved to the suburbs from downtown. It's actually still in the city, not one those uniform developments on the outskirts, but as far as I'm concerned, it's pretty suburban here.

There's a carriage house in the back of the house that I rent part of, and somebody moved into it yesterday. It was the worst possible day I could've encountered a new person. I was experiencing the boomerang effect that occurs when I have a period of strong awareness, and I felt extremely irritable. Every little thing really pissed me off.

The new person's presence was obvious and, in my super sensitive state, obnoxious. I had to park in front of the house instead of on the side because the moving van and other cars were there yesterday, which was perfectly understandable, but I left my car there overnight, and the new person parked square in front of the side gate I use to get into the yard. This made me very angry. When I got home today, I pulled my truck up close behind the new person's, slammed the door, and stomped inside.

Now the whole thing seems ridiculous and petty. I recall a story I saw on the news a week or so ago about a murder that was reportedly over a "parking dispute". This is incredibly stupid. Who cares if someone parks in front of the gate? My ego, however, is taking it very seriously and is deeply insulted that some interloper dares to park on my little patch of public street!

2008-08-01T17:45:00.000-07:00

I had a little epiphany last week, and it's still with me. I have relatively minor feelings of nervousness or irritation, but they dissipate very quickly, and the underlying sense of peace that happened last week returns to prominence. And out of nowhere, if I get quiet for a minute, I feel exhilarated. For instance, this afternoon at the car wash, as I stood in the little glassed-in area watching the workers wash my truck, I got that feeling. My car- it's being washed! And I'm standing here watching it being washed! And it's firecracker hot outside and I've spent all afternoon running around in the heat catching up on boring errands! And I feel GREAT! It's all just GREAT!

There is no external reason for the feelings of sheer joy that keep bubbling up. It's not about what happens outside, although no longer living wrapped in a sort of self-made emotional cocoon goes a long way toward being able to enjoy external things. This cocoon was so well crafted that I couldn't even enjoy internal things. Any feeling verging on enthusiasm or the unthinkable- happiness- was immediately squashed. A sad result, in part, of my emotionally crippling childhood, but once you discard that conditioning, you can feel and do whatever you want. And that is not feeling numb or alienated, or spending your time desperately wondering how long you're going to have to put up with this before you die.

There is no reason for it, there's no use for it, and I don't know what it is. It's beyond the self and so beyond utility or reasoning. All I know is that it is alive, perfectly confident and capable, and it doesn't answer to the ego's wants and perceived needs. It's joyful at waking up in a wonderful world.

(perceived) similarities

2008-07-31T18:41:00.000-07:00

My boss thinks we have similar outlooks. This stems from a single incident a long time ago when I made an offhand remark about how most things are in your mind. He grabbed onto it and excitedly agreed. He immediately warmed up to me and since then, it's been apparent that he likes me.

I'll take it, but it's based on a misinterpretation of why I said that. Aside from what he does at the office, my boss is a personal coach. Any hint that you may be on board with the perky, life affirming philosophy such a vocation requires apparently warms him up to you immensely.

I actually find the entire idea of personal coaching appalling. Taking advice from someone else on how best to improve yourself is taking the wrong road. It seems like a great idea on the level of the self, but of course the self would be terribly interested in its own perceived improvement. No thanks.

I let my boss think I share his sunny outlook. It's no good trying to explain that, yes, everything is in your mind, but where I'm going with that is not to better work performance. My boss also is a poor listener, which isn't much of an advantage in personal coaching, if you ask me. It points out to me that my boss really likes the idea of personal coaching, but personal coaching itself, the reality of it, isn't quite as alluring. It's gotta be kind of hard to help people if you're not fully listening to them.

shattered dreams

2008-07-30T18:48:00.000-07:00

It turns out Jamie and I aren't really going to be able to go kayaking by ourselves. We're both too short to load the kayaks on top of the Jeep without risking our safety. It seems like a bummer, but I'm not really bummed about it.

During yet another brainstorming session to come up with some way to manage the kayaks on our own, I jokingly told Jamie that she'd just have to abandon the kayaking idea and throw it in the box marked "Shattered Dreams" that she keeps in the attic. Her response was a silent stare. Apparently she was not amused.

She did, in fact, lecture me on how it wasn't funny and her dream really had been shattered. I was penitent, but I'm still not upset about not being able to go on our own. It would be ideal to able to go by ourselves, but it's just not going to happen, no matter how much I love kayaking. So I stopped thinking about it. I'll go whenever my brother can help us, and that'll be good enough.

Getting upset over things that aren't going to change is a major self-inflation exercise. At this point I don't even have to remind myself not to get upset- I'm simply not upset. It also occurs to me that if kayaking on our own was that important, there would be a way to do it. Obviously it's not what I need to focus on right now, so it's in the background. Unfortunately, saying this is unconvincing, especially since being detached from it would probably be perceived as not caring, so I haven't attempted to explain it to Jamie. She's already mad at me.

conflict

2008-07-29T18:38:00.000-07:00

Today when we were talking at lunch, a couple of my coworkers mentioned that certain other people at work give them attitude when they ask them to do things. This surprised me. I have to ask the same people to do the same last-minute things, and while I doubt they enjoy it, they do it without complaint. I never got the sense that they resented it or that I was making them angry.

Some of these people are considered what might be called "difficult", but I haven't really experienced that. I just politely ask for what I need, which usually includes an apology for bothering them, listen if they need to tell me about how much pressure they're under or how much work they have to do, thank them, and go back to my office. Easy.

Usually when people talk about conflicts they're having with coworkers, I silently marvel that they would waste their time and energy on such a futile thing. Why on earth would you ever oppose someone and turn your relationship into a tug of war? Letting others be themselves makes it all a lot easier.

This doesn't mean always doing things their way or letting them get away with things, but being polite and as aware of the true situation as possible goes a long way in getting along with other people. If I think someone is doing something wrong and it's affecting others, I mention it in as kind and nonthreatening a way as possible and then forget about it. Approaching people in a courteous, non defensive way will work wonders to decrease conflict. Let cranky or frightened people be cranky or frightened. They'll love you for it.

self confidence

2008-07-28T19:11:00.000-07:00

Something strange happened today. I felt personally shaky, no longer quite sure of myself. It was almost as if I couldn't remember how to behave. It's like I just didn't have any faith in the reality of my self anymore, and that made it harder to act with any degree of certainty.

Most of my interactions felt tentative and phony. It was like watching a bad actor stumbling through a scene. How strange, to see through yourself so completely that you begin to lose your ability to pull off a convincing fake.

I've been able to see the unreality of the personas some other people project for quite a while, but it took a little longer to realize it so clearly in myself. It's disconcerting enough to realize that the personalities around you aren't real- when you know that it also applies to your own personality, it's really strange.

I used to know someone with schizophrenia who thought every other person in the world was a hologram. He thought only he was a real person, which demonstrates the extreme proportions that the ego takes on in such a serious mental illness. It finds a bit of truth and grossly misinterprets it to an unbelievably inflated extent.

Realizing the ultimate unreality of everything, and including yourself in that realization, makes a big hole where your self used to be, and that's the space where your real essence manifests in your life. But until it begins to gel, I guess you have to grin and bear the sense of falseness until you get your feet under you.

serenity now!

2008-07-27T19:31:00.000-07:00

I have a pattern where I'll get pretty depressed for a while, then swing over to a state seemingly opposed to it. It's not a manic state, like a bipolar thing (me being manic is, I suspect, impossible), but a peaceful state of quiet gratitude. That's not a very good description, but that state is so complex, nuanced, and unfamiliar that it's difficult to convey what it feels like. It's the state people reference when they talk about God, the Holy Ghost, Buddha nature, Brahman, or whatever traditional term you may be familiar with. These are not words I like to use as they are so loaded with problematic baggage, but they give a clue to what I'm talking about.

The feelings of problem-free, serene gratitude are so strong that I spent a lot of time today on the verge of joyful tears. Especially after feeling crappy for a week, being in that state is like an extreme version of being in your happy place. It's miraculous that this state exists and, even more miraculous, that this state is my very being.

This falls into the familiar category of things I already knew, but now know at a new depth. It's no longer a mere hopeful belief that this inexpressible state is reality and is actually my essence, and the essence of every single form that exists; it's a fact, as it always has been, but this essence is now becoming increasingly factually aware of itself as this particular form. Hard to express, maybe it sounds like gibberish, but that's because it's beyond the self completely and there is no reference to it.

lighten up, man

2008-07-26T17:07:00.000-07:00

In the spirit of my most recent post, I'm taking it easy this weekend and trying to forget about this enlightenment thing for a while. My last bout of ill temper has (nearly) convinced me that it's not up to me, and struggling only makes it hurt more. Plus I'm way too serious all the time and I need to lighten up. Ergo, my agenda for the weekend:

-Sleep in. This is priority number one.

-Buy a truckload of magazines. Read said magazines while sitting in a coffee shop all damn weekend. (So far this weekend I haven't gone to any coffee shops and tomorrow isn't looking good either, but at least I bought the magazines.)

-Go with my brother to the movies. He wants to see Hancock and I'm not that interested, but on the other hand, my way of doing things hasn't been working out so good. I might even take a page from the book of George Costanza and start doing the exact opposite of everything I think I should do. Who knew George might actually have a good idea?

-Eat and drink whatever I want. Maybe even a rib eye steak. That's right, a steak! I already had frozen custard today- mmm, good.

Sound wild and crazy? Not really? Well, at least it's without the usual baggage I generally haul around. That automatically makes even mundane activities a lot more enjoyable.

goals

2008-07-25T15:26:00.000-07:00

Even enlightenment can be co-opted by the ego and made into just another self-improvement project. It becomes an elaborate method to make yourself feel better.

Just as weight loss, quitting smoking, or trying to be kinder are actions undertaken by the ego in an effort to improve itself, so are attempts to achieve enlightenment. Enlightenment itself, not the idea of it but the actual thing, has nothing whatsoever to do with the self. When you think you're working on enlightenment, you're really working on building the self. It's the cleverest, most subtle deception the ego perpetrates on itself. You finally begin to realize that everything is overdue for a major shift, but just at that point, the self steps in to engineer it. The self is the generator of every illusion and misery suffered by humanity, and it thinks it's effectively working on enlightenment.

Even trying to stop the ego from working on enlightenment is still the ego! This is where despair and hopelessness can set in, and if you stop here, you become chronically depressed and cynical. You realize there's nothing the self can do, and that sounds incredibly depressing. No way out, but if you surrender to the utter ineffectiveness and helplessness of your ego, something totally other may manifest itself.

But here be dragons: I have no idea if this part is true. My self simply will not give up and it would literally take divine intervention to get it to ever stop. But I do know unequivocally that resistance results in unbearable stress. Nothing left to do but surrender.

nervous

2008-07-24T19:51:00.000-07:00

I've been a nervous wreck for a week. Actually, it started at the beginning of the summer. Things have been unsettled since the beginning of June and I have a low tolerance for that, so I quickly reached my coping limit and descended into anxiety.

A number of bad, or at least undesirable, things have happened over the past couple of months. This was all preceded by two years of stagnation punctuated by irritations. It finally made me question my competence to function as a responsible adult and I started to feel pretty bad about myself and my life.

It became acute this week, draining my energy and will. I had no desire to do anything and just brooded constantly on the sorry state of things. Trying to do anything, at work or at home, seemed overwhelming and futile. I just put in my time until I could go to bed, where I could at least forget about it all for a few hours. That didn't always help though, because I had a few disturbing dreams that clearly reflected my paranoid state of consciousness. Yesterday I finally broke down and bought some whiskey. I simply couldn't tolerate living in constant torment anymore.

For reasons unknown, the awful anxiety and despair abated today. I'm feeling better but kind of raw and still smarting from it, and it's put a serious dent in my "just watch it" project. It really hurt and watching it didn't seem to be very useful. But I guess trying to get out of it, even through watching it, is still the action of the self and is shunting you off onto a dead end. It's terribly hard though, sometimes impossible, to bear that kind of unrelenting psychological pain for very long.

back and forth

2008-07-20T17:13:00.000-07:00

Today is the last day of my little vacation, and I spent most of it sitting in a park in the plaza district of Santa Fe. The place was packed, but Jamie and I found a nice bench and sat in the park for a long time. I felt pretty worn out today because I usually don't sleep well in hotels, so I appreciated the chance to sit on a park bench all afternoon.

Jamie asked me if I was having a good time and I said I was, but why did she ask? She replied "Well, it's hard to tell." I'm naturally a quiet person, but since I started watching my thoughts and feelings, I'm even more so. It's a constant activity that is attention itself, and it cuts down on external reaction quite a bit. From the outside, it might look like I'm unengaged with what's going on, but that's actually the opposite of the truth. Giving what's around you all of your attention makes everything more alive. You can comfortably sit in a park for half the day without getting the slightest bit bored.

Paying attention to everything means I also have to pay attention to the unease that's my constant companion, but at least now it's not always in the forefront. These days I often feel quiet and peaceful, but it's hard to go back and forth between paranoia and tranquility. The ego wants tranquility all the time, which is really ironic, because the ego itself is the only thing that prevents it. Wanting more tranquility is the surest way to not have it. As soon as I stop wanting tranquility, the paranoia will cease and so will the back and forth. Then tranquility.

anticipation

2008-07-19T17:09:00.000-07:00

I'm on a road trip this weekend. It's going pretty well, except I've been constantly anticipating what's next. If I'm at my hotel, I think I should be out doing something. When I'm driving, I want to be wherever I'm going. If I'm at an attraction, I'm thinking about getting to a restaurant. At the restaurant, I want to get back to the car. Wherever I am and whatever I'm doing, I'm thinking of something else.

Of course, that means I'm constantly uncomfortable and restless. Everything is passing me by as I worry about what's coming next. What's coming never arrives, because what's next is the future and that doesn't even exist.

This is the same thing that's behind my problem with my messenger bag, which I keep thinking I've misplaced. Between that, this vacation, and other worries I can't even bring myself to mention, I'm a nervous wreck. It's mostly internal though; I haven't been acting on the anxious feeling or otherwise letting it affect me very much. I mentioned it to Jamie and she was surprised, as I'm not acting nervous or impatient.

It's hard to not either suppress or act on the anxiety, simply because it's so unpleasant. Just allowing it without interference is really difficult. But there's no other way to really deal with it. And doing that is what has made it possible for me to have the anxiety without letting it ruin my vacation.

Here's some pictures of my trip so far.

Here I am giving the thumbs up from a cave used hundreds of years ago by Native Americans.

I love the interactive way you can climb up and get inside these. They're dark and quiet. I could've stayed in there all day.

creepy cartoon

2008-07-17T13:00:00.000-07:00

Check out this creepy t-shirt I have. Jamie hates it, but it's endlessly funny to me. The cartoon also glows in the dark, which gives an additional dose of hilarity.

This is the fix we all find ourselves in; steadfastly turning our backs on death, which nevertheless remains looking over our shoulders, broadcasting its rays over all. Fear of death is the ego's fundamental fear; all fears, no matter how seemingly sophisticated or far removed, boil down to the ego's fear of death. Yeah, it's still there.

Bug Eyed Earl's obvious, and ineffective, attempt at escape is what's so funny about the cartoon. What's lurking behind him seems awful, but if Earl just turned around and looked at it, it wouldn't be that scary for that long. It reminds me to not live my life ignoring things, as I am so wont to do.

fear

2008-07-16T18:00:00.000-07:00

A couple of months ago I left my bag in the dressing room of a store. Somebody found it and turned it in so no harm done, but since then I've repeatedly suddenly wondered "Where's my bag??!" and gotten one of those unpleasant adrenaline surges. It happens over and over. It's gotten so bad that I won't even let go of the bag- it's a little messenger bag so I can keep in on my shoulder at all times. Even when I take it off to drive, I keep looking over at the passenger seat to make sure it's still there. It's crazy.

It goes to show the straws the ego will grasp at in an effort to keep itself going. No longer able to dramatically carry on about the meaninglessness of a random universe, it just won't forget about an inconsequential little event. As the covering of the ego falls away, its bare frame (yearning/fear) is revealed. That basic structure becomes more and more obvious while the outer wrappings (rationalizations, justifications, excuses) rapidly shrink. So it seems like things are getting more irrational and painful, but it's really just that you're getting a clearer view of the nature of the self, sans any way to avoid it. In this situation, the ego clearly is feeling totally unable to control anything and lives in fear of losing what it thinks it needs to stay safe- a messenger bag full of the trappings of a respectable citizen.

anger

2008-07-15T18:14:00.000-07:00

I'm trying to get ready for a long weekend, and it's been tough. The unending demands at work make it seem hardly worth the struggle to get away. But I started exhibiting symptoms of burnout at least a couple of months ago, and it's past time to get away for awhile. A few days isn't enough, but it's all I can manage right now.

As soon as they find out you're going to be gone, the clients at work start freaking out and demanding that you finish whatever it is you're working on before you go. Too bad you have a ton of clients and it's impossible as well as pointless to do it all ahead of time.

I started to realize last night that I'm not going to get everything I need to finish done before I leave, and my panic was quickly followed by rage. I strongly resent the unreasonable demands made upon me as the result of trying to take off what amounts to two and a half lousy work days. I do have some semblance of a life outside of the office, and taking a few days off being such a big deal really pisses me off.

Lately I've been having my recurring fantasies of running off into the desert to live in my truck, or buying a tent and living in it down by the river. I get so sick of work that these actually begin to seem like viable alternatives. Most of my anger at how messed up everything is gets focused on work, and when it gets stressful, I get really resistant and angry. I'm overreacting to the situation, which is a sure sign that the ego is fueling the whole thing. Still, work serves not only to wear me out but also to keep the whole corrupt system churning along, so it's no wonder it gets me mad.

dreams

2008-07-14T16:53:00.000-07:00

I once read that some enlightened people don't have dreams, or at least they don't need to dream. I found this strange. I always thought that dreaming was a biological necessity, but maybe not. Nearly everything is attributed to biological necessity these days in any case.

I used to be interested in my dreams and the hidden information I thought I could glean from them. One thing I did notice and wonder about was that they were invariably creepy or otherwise unpleasant. And if you really look at what they are without making any assumptions about them, it's pretty clear that they're mostly a continuation of what you spent all day doing- thinking- which explains their overwhelmingly negative feeling.

In the main, they're the brain trying to process what you didn't during the day, which was probably everything. Our poor brains are like little overworked engines, revving uselessly in neutral all day and all night, and we wonder why we can't remember anything and are going senile at epidemic rates.

Nighttime used to be a stressful time for me. It seemed that whatever censor tried to keep a lid on things during the day was immobilized at night, and my substantial fear and anxiety were free to take over and wreak havoc until I woke up from sheer fright. It was horrible. I would suddenly jerk awake, feeling scared and like I'd been punched in the stomach. I could remember that my brain had just been barrelling along like an out of control train, thinking at lightning speed about all the dreadful future possibilities, until finally it sailed off the rails, crashed, and woke me up.

Dreams? Who needs 'em!

be conscious

2008-07-13T19:44:00.000-07:00

This is a picture I have on my fridge that reminds me to stay conscious, not letting any reaction or state get by unnoticed. It's cool.

How Soon Is Now

2008-07-12T16:48:00.000-07:00

Does anyone remember the Smiths song "How Soon Is Now"? It just came up on my iPod and it tickled me. It reminded me that, basically, your ego sits around wondering when it'll be able to live in the present.

There isn't even anything else. How could it be any time other than right now? In an unbelievable act of destructive escapism, the ego spends the present dreaming about a nonexistent future, asking "When will it be now?" The ego thinks living in the present is some kind of spiritual accomplishment that will take time to achieve. Somehow it will be now in the future, if you could just get it together. This is obviously impossible, if you think about it at all. It would be funny if it weren't ruining everybody's life.

atheist/agnostic?

2008-07-10T18:07:00.000-07:00

Today one of my co-workers told me that she thinks I'm probably an atheist or an agnostic (she wasn't sure which because, she said, she couldn't remember the difference). It must be my moodiness and the fact that I never display any interest in religious or even spiritual topics. I'm sure she would be shocked to learn that I minored in religious studies in college, a fact I hardly mention because it seems so irrelevant now.

I almost never mention anything spiritual to people, which is how I assume my co-worker got her idea, because it's so hard to talk about it without the usual religious vocabulary. I'm just learning about the self and why it causes so many problems, and if I find it's because the self is a fragment separated from a divine source, then that would be really, really great, but I don't know that. I strongly suspect it, because people who I think are probably actually enlightened have talked about it and most of us have hints of it ourselves, but until you fully perceive truth, you can't know what it is.

It's like being a scientist of the self; you conduct your little experiments to determine the nature of the self, but if you decide ahead of time what that nature is and then try to get there, you're no longer engaging in objective learning, the discovery of truth, but in the gratification of self-centered desire. I want to know what's true, not what I want to be true, even if I find out it's that there's nothing beyond our daily meaningless struggle.

It's funny timing that my co-worker mentioned it today, though, because I've spent the last couple of days in an unusual state. Serenity underlies everything. No matter what the thoughts or external events are, even if I get caught by them for a brief moment, there is the silent tranquility. That's not totally new to me, but it is stronger and more persistent these days.

Probably this blog gives a more grim impression of my life than is actual, because any report of unenlightened human consciousness isn't going to be pretty. But there are periods of silent peace and oneness, which is really total acceptance and lack of conflict with the present.

Nonacceptance of the moment is like having a noose around your neck; the more you pull against it, the tighter and tighter it gets. Some people never try to get loose, and they don't think anything's wrong. They don't struggle so they don't feel the rope. Other people fight it to the bitter end and end up strangling themselves. And others struggle against it until they choke, then stop when they realize they'll kill themselves if they keep resisting. At this point, they either give up (cue the existentialists, who are at this very point) or they slow down and carefully examine the rope. They can feel the knot and begin to work it loose. Then the noose falls away and they can move without restraint.

Maybe divinity is what's there when the noose isn't. Whatever it is, it feels a lot better than the bind.

fickle

2008-07-09T19:11:00.000-07:00

The self is fickle, even to itself.

I've been having a lot of resistant/angry/despairing/depressed feelings of late, but the edge seems to have been taken off them. And they don't last for more than a few minutes at a time. The thinking is so rapid that it jumps from suicidal despair to wondering what's for dinner within a minute. It's really ridiculous, and when your existential funk is only good for forty-five seconds, it begins to lose its heaviness. Like the weather, if you don't like your thoughts, wait five minutes. Sheesh.

Watching thinking makes it lose its seriousness. When you see it jump all around, contradict itself, and advocate overblown irrational reactions, you begin to suspect that listening to it maybe ain't such a good idea. Thinking is great in its place, but when it tries to reach beyond its field, the results are disastrous.

shallow

2008-07-07T19:39:00.000-07:00

Today I had a totally unexpected realization. It suddenly dawned on me that I'm shallow. This is something I would've laughingly dismissed up until about four hours ago.

Yesterday I was hanging out at Jamie's, dominating the remote as I watched her satellite TV for hours. I watched a couple of documentaries on dwarfism, a topic I'm fascinated by. There was one on little people that I'd seen before, followed by another on primordial dwarfism, which was unfamiliar to me.

There are a lot of people on these kinds of documentaries who show a lot of fiestiness and don't let their perceived physical differences/limitations run their lives, but on the show about primordial dwarfism, there were a couple of people who were clearly depressed and upset by their condition, and it was having a gigantic negative impact on every aspect of their development. I became upset myself at seeing these kids so negatively affected by their bodies.

While I could intellectually recognize that a condition such as dwarfism could provide an nearly unparalleled opportunity for enlightenment, it remains on that useless intellectual level. My own problem is merely being overweight, a superficial and really common condition, yet psychologically it's hobbled me for many years. Sometimes I can't even go outside, and at the best of times, my self loathing is merely stifled. Such issues as being limited in what I can do or even my long term health take a very distant second to obsessive concern with how I look. This, of course, is actually concern that somebody else will dislike my appearance, and this will somehow have a negative impact on me.

So today it struck me pretty much out of the clear blue sky that over concern with one's appearance is aptly described by one word: shallowness. Uh oh. Uh oh! Am I shallow? I'm shallow! It was so shocking it was funny.

I've spent much of my life feeling intellectually superior to nearly everyone, believing that someone with my depth of thoughtfulness (feel free to laugh derisively at this) couldn't possibly be shallow. Other people, overly concerned with clothes, boys/girls, the size of their boobs/penises, etc. were the shallow ones, not a deep, tortured intellectual such as myself. But now, not only am I revealed as a self-pitying jerk, I'm also really shallow. Such is the reward of honesty.

It really is great to realize these things, though. Such glaring and limiting personality flaws can't be effectively dealt with until they're seen in all their 3D Technicolor glory, up there on a giant screen to plainly see. Probably everyone else has been watching the show for years now, quietly snickering, in any case. So I had no chance to cease being a self-involved, shallow snob until I fully realized that's what I was.

I feel better already.

irrationality

2008-07-06T21:35:00.000-07:00

I went to Imax today. I normally don't like to go to the movies, but Jamie wanted to go and the movie didn't sound dreadful, so I went. I've also decided to go see a number of other movies this summer. It's strange, because normally I can't stand the thought of sitting through a movie. I find them painfully boring.

Similar to my post a couple of days ago about not having any discussions because they're all useless, and feeling lonely as a result, I usually rule out nearly every movie right away, so I hardly ever go to see any. But for some reason quite a few movies that are out right now seem at least watchable, and that's good enough for me. I'm not sure if my standards have relaxed or if the movies themselves have improved, but whichever, I'll take it.

I think part of the reason I don't like to go to the movies is because of how it makes me feel. It's not the particular movie, but something about being at the movies in general seems to arouse some strange, unexpected, irrational feelings. I have no idea why, but I generally start to feel emotional in the theater. Tears start up in my eyes as the lights dim and the moviegoers quiet down. Something seems so poignant. . . but I don't know what, because it just doesn't make any sense. Today my explanation was that people, myself clearly included, are just insane. We're little explosive balls of emotion, unknown to ourselves.

But today, instead of trying to make the inexplicable and embarrassing feelings go away, I just watched them as they predictably arose. I let go of trying to figure out what was happening and just let the feelings be. They're weird and irrational, sure, but the only way to truly deal with them is to allow them to exist (no choice here anyway, because they do, in fact, exist). I just sat in the dark and felt the feelings, knowing that they're not really my feelings and that I don't have to justify or explain them to myself. They're just there, and my job is to witness what's there. If that's incomprehensible movie feelings, so be it.

So if I go to enough movies this summer, maybe the cause of the feelings will finally come to light. If it does, I'll let you know. People are strange!

The Trial

2008-07-03T17:39:00.000-07:00

Today is Franz Kafka's birthday. Every year on this date I write my obligatory post about Kafka, who is my very favorite author. Here's a good picture of him, looking expectedly solemn.

I'm just finishing reading The Trial. I've read it a number of times, but this is a new translation, and it's really good. You can get the gist of Kafka's stories from the old translations, but the new ones really reveal their liveliness. They're much less stiff and stuffy. I plan on buying a new translation of The Castle this weekend because I'm enjoying the writing too much to stop reading Kafka at the moment. Before I got a hold of this new translation, I considered Dostoevsky's Crime and Punishment my favorite novel. But I think The Trial may have toppled it from that position now.

A couple of weeks ago, I was reading some mystery I bought at the grocery store. I made it to page sixty before the mechanical, unengaging nature of the book finally overcame my determination to read it and I threw it away. I perused my bookcase and ran across the new Kafka translation, which I bought ages ago but forgot about. I stopped reading for a long time, but, especially right after reading such a crappy book, the Kafka is like cold water in a literary desert. Ah, that's better.

Now that the pleasure of reading is back, I plan on working my way through some of my old favorites- Moby-Dick, Bartleby, The Overcoat, Nausea, and maybe even something by Chekov, or by Dostoevsky that I haven't read yet- which is most of his stuff, because it's all so long and hard to focus on.

Anyway, happy birthday, Franz. See you again next year.

lonely

2008-07-02T19:04:00.000-07:00

Is it possible to be spiritually lonely? Probably not in any ultimate sense, but apparently it is on this limited little level that we're living on. I tend to take things to extremes, and my reluctance to get involved in philosophical and/or spiritual discussions due to their uselessness has pretty much resulted in my having no discussions, since the ordinary kind won't do in any case. Sigh.

But trying to interact with so-called spiritual "seekers" won't do me any good. Strange as it sounds, I'm not looking for anything (this isn't 100% true because I still have a self, but my painful search for God is as over as it can be for someone with my degree of consciousness). People who are still looking for anything are not on the right track and, while they may make great social companions and friends, they won't be of any spiritual help, unless you consider them models of what not to do.

Sounds unbearably snobby, you say? Hmm. . . that could be true. I don't even hang around with my existential friends anymore who, by virtue of being existentialists, are practically the biggest snobs around. Even they aren't good enough for me anymore. But it gets really lonely not being able to talk to anyone about any of it. It's a dilly of a pickle.

unknown

2008-07-01T18:30:00.000-07:00

A few days ago I realized that things haven't been going well since I moved out of Jamie's. Actually, it all started before then, with the fire we had in our apartment building. I moved out about six months after that and, I recently realized, I've been uncomfortable since.

I've lived in three places in the last two years- the first two apartments I had after Jamie were fatally flawed and I couldn't stay in them. My present place is okay but, let's face it, it's just somebody else's basement.

I talked to Jamie last weekend about getting a house together. There's no way I can afford one on my own, at least not in anything approaching a good neighborhood, so the unthinkable is now under consideration. I thought I needed to move out, but it seems to me lately that everything I decided to do the past two years has been based on delusion or, at best, ignorance.

If there is anything going on, I'm painfully unaware if it, and I feel like I'm stumbling around in the dark with no clue as to what's going on around me. It's scary to realize how powerless and uncomprehending you are. It's like you're a dog trying to cross the interstate. Fat chance, Fido.

But at this point I can't even trust that things haven't been going well. How would I really know? I have no idea how the universe works and what might be going on. If I'm honest, I have to admit it all seems terribly random- I would like to say it's even malicious, but that would mean there was some sort of larger intelligence, and that's precisely what I don't know.

ow

2008-06-29T19:40:00.000-07:00

Today Jamie and I finally made the leap and went kayaking by ourselves, with no male assistance. It took us a pretty long time to get the kayaks loaded, but we did it, dammit. We were gone all day and kayaked for probably a couple of hours, tops; the rest of the time we spent carrying stuff around and figuring out how everything worked. I guess we did all right because the kayaks didn't fly off the top of the car and wipe out a bunch of other cars on the freeway, which is the scenario I was nervously imagining all the way to the lake.

Loading the kayaks on the car is the toughest part. While struggling to load them, I almost fell off the ladder we have to use to reach the top of the Jeep, and then one of the kayaks came down on my hand and forced my thumb back pretty far in the wrong direction (this is where the ow happens), but we managed to get to the lake and back without any permanent damage.

I'm doing different things from the things I'm accustomed to because I no longer believe I'm a certain type of person who can only do certain, predetermined things. Your images of yourself can keep you trapped in a worn-out version of the world. Beliefs are extremely strong and structure your reality. Beyond them is the way things really are, the way you really are. So go kayaking!

the little things

2008-06-27T19:50:00.000-07:00

Things seem calmer now than they have for the past few weeks. It's been a whirlwind since I moved at the beginning of the month, and all the happenings were wearing me out. I get off work early on Fridays during the summer and I've spent all afternoon and evening quietly alone at home.

Everyone else in the house took off for the weekend so I have dog duty until tomorrow night. I sat outside with the dog for a while. He sat down right in front of the gate and quietly watched the world go by. He didn't get upset or aggressive about anything, including a passing pair of gigantic dogs. He just sat there like a little statue and observed it all. It was a good reminder and was very cute.

I hadn't been able to get on the internet since last night until about an hour ago. I'm not great with computers; if anything goes wrong, I'm pretty much at a loss. I didn't even know if it was the computer or the internet provider, but I stumbled around trying stuff and eventually it just started working again.

Because I felt helpless and unable to fix anything, I used to go berserk when anything would go wonky with my computer or iPod. I would get really angry. But tonight, after I got on the internet again, I realized I hadn't even gotten upset about the problem. I just fooled around with it until it worked again without blowing a gasket.

These are both little things, but life is really made up of little things, and they reveal what you really think your relationship to the universe is.

A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Airport

2008-06-25T18:26:00.000-07:00

The following is something that happened a few weeks ago, but other things happened so quickly that I didn't have a chance to mention it until now.

At the beginning of the month, I had to go to Maine for a wedding. Maine is really far away, I've only been east of Kansas once, and I don't travel a lot, plus I didn't really want to be in this wedding, but my dear friend Carrie wanted me there so I went.

The flight was a serious red eye- the first plane left at about 1 a.m. I set up one of those little shuttles to come pick me up, as I don't go to the airport much and it seemed like it would be easier, especially as I don't really know where the cheaper parking is and my contact lens prescription needed updating a long time ago, so I didn't want to drive clear out to the airport in the dark.

Anyway, one evening the shuttle people call me to tell me they're gonna be here in five minutes. I go outside to tell the driver I must've screwed up because my flight is the next night, so sorry. So I go back inside, and it begins to dawn on me that if the flight leaves after midnight, it actually is the next day at that point and I do, in fact, need to get my butt to the airport immediately. I took about five minutes to pack and put on decent clothes, and I buzzed out to the airport, parked right up close in the most expensive possible place, and ran to the gate.

The point is that this is exactly the kind of thing that would've pushed my buttons hard before- I have to unexpectedly drive to the airport at night and I have to hurry because I nearly screwed up my flight time, and I don't like to travel and I have to go to a wedding with a bunch of people I don't like/haven't met and I don't want to and I have to leave now?

But I was perfectly serene on my way to the airport. I wasn't even speeding, even though I really couldn't because I was also nearly out of gas and I didn't have time to stop for any. I was totally unprepared and came way too close to screwing up Carrie's wedding by making a silly mistake, but I just cruised out there and dealt with it. No biggie.

I'm really glad I realized I needed to go when I did, or I never would've lived it down. Plus being put in the kind of situation that previously would've sent me near the edge was good too, because now I know that kind of thing won't freak me out anymore.

Of course, the self immediately grabbed onto this little incident as "proof of progress" and added it to its own identity. But the day after I got back I had my little accident, and my response to that pretty well obliterated my ideas about what kind of person I think I am. I totally didn't handle the accident well, and the image of myself as calm and capable took a major hit. I'm not totally flaky, but obviously I'm not the manifestation of tranquility either. I guess that's what life's for- to point out the obvious to those who don't want to see.

consistency

2008-06-24T18:33:00.000-07:00

Today I felt a lot better than yesterday, when I had one of my well worn Monday moods. They've been getting better, but yesterday was pretty bad. I had that awful numb feeling and it just seemed overwhelming to try to do anything. It took me all day to do about three hours worth of work, and I only did was was absolutely necessary. I spent all day in my office and didn't even leave for my usual hour of walking at lunchtime.

Today was much better. I started out with some residual crankiness, but it soon wore off and I was a lot more effective. But after I got home, I thought about how these moods keep coming and going and how that aspect of them is probably the most troubling. Being depressed is one thing, but fearing depression'sa recurrence and feeling depressed about being depressed is another. That extra level of misery is the real problem. If you don't mind something, it's not a problem. It's only a problem if you resist, fear, it. If I could just be depressed and not worry about it happening again or about being moody, the bad moods would have much less power to interfere with my life.

This is where the self chimes in loud and clear- trying to fight off the depression and feeling bad about feeling bad is 100% self. Trying to maintain consistency is a hallmark of the self too. The self is really basically trying to maintain itself in a swirling sea of change, and if it sees itself changing or being inconsistent, its very identity is threatened. So it wants "never to be depressed again" which, for me at this point, is entirely unrealistic. I'm not depressed to the extent I used to be, but I'm still subject to foul moods. The idea is not to try to change the mood, but to let it be completely without identifying with it, and it'll run its course. Doing this has already lessened the force of the moods greatly.