One thing I am not accustomed to - keeping my focus on the positive.
While we like to cling to the idea that the wake of the boat is driving us forward (that is, the evidence of our journey and not the motor propelling us forward) the plain fact is, once you recognize a pattern that is detrimental, you can act against it (or, better yet, just act some other way - get resistance out of your thoughts). In most cases, the average person will continue in the same self-defeating behavior because, gosh darnit, "the past" and what-not. I certainly have embodied this, and in many ways still do.
There is nothing keeping me from doing better, other than laziness/habit/being too deep in my head.
I do have one question, though.
How does one sow a joie de vivre?
It's an essential foundation to doing the right thing. I am, like that unfortunate Fisher King, 'sick with experience.' The joys in my life are brief and fleeting. I have my successes and failures like anyone. I certainly cannot complain that I have a roof over my head, am well-fed (far too well fed), have enough money to feed the kids, have a loving wife. I've had wonderful travel experiences, I have fairly good health (although I have certainly abused my body in recent years).
My friend count is low, as I have about a 10:1 loss to gain ratio there. I keep people away as I have taught myself to trust very few. This is a mistake of ego, of course. But it is what it is right now.
Very little excites me nowadays. The routine I am locked into (by my financial and familial obligations) holds no mystery for me. Nothing new is learned from it. Whenever I'm on my deathbed, I won't look back upon it because it is insignificant.
The routine needs to change, and not by focusing on the negatives. All energy needs to be directed toward the desired result. Negative begets negative. Being angry with the current conditions doesn't make them better, make them go away, or make your reality improve. Expressing constant anger, passive-aggressive distaste for those not holding you aloft, or even the "well I don't care" bullshit admissions that only vocalize because you DO care - all of these self-aggrandizing tactics just make people, who once cared, go away.
I write because I want people to like me, to validate me. Eventually to finance me. But one can't market to friends, who figure they've paid enough by giving you verbal support. They think buying from you is somehow just giving you money. The sales that matter are the strangers, those people with no obligation to you, who part with their money because they want a piece of your human contribution.
But that joie-de-vivre lack... or the stifling of it somewhere along the line... that's what seems to have a stranglehold on my creative voice.
I'm focusing on positives because that's where the voice must be. If you go looking for brown, you certainly can find it. I have enough rods-and-cones on my retina to see as many hues as I can imagine. Somewhere along the path, I hope a fundamental joy implants itself, because it's slow-going until then.
Sunday, August 28, 2016
Monday, August 8, 2016
Inconsequential consequences
I, like most, have moments where I leap effortlessly between recognizing the one-song (uni-verse) as an unthinkably infinite thing, and imagining that my chosen microcosm is somehow the end-all. Whether I do the dishes or not ... whether I fold the towels or not... whether I let the weeds grow or not... whether I accept that the weeds are going to grow, quite independent of my opinion on the matter... all of these decisions I imagine myself in charge of, the universe continues on around me, so it is foolhardy to take oneself too seriously.
Yet why has my consciousness chosen this material form? Did 'I' - that is, the consciousness that has taken on this language and given itself the designation 'I' - choose this particular form for a reason? Was it granted to me by some other consciousness as a test?
Before I start chastising myself for the notion that, somehow, existence is a series of tests and contradictions and gainsays that serve some higher purpose, let me state for the record (and for the moment) that I don't yet understand what purpose is served by such a thing. I'm willing to accept, if it comes to it, that human consciousness isn't a mystical creation, but a by-product of a brain evolution gone awry.
That idea may change later on.
In the meantime, I'm pretending it all makes sense to me, and that I am simply strolling along the unending path of universal discovery for a purpose that evolves, fine-tunes, creates and diminishes itself. I am accepting, as well, that my continued use of "me" and "I" and "you" and "them" and so on are just relics of this ego-based paradigm humans have come to embrace. The notion that the elephant in the room - "ego" - is something that I am bound to fight off on the path to this mysterious state of being called "enlightenment".
I become aware, as I type these ideas out, that they all sound very strange and to a large degree, fabricated by a mind-run-amok. Am I separate from mind? Is the concept of heart something that balances the logical mind? Is the mind capable of objectively pondering itself or even other minds? ARE there other minds? Why am I typing this here - for my mind, for "me", for what I imagine are other minds, or some other purpose I cannot even fathom? Am I a conduit for a higher voice? Is that voice something greater than what I call "me" or "I"?
This line of unanswerable questions can go on ad infinitum, ad nauseum. I expect you wouldn't read that long, since I don't have any firm concepts upon which to answer even a single question. The universe is infinite expanse, and even good ol' Science can't say with certainty that all of the universe's tricks and trappings can be observed and tested and theorized from our single planet's offerings. And, in that vein, our concept of infinity (wrapped as it is in various cloaks called religions) is just as narrow. Can minds like ours even conceive true infinity? Timelessness - no beginnings or endings?
So what is there to talk about? Is experience only valid if put into words? I for one cannot adequately describe what it's like to watch a bee at its work, witness the slow process from seed to seedling to sprout to bud to flower to fruit, watch the dung beetle roll its fecal prize backwards across a long sidewalk, watch the waves consume a polynesian shore, describe the sensation of seeing a star's 435-year old twinkling having just arrived at my eyeball.
Human experience feels like a trap sometime. With such evidence of the infinite, why does the human brain repeat the same 60,000 thoughts every day? What is the case to be made for limitations? Is it really easier if everyone conforms? Human consciousness certainly seems in its earliest stages of infancy. Should be an interesting, "enlightening" journey. Regardless of how we feel about it or through which paradigm we choose to view it, it just flows as it will. As the Natives say, no tree has branches foolish enough to fight amongst themselves. So goes this universe as well.
Yet why has my consciousness chosen this material form? Did 'I' - that is, the consciousness that has taken on this language and given itself the designation 'I' - choose this particular form for a reason? Was it granted to me by some other consciousness as a test?
Before I start chastising myself for the notion that, somehow, existence is a series of tests and contradictions and gainsays that serve some higher purpose, let me state for the record (and for the moment) that I don't yet understand what purpose is served by such a thing. I'm willing to accept, if it comes to it, that human consciousness isn't a mystical creation, but a by-product of a brain evolution gone awry.
That idea may change later on.
In the meantime, I'm pretending it all makes sense to me, and that I am simply strolling along the unending path of universal discovery for a purpose that evolves, fine-tunes, creates and diminishes itself. I am accepting, as well, that my continued use of "me" and "I" and "you" and "them" and so on are just relics of this ego-based paradigm humans have come to embrace. The notion that the elephant in the room - "ego" - is something that I am bound to fight off on the path to this mysterious state of being called "enlightenment".
I become aware, as I type these ideas out, that they all sound very strange and to a large degree, fabricated by a mind-run-amok. Am I separate from mind? Is the concept of heart something that balances the logical mind? Is the mind capable of objectively pondering itself or even other minds? ARE there other minds? Why am I typing this here - for my mind, for "me", for what I imagine are other minds, or some other purpose I cannot even fathom? Am I a conduit for a higher voice? Is that voice something greater than what I call "me" or "I"?
This line of unanswerable questions can go on ad infinitum, ad nauseum. I expect you wouldn't read that long, since I don't have any firm concepts upon which to answer even a single question. The universe is infinite expanse, and even good ol' Science can't say with certainty that all of the universe's tricks and trappings can be observed and tested and theorized from our single planet's offerings. And, in that vein, our concept of infinity (wrapped as it is in various cloaks called religions) is just as narrow. Can minds like ours even conceive true infinity? Timelessness - no beginnings or endings?
So what is there to talk about? Is experience only valid if put into words? I for one cannot adequately describe what it's like to watch a bee at its work, witness the slow process from seed to seedling to sprout to bud to flower to fruit, watch the dung beetle roll its fecal prize backwards across a long sidewalk, watch the waves consume a polynesian shore, describe the sensation of seeing a star's 435-year old twinkling having just arrived at my eyeball.
Human experience feels like a trap sometime. With such evidence of the infinite, why does the human brain repeat the same 60,000 thoughts every day? What is the case to be made for limitations? Is it really easier if everyone conforms? Human consciousness certainly seems in its earliest stages of infancy. Should be an interesting, "enlightening" journey. Regardless of how we feel about it or through which paradigm we choose to view it, it just flows as it will. As the Natives say, no tree has branches foolish enough to fight amongst themselves. So goes this universe as well.
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