I was prompted to think about this by something I read, so I'm going to talk about the gifts life brings.
Life brings gifts.
always.
That is, with any experience that comes to you, within it is a gift, waiting to be unwraped. this is a very old bit of wisdom, because all wise people discover it for themselfs, so it must have been known in some manner from the very begining.
some gifts are easy to understand. A beautiful sunset is an immense gift. Such a tremendous creation of beauty, in scope, size, detail, intensity. Given away, totaly free. Nothing asked in return. No down-payment, no bidding, no price tag. This is perhaps part of why I create so little art: I don't need to create something to add beauty to the world. I just need to pay attention, and here it is. If I make art, it is for the fun of making something, and the fun of seeing what it is I end up making. And, with some of the primitive skills I'm learning, to create something that will be of use to me, that does not poison the earth.
watching a really good dance. that's a gift. Having a deep conversation. That's a gift.
Falling in love and having your heart broken over and over for seven years, ten years, twelve years.
that's a gift too.
That happend to me. I was in love, deeply in love, as little kids sometimes are: in love without a logical reason, in love feircely and one pointedly. We have such blindingly powerful feelings as children. It is both extreamly powerful and extreamly vulnerable. Both joy and fear and realer than real.
I didn't think my love/obsession was a blessing, or a gift, while going through it. usualy, I thought of it as a curse. What else would you call something that caused you immense pain constantly?
But by the end of it, I realized how strong it had made me. My chest was a patch of ground, and through this constant breaking and pulling out of my heart, again and again, a giant hole had been formed, and before, where I could only hold a small puddle of water when it rained, on my patch of ground, or a small range and depth of feelings, when things were good or bad. Now I had a small pond, and there was simply more room for love, and also more ability to hold suffering and sadness, and not be overwhelmed or flooded. And the deep suffering had given me compassion, and empathy for others. I understood pain, and didn't want anybody to have to go through it, certainly didn't want to be the cause of it.
Much later, looking back and unwrapping the presents of those lonely years, I also learned that it was ok for people to suffer. Because I had suffered, and it had been ok. Not preferable, but not the end of the world.
I'm still at the beginning of this journey with the suicide of my friend, but wherase with my long unrequited loves it took years to be able to look back with gratitude on them, (I can't look at them any other way, without pretending.) the time gap gets shorter, and I get better at the proccess.
I'm still very much a wounded animal, limping and licking it's wounds. But also like an animal, I'm not perticularly self-conscous about being injured. Just trying to take care of myself.
It is interesting, the changes that are going on deep inside me right now. My freinds death is real in a way that has been hard for me to grasp. This is something that happens to other people. Not me. This is something that happens in Life. and I'm not in life. I'm in the training area, before life. Or at least I was.
As is always the case with these kinds of things, it turns out this "Real Life" I had been searching for was always around me, I just wasn't able to see it, feel it, connect to it. I was living in a bit of a bubble. As are most people. As I still am, mostly. what I thought I was looking for was something "real," but I realized that no matter what experience I had, it wouldn't feel real unless my feelings about it felt "real" and so what I was looking for was not some thing, some specific experience, but a depth of emotion. And maybe it's ok if life doesn't feel compleatly "real."
maybe it's not compleatly "real."
all we really know about the reality we live in is that we don't know anything for sure.
I wanted reality because I wanted purpose, meaning. I was afraid of dieing, unacomplished. dieing without ever having done anything importaint. my legacy, the ashes of my body, and memories, lost in the blink of an eye as the memory holders died off too.
dan dieing changed that. I'm just not afraid of life ending like I used to be. don't get me wrong, I'm still really depressed that the person who I most enjoyed spending time with, will never spend time with me again, because he killed himself. And if I stopped being depressed abou that, wich I probubly will at some point, then I'd say fuck you to anybody, including my own belife structure, that said I shouldn keep beign depressed. I'll be what I am, and that's enough for anybody. when you try to be more than that, usualy you end up being less.
Anyways, that's the first gift dan gave me when he did what he did. Suddenly, I wasn't afraid of my own death. Read into that however you want. I'm sure one of the mirad of psycics would say something about being so close to him that I'm still connected while he's on the other side, so I know on a deep level that it's not an end. perhaps. But explinations like that are just for fun, just hypothises, working guidlines so we can make educated guesses.
Also, despite the empty, tired lack of motivation or energy to do anything, which feels like a part of the phisical blow dealt to me by his sudden absence from my life, there is a burning, somewhat furious resolve, to live, to be something great, becase he fucking can't be anymore.
He would have been such an awesome old man. He would have given so many people so much freedom, throughout his life time. I'm not going to do the things he left behind, but I might just do the things I could do, but didn't have the dedication to compleate.
And now I have to learn, how to have other really good freinds. I don't know if it's possible, but I liked it. I loved it. And now I have to work for it. Now I have to learn how to get it.
Now I know what it feels like, to have a dear loved one die suddenly. I read in a suicide book that having a loved one die by suicide is ranked in the "massive trauma" range of psycological stress. It is apperently similar to the experience of being in a concentration camp, in terms of the effects in can have on people, like PTSD. there is no longer anyone I need turn away from in fright, because I feel unworthy to talk to them about there pain, because I have nothing to compare it to and I imagine that what they are going through is a whole other level of suffering.
to those of you who were like me before this: even not having this experience, there is no reason to turn away. Your projections about how bad something is for someone else are always worse than reality. Like seaing someone with a really nasty looking injury: they don't even care, it doesnt' hurt that much, until people start screaming, and then the person starts worrying, going into shock.
This is both true and not true. I happen to have a very resiliant mind to stress. not accidental or inherited. Made. Through sweat and blood. And love. So the experience that I have going through this is almost certainly much less intense than most other people's would be. I am aware of that and compassionate for it. But it does mean this:
In a general sense, suffering is optional. two people go through the same situation: one person goes through total hell. the other goes through something very unpleasant. One emergese with life-long emotional scares, fears health problems. The other comes out, eventualy, much stronger and more powerful. That's the path I walk. Though it is dark sometimes when other people's paths are more or less neutral, it's a good long-term investment. For the above reasons.
as a reminder, this path I'm talking about is the path of spiritual awakening. The real path of awakening, not the one sold in magazines. Not the one sold in any dogma or religeous treatsie. Those are dead things, and as far as I've experienced, all incomplete, by there very nature. they are at best a good place to start. But the true path is one every person must find forthemselfs, because it is a path of experience, and path that YOU are walking. No one else can carry you there. No sage can give you there enlightenment. Hell, I don't actualy know that. Maybe that is possible. sounds silly though. If there was someone who could just bop you on the head and give you compleate awarness of reality and freedome from all your binding concepts etc., you'd think there'd be a lot more people walking on water and healing the dead, and this bopping guy would be pretty famous. But at the very lease, I can say from direct perception, that if there is someone handing out free passes, they do it rarely enough that it's not worth waiting for. Especialy since you can make the journey yourself, on your own two feet.
another long winded, heavy post. how to balence this off...
I took a really long poo today. no literaly, I was amazed, when I looked down at it: it must have been over a foot and a half long.
My room smells bad and there are too many people in the house and I want to move out but everything else is so danm convienient and I've got so much effing stuff that I don't want to move it all, especialy since I'm moving back in a few months anyways. bah.
No comments:
Post a Comment