Journey through the cosmic colon

what do i want? I want something. Something. ?Who? who wants what?

I'm spinning my wheels. I'm just trying to ask a simple question, and get a simple answer: what do I want?

Apparently it's not such a simple question. or a simple answer, because the answer is you don't want anything. Don't want anything.

And I wonder why I don't do anything big, don't rock the boat. Of course not, if there's nothing I want to do, to have. I just do the normal things of life. Eat, sleep, jack off to porn, keep myself from getting bored with videos. Sometimes I can't even stand watching videos, and I just sit, doing nothing at all. Sometimes I journal, like this, looking for answers. Hoping that something will spill out accidentally, really, just happy to be moving my fingers, just happy to talk to space, to try and put words to this ever so slippery experience. I check gmail, Facebook, the blogs I'm subscribed to, in the hopes of being in contact with another human being. Other people take away the silence. They take away the aloneness, which breeds this nothingness.

For now, I'm trying to get more comfortable in my skin, in my brain, in my life. The reality I perceive works a certain way, and when I try to make it act a different way, it hurts, and it fails. I'm guessing that the only way to make my life work is to play by the rules. The rules are the perceptions I have of my existence, my memories of my experience, what works, what doesn't work.

I kinda want to go look at some porn now, rub one out so I can go to bed (if I don't, I'm wired for another two to three hours, just lying in bed with the lights off.) and forget all about this.

But I also kinda just want someone to talk to. I want someone I can really talk to though. This blog, believe it or not, is way more censored and toned down than my personal journal. That journal is totally free form, stream of consciousness, everything goes. Sometimes I get the text to voice feature of my computers wordpad program to read sections back to me. It's super entertaining. Especially considering what I've written. The ravings of a perverted madman, as dictated by a robot. perhaps I should give you a tast of it, for your curiosities sake. well, ok, I'll write it here, but I'll re-read it and see if it's actually safe for print:

wax on wax off. fuck me. egotistical bullshit.

I am nothing.

no.

not right at all: I ask the question, "who am i " or "who is it that acts."

fine. now I travel with that question, to the answer. It's like falling down a rabbit hole, but at the bottom of the whole, I fall through, and suddenly I'm in outer space. Vast, empty, black, surrounded in points of light. This is not nothing, but I don't know what it is. It is a big unknown. if it has qualities, they are not qualities that can be spoken. No words can describe it. Like a reverse Lovecraft monster: it is beyond words, yes, beyond comprehension, but in a good way. It is peaceful. It is destruction of all that I thought I was. Not real destruction that, just the kind of destruction you get when you say, destroy that woman over there with the beautiful blond hair, when you go to hit on her and it turns out it's a man in drag. That woman has been completely annihilated, as if she never existed. Because she never did, except as a mistaken concept you had. Just an idea with no corresponding physical counterpart.

So to, the idea that I am anything namable is gone when I ask, "who am I" because it takes me there, and also gone is the feeling of superiority, inferiority, or free will, or rather, separate will, when I ask the question, "who is the actor, the do-er?" And get shot out the same cosmic butthole into infinite space.

Into what I can only assume is God.

One thing I'm carful about right now, is I don't want to say I've arrived anywhere (common thread with me eh? It's because people who make themselves sound all great and stuff piss me off, and so I don't want to become one of them. I hate myself enough already)

I think that arrival should be concurrent with something I could label "bliss." God is good, right? I'm not interested in intelectual bullshit, even if it's perfectly reasoned. I want my heart to have a place to rest. I want joy. I'm not willing to settle for intelectual satisfaction.

I actually recall my old teacher saying something about that, in one of his myriad tapes. Something like, "the first stage of enlightenment, the mind is finally satisfied, it can rest, but then the heart takes over, and wants to be satisfied as well, and it doesn't get satisfied until every last thing is completely unified.

well, I guess that's not really related. What I'm talking about is not unification. it's just feeling good in my heart. I will assume that is what the experience of reality, fully experienced, feels like. Otherwise, whats the fucking point?

It's a simple enough equation, like one of those programming diagrams:

[are you satisfied?]

Y--> your done, stop trying to grow/get enlightened etc.

N--> keep trying-->back to question [are you satisfied?]

ok, I'm done. I either need a walk, a shag, or a sit and stare at the darkness while hurting emotionally. hell, why not all three? Life is full.

;)

until next time, fuck you San Francisco.

i o

.... ok, that was about halfway between my normal posts and my insane-o private journal. I can't seem to do the insane-o journal thing with people watching. Well, I guess I'll go do that a bit before the other three.

Cosco and the ultimate power of the universe.

The husband of the couple who I'm renting my place from offered to take me for a trip to Cosco. I didn't understand why that would warrent a trip, but I couldn't find a good reason to say no, and I I think he's pretty cool, so I went along.

Turns out Cosco is really a secret Cabal, mainly for old people. I've never seen so many handicapped parking spots in my life. At least thirty or forty.

The shopping carts were twice as big as normal shopping carts, and there were also... what to call them, something you might use to transport large crates of things, or a lot of luggage. You need to present your Cosco membership at the door, where it is carfully checked. Inside is a space to rival Super Walmats. It's a huge, high cealinged warehouse, with tall stacks of giant boxes of kleenex, wide screen tv's, a food section with lots of free samples, and just about everything else. Kind of a Shopping center for giants. You have to use your cosco card to check out, and at the door, a lady looked at our reciptes and counted how many items we had in our cart, to make sure we weren't stealing anything.

I've never seen such high security at a shopping center. I can only guess that old people are an especialy high demographic for shoplifting, because they just don't care/feel they're old enought that they can do what they want/realize they're going to die soon so who cares what other people think of them.

Oh, and they had partial sky-lighting, which made me happy.

Also, the periodicaly move around were items are, in an obvious attempt to mess with the old people and make them think they're getting alzheimers, to try to send them into a buying frenzy.

(reminds me of a comic someone told me of: an old dieing man is lieing in his deathbed, family gathered around him. his last words are, "I wish... I'd bought...more crap...")

In other news: I just got an interesting suggestion, that I function on a shame based (in this definition shame = feeling like I'm bad) system rather than a guilt based (guilt = feeling like my actions are bad) system, because I feel like I am incapable of change, of improvement. I feel like I have no power to change things. So, I do something I feel is crappy, and I don't make amends, rectify my guilt, and so it sticks around and starts being shame.

Malcolm mentioned that the rule of karma means, if you work on something, that action will absolutely have an effect. If you practice a sport, you will get better at it. Cause and effect. It may happen slowly, it may not make you the best in the world at it, but it will definitly have an effect. And in the moment, the current moment, I stand at the head of my previous karma, with the free will choice to create whatever current karma I want. I have to start from where I am, but if I don't make different choices, I won't change.

So now the old program has been brought to light, and a new, more attractive program has been introduced, or activated. Now they have to battle it out. My job is to lean as much as I can into the new program, because that is much closer to how I want to be functioning.

And it starts with this belief that I'm just fundamentally not a good person. And it starts with the realization that I can change my destiny through my current actions.

There are a lot of people in the town of fairfield, and a lot of my close friends, who espouse my original program. They say, "you have no free will, it's all predetermined." And they are good talkers, so they can argue there point very well. I kind of want to scream fuck you at them, but I realize the problem is with me, not them, and speaking harsh words is something I long ago realized has very strong and often immediate negative consequences. It's amazing how much you can wound someone with a mere word.

Really, any viewpoint is just that, a viewpoint. Whether you really think there is free will, or not, what is important is the consequences of your beliefs. Because they create your world. For me, my belief in no free will has the consequence of great suffering and inertia. It leads to me feeling powerless, and thus acting powerless. And the truth is that's bullshit. Man is not powerless, Man is incredibly powerful. We have the ability to shape the world we live in, and we have huge control over our personal reality, via our beliefs. This old belife fails my simple, effective test, and so is up for changing.

That simple test, by the way, is this: does this create more light in my life, or darkness? Said a few more ways: Does it inspire radient feelings or constricted ones? Does it inspire me towards purity, joy, growth, or discourage me and depress me? Is it of the light or darkness; your heart knows this, in it's simplicity. Suffering, ignorance, confusion... or love?

Now comes the longer part, where I have to feel through all of this. Where I have to stand in tearing winds of doubt and fear and old patterns and begin to create something new. Where I take my first, unsteady steps, unsure if I can do it, unsure of what is going to happen, of where I might end up, if I do succeed..

Shitfuck. as the old philosophers and saints-in-training say. Too bad I can't buy determination at Cosco, cus I could sure use a wholesale box of it.

how to: live

here is a functional question that's been bothering the hell out of me: I want to live free from suffering, which means unattached or unbelieving of the drama that plays out before me. At the same time, I want to be dynamic and successful in my life.

The paradox is that if I am unattached, then everything is OK. From the point of view of the witness, there is no problem, nothing that needs doing.

But the mind needs to believe in its power to change things for the better, for it to have the motivation to do so. I think.

I guess what I'm struggling with is the dichotomy of free will verses predetermination. People keep telling me that all is as it should be, and everything is already decided. Everything that happens was inevitable, and was in fact for the greatest good. A nice point of view to sooth the pangs of feeling like a failure, feeling that you are doing something wrong, that something is fundamentally wrong.

But at the same time, it feels like that belief cuts my legs out from under me. If everything is fine, then nothing needs changing. If everything happens perfectly, than nothing can be changed...

hmm, could that be it? everything is perfect means everything is perfect. Any possible rout you could take. Not quite it I think.... It's one of those paradoxes that needs resolving my going to a higher level, a bigger point of view, that includes both without contradiction. Paradox is only the experience that one thing cannot exist at the same time as another, so the solving of the paradox is simply to experience the opposite: both existing at the same time. Then it is no longer a paradox.

And that is the answer to this question: just look at your experience: I feel like there is no control on my part, that life just flows, and any attempt to control that just results in my swimming against the enormous power of natures movement, and suffering, and inefficiency. At the same time, I do have that choice, to swim against that flow, ineffective though it may be. I don't have control of the outcomes of my actions. That is certain. Sometimes I get the desired result, sometimes I don't. But at the same time I am always choosing. Surrender or Control. This or that. And in that apparatus of choice, reduced to it's simplest component, is the answer to this question, for me.

When I try and locate "my self" I fall into an abyss of mystery, that shatters words and is beyond understanding, beyond my ability to see what it is. I think someone once called it "the cloud of unknowing." So that is all I can find, when I look for myself. At the same time, when I look for the connection between me, and action, I end up at the same place. I get an image, as I sink there, of falling from white light into blackness, fingers of the blackness shining into the light as the space surrounding me gets more dark, until I can't see anything, not even the nose in front of my face. There's nothing I can say about this place. People have suggested that this is the self, the absolute, the ground state of existence. That makes sense, from inference and logic, looking back at it with a functioning mind. As does the reasoning, "well, that must be what I fundamentally am." But when I'm deeply in it, no such thoughts or certainties are possible. And even that's not true. Anything that can be said about this seems to immediately negate itself.

In any case, that is where I end up when I look for what does the deciding, as well. There is nothing specific then, that I can find, which is either me, the actor, or the decider.

The questions, then, are answerless, at least for now. Perhaps even meaningless. What is it that I really want, in my search for whether I have free will or not? I think I'm just looking for the security to say, "I am in control" or "I am not in control" and know who to blame, when things go wrong, and know who to trust, and know what to do. And all these different lusts for understanding stem from one basic desire, to feel comfortable and safe, to be happy and purposeful.

But I never get these questions answered in an absolute way, a way I can trust completely, because they are not absolute questions. There is nothing I can say, that is absolutely true, as far as I've found, as far as I can conceive of. There is something I can be, that is real. So what I really end up looking for is just whatever it is that will grant me peace from my constant fear and pain.

Who cares if I have free will or not? What does that even mean? Show me the way to love, to fulfilment, to peace. And you know what? My mind can't do that. My mind is just the burger boy, in this case, being asked sagely questions. The one that has the answers is God, is my Heart. And my heart doesn't have to explain it's self. it just knows.

It says: surrender, because you don't have control anyways, and trying to control what you can't leads to suffering and inefficiency.

And it says: act as though you have free will, because acting as though you don't leads you to complacency, confusion, and depression. Act as though there is right and wrong because acting as though you don't makes your heart sad. And when you do something or something happens that you think is bad, something you don't want, look closer at it, because if you look close enough to see what is actually there, you will find nothing but beauty and perfection and gifts, and the only thing that can hurt you is thoughts, believed in.

Control is irrelevant, free will is irrelevant. What is relevant, utterly relevant, is what makes your heart sing, and what is your experience of reality. My experience of reality is a wondrous mystery, and learning to listen to and trust my heart is the journey I'm currently on, along with unwinding all the knots that keep me closed down and suffering.