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.

testing

I trying to explain something that I don't know, so it's difficult. why the hell even try then. I'll figure it out, then try and explain it. It has to do with being vulnerable. Taking down the defenses. Basically: what happens when you stop hiding your true self. What happens when you can look at all those things you thought were wrong with you without seeing them as wrong. You know that phrase, "a face only a mother could love." ?

What happens when you mother yourself like that and treat yourself with love, rather than the horrendous abuse we give ourselves.

Well, it's a good experiment.

e. e. cummings

I like this:

I carry your heart with me

i carry your heart with me(i carry it in
my heart)i am never without it(anywhere
i go you go, my dear;and whatever is done
by only me is your doing,my darling)

i fear
no fate(for you are my fate,my sweet)i want
no world(for beautiful you are my world,my true)
and it's you are whatever a moon has always meant
and whatever a sun will always sing is you

here is the deepest secret nobody knows
(here is the root of the root and the bud of the bud
and the sky of the sky of a tree called life;which grows
higher than soul can hope or mind can hide)
and this is the wonder that's keeping the stars apartv
i carry your heart with me(i carry it in my heart)

Conversation snippent

"my mind is a burger boy, who I keep going to and asking about the meaning of life and my purpose and all these big questions. The burger-boy scratches his head and says, 'uh, I'll see what I can do for ya.' and tries to answer you, but he's always wrong. He's a fucking burger boy! His job is to flip burgers, not answer the meaning of life. At some point I'm going to realize I am the answers to the questions I'm seeking, and start asking the Teacher within these questions, and then I'll just be asking the burger boy to make me some food and get to enjoy his tasty burgers.

I think that's what I would call no-mind, or spiritual mind."

school starts tommorow

I'm going to meet my teachers, and fellow students, for the first time. I'm going to drive there for the first time. I'm going to make myself a peanut (or... cashew)-butter and J sandwich for my bag lunch, for the first time. All tomorrow. I am nervous and excited. This is why I drove two and a half thousand miles and gave up the comforts of home. I hope it's worth it (or do I hope it's not, so I can just call this a weird vacation and go back to my comfort zone?)

Lately has been a huge juxtaposition of the perfection of the world, and my trust in it, and my fear of the future, and being deserted by God.

I feel like I am going past words now. The path I'm walking, it's tearing down all the words that I would have used to describe it, to describe the goal. Each word, so precious to me: God, Enlightenment, TRUTH, Compassion, is taken down from the wall of my mind, where it hangs like a picture, and examined closely. And each one proves to be a fake. I pile it up in a corner somewhere, and the walls get blanker and blanker. Except really, the paintings are the walls, and there is something beyond them, but it's not something of words, it's just something that is.

This is not an easy process, this is not a fast process. There are parts of it that are easy and fast, but there are words that are stitched into my body and to take them off and examine them is to rip off part of myself. I am inexpert at this. No one showed me how to do this. It is a shoddy job, messy and often unnecessarily circuitous, like taking ten minutes to slog through a brier-laden swamp because you didn't know there was a thirty second trail that went through it. But that's how it goes when you walk a path by yourself. No one else to give you directions. I suppose you could call it the path of you.

hmm. poem?

the path of you
alone
you walk
to find yourself
you walk
alone
to find yourself
alone

The answer to the most common question

of "what are you doing?":

is: read my post, "I suppose I should"
or at least the beginning. That explains everything. The rest is a brief travelogue.

no title.

met a man tonight, in the bookstore, looking at comics. Middle aged, starting to have trouble moving around. Worked down in Renton. Some company that started with a U. He had only been in Seattle two months. Finally got himself a job, but he had to take the buses to get there, and he had to be there by 6 in the morning. At night, he went to the homeless shelter, but it was already closed tonight. "it really gives you a new perspective. opens your world. living in a homeless shelter. You understand what it's like. Without that, there's just no understanding that life." And now it was raining, and the season was changing. He had to find a place to stay for the night. He didn't know where. He liked to write. "I'm just gonna come out and say this, I could really use some money to get a bus to where I'm going to sleep." He was from Texas, where people were more open, and the summers were terrible. I conspiratorially slipped him a twenty, making sure no one noticed. From the expression on his face it was more than he expected. We talked more, and I saw a little of what it meant to live his life. His family back home worried about him. He asked, hesitantly if I would go with him to the station and buy him a bus pass. I hesitated, then said, "good luck, brother." his eyes got moist and he quickly walked away.

Tom, was his name. I gave him my email, at his request, so he could tell me how it all works out. I hope he finds what he's looking for.



[November 2013, never did get an email from him, and wish I'd bought him that bus pass.]