In the Battle of Good and Evil...

...Good always wins.

We are taught this as we are growing up. The hero always gets the girl, the bad guy always gets theirs in the end. The stories, the comic books, the fairy tales... they all instill in us the idea that if you do good things, good things will happen to you, and if you do bad things... well, if you do bad things then the good guy will kick your ass in the end.

Elementary karma?

As we grow older we start to see this view as unrealistic, or at least fallible. We'll proclaim, mid-tantrum, that "this just isn't FAIR!!" to bemused parents. We are told that life isn't fair. This sucks, as an answer.

Then we get even older, and things get a little bit dicier. We see tragedies, both of the natural and man-made variety. We see wholly "good" people get hit by cars, or any number of other bad things that shouldn't happen. We don't ask anyone why this time, because we're supposed to know better.

Lately I've been thinking a little more about the nature of good and evil itself. I'm not even sure why, it's just one of those thoughts that's been floating around in my head, begging to be put into sentences.

What's got me really confused and screwed up here is this thought: Do good and evil exist once we strip away the notions of ourselves as separate entities?

My first instinct here is no. How can they? Evil is defined in the dictionary first as morally wrong or bad. Well that one's fucked. Morally wrong is a totally subjective concept that could never be agreed upon by everyone. We could spend until the end of time arguing about what is and isn't morally wrong. By some religious standards, the way I conduct my life is morally wrong and therefore evil, but my life is serving me just fine.

Next evil is defined as harmful or injurious. Again, no. I've had what some people can consider evil thoughts, but my thoughts have never hurt anyone. What I've done about or in response to those thoughts has done some damage, but either way...

But wait! I'm noticing a trend here!

This is sounding less and less like I'm defining evil, and more like I'm define sins for you, doesn't it?

My next thought is that good and evil are constructs. Devised in our heads to make us feel better about ourselves, and allowing us to distance ourselves from and condemn those who do not conform to what we consider right actions to be.

I think socially we need good and evil. As ideas, not in any practicality. We can look at this in terms of right action or right livelihood. If I walk up to someone and punch them in the face, that would not be considered right action. We're all ok with calling it that, because as it were, I don't punch that hard, and there wasn't too much harm done.

If a man is found to be sexually assaulting children, are we still ok just calling it wrong action? It doesn't sit right with me, because wrong action doesn't sound severe enough, and also, I've taken wrong actions. Does that put me right in ranks with a child molester?

Well, yeah. It does. I am.

Not a child molester, obviously, but I guess I'm just finding my way back to the point that I need to strip away these ideas that keep me separate. That identify me as a special unique thing. Because I'm not.

Everything is a separation. Everything is a distinction. Every time we call something something, we give it life in our heads. We convince ourselves that it exists independently.

Maybe good and evil, if they exist at all, don't need to be understood. Maybe they don't need to be analyzed or picked apart. Maybe it's just a part of everything else, and can be left to be.

Life Surfin'

So last week I didn't really check in here or write at all. There are a few reasons for that. First and foremost, I got a new kitten named Boo (short for Boo Radley, for those interested). I took a few days off of work to take care of him and get him accustomed to life in my apartment, and my boyfriend has been staying here to help me out as Boo is my first cat. Between my two boys, I've been busy. It's funny though how I'm starting to see things in a different way, even when I'm not trying to.

I've been catching my boyfriend up on old episodes of Dexter and True Blood (two of my favorites), so we've been switching back and forth between the two. One episode of this, a couple of that, etc. when we start to get bored. We do this a lot. Not he and I, specifically, but people in general. My mother can't just watch one show. She'll pick two or three, and flip back and forth during the commercials. This practice isn't horrible. It's perfectly innocent, and understandable. But I can't help but draw the parallel of people who "channel surf" in real life.

We all know someone like this. One thing isn't enough. In the way that another show on another channel might be more interesting, another job/relationship/location might prove more fulfilling. This person can jump from thing to thing looking for total fulfillment, or at least freedom from boredom.

There are a few important things to note here. First of all, when you switch TV shows like that in the middle, you never get the timing just right. You always miss something. You miss the first couple of minutes after the commercials cut off, and you have to try and figure out what's missing. When you're constantly bouncing around in your life, I would imagine it's hard to have any feelings of continuity.

On another note, there's something voyeuristic about channel surfing. You essentially get to drop in on other people lives as an outsider and watch things unfold. And then when you get bored, you go check in somewhere else.

The whole thing also makes me wonder what the fascination is. What are we searching for? Are our own feelings of inadequacy driving us to live vicariously through images on our televisions? Are we longing to feel a connection with a character, to identify, to see some of ourselves? Are we looking to fictional characters to give us answers on how to live our lives?

I know I'm out on a limb here. I know that channel surfing is not the gateway drug to living a life of running and escapism. It's TV, for fucks sake. But my mind has been going to some interesting places lately, this being one of them.

At the end of the day, the real question is: Why is the prospect of living our lives, our own lives, and seeing things through so terrifying? Your perfect ideal doesn't exist. It's not real. And even if it were, and even if you found it, something would be wrong with it.

Your perfect ideal is right now. Wherever you are, whatever you are doing. Right now is also your eternal hell. Every moment of every day contains both of these mutually exclusive states. How can that be, you ask? Because this moment is the only one that's real. Yesterday is contained entirely in your memory, and check my last post for my thoughts on perception and reality. Tomorrow hasn't been born.

You've got right now. It's perfect, it's hell, and it's yours.

Go live.

"Time is but the Stream I Go A-fishing In"

After a few more sessions of sitting, I began to notice something I thought was funny. I don't let myself look at a clock or timer while I'm meditating, doing so would only feed into my thinking about how much longer I have to go. However, there seems to be a pattern. What I guess are the first few minutes of my sitting feel like they take absolutely forever, but after that initial period the rest of it flies by before I have time to realize it.

It made me wonder, why does time go by so much faster when I'm meditating?

The "obvious" answer is that it doesn't. Time is time. I can't speed it up, slow it down, or stop it. The second hand on a clock is consistent. Uniform. Unchanging (unless the battery is dying... hehe). So then what changes? What makes time feel like it goes by faster or slower depending on what's going on? The only answer I can come up with is perception. My perception, to be specific.

We all perceive things differently. Talk to 10 witnesses at the scene of a crime, and they'll all tell you something slightly different. Our mind instinctively takes reality and packages it away in a way that makes the most sense to us. We could think the same color is a different shade, my hot could be your cold, etc. My reality is very personal, and not consistent of all that much reality when you think about it.

Here is the inherent flaw of perception. Any time you filter reality through anything, it's not reality anymore. There have been plenty of days at work when I felt like the shift was ddrraaggggiinngg on to no end, only to have someone else comment on how quickly it was going by.

Usually I find that time seems to go by more quickly when I'm distracted by something. A busy night goes by much faster than a slow one. I can easily get wrapped up in a good movie or playing a game and not realize that hours have gone by. So why does the same thing happen when I meditate? I'm not distracting myself in meditation, actually the opposite. I remove all of the distractions that I can control.

Thoughts, actions, everything "takes up" time. Or rather, numbs us to the passing of time. We don't notice time slipping past us while we're totally engrossed in things. So what happens when you take the thoughts away? We measure time the way we measure everything else, in relation to other things. In that state of deep meditation, when thoughts begin to float away and you're truly able to sit in the moment without floating away with them, do we not notice time passing because we have nothing to base it on? Does it exist at all? Do we exist in it?

Consider my mind thoroughly fucked.


PS: Happy Thanksgiving, to any and all Thanksgiving celebrators out there!

There's a First Time for Everything...

Well, ladies and gentlemen of the internet... I sat.

After the last post I started thinking, what am I waiting for, really? Why do I keep creating excuses, delaying it, when it really can't be as bad as I'm building it up to be. And, aside from a slightly sore back, it wasn't.

I set an alarm on my phone for 10 minutes. I didn't want to bite off more than I could chew the first time, and I thought that sitting for way longer than I could take would only serve to deter me more. I'm going to try and extent that a few minutes each time, and see where I end up.

It took me a while to settle into a position. I still can't get myself into a full lotus (I can do half, but it's incredibly painful which seems to defeat the purpose slightly), but I think some stretching before and after should help. I sat cross-legged on my floor, and found a nice blank part of my living room wall to look at. Even though I couldn't get into it, I put more emphasis on my posture than anything. I figured that so long as I wasn't slouching, not having my legs crossed up perfectly right away was less important. At first I started by counting breaths, but I realized that it only made me think about how much time must have gone by, and I was putting too much effort and energy into the counting, so after a while I lost count on purpose.

The biggest difficulty I had really was that I kept wanting to close my eyes. I realized that it was because it's easier to drift away and daydream with your eyes closed. Staring at my wall kept me in the here and now, and not in a particularly enjoyable way. The thought dawned on me though... Why do we feel this great compulsion for distraction? I've spent hours on my couch doing absolutely nothing, but the images on my television kept me sufficiently distracted so I didn't care. Why is it that we need to be entertained all the time?

Humans seem to have this inherent need to be distracted and entertained. Why? Nothingness freaks us out, and I sort of get it but I don't. Don't believe me? The next time you're talking to someone, wait for a lull in the conversation. Wait it out. How long can the other person sit in silence with you without having to make some bullshit small talk just to fill the gaps?

It it the nothingness we're afraid of, or is it the everything that is contained in that "nothingness"? What fascinates me about Zen is that the answers aren't just handed to you. You need to find them yourself, but in order to do that you need to stop looking. Stop searching for enlightenment, stop wondering what all the secrets of the world are. Everything is here, right in front of you, you just need to shut the fuck up long enough to notice it. My truth may very well be different than yours, but the important thing is that no one tells me what it is.

Silence, emptiness, nothing, it holds so many possibilities. It's so complicatedly simple.

My god, I think I'm starting to get it.

Eureka!! I have discovered.... The Obvious!!!

I noticed something the other night that really is fairly obvious, and completely logical, but for me felt like a big deal. I'm guessing I'm going to feel this way a lot. When I reach a conclusion on something lately, especially related to all this, I get this great big "D'oh!" feeling attached to it. Like whatever I'm realizing is so obvious, how have I not known this the entire time?

Bear with me in the coming future as I regale you with tales of these.

I will admit, that I have not been sitting. Aside from the fact that my body refuses to pretzel up like it's supposed to (I'm convinced zazen is for gymnasts), I just can't bring myself to do it. Since my apartment is new, I have lots of big plain white walls with nothing on them to distract me for me to stare at, wide empty spaces on my floor, and no one living with me to disturb me. It seems perfect. But I keep coming up with reasons not to. I don't know what's stopping me.

In lieu of that, however, I've been trying to get my feet wet with my own little meditative ritual I've been doing before bed. The first big difference is I usually do it after I get in bed (I know, I know, don't even say it). It's nothing special. I've tried just letting my mind go where it goes, without fueling it, and that doesn't quite work yet. Invariably I end up wandering off somewhere mentally and defeating the purpose. Just to help me stay in what I'm doing, I've been counting breaths. At first, I counted in One, out Two, in Three, etc. but the issue with that is that it's too automatic. It takes zero concentration. I've found it to be a bit harder to count in One, out One, in Two, out Two, etc. Not harder, per se, but at least requiring more conscious attention.

Now that that's all out of the way, on to my revelation.

You can tell how consistently I've been doing that by looking at how consistently I post on here. Not to say I post every time I do it, but there does seem to be a correlation. When I'm "meditating" (or at least my own version of it), things come up. I don't know from where, or why, or even really how, but invariably something pops into my head. Most of the posts on here so far have stemmed from a thought that came into my head while meditating. I think differently when I'm consistent. It feels almost like a different mindset. I feel more.... deliberate.


So what does this mean, and why am I talking about it?

I'm glad you asked!!

It means that I'm starting to actually feel how and why this is a good thing for me, and why I need to get the fuck over myself and just do it. Part of my shying away from real, live, honest-to-Buddha meditating was being scared of what would happen, and being scared that nothing would happen.

Do I think the world will unveil itself before me if I sit like a pretzel? No. It's very subtle. But it's tangible. There's a different feel that I can't put my finger on, but I like it.

There might just be something to this, after all...

Right Here, Right Now

So after being on my own for almost a month, I came back to spend the night at my parent's house. They had piled together all the stuff I had left and wanted me to look through it and decide what I wanted to keep and what we should get rid of. At the bottom of the pile lay my old, busted up, piece-of-crap computer that I had through college (that I am also typing on currently).

I was surprised to see it, more surprised that it still had the power cable with it, and even more surprised that it turned on!

The bottom of the laptop feels like it is about to burn holes into my legs from overheating, the fan inside of it sounds like a car engine, and whatever I ask it to do takes 10 minutes to load, but lo and behold it still works.

It was like time travel. As I hear the little song my poor neglected Acer played as it sprung to life, I watched a picture of a vacation I was on years ago spring up on my wallpaper. The programs I liked loaded for me automatically, as if my computer was saying, "Here you go, Kate. I know it's been a long time, but I missed you and I promise everything is as you left it."

Something on my desktop catches my eye. A Word document, whose title only takes a moment for me to place mentally. There's my ex-boyfriend's name, staring me in the face. I open the file, and the memories come rushing back. It was a letter he had written to me about what was wrong in our relationship, what I needed to do to fix things, etc. It brought me right back there. It made me remember who he was and what it was like to be with him, and why I was glad I wasn't anymore. It also made me curious as to what else was hidden in this hard drive of mine.

Nothing else was that interesting, really. An old copy of my resume, all my old music, a few stories I had started writing but never finished, and... my instant messaging logs. I had forgotten completely that my computer used to log them. So of course I sat there and read them all.

It was one of the strangest experiences I've had lately. It felt like spying, even though it's not spying if it's on yourself. I feel like by being here, on this computer, looking through these files, I'm disturbing or interrupting the 16-year old me that still lives here, if that doesn't sound completely mental.

The most unnerving part of it was how much of those conversations I didn't remember. Sure, I remember the people, even some of the things that were said, but the bulk of it was new to me. I knew it was me. It sounded like stuff I would say, but I had no recollection of it.

In reality, that's not that weird. We say and do so many different things it's impossible to retain them all, but I'm not used to being confronted with who I used to be.

In this moment, it makes so much sense to me why we need to live in the now, the right fucking now. Memories aren't like my computer. If I store something in the computer I can leave it there for years, and it will still be there. Our brains don't work like that. Memory is fluid. It is open to interpretation. It's based off your perception, which is totally screwed to begin with.


My right now is not that open to interpretation. I can have confidence in the things I know about this moment, because I am currently experiencing this moment. This moment is the only thing in the world that matters. Life is made up of a series of "this moments" and we can choose to live in them, or we can choose to escape our present moment by distracting ourselves with the "what-ifs" and "if-onlys."


This is it.

This is all you've got.

This moment.

Right now.

Oneness: Not Just a Groovy Santana Album

I've been putting this one off for a few days. I wanted to let it swirl around in my head a little bit more, but also honestly I just didn't want to think about this deeply enough to be able to write about it. Two key things were going on the other night: I was thinking a little bit about interconnectedness, and I was pissed off. This was a predictably dangerous combination.

I've been giving myself too much credit when it comes to accepting a lot of the concepts that have been coming my way lately. In theory they're fine. I can handle any and all of it on paper. It's the implications that fuck me here.

I'm cool with no one actually being separate from anyone else. I can even get down with not being separate from any of the inanimate shit I walk around all the time. In theory.

The question that was raised in my head was (and still is) this:

If we're all connected, if we're not just a part of this big huge thing, but collectively the big huge thing itself, where does anger come from? I mean, aside from ego. That's an easy one.

Can you ever really be angry at another person? Because the more that I think about this, the more I think that outward anger and hatred don't exist. I don't hate you, I hate the part of myself that you represent. I'm not angry at what you did, I'm angry at what I am capable of doing. Everyone in this whole entire world is capable of everything. I've said this before. Does someone else doing something wrong just illustrate that part of myself? Is that why we react so strongly?

Being connected, being one, means something. It would be wonderful if I could believe that all the good wonderful people in the world are connected on one great big happy love-circle, and all the bad people in the world have their own connected-ness going on. But really, my desire to think that comes from two decades of Catholic upbringing, and how ingrained into my head heaven and hell were as a child. I instinctively try to apply the things I was taught when I was younger to make a scary concept more palatable. That's not how this works.

It's easy to say you're mad because you've been fucked over. But being fucked over, in some way, forces you to recognize every time you've ever fucked someone else over. And we've all done it. There's a monk out in the mountains somewhere that stole another monks dinner roll, I guarantee it. We all have the same set of seeds in our head, but we all water different ones.

At the end of the day, I am an axe murderer. I am a terrorist. I am a rapist. (Dear Homeland Security: I promise I'm not, I'm just making a point. I swear). I don't get to take credit for being one and the same with Mother Fucking Theresa, and pretend I'm not also Osama Bin Laden. I don't get to go on fun little talks about how I am the Stop Sign, without also acknowledging all the negative things that connectedness entails.

Every breath in comes with a breath out. There is no shiny happy take on all of this that doesn't have another side to it. I guess this is just that other side to what I was talking about the other day. It's hard to still feel that anger, that rage, once you start thinking that the only person you are truly mad at is yourself. And if you don't actually exist as an entity all to yourself... You get the point.

It's very dismantling. Picking apart everything you've ever thought and felt for your entire life and seeing it for what it truly is sort of bites.

And at the very least it's exhausting. You know, in an invigorating sort of way.

42

A week ago I moved from my parents house into my own apartment for the first time. As the excitement of being able to order Chinese food at 2am and dance around naked waned, the anxiety of being disconnected from the world began to set in.

Financially, I thought it would be a better idea to hold off on hooking my internet up. I can wait, right? No big deal. I build up in my head what a mature, responsible, and wholly adult decision this is. Prepare myself for it mentally. I’ve got enough books and movies to keep me busy.

The first few days weren’t that bad. As time starts to go on, I get into the routine of being pulled over on the information superhighway. I’m playing with my keyboard, putting new strings on my guitar, getting back into my music. I’m thinking about writing some more. Until...

Dear sweet lord my neighbor didn’t password protect their network!!!

The glee I felt in that moment remains unsurpassed by the most excitable child waking on Christmas morning. All my claims of not needing an internet connection go out the window, and are replaced by one great flood of relief.

Why?

The internet is the ultimate distraction from yourself. The limitless supply of mindless entertainment ensures that I never have to think about anything I don’t want to think about ever again. I don’t have to think of or for myself, nor do I have to remember anything, as any trivial fact I need can be Googled in a matter of seconds. Alone in my apartment without a connection means that I am left completely and totally to my own devices. I’m just here.... with me.

That experience scares me off of zazen.

Zazen scares me in and of itself, that’s no secret. But is there anything more purely... me, than being left to sit with my own thoughts? With no distraction, no means of escape, nothing to take the focus off my here and now.

And if the thought of being left with me and my thoughts scares me, is it really zazen I find scary, or myself? Do I scare me? Zazen seems to be merely a tool. It’s a way, not even the way, just a way, to gain a deeper understanding of this thing I call me, and the world I think I’m living in.

Maybe I just don’t want my reality shattered. Maybe I don’t want to have to face the true nature of life and everything around me. In my day to day life, I walk around mostly oblivious. I don’t consciously ponder life, the universe, and everything while I’m going about my day. I tend to dip in and out of it though. While I walk around pretty blissfully ignorant, sometimes those thoughts creep in.

And they fuck me up.

The other night I was walking to my car after work and I paused to look at a stop sign. And I would have sworn on my life that I wasn’t looking at the stop sign. The stop sign was looking at me. And as I looked around I noticed that it wasn’t just the sign. The tree, the lightpost, the other cars, were all watching me.

I don’t mean this all in like a paranoid schizophrenic kind of way.

My point here is what separates me from a stop sign? The stop sign exists because all of it’s cells are doing exactly what they are supposed to be doing. In the way that I exist because all of my cells are doing exactly what they are supposed to be doing.

Maybe The Beatles were on to something here.

“I am the Walrus” has a much better ring to it than “I am the Stop Sign”

Penny for Your Thoughts?

I was running a group with some of the kids at my psych hospital, and they were talking about depression, suicide, dark stuff like that. They kept saying to each other, "It's ok, I've felt that too. I've had that same thought." As they say this over and over, it starts to dawn on me... Have I ever had a thought no one else has had before? Has anything ever crossed my mind that was completely original, or completely my own?

I don't think so.

Everything I have ever thought, someone has thought before.

We may have the same thoughts at different times, and they may result in different actions, but we are all cut from the same cloth. Every one of us has the potential to be the next great philanthropist or the next great serial killer. We all have the seeds of both. We've all thought to help someone who needed it, and we've all thought, "I could seriously just kill them." What makes the difference is which thoughts and impulses we act on.

In which areas do we exhibit self-control, and which do we let ourselves go in? When I get the urge to punch someone in the face, I exhibit self-control. When I get the urge to go eat McDonald's, I go right ahead. This is (a very abridged version of) my value system. In my mind, it's never ok to punch someone in the face, no matter how good it's going to feel (or how much they deserve it). Eating some crappy food however, that's fine, as long as it's not too much.

This is just me. I take the actions in life that I take because of the way I react to stimuli. Put me and 10 other people in the same situation. We'll probably have all the same thoughts and feelings, but those feelings will manifest differently in each of us and we will react in a different way.

I guess I'm hung up on this because thoughts are supposed to be as unique and personal as it gets. And if that's all a load of crap, what separates me from everyone else if even our thoughts are indistinguishable?

I'm not sure anything does.

Philosophical Spice

"Without something, there is no nothing."

The words of Roger Moore emanate from my television's speakers. As his character, "The Chief," hangs up the phone, the movie continues, and so does my head (albeit in completely different directions). I'm left on my bed with my dog thinking those words over again. It's a simple concept, but not one that gets a lot of conscious thought. What is nothing, but the absence of things? If there weren't anything, than there couldn't be a nothing. Nothing seems to be a "thing" all by itself. It's definable. It exists. Does it?

If you ask someone what takes up the space in between things, they're probably going to either tell you "nothing," or "air." I'm inclined to count myself among the "air" people. If there is nothing all around me, then what am I breathing in? The air we breathe in takes up all the little spaces, all the little cracks. What is wind? Does "nothing" exist only as a concept? Is it just a word we use to describe the absence of things? As in, "I've had nothing to eat today." We don't really need a word for that. Wouldn't it be just as valid to say that you hadn't eaten?

The word stems, in the humble opinion of a 22 year-old child, from our need as a species to categorize beyond categorization. We need a word for everything so we know what neat little box to put things in. Life is big and scary. There are so many questions in this universe we have no way of answering, and that drives our arrogance crazy. How dare there be something we don't entire comprehend. "Nothing," then also becomes a term of dismissal. "It's nothing, don't worry about it."

What plays with my head even more is noticing where all these thoughts are coming from. In 1997, Roger Moore had a very small part in a movie that I put on because I had a bad night and needed something to cheer me up. That movie?

Spice World.

It made me realize not to discount anything as trivial or pointless. If a campy movie about an over-hyped pop group can spark that kind of thought in you, anything can. Things are only as pointless as we deem them to be, and that's our own fault and no one else's. It's so easy to become pretentious, especially in intellectual and religious types. If I don't see the deeper point behind something, then there isn't one.

The real job here lies in creating a deeper point for yourself. It's all there, you just have to make the decision to see it. I'm not even saying that everything has to have some deep, life-altering meaning in it. But if you want it, it's there.

It's like so many other things. We like to blame others for the things we miss out on. If I don't get something deep and meaningful out of a song/movie/book/experience, it's their fault for not having one. If I'm not happy, it's someone else's fault for keeping me down. If I wake up one morning mad because I'm 60 and I'm not happy with what I've done with my life, it's your fault for marrying me and keeping me down.

If you're miserable, you're choosing to be. I've met too many people in absolutely horrible conditions and states in their life, and the capacity to be happy is still there. Is it easier to be miserable? Not long term, but it definitely takes less work in the moment. If I get to blame external factors for my misery, I am refusing to see that I have any control over it.

It's like the prisoner who resents the world for the fact that he's being held captive, but doesn't know the door (though closed) is unlocked. All he has to do is get up off the floor and push, and the door will open and he's free. But then what will he do?

Once we know we can choose to live our lives the way we want; once we accept that we ultimately control the things we do (and the way we feel doing them), there is an inherent responsibility to take action. For the most part, we don't want to take action. We want to stay stuck where people can tell us what to do and how to live our lives so that when things go wrong we don't have to look at ourselves.

Sorry kids, it's not that easy.

Schrödinger's Lily

Thinking about the permanence (or non-permanence) of things has been screwing with me for the past couple days. I don't mean the permanence of things as in everything, I mean the permanence of things, specifically. My cell phone, the pen on my desk, the bench outside, the empty water bottles I haven't bothered to recycle yet, my pillow... You get the idea here.

My reality is perceived. Things exist because I think they do. That's not to get all solipsistic on everyone here, but think about it. When I look at something, the cells in my eyes send a message to the cells in my brain, and I see. When I reach out to something, the cells in my fingertips send another message to my brain, and I experience touch. Pain happens because some other cells tell my brain to make me hurt. Without those organs and parts of my body, without my brain, what exists? The world doesn't exist to someone in a coma. Are they alive? Yes. But they don't know that.

When I go to sleep, my reality disappears and is replaced by a new one in the form of my dreams. Note here I'm saying my reality, because that's all I claim it to be.

Working at a psychiatric hospital, I see a lot of this. I mostly just do detox and rehab for addicts and alcoholics, but the other day I was on one of the more acute psych units. Someone with acute psychosis is experiencing a completely different reality than I am. I call their reality a "hallucination" just because I don't see it too.

What gets us by day to day without going crazy is our faith in the permanence of objects. I know where my apartment is. I can leave it for days at a time and I know it's not only still going to exist, but be right where I left it.

How do I know that it's all still there when I'm not? How do I know that the lily I'm looking at exists at all when I'm not there looking at it? We feel as though our senses provide "proof" of things, but how valid is it? If I'm not here, in this room, looking at this lily, it's equally probable that it's there and not there (enter Schrödinger reference for my nerds). It's only when I look at it that I know for sure.

Reality is fluid. Memories are impermanent and horribly unreliable. So what do we have?

To Sit, Or Not To Sit

That seems to be the question for me lately.

I've really been intending to try to sit zazen soon. I mean it, I promise. I just still have a few hang-ups that I'm letting stop me from diving in lotus-first.

Is it really just as simple as sitting down? It can't be. And how badly do I need a teacher to show me the ropes? Is it ok if my mind wanders? Doesn't it just make it worse to try to not think of anything? Why the hell can't I close my eyes? Can I scratch my butt if it itches? Does everyone overthink this part of it or is it just me?

I am fully aware of just how much I am building this up in my head, and how counterproductive that is. This is like in Pulp Fiction when Mia doesn't want to tell Vincent her stupid ketchup joke because now there's all sorts of pressure on it. Just like that (sort of).

I get that by putting all this emphasis on doing it "right" I'm taking away from the practice itself. I have to build it up in my head though, or else it will seem pointless. I don't see how I'm going to really learn that much about myself and the world, gradually or otherwise, by staring at a wall. If it's a "being in the present moment" thing, can't I do that while I'm doing other stuff? How about hiking meditation? I'm going to start a craze.

I feel like I should stop worrying about "getting it." The harder you look for anything, the more impossible it becomes to attain.

Want proof? Do you find Waldo faster when you just open the book and let your eyes wander, or when you're really looking? The more pissed off and frustrated you are at this stupid fucking game, the harder you look, and the longer it takes to find him because everything you're feeling clouds your ability to see. The frustration, and anger, the desperation to find this stupid little man in his stupid little hat. It's cyclical.

It's like that with a lot of things though. Happiness, relationships... How many people do you know that are so cranky and mean because they can't find a partner, that they can't find a partner because they're so cranky and mean?

And happiness... Fuck that. If I'm trying to be happy, it's because I feel like I'm not happy to begin with. However, that yearning for happiness is going to prevent it from ever happening because you can't recognize it when it's right in front of you - you're too busy striving for it. Asshole, open your eyes, it's here and now and you're missing it!

Back to the whole zazen thing... Reading this over, I think I just made the case for it all by myself.

Mindfulness is a Bitch

"I am angry."

There are no thoughts in the world more ridiculous than that when you actually are angry. Supposedly, by acknowledging my anger and the root cause of it, it will be disabled, and it's hold on me will be loosened. Ok, that sounds alright in theory.

The tricky part comes in here because I want to be angry. Anger inherently means that I am right and someone else is wrong. I don't have to examine my part or role, I just get to be pissed. Sweet, I can do that. Anger seems like muscle memory. I'm good at being angry. Even if it's more draining ultimately to feel that anger and hold on to it than it is to let it go, it's also by far more enjoyable.

The balance here is what I am having a hard time with. It seems like anger is never ok, never justified, never an acceptable thing to be feeling. I teach my patients all the time that anger is a secondary emotion. We feel anger because we feel something else (primarily hurt or fear), and anger is an easier alternative.

But isn't it justified sometimes? How do you walk that line between being all zen and calm and shit, and still being able to set healthy boundaries for yourself and those around you? Anger can be toxic, but it can also be a useful motivating factor. If I'm never really mad about anything, why would I bother to tell people if something isn't alright?

I'm pretty sure I'm being too black and white about this. It seems less like the point is to never be angry - it's a natural human thing that we really can't do much about. It seems like the point is closer to what you do about your anger. If something you did caused the cells in my brain to react in such a way that I feel compelled to curse you out, do I feed into the illusion that you made me feel a certain way?

Ego plays a huge role here. My ego tells me that there is a me. That my me is different than your me (if you're still following me here). That I am a unique individual, separate from the universe and definitely separate from you (as evidenced by my middle finger). Is there any greater ego-shot than the concept of there not being a me at all? If we're all the same, I can't be mad at you. Your cells did something, my cells did something in reaction, and I call it anger because it makes me feel better about myself.

Dear lord this is exhausting.