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.
If you are living in a sand castle, but then you start sweeping it all away, its going to be an uncomfortable process because you are still living in the sand castle. You haven't actually touched the ground yet, so there is no sense of security or safety in it. The process becomes even more involved when you realize there is no ground to touch. At that point the process itself is all you have left, and then you discover that it is going away as well.
ReplyDeleteBut lets not get ahead of ourselves. When the cyclone is spinning, the only peace to be had is in the center. That happens now, only now. Not just now, a second ago.. NOW. Not tomorrow, not in a year, not in a decade.. NOW.
The sense of touch aids the illusion of solidity, which the human embodies in a physical way - unable as we are to dematerialize into our component atoms. Further, the idea of the self, the self image, is subconsciously considered a solid object, a discrete persona. This layer of abstracted self, the self image, is founded on the psychology and instruction of a pre-established human society. In its daily manifestations and general activity, it is directed by thought and driven by emotion, both of which have, at their long lost origin, only derived from very basic instincts of this most socialized (or "learned") animal on the planet.
The word, the symbol - that which approximates and is but a meager stand-in for reality - is the same as any other image - and just as language itself often becomes more real to people than that which it points to, so does the image of the self become to the mind of the social animal, the human, that earthly apex of the purely mechanical expression of biology.
At least the space is there, so the possibility is ripe, and its unfettered by supernatural power or transcendent bliss - which is why buddhists say a human birth is the best for practicing the dharma. The question is whether or not you can resist the temptation to follow in the footsteps of all the other humans, and the rest of our glorious society. Can you exist as being without limitation.. without form? Or do you need the comfort of your name, your home, your stuff? How much reaction do you need to define yourself?
"If you are living in a sand castle, but then you start sweeping it all away, its going to be an uncomfortable process because you are still living in the sand castle. You haven't actually touched the ground yet, so there is no sense of security or safety in it. The process becomes even more involved when you realize there is no ground to touch. At that point the process itself is all you have left, and then you discover that it is going away as well."
ReplyDeleteThe Yeti has a way with words... nicely put.
At the end of the day it's all about shutting up and sitting down. I believe a lot of the questions you postulate will answer themselves (or just dissolve) in due time, just keep on sitting! Every day!