on suffering

Tonight has been unusual and I feel very compelled to write about my experience here and now. I have already written in my handwritten journal during the experience. So, this blog post is reflection.

I walked home slowly and reflectively from the bus, returning from a typical day at work.

I was tired and annoyed about the build-up of stress throughout the day. I awoke to the day quite nicely in the morning. I rested for a few moments and decided to take a bath before getting to many tasks I needed to do. Though after the bath, relaxed bodily yet stressed mentally, I returned to resting. I was highly annoyed and agitated in thought though my body was resting, nearly sleeping. I slept lightly for a couple hours. Upon gently waking, I did not feel like moving, as though I was very depressed. I was very agitated in not wanting to suffer nor participate in any suffering. Slowly, as my thinking went onto more tangible aspects of life (like wanting to eat and needing to do work), I sat up at the edge of my bed.

I wasn’t about to do anything, feeling miserable, I wanted to resolve the suffering situation I was in. I started writing in my journal. I was writing about how conflicted and delusional thinking is and that I continue maintaining such thinking.

I researched a little on the internet after writing a question with a lot of emotion: Why am I not released from my suffering like before in my life? I read some of thework.com and did some of the work I am not unwilling to do anymore.

I continued to write, but a little more focused. I quote my journal here.

I am very annoyed by all the contradictory thinking delusion that causes suffering in this world/for humans. This “prevents” me from feeling peace, because I see the existence of it (the delusion and the suffering). Thusly, I do not know what to do since suffering appears to exist beyond my natural existence/original nature. Even as delusion in the conscious brainwashing and habitual karma of humanity, not Jesus, Buddha, nor any heros change the fact that the delusion persists like a plague! Ironically, humans survive even with such stress and self-inflicted pain! So, then, how can I be free of suffering in my own life as I know most other humans suffer greater duress and even unconsciously to the point of causing greater suffering? I don’t know how to live a life free of suffering (because I know the cause–ignorant desire for things to be other t h a n t h e y a r e!)

There it was/is! The extra spaces between the letters meant I was getting it! I smiled and realized the illogical, contradictory thinking feedback that was happening in my brain that caused the annoyance, frustration, and suffering. The belief I held so strongly to was debunked through simple logic. NO WONDER! How could our mind, brain, body, energy be flowing peacefully with such inconsistency and hypocrisy! How can we live well with all life if our minds are messed up with contradictory beliefs and untruthful thoughts. This is a truly wonderful moment of realization for me.

I nearly immediately calmed down and started doing the work I needed to do. After I did my work for a couple hours, I decided to write this post. I am happy to offer this to you as plainly as I have.

two core issues

I have two very core personal issues to share. I’ve seen these issues with more clarity and less clinging, so I want to record and share this struggle to clarify the conditioning in my life for myself and others. I can see this is a big place for me to be right now. I am learning due to truly practicing with the way my life is. That’s the way it is for every single human–the process of realizing our true being in actuality.

I’ll get on with it. Core Issue Two: I am not accepting all things to be as they are and working with everything as it is. I daydream about choosing something else for my life–some other job, some other profession, some other location, some other place, some other food, some other person, some other music, some other interest endeavor, or anything else than what and how I may be doing now in my life. I wish things were different with my father, with my brother, with my ex-fiancee. I am beginning to more clearly see the dreamy story of otherness that my conditioned mind repeatedly generates which makes me feel miserable. I feel miserable because I don’t have what my conditioned mind is thinking is better than what exists now in my life. So, I am seeing this mind running away from presence with dreams and desires of delusion. However, with this seeing of the habitual mind activity, I experience distance from the suffering because I am no longer just totally believing these dreamy thoughts of otherness. The story-esque otherness doesn’t actually exist and this conditioned mind is rambling on with gobbledygook that causes me to feel horrible and miserable and not accept what is actually happening in my life. This is the suffering of the illusion of separation which I am seeing happening more clearly. I am authentically practicing seeing deeply into how this egotistic-story-generating-conditioned-mind is a cause of suffering in my life. I am learning not to follow it’s grandiosity and to return to this very moment of present existence as it is. This is practicing deep acceptance of the greatness of the Way existence always and already is. Am I recognizing this Truth, this gentle brilliance of being OR am I infatuated by all sorts of ideas about how things could be if only things were different. I must return to acceptance in order to experience peace in living day-to-day life.

OK, that was issue Two; here’s the deeper Core Issue One. I want what I’ve felt I’ve never truly had–authentic deep human connection. I feel miserable just writing it here. This is very emotional for me, yet I remain focused to concentrate on seeing into this issue so that I may not suffer like this for the rest of my life. I can see that my suffering arises from the cloud of story surrounding what I may think of as “authentic deep human connection.” Let me put it this way, IF others’ and I connect only through the conditional framework of cultural worldliness and never seem to get to a synergy at the core and/or a miniscule moment of mutual aware recognition of our essential being beyond conditioning, THEN I think we failed to connect authentically. This may or may not be actually true. It is very important for me to see this way in which I view relationships with others. For example in my actual life, I have had moments of very deep mutual seeing into and beyond the typical culturally conditioned delusions of reality. This may or may not have been “authentic connection!” Which leads me to see that the way I am evaluating interpersonal activity and relations is wonky and conditional! If I think this way about life, then I am layering my thought-structure over what has happened, after the fact. This is dampening my experiences and creating suffering for myself and others. SO, I am seeing into my invovlement into part of the reason why I don’t seem to experience “deep authentic human connection” in life. I blame others’ all too often in their short-sightedness and clingings to their thoughts and dreamings, but I am doing this (too). Next steps in my practice with this issue is 1) more observing of my physical and mental activity in personal interaction, 2) softening my body, mind, and gaze particularly around others, 3) remembering that I am able to unlock this issue as a function of how I see into it and the directness with which I dispell the egotistic delusional beliefs, views, and thoughts that cause suffering for me and others.

attitude

How did I get this difficult attitude that is so harshly perfectionistic and critical of my own self? I know how, it was my defense mechanism in dealing with the harsh criticism and judgement that my father applied in his conditional parenting. I was smart, did quite well in school (and got some praise for that activity), and did what I was told to do (or else punishment). I’ve spent countless time relearning about my past and life such that I could arrive at and understand the answer to this question of how my ego conditioned self functions.

But the question for me nowadays is how do I move onward from the old habits that keep me in fearful avoidance of assumed and projected disapproval and punishment? Now that I am softer and more open to the subtleties of life, how do I flow with the energies and live fully, rather than resist, stress, depress, and struggle trying to make it through each torturous day of monotony?

I need an essential healthy attitude adjustment. I do not need a conditional repositioning of views and beliefs such that I can be what others may think is successful. That’s what I’ve been doing most of my life, trying to appease others’ expectations and act well, which drains me of all my good natural positive energy. I am watching this occur each evening I come home after working a job I just barely like (I consider myself lucky and am very grateful for this job at this time in my life, which isn’t an essentially good attitude). The FACT that my energy is so very drained each and every day is a massive warning.

Very deeply I actually, and even somewhat easily now, see the inherent essential goodness of all being. Of course, though, I like to call this The Great Emptiness of the Way, along with Zen Buddhists and Taoists. But each day, I get highly mired in the day-to-day muck of conditional existence. HAH! There! That is my attitude I must change if I am going to rest in deep presence and move from great emptiness in my life. I aspire to live this way more than anything else at all. I see this is my calling to live this way, though it’s manifestation and expression I do not know. I NEED to find the effortless effort of harmonizing with the Great Emptiness and Goodness of the Way things always and already are. My attitude (collection of beliefs, views, and thinking) needs to practically support harmony, not conditional living strategies that I learned in trying to appease parents, teachers, friends, etc.

TOWARDS THIS, I shall read a book I haven’t completely read yet. I will start the book over from the beginning. I acquired Sakyong Mipham Rinpoche’s first book, “Turning the Mind into an Ally” when I started meditating in 2003. As he is quoted on the back cover, “We can create an alliance that allows us to actually use our mind, rather than be used by it. This is a practice anyone can do.”

In my current practice of seeing myself as clearly as possible in order to move beyond the hard conditioned egotistic karmic aspect of my life, I am ready to embrace a thorough attitude adjustment that is harmonious with the Great Allowing Presence of the Way. Since I have experienced a great awakening in this vein at another time of my life (2005-6), I am already very aware that this can be the way in which I live my life. I am hungry for harmonious goodness and a warmly open attitude towards everything.

inherent goodness

Understanding thorough non-dualistic emptiness is not a particularly useful concept for me at this moment. Simply, with some realistic empathetic compassion for my suffering caused by my own conditioned ego habits in thought and action, I must begin to believe in my inherent goodness. My habit of depression appears rooted in dismissing my true worthiness, my original nature, my completeness in being real, the fullness of my existence, my being a part of inseparable nature of life and reality.

Ego mind thinking rambles on and on. This part of my mind always seems to take me over and force me into passivity in life. I couldn’t hug my mom this morning, even though she made the atypical loving effort to hug me. I couldn’t speak to friends at a party, even though they were kind enough to greet me. I couldn’t thank my significant other, even though she did find ways in support of me. I gave in, I caved in. I victimized myself through believing my fears, negative thinking, self-doubt, guilt, confusion, and unworthiness of being alive. I denied my true self in being my guide.

I think it is important, particularly when depression gets so horrendously self mutilating, to try to figure out why. This is no easy task, because I’ve seemingly necessarily had to spend 15 years writing in journals, reading countless pertinent spiritual & self-help books, and making searching for answers one of my highest priorities in life. Beyond money, time, energy, people, self, work, I’ve spent my time trying to figure out and understand what is going on and why this is so with me. It’s been my life’s primary effort, again, seemingly necessarily so. Hence, in self-discovering and self-revealing, a mere two months ago, that I have been suffering from self-victimization and identification with the aggressor in protection of my survival founded on the traumatic experience of wordless fear of near-death in infancy which results in passive-aggressive co-dependent forms of relating to others, my life has changed.

My fiancee abandoned me and cancelled our wedding plans as well as our communication. She doesn’t talk to me anymore. I suppose she cannot handle the truth very well either. I understand. It has taken me so very long with so very much effort to begin to handle, comprehend, and realize this truth for myself. I am farily certain she won’t be reading this blog, but I wish she would/could. I am honestly angry at her action of abandonment, but I certainly know how very hard it must be for her to deal with my depressed conditioned egocentric being, because it was very hard for me to bear the experience of depressing myself so relentlessly.

I didn’t believe I was good enough, not for anything or anyone, nor for God, as I thought he forsaked and denied me too. But all of this negativity is my own, born, only in part, by the intrinsic suffering and pain of life itself. As a child I was unable to discern, nor understand. I learned to follow my parent’s, teacher’s, priest’s, friend’s, role model’s ideas, expectations, projections, and ways of seeing. I didn’t know what I didn’t know, and yet I also had a strangely envigorating sensation of and firmly faithful connection with God’s absolute and infinite permeation throughout existence. As a child, this protected me from bad dreams and assisted me in preserving some sanity in day-to-day, week-to-week confusion of life and seeing hypocrisy and inconsistency everywhere I seemed to look. “Why is life so screwed up?,” I used to think continuously. Now I realize I learned that question from my critical and worry minded parents, father and mother respectively.

So here I am now, in the process of healing in depression recovery. As difficult as it is, it is also comforting. As I’ve mentioned to quite a number of people lately, I feel supported from <em>every</em> dimension of my life right now. From my ex-fiancee to my parents, from plants to energy, I am clearly supported by the inseparably continuous fabric of reality. Without a deep gratitude and awareness of this absolute support, I’d likely not even be writing any of this realization. I am eternally grateful.

Goodness…

moving along without purpose

I started attending a four week Zen & Depression class at A Single Thread this past week. It was beneficial to meditate, walk, and focus awareness to the body and outside, but also to hear the some more info about depression, anxiety, and such things. Just being open to hear what others have to say about depression is important for my how of dealing with life.

Another interesting thing is a conversation me and my fiancee had earlier today. She asked if I’ve ever had a goal that I tried to do but felt bad about afterwards. I had to answer no, because I really haven’t had my own goal. She hit it right on the target! She revealed the fact that I’ve been observing, trying things, and adopting others’ goals through life. Then, we talked about purpose for a while. Due to being conscious beings, we determined that purpose is necessary for us to be active in our life choices. Purpose changes along with everything else in reality, though, it’s lack in life–which is what I have been experiencing for quite some time–appears to cause depression and anxiety. Tired of attaching to the next interesting or necessary thing that comes into my life, I have been lacking purpose and thus, focus, goals, perspective, grounding, connection points to others, depth of action. I have been dwelling in existential misery.

Conversely, one thing I have learned is the subtleness of darkness and emptiness. I am not afraid of death, boredom, nothingness, not knowing, etc. but it is still challenging to work with these aspects of life, particularly when I am purposeless. I am noticing that belief may take the place of purpose. Belief is “an attitude of acceptance or assent toward a proposition without the full intellectual knowledge required guaranteeing its truth.” Purpose is “determination: the quality of being determined to do or achieve something.” But purpose is not simply a goal towards which we act and work, it is the whole life path that we choose. It is the process and the intended goal, that we decide to entirely align our lives with intention, attention, and conscious awareness as creative and free beings. Our purposes are unseparable from reality and the nature of reality (contingency, creativity, change, and ambiguity). However, it seems belief and thought can distort the realistic connections of our purpose. Thus, the phrase “rest in presence, move from emptiness” comes to mind again as a way of reharmonizing with reality, instead of belief.

So, I’m learning and thinking anew about purpose, but I am not aligned with my purpose, because I don’t have one. The words of advice I have for myself are… “creating your purpose is part of your process of healing, continue with how for now.”

peace and gratitude