fearification

I might as well get a bit playful with the fear that has plagued my life. On the radio this morning, I heard a coach tells his team to work hard and don’t return off the field saying “I wish I had… .” I reflected on my own life and thought about how hard I work on overcoming my own personal issues, at authenticity in relationships, at my jobs, exploring beneficial new activities, and trying to be open to others in life. I usually feel very undervalued for this hard work. I don’t have a coach, guru, significant other, or parent that supports my work. I’ve discovered I need to do this work for my own self and in relation to being with others.

obeygiant.com

The wet cement of suffering I wade through in life is conditioning and the causes of such conditioning. Early coping mechanisms for dealing with perceived abuse, social dissonance, and high sensitivity are now very inadequate ways of living an adult life. It’s clear my childhood was fraught with fear which enforced intended behavioral patterns of listening, obeying, paying attention, and doing things as instructed. I was really taught how to follow and fear was the primary method of coercion for making me do what I was told. I’m playfully calling this fearification as I dive into how this has functioned in my life, because this word allows me to seriously view the use of fear–by using intended or actual verbal or physical punishment or reward–to make someone act in a preferred way through the lens of unconscious ignorance.

No aware, loving, compassionate, and true human would use fear to force an egotistically desired result! I know this now, yet I still stumble along far too much in the unconscious conditioned coping mechanisms I learned as an innocent little bubba. I am trying to let go, but no one every taught me nor showed me how to live this day-to-day life in calm, open, careful, and energetically masterful ways! The old coping mechanisms and habits are the actions I learned for dealing with a life of stress, condemnation, rules, criticism, limitation, and fear. I wonder who may have actually seen that me and my siblings weren’t just well-behaved, but fearfully coerced into doing so. God, all parents (not just my own!), adults, teachers, and all authorities were the enforcers that my parents unconsciously recruited in their memetic structure of raising the people they procreated. Sounds a bit odd, but even now it resonates with tons of twisted relative truth. My life is thusly stained with patterns of rebellion, fearful obeying, silent resignation, expressive outbursts of stifled energy, reading volumes of self-help and health resources, self-marginalization from society because I think I don’t fit in with others, and thinking I am strange and inappropriate. This is the one result of fearification, though it appears to be prevalent enough. I sure don’t have a statistic, but the abundant “problems” of our contemporary world suggest that people are highly identified with their own conditioned coping mechanisms.

So, how shall I move on from the conditioning? Conscious seeing of the conditioning with both compassion and the authentic aspiration for transformation to the other shore of naturalness and being. Meditation is clearly key practice. But what about the unknown and unexperienced living activity that exists beyond the abandoned unconscious habits, learned strategies of behavior, unrealistic thinking patterns, and typical routines? Often times I think that I can’t let go of my father or fiancee because then, I will have abandoned them in the pool of ignorance and conditioning. Isn’t it my purpose to help those whom I love? Or is this too a conditioned way of considering relationships, love, and conditioning?

Enough with the questions about the unknowable. Fantasy will only provide another story, not living presence in actual life. I don’t want to create another ignorant story, however masterfully devised. Here I am reminded of the Constructive Living tenets: know your purpose (how, by what means is true authentic purpose known? meditation?), accept your feelings (I’ve been practicing this for nearly 15 years), do what needs to be done (attentive action is our real relationship with everything), and Naikan reflection (how I have caused trouble for others, gratitude for everything). Constructive Living provides a way for us to practice living beyond the conditioned ways we’ve developed. This is just one way, yet it is a good one for supplying a structure to work with in transforming our lives from identified fearification to authentic conscious presence in our own lives.

I also want to mention that yesterday was Class 2 of Cheri Huber’s What You Practice Is What You Have email class. Her class is copywrited, so that is all I can mention about it. I’m following the rules.

the deep pit of my suffering

Here i go again. I am beating myself up with an array of criticism and negativity. I cannot seem to think through any of it; i am fairly sure that it’s impossible. I need to give it up because it weighs me down, stresses me out, and taps my energy. Circumstances that occur in this conditioned world that I cannot deal with well cause me to pummel myself into trying to deal with it, but seeing that I am not. I am not dealing well with the demands of 21st century living and there is no avoiding it either. I must seemingly abuse myself with work, or lose the work, the money, the relationships, and the whole thing. It seems as though everything is on the line. I have lost one client this way. I was doing my work at my own break-neck pace (slowly, but surely and doing good work too) but being way past deadlines that the client needs is unacceptable for their situation. However, clearly, their situation is not my situation, even if it is interrelated. And this isn’t about upholding one’s word or not being professional, this is this way because of the suffering i experience which corrupts, confounds, and debilitates me. I’ve proven to myself i can battle myself to uphold my word and be professional. But now, i don’t want the battle anymore. I need to ease back when this battle seems to start. I don’t seem to win anything much. Even the “good” that appears to come from this warring is thoroughly stained by the self-sacrificing, unconscious, demoralization of forcing myself to do for others rather than take care of myself. THIS is a major root problem for me. Some might say “suck it up,” or “hard work is good for you,” but I don’t believe that anymore. It’s not true. I have done this year after year, within jobs and relationships, and have lost all of it over and over again, which seems to cause all the more suffering in the forms of loss, grief, and guilt. I haven’t taken care of myself. I need to change my ways of working. I take TOO MUCH ON for others, and often receive far less than it’s worth. But, too, I labor hard over what I do, beating myself up along the way of creating imperfect solutions and less than stellar work. I try too hard and get frustrated with the small details and the slowness of it all. It gets so heavy and I don’t want to do any more of it. I can’t live like this anymore. I get to the point where I don’t want to live at all, because I do not know a way out of this kind of struggle with human existence and relational being in this cultural worldliness. I fear there is no way out. Even my meditation practice seems to suggest that I am pretending if I think that some kind of perfect equilibrium may exist. Change is at core of the way things are, not some harmonic, blissful state of being with humans and nature. And, when I ride along with the work that I do, choosing to fail to see the contradiction in my action, the deep pit of suffering gurgles to remind me of it’s perpetually hungry ghosts that are ready to torment me. “Risk your livelihood for what you think is right,” or “coast along in further anguish in what is convoluted and stressful.” The problem here is that it is all worthless and meaningless. It is not a situation of choice, as it is an opportunity to rest in the presence of being and doing beyond personal commentary and evaluation. Ahh, but I am not a tireless robot, a machine of capable mind and body activity. I am a very lowly human, not great, not special, not ordinary, not anything but a living human being. I continue to feed off of a cultural paradigm as much as it’s food supply. I’m conditioned to live this way, and I am not so happy with it because I feel very abused by the seemingly concrete and oppressive conditionality of the way I am expected to be–on time, appropriate, suitable, smart, efficient, friendly, professional, etc. Honestly, I don’t believe all this stuff, because when I meditate, do qi gong and butoh, the thinking mind abates into rich sensorial aware presence where thought is secondary. But in the “real” world, the thought-time-space-ego-meaning structures are primary! WHY do i experience actuality and reality as an inverse relationship? Is this accurate and true? Krishnamurti and Zen monks seem to see this kind of a relationship too.

But this is where I typically stop in my tracks. What now? Back to the load of work? Onward with the sleep deprivation and stressing out my mind and body? Is it even possible for me to relax in doing this work? [Massive lightning just struck the earth a moment ago and took me by surprise. A lone lightning bolt of awakening!] Some rain follows. Ahh, another lightning flash makes the previous one less of a shock. I am already dulled by the plip & thap of rain hitting the urban ground. I don’t have anything left to lose. I don’t have anything of meaning anymore. It’s as though I have to maintain the meaning just to wake up in the morning and hurt myself all day long doing what I don’t care to do and for no particular reason. I have no one left in my life. Father, brother and ex-fiancee all gone. All I see now are token selfish gestures of “hi” and the same old conversations. That’s beyond boring, that’s ignorant samsara–on my part and theirs! I’ve lived a good portion of my life now, and I just don’t see any reason why any of this will actually change out of the ebb and flow of samsara. It’s a river egotistic life. How can I refuse ego without a war, and let go of cultural manifestations without isolation? How can I love myself in this milieu? How can I actually help anyone, as I struggle to the bone of my being? How can I be helped myself, by me, other, and nature? Why is my life filled with day-to-day struggle and difficulty in existing in this thusness of humanness?

I’m sorry, but I don’t know. And when I realize the nature of the way, some peace does flow within, but a glance at all that needs to be remembered, done, and practiced in work, social, and personal life–I gasp and want to go to sleep first, i don’t have the energy for it.

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.

Walls and Vows

Walls are dividers. Physical walls offer us protection from that which exists on the other side. This may be quite necessary, as in building a home with insulated walls that protect us from environmental conditions like the wind, rain, and temperature. We also construct ideological walls in our psyche to protect us from cutural conditions. The physical and the mental, the internal and the external are dualistic distinctions, yet they are helpful for developing Right Understanding and the clarity of wise discernment.

I am not typically humble enough in my relationships with others. This is one of my remaining walls that I am deconstructing and unlearning. I learned this in order to protect myself and project an insincere confidence of coolness. The coolness has gotten me far, so to speak. Yet, it has also disabled me from connecting with others more deeply, something I know I desire to the depths of my being. It is original human nature to connect freely in the midst of all cause and conditions. We can say this takes love and compassion, though it also takes deconstruction of our walls. It is my egotistic self that denies an aspect of connection, which is my wall of arrogant coolness. People noticing my wall perceive me as righteous and indignant. I try to talk through the walls of others, meanwhile missing my own ignorance which causes a great problem and certain suffering.

What is fascinating is we don’t perceive our own walls as our unique problems that we need to address and debunk. My wall of knowledgeable arrogance and stylistic coolness traps me in ignorance, where I feel quite safe from the emptiness of existence. Now I know many people don’t even tread in this territory of “emptiness,” however, when understood as the universal order of existence, we may rest in presence rather than wall ourselves with what we know. I hope that makes sense. I’ll continue with my life example. When I say I want to connect with my brother and remain unable to see my own wall of arrogant knowledge, then I am the one who is ignorant and will remain ignorant until I wake up to my own walls. What is even more amazing to me is that I often talk with others about their walls that prevent connection within our relationship. They typically may agree that a wall exists in them as I have pointed out, yet have no desire to deconstruct the wall. The wall is there to protect them and they want the wall to maintain their egotistic structure they are working on. This is what I have been consistently ignorant of for most of my life–a deeply ingrained pattern, a wall of egotistic protection. I have been both comfortable with and unwilling to see that I have been very hypocritical in preserving my egotistic wall while trying to demand that others deconstruct theirs. I thought that in helping others see their wall, I was helping them.

Yet, even if this may be partly true, if we are not “ready” or “willing” to look at our own walls as impeding factors for fulfillingly free living, we will not see our walls as the problems. Our walls are always “the problem”, always the work that we need to do in opening to reality, in enlightening ourselves, in helping others. If I realize you have a wall in place, it is now my responsibility to respect you as you are, walls and all. In this realization and practice, I must be humble enough to ‘be with’ you without arrogantly calling attention to your walls that I sense and see, which is causes me to ignorantly and firmly erect my wall of arrogant indignation and cause suffering for both you and me. SO, heretofore, I take upon my second life vow to deconstruct my wall of hypocritical ignorant arrogant indignation and practice humble connection with others.

For the record, my first life vow is to always do my best.

seeing the resistance

I met the resistance in my father again today, just a few moments ago. He called to say that he doesn’t want to travel in the very cold temperatures tonight to drive me home from my second scheduled Rolfing Session. He supplied me with plenty of excuses, though I did my best to remain silent on the phone here at work. He said I should cancel my appointment. I then remarked that I want to go the Rolfing Session and I can find a way to get home somehow. He was immediately relieved and thanked me.

I can see I too have done this similar excuse-filled behavior with friends, girlfriends, and family. It’s very strange not only for me, but very much for the other individual who is asking something of me. We both are at odds because I make it known and stick to my excuses for NOT DOING what the other wants. Usually, this situation lingers like stinky cheese in the minds of those who I have disappointed. Sometimes the excuse is justified and reasonable, but even when it is, it is still an excuse NOT TO DO because I DO NOT WANT TO. It still stinks. How immature am I to want to do what I want over what others ask of me? For me, I can see it is typically selfish laziness that causes me to generate a mindstream of pseudo-reasonable excuses for inaction.

Seeing and experiencing the resistance within my father to do as I have asked of him, I realize the frustration that is caused as a result. The frustration arises from WANTING to NOT DO something and is passed on through excusing one’s self from what has been asked. This is essentially breaking one’s word, even if it is implied in the fact that we are friends and family of the one’s who ask something of us.

In this moment, I apologize to those I have frustrated due to my selfish laziness in wanting not to do what you have asked of me. In most situations, I could have left my selfish desire behind and answered your call for my assistance in your life. I see in this moment of experiencing my father’s pattern inaction where my pattern of inaction has originated, and, that I may consciously be able to circumvent the learned conditioned habit towards “being with” you.

peace & harmony