over, under, around; always just this

For the most part, as I am depressed, I lose my mind, body, spirit, energy, time, consciousness, awareness to my ego’s control. But, since my ego saved my life through perceived and real struggles and threats in a troublesome childhood experience by receding into depression, passivity and following the wills and wishes of others as well as possible, now, my ego is largely in control.

I’m feeling like I am having a mental breakdown now. I can’t handle all the pressure that my ego-centric karmic conditioning is putting onto me. It’s ruined my adult life, not saved it. I don’t really know what “Self” is anymore, or how to be other than my egotistically controlled small self which is really just killing me slowly.

Why is this so? WHY? Why do I live with a sense of pure empty worthless meaninglessness as my core understanding of self? I see nothingness, even beauty is empty, and thus all life too. My ego has certainly integrated Zen Buddhist concepts and psychologically philosophical cultural views to keep me, whatever me is, from happiness. I’m not worthy of anything. I should be dead, I should have died, but I am still living without purpose, reason, or meaning. Others don’t seem to connect with me either, nor I with them in any profoundly deep ways. All my relationships seem insignificantly superficial, and, yes, thusly, meaningless. Ego returns to thinking that the nature of reality is ambiguity and emptiness, so stop trying to make meaning out of nothing. I can’t make meaning, it’s all impermanent and shifting like all things in nature. Meaning is, well, silly.

Thus, I return to my most recently created mantra, “infinite being is being with.” No meaning, no trying, nothing can get in the way of being with as long as I am living. But, as the ego understands it, this may be it’s greatest strategy yet for keeping me from any amount of happiness in this lifetime. Since “being with” is effortlessness, purity, and the truth of reality, my ego has seemingly found a way to give up all conditionality and be thoroughly unhappy in this unseparated existence. All existence naturally depresses and overwhelms me in it’s magnitude. I cry, being with this crushing feeling. I cry, realizing that my fiancee left me. I cry, knowing my current career is unsatisfactory. I cry, viewing no deep authentic human connection in my life.

So, I am amidst the abyss of loneliness and emptiness. It seems not to matter that anyone else exists, because they can’t connect with me, or vice versa. Life has been deconstructed into the essentials of reality (ambiguity, creativity, contingency, change – impermanence, nonseparation, emptiness) whereas, like any bit of unconscious matter, I too exist here and now, hard and cold. It’s amazing blood and breath still flow through me. But that’s all there is, a material maze of coexistence, truly infinitely unknowable and nonmeaningful. It is what it is, that’s how it is.

You Are What You Eat

You know? This truly has more meaning to me as life goes on. I remember when I first heard it, I thought, “Oh yeah, like if you eat meat, you’re carnivorous; and if you eat veggies, you’re a vegetarian…” But this means so much more now.

I’ve been battling a nasty head cold and I’m doing it without any bought medications (with the exception of beverage vitamin C). This is quite a new trial for me. So, I looked into my copy of Healing with Whole Foods by Paul Pitchford and sought out some tips for dealing with the cold. So, we proactively got me some sleep and increased my vitamin C and had simple soups with basic greens. Rouge made an excellent simple soup with leek, shallots, celery, a little lemon, salmon, milk, and of course broth. It was perfect, light and green; which was an emphasis from the book. Fruits were encouraged; so in between my wakings I’d have rooibos or green teas and maybe a piece of fruit or orange juice and eventually a small bowl of soup.

I even tried a sweating technique to help erradicate the toxins from my body. I do believe it helped. I drank some hot chamomile tea, had some more in a hot bath and sweat and then tried to sweat some more in bed. That part didn’t go as well… it’s kinda cool here, but I certainly stayed warm!

So, it’s developing for me; “you are what you eat.” It’s becoming much more than just the simple phrase it once was. We really are what we eat. I’m so glad that Rouge and I are taking our extra efforts to have ecologically friendly foods whenever we can from eggs and milk to flour or museli. I do believe, more than ever before, that it really will and does have an impact in our bodies to have things ecological and organic. Thanks also to green for planting those seeds so long ago!

Heaviness

When my prevailling sensation is heaviness, I think I should already know by now that I’m in trouble, though I don’t normally recognise it. It’s a downtrend into the depths of negativity, self-deprecation, non-acceptance, and self-judgement. This is a horrible habit and one that seems to have been developed very early in my life. It seems to be an extension of the criticism and control that my parents enforced on me and my siblings. They also united their control with the concept of the Catholic Christian God. To this day, I resent what they have done, which shows me that I have much more healing to do.

I’ve come a long way and I am proud of my efforts in the process of healing and recovery from deep depression (in college in the early nineties). I’m nearly 34 years old and still fall into the trap of heaviness, negativity, and rigidity. I usually think my way out of it—which takes a great deal of time and attention. I write in my journal and contemplate my situation, experience, thoughts, emotions, intentions, desires, and relationships. I tend to get philosophical and read a lot of psychological and religious material to bump or nudge me me out of the stupor of suffering. And, it’s hard stuff; which makes me realize how much more healing I need to do. I need to be loving and compassionate with myself. I need to find authentic happiness and allow it to resonate in my being through all of my actions.