I have slowly evolved the conclusion that there is really only one pole that matters in human affairs, that between relaxation–the cessation of worry and neurologically rooted chronic trauma–and tension. A chronically tense person cannot be truly good. Period. They might be, say, Mother Teresa, and work relentlessly for 18 hours a day across many decades in selfless service. Don’t care. They are not working from UNDERSTANDING, because understanding at a deep level is impossible if it does not flow from a physically relaxed state.
So I got drunk last night, again. I’m very stressed and it’s an easy, short term release. But a voice said to me this morning (me talking to me, to be clear, nothing more) that if I can stand 2-3 months of relative silence and sadness, that the wave will be over, that inaccessibility will be gone.
And thinking about it, what we need other human beings for is to comfort and calm us. Children need parents for that–the mother in particular–and men need women for that. And women need women. Yes, there is a pattern there.
But loneliness, at root, is the lack of someone to calm you, and if you can calm yourself, you are not going to be lonely.
I have been making progress in my meditations. I was able to pack in the whole bundle of hatred and aggression that loops in out and out rhythmically, and include it all in a bunch in my space on the meditation cushion the other day. You have to get it in there to make it go away, and I did for a moment. I was also able to directly access the pain of solitude. Feeling ANYTHING, even something “negative” with sensitivity and presence is an inherently enjoyable thing. This is the path back to Life for all of us.
And I also felt Impermanence, and realized that it is always simultaneously PRESENCE. Yes, everything and everyone I love I will lose. BUT THEY ARE THERE NOW, and knowing that loss is inevitable it makes their presence NOW richer, stronger, and more pleasurable. If they feel permanent, they feel abstract in a way.
To my mind, as well as to what I feel, the idea of impermanence is not to loose all connections with everything and everyone. On the contrary, it is intended that you love more deeply, feel more deeply, be more consciously happy of what is there. Just recognize that every moment is a special moment that is bound to pass. But then there will be another moment, and another, and another. If you learn to be present to what IS there, then that is a good and intelligent way to live, right? Yes, I will answer for you.
And here is a nice little saying that I came up with in the midst of a long series of problems that seemingly went on endlessly (at work): Patience is a constant, kind companion. (edit: what I initially typed was true, too, but banal; I AM a bit fuzzy this morning).
That’s good, isn’t it, if I do say so myself. And it’s useful.
Think about this: if you are chronically irritated about this that or the other, you are in the presence, in effect, of a chronically irritated human being who constantly puts you on edge. But you are choosing it, by not rejecting it.
It seems obvious to me that learning calm is learning patience in the midst of troubles. It is asking yourself: who do I want as my passenger in the carseat of my brain? Do I want someone who calms me down, or who agitates me?
And obviously, if you are patient and persistent, you get more done in the end, done better, and done much much more happily. You have more attention, more energy, and more motivation.
So these are some of my musings in recent days. I have realized that blogging is very much me trying to calm myself by creating an illusion of companionship. I’ve said this before, probably several times.
It’s funny how you can encounter an idea, accept it, play with it, but not REALLY “grok” it for a long long time. Impermanence is certainly an idea like that for many of us. So are love and compassion. Most of us likely dream in faded colors and grays, and don’t even realize it, since there is nothing to compare it to.
Last idea, not really part of this, but something I liked, so I will share: the word Hurtred. I was in an alley filled with street art, and looking at these “poems” on the ground that sounded like the affirmations someone walked out of a psychologists office with, and looking at these two individuals, who appeared to be black women, but both gender and race were, to me, a bit indeterminate, so I made them a provisional lesbian couple in my mind. And I pictured both of them with traumatic personal histories, trying to make things work, when both of them would fly into a rage sometimes over nothing; both of them both needy and terrified. Typical human beings, in other words, who most likely thought they were unusual, since everyone else seems -so smiling and happy. I pictured them hating Republicans as an easy scape goat for all the ambient hurt and anger, and then that word popped into my head.
Can there be hate without hurt? I don’t think so. Not true, lasting, gut level hate. I will even posit this: hate is proportional to hurt. Would the Holocaust have been possible without the disaster of World War 1? I very much doubt it.
And that of course begs the question as to the source of the enormous volume of irrational hatred in our present world. We live in the most affluent society in human history. Our lives, by any reasonable physical standard, are if anything much too easy.
But here is the thing: hurt is proportional to capacity. Weak people are vastly easier to hurt than strong people, and most of us are weak because we lack real problems.
But at a deeper level, I think most Americans, at least, exist at an emotional level of nutrition roughly equal to what you get with a sugary breakfast cereal or Pop Tart. We don’t get enough DEEP connection. Most of us live in this limbo where everybody is faking feelings most of the time, not least because they don’t even know what they are feeling. Sentimentalism is the worse substitute for authentic deep feeling. It is superficial feeling, that becomes all the stronger for lacking true substance.
We are all lonely, in other words. “The Lonely Crowd” was written in the 1950’s, wasn’t it? Have things improved? You know the answer to that. Social media has merely made superficial human contact easier and vaster. It is another form of fast food and white flour denuded of nutrients.
Oh, there are solutions to all this, for me. I see a way out, for me. And if and when I find that way, I will share it here. I might even show my face here and there, and not even while drinking.
Courage is the root of all discovery. Cultivate it. Value it.