My life has been a peculiar one. I literally think that, the moment after I drew my first breath, and was handed over to my mother, we didn’t like each other. I never had a mother, emotionally, and on her own account she hit me hundreds of times from age one to 4, until my father, one of the least emotionally sensitive human beings I have ever met, put an end to it since even he could tell it did nothing but terrify me.
So I am left wondering, as an adult, how it is that I came to even approximate sanity. Perhaps I don’t. This is always a possibility. But I don’t think that is the case. I think my reality testing, because of long term, very dedicated effort, is better than that of most, not least because I do not retreat when confronted with the prospect of hearing something I don’t want to hear.
Last night I had perhaps the strangest set of dreams I have ever had, and that is saying something. I was told by some voice that all of us live 9 lives simultaneously, and I was shown 3 of mine. I dreamed I was one thing, then woke up, then dreamed something else, then woke, then did it a third time, with all of the wakings being in my room, but in a dream state.
Waking now–at least to the extent of typing on this keyboard, now, although of course I cannot say this is reality either–I wonder how any person could possibly process intellectually 9 lives. Answer: you couldn’t. You can’t.
But I think of the Buddhist teacher–Padmasambhava perhaps, or Longchenpa–who taught of the Four Great, the four feelings which are and can be made to feel infinite: Joy, Love, Compassion, and Peace/Tranquility. If I could infuse all those lives with those feelings, then there is a unity of sorts.
What if the Great Awakening of the Buddha consisted in realizing a truth like this, and successfully implanting these feelings in all his lives? What if Nirvana is an “extinction” of this separateness? How could he teach this, other than as he did? Not ONE Samsara but 9?
And what if evil is the result of trying to be good in one life, and thereby manifesting evil as a shadow in another? What if every evil person in this world is trying to be “good” in some other world, by carefully following rules, by not working on the Sabbath, by keeping fish and meat separate, and by keeping all the holidays scrupulously holy, and through all of this sequestering and separating some part of themselves emotionally, which itself then becomes dark and unholy?
I won’t lie: that whole thing was a bit of a mindfuck.
And here is an idea: what if the conscious “You” can only inhabit one at a time, but can, as it can and chooses, sequentially occupy all of them? Free will I have spoken of as “non-statistical coherence”, the extent to which a consciousness changes the behavior of a human system in ways which would not be expected by chance, not expected based on the sum total of biological inheritance and social conditioning. Maybe 8 of your 9 lives are fully statistical. Maybe they are like the Non-Player Characters which have worked so effectively recently to trigger Leftists. Maybe sometimes NPC’s grow to occupy entire worlds, when all the people who do not know how to alternate choose to stay in one place together, which we call heaven.
Lao Tzu said that it was impossible to improve the world. Within this vision, that may well be true.
Now, I am of course strongly dissociated, so another reading on all this entirely is of course possible. Reintegrating what I have lost emotionally is a present task of mine, and that is also unquestionably present. And much of this can be seen symbolized in the above. I was experimenting last night, when I started to shake, by saying “This is life”. “This is LIFE”. Which it is. The joy is on the other side of the terror. I can feel it. I can sense it, like a dog senses food.
But as I say from time to time, multiple truths can and usually do come simultaneously down the same pathways.
As to how I feel, I think I feel calmer than usual. My task right now is to feel like life is worth living. It has always been a struggle for me; if my sense is correct, since at least the first breath I took in this world. But I feel I am on the cusp of getting this done. That will be good.