Well then, it appears I have been wrong all this time, or rather mislead perhaps, being untrue to my original face. I have undergone a journey which has led me through many crossroads, I am now confronted once again at another crossroad, one path challenges my current belief systems, it appears harrowing, and with many obstacles but promising. The other path looks familiar and safe, something I have been through before. Do I want to take the chance and risk failure to experience something new, or do I want to play it safe?
I have lived my whole life in an atomistic, empirical kind of society of reductionism. All of the institutions including my family seemed primed for this kind of worldview of the observable world that can be mapped, categorized ect. Inherently within this “right hand” path lets say, the importance of consciousness and self awareness is nearly non existent. I lived my entire life mostly in pursuit of materialistic satisfaction, constantly seeking stimulation of my five senses, because as far as society was concerned that was all there is. Equipped with an upbringing of Catholicism i was especially fucked over as a child, combining the indoctrination of religious bigotry with this consumer kind of lifestyle made me feel extra guilty. I learned how to be greedy, selfish, dishonest, manipulative, deeply guilty and inadequate as a spiritual human being. I was a confused train wreck. Fortunately I reached a peak in this hellish state of consciousness and finally started to weave myself free by asking questions. If there is one thing I can thank my father for is for helping me understand that authority should be questioned regardless of anything. Its ironic how I learned this to because when told not to do something I would naturally ask in my head, but why? Many times an inadequate answer was given making me sceptical. So now I am starting to ask questions of the establishment, why were things the way they were? This sparked my rebellious spirit and my existential thought process, and the more I thought about it the more I confused I became; I was challenging all of the entrenched values and belief systems that have been entrenched in my young fragile mind. I spiralled out into schizophrenic stage of separation, I was two selves. My old self trying to claw on to the old and the new self trying to pry itself free, this transitional period was extremely rough. It was mainly selfish and hedonistic. I became a genius at escapism, a mastermind of self delusion. What I thought was love was just a well disguised form of narcissism. This chewed me bare until the point I could not feel anything and the only way I was able to feel alive was through pain. I felt so deeply empty my existence in this world was that of an empty can of sardines. I wallowed around this all time low for several loathing alienating months, instead of truly healing I masked the suffering with a wall that I built for myself, encased in a impenetrable shell that I could retreat into whenever I felt threatened or challenged. Stubbornly persistent and hard headed I continued. Somewhere along the lines of this time of self pity, I made the crucial realization that I was the bringer of my own pain, I allowed myself to suffer severely because I chose it. At first this didn’t make sense because I was so used to blaming the extrinsic forces as the root of my failures, always blaming the other. The thought that my self, my ego was the cause of my suffering was ludicrous, after all I loved my ego, I loved the persona I created myself with the helpful tools of society. Acceptance was far more important that non conformity, what my peers thought of me was too important and because of this it I compromised my integrity and widened the gap between the self and the true self. its funny because when I look back it really showed, just from the type of clothes I wore and people I chose to be around. And it is also ironic that you thought that those times were going to last forever, and you were going to be this person forever and not change. When I look back now I see a frightened and confused little boy and it scares me to think that most of those kids never really leave that level of consciousness, they cling to it and it ends up destroying them. Unfortunate as it sounds, many of the friends I had in school are still the same, no progress. I have to acknowledge though under certain circumstances the opportunity to further your consciousness is just not readily available, we can’t all be revolutionary thinkers. Let me just say thank you maryjane for opening my eyes to how much of a shitty human I was.
The roots of my spiritual reform were laid at my conception. Because I was brought up in such a comfortable environment where everything was provided which included wants, I expected things without having to work for them. Essentially I was spoiled to the max. I started looking deeper, everything material was satisfied and once again I felt empty and without meaning. Hedonism was not the answer, I needed more exponentially to fill in that gap, and my desire just deepened as did my suffering constantly trying to find my next fix. So in that sense because of my cushioned upbringing, I found dissatisfaction in that comfort as backwards as that sounds, like Siddhartha before me. Being the black sheep of the family, the weird one, my parents tried frantically to understand me, to the point where it was just easier to say that I had ADD and should be medicated. Now when I look back I feel cheated, and that my development had been arrested, the amphetamines that they were giving me sure helped me focus but the side effects were unparallel and consequential. BUT. Once again this played a crucial role in my rebellion because once I was old enough to realize that all that was being done was contributing to my dehumanization, I got angry and I demanded answers. So then the seeds of my revolt were in place and I proceeded to rebel and do things my own way regardless if wasn’t the best way I was defiant against my parents or any other authorative figure for that matter. The more I was repressed, the more I regressed to my rebellious state. Though a seemingly turbulent and unnecessarily violent way to change, it was the only way I think my true self could have survived, and it is proving to be working thus far in protecting my true nature from external pressures. I am just so glad that I went through that turbulent stage early rather than later, if I didn’t do what my intuition told me I could still be in the same dormant conscious state of self pity, low self esteem, materialistic narrow mindedness. I can also say that my progression was not forced which is why I am not where I don’t want to be, I am exactly where I want to be and though it seems uncertain at times I generally know where I am going to be.
With all of this being said, I cannot claim to be some sort of spiritually enlightened Buddha, because I fully understand that I am far from it. My spirit manifests daily through the choices I make, sometimes they are disassociated and then dissolve and sometimes they transcend and include. i am still in this angry, confused state that I believe is necessary and crucial to ones growth. Anger is a very constructive emotion if expressed rightfully and with non violence something very beautiful can arise from it. I can sense though that I am nearing the end of this angry stage of defiance and am now learning the fundamental importance of sacrifice and acceptance of the things that I cannot change. But it is my responsibility to help people realize their true self, the all encompassing nothingness, the divinity within us all. This can only be done through love. I have diverted my focus from changing political systems, ideologies, systems to trying to change the individual who make up these systems. You really have to start at the root level so naturally it can bloom into something beautiful rather than applying cosmetics to hide the ugliness that we have been doing since the dawn of man. My philosophy is human potentiality, furthering our potential one person at a time. I have not yet realized my full potential because I have constructed all of these limitations so my philosophy is subject to change, but i feel as if I am headed in the right direction regardless if the whole world is shitting the bed. Because really it does not matter what is happening “out there”. How do you expect to change anyone if you can’t even change yourself?
Now I have come to my initial point here, I have reached a crossroad in where I see the opportunity to change the way I think. Should I take it? I think it’s necessary and here is a parable to why I think it is necessary. Gutama Buddha, Confucius and Chuang tzu are sitting at a restaurant discussing existential matters, when the waiter comes up with three drinks called labelled “life” Buddha automatically says no because he understands that life equals suffering, Confucius on the other hand takes a more logical, sceptical approach to the drink and says well I cannot judge if I haven’t tried, so I will take a sip. He takes a sip and then says “your right, life is suffering”. Chuang tzu on the other hand takes all three drinks and downs them all, he proceeds to sing and dance, laugh and cry. Buddha and Confucius are in awe in shock. You have to take risks or else you will not have ever really lived. Buddhism disregards the body as illusory, but I believe that it is fundamental as a part of the whole spiritual experience. Integrally accept everything for its divine nature. Confucius the logical behaviourist takes a small sample and quickly disregards anything else; he is satisfied in his claim. That is what religion and science has wrong, they both cling to one side disregarding the possibility of the other, it is dual and therefore fragmented. But if you are like chuang tzu and you embrace everything life has to offer then you will experience. This whole time I was obsessed of the idea of the middle way of no extremes, I thought I could escape suffering derived from desire by attaining perfect equilibrium, I now realize that this middle way is in its own is an extreme. If you notice the lever of a clock sways back and forth, if it stops at the middle, it stops working. Constantly sway back and forth between opposing forces and you will always experience a moment of clarity and peace as it passes briefly through the center. I haven’t fully yet finished my endeavours of the “left hand path” religious experimentation so in that sense my view is still fractured and dual. But I am gearing myself towards a new integral approach that can integrate both the extrinsic and intrinsic, the extroverted and the introverted, the external and the interior, the “I” and the “IT” objectivity and subjectivity, science and spirituality, rational and irrational, logical and creative, man and woman. I am anticipating the moments the pendulum of life hits the middle but also excited to see how far it can take me with careful moderation.
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