Can't Go to Bed; My Brain Will Eat Me

As far back as I can remember, I've needed a long routine to get to sleep. Even now, simply plopping down on the bed and shutting my eyes doesn't cut it. I could stay awake for hours on end. As a child, it was because I was aware that there were things I was missing; I think that's a common reason why children don't want to go to bed. There are still things happening, things to do. Bed is boring, and thinking is difficult and frightening. When we're left alone in the dark as children we begin to imagine creatures in the closet, or see shadows on the wall. I think that this combination of not wanting to miss out on what's happening in your absence, with the fear and stress of what your mind does when it's left to it's own devices is fascinating. Like so many things, we keep the same habits we had when we were children just in a more grown-up way.

Don't let the word "grown-up" fool you. It's just as absurd, if not more so.

When at a pub or a bar with friends I am usually the last to leave and I encourage everybody to stay late with me, despite whatever it is we all have to do in the morning. If some people are going out, I must be there and I have to be there for everything. I don't want to miss a damned thing. If I leave early, I become slightly depressed and start thinking about going back out. This is, of course, very unhealthy physically, emotionally and financially. Nobody can be there for everything and trying to do so will ruin you.

Just recently I opted out of a trip out of town with my brother to visit my sister. Earlier today, I decided not to go out with a bunch of friends to the pub (mostly because I'm broke, but let's pretend it's because I'm being responsible.) Both things would have been very enjoyable and I'm sure everybody had a good time, but I felt I should have sit it out this time around. There would be other times to see sis, and there's a weekly trip to the pub. However, as soon as I was left alone I began to worry that I was missing out on something fun or that I was letting somebody down. Naturally, we all want fun. It seems, though, that I can't handle not-fun. I'm not speaking of misery or even boredom, just a certain lack of excitement or social interaction. It scares me in a very unique and very weird way. It ties my guts in knots and I feel like something about my identity is threatened.

You see, when left alone I begin creating new monsters and they are just as bogus as the ones I dreamed up as a child. As cliche as this sounds, I'm beginning to realize that my worries are not based so much on what people think of me (certainly a large part of how everybody behaves,) but much more so on what I think of myself. I am not saying that I hate myself, far from it, but that for all the meditation I engage in; for all my exhortation to others, I still worry about other people's perception of me. I still get anxious about expectations. When I am with people, I can keep these problems at bay, but only for a short while. Eventually one has to face these issues and you can either face them and realize that they aren't even real (which is easy to understand intellectually, but not quite as easy psychologically,) or collapse in defeat and failure.

I feel like I'm making small strides, but as it stands right now, I am still truly afraid of turning off my music, going home and turning my attention inward.

Happy, Open Stubbornness

It's been nearly three weeks since I've written anything, mainly because I didn't have anything to write about, and even if I did, I'm often getting ahead of myself in my views. This blog is a great way to sort myself out and feel things out a little better, especially because of the conversations in the comments section (further solidifying this as mainly being read by family and friends, but that's cool. Knowing me probably gives some good context.) Seriously, I could just copy/paste the conversations in the comments sections and have three new posts, but that would of course be lazy.

So I get all these ideas and run away with them immediately without contemplating them. To paraphrase Lao-tzu: "Standing on your tip-toes can help you see over a wall, but in doing so you sacrifice your footing and are set to fall." But, of course, where would any of us be if we didn't take risks? My problem lately has been that I am too interested in my footing, but I'm also trying to stand on my toes. I want to expand myself but I don't want to take the risks involved.

I should clarify, by "sacrificing your footing," I don't mean throwing yourself into the world and constantly forming and reforming your opinions with reckless abandon. Just as open mindedness is not the same as being gullible, these risks I am talking about are not the same as being flaky with your philosophy. There are some very stubborn people out there with very intelligent views, willing to listen and consider what other people have to say. Likewise there are some open, accepting people who are wishy-washy and foolish.

Take, for example, the Dalai Lama. His message of compassion, peace and detachment from wealth hasn't changed in many, many years. He is actually quite a stubborn person (not that I've met him, personally,) but not stubborn like a brick wall, rather he stubborn like a river. He doesn't shut people up or antagonize opposing views, but he takes them and moves around them.

In many ways I am a brick wall that thinks he's a river. Many of us are like that. How often do you meet somebody who claims to be progressive, compassionate and open-minded. Then as soon as you challenge their ideals they start to get fired up and angry. I'm not talking about conversations that get excited and escalated (those are often fun.) I'm talking about claiming to not be easily offended, and it turns out that the mechanism for that is deflection and rigidity.

Throw a pebble at a wall and it will bounce off, but still chip the surface.
Throw a pebble at a river and it disappears, seemingly to never be seen again. However, it may be brought to shore in time, rounded and smooth.

I Feel Beautiful in the Head Today

Took a walk in the woods today. Nothing helps me think better. Of course, the clarity with which I'm thinking while I'm out there, like a high or dream, quickly fades when I come back home. I keep thinking that maybe I should seriously consider being a hermit for a little while, just to see what happens. In any case, here's the general gist of what I was thinking about today. Or at least, it's the best I can do with what I remember.

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I kept thinking that I need to organize my life. Then I sat down by a stream and saw the rocks and pebbles strewn in random places, while the water flowed around them. It dawned on me that people say things like "get real," or "welcome to the real world." Their "real world" is full of grid patterns, straight lines, files, structures and numbers. We need these things to function, and yet the real real world is random, spontaneous and messy. Yet life, like the water, finds a way around everything with great ease. The real world can function, indeed it thrives, without the organization that we seem to need. So perhaps we're actually quite stupid in comparison with the world. I find that quite uplifting and encouraging.

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I think some ideas and feelings are self explanatory, and can't be otherwise defined. Love, anger, hatred, happiness etc. These things require no explanation because they are experienced at a very young age and the adults say to you, "that is anger," or "that is love."

We can give these things characteristics and descriptors, but we cannot truly get at the core definition. However, that sits fine with me. I would rather revel in their magnificence than try to say what they are or what they are for. I'm sure people might be getting tired of my Alan Watts references, but he describes a real philosopher as something of an, "intellectual yokel." Somebody who can't stop gawking at things and at the grandeur of life itself.

Props to the philosopher's who deal with that by defining things, and deciding whether or not that sentence makes sense, or whether or not this concept is logically valid. It's not for me, though. I am content in simply being.

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Existence is playful.

The sight of a bathing bird or a squirrel eating a seed brings delight to my soul. Everything bounces and jitters and makes funny sounds. It all seems so light. The flora around us blooms and explodes. It dangles and sways. It spins and unfolds. It runs on and on in it's own messy, wiggly way.

If you asked me, "What is the nature of our existence?" I might answer by humming a song.

Man, maybe I am going crazy.

Imagine There's No Heaven

I feel like I'm seeking in the same manner that somebody looks around for their glasses when they are right on the person's face.

I've spent a long time trying to expand upon my last entry and it has been exhausting. I've been trying to explain why I am not one thing and why I think another thing, revising opinions and scrapping entire entries and starting over. I feel like my mind is settled and that I can sit down and write, but then the dust just gets kicked up again.

I think this is mostly because, although I believe in the importance of spontaneity especially in cases of philosophy and spirituality, I never took the time to sit and lay down some basic groundwork in my own mind (for example: I am not a Catholic but I still wear a scapular). After I left the church, I wandered pretty aimlessly until I finally landed on a few ideas that have recently evolved. The problem is that I skipped over or didn't think much about the basic things and leaped right into the big ideas, using terms and concepts that I'm not sure I understand or at least haven't really taken the time to make a decision about. So a created a list of four questions that I had never genuinely asked myself.

Do I believe in God(s)?

Not as such. I do not believe in an extra/omnidimensional or omnipotent existence. It has taken me a long time to come to admit that. I held onto that concept like a child that won't give up it's security blanket. I do, however, hold existence itself in similar sort of mystical esteem. I accept the idea that there are very strange forces at work that we cannot yet hope to understand. For example, magick might actually be a thing. I don't really buy into it but it does make a certain amount of sense to me if I think of it from a sort of... psychodramatic point of view.

Do I believe in an afterlife?

No, but I do not believe that it strips us of our responsibilities and consequences of our actions.

What is the purpose of existence?

The purpose of existence is, in my mind, that there is no purpose. That existence is for existing, and every second I spend thinking about what I want from it or where it is going is a second spent not actually doing things and figuring things out. Even what I am doing right this very second is kind of weird, because while it is the exact opposite of what I have been talking about (learning and being instead of knowing and dissecting) I get enjoyment out of blathering about nothing and putting it out there for people to see. I like to entertain. I would like to see if people out there can enjoy a point of view that I quite like, and that has helped me a great deal.

So my answer to "Why are we here?" would be, to be happy and find a sense of worth in some fashion or another. Sometimes being happy means living for the moment, in a perpetual now; sometimes it means planning and doing something productive and getting that sense of worth.

I don't think it's weird to say that and turn around and say that I don't think there is a God or an afterlife. I don't believe the removal of a cosmic judge and watcher from the picture turns the idea of ethics on it's head. Which leads me to my next question.

What is good and evil?

No afterlife and God is not, in a stricter sense, a single being with a single will of it's own? No great entity comprised of pure goodness, or even goodness itself? Well then, how can we possibly make a clear, concise decision of what is good and evil? How can I claim that we ought to be compassionate when I have no basis, no creator to compare it to? I'm really tempted to just say "I don't know," and move on, but let's at least try.

For a long time I tried to distance myself from dualistic views of good and evil, mainly because of the sense that good is stronger was so heavily ingrained in me. Also because of a concept that was explained to me through the works of C.S. Lewis. He talked about how dualism doesn't work in this case because evil has to borrow free will, a good trait, to be evil. Evil has to actively decide to be so, and yet good can be good of itself or through free will.

There are ideas in there that I like and that I don't like. I like his distinction that good is not only a choice, but also that when things are the way they ought to be, it is a good thing. What I don't agree with is his assertion that free will is not a neutral thing. I certainly enjoy having free will (most of the time) and try to make the best use of it, but it can be used to perform acts on either side of the ethical fence. Saying free will is good because you don't need it to be good doesn't make a whole lot of sense to me. So, to bring it back around, I can't help but have this nagging inclination that, while the "forces of good and evil" (whatever that means to you) might not be exactly equal in strength or will or power or whatever, that it's difficult to imagine one without the other. Good things are called good, I think, because they can be compared to evil.

If a person doesn't go around stabbing people, helps friends when he sees they are in distress and tries to be decent but generally minds his own business, we would say that is a good person.

If a person, say, becomes a doctor and goes overseas to help impoverished countries, donates regularly to homeless shelters and generally dedicates their life to helping others, we would say that is a very good person.

Killing people, taking their things, hurting people physically or emotionally, hatred. These are evil things, n'est-ce pas?

So if we remove the heavens from the picture we see right away that good things are things that help or at the very least don't hinder each other's lives and that, comparatively, evil things are things that create obstacles for each other. We know when something is good if it is not evil, and conversely we know something is probably bad if we can't find anything good about it. Both things will perpetuate forever or as long as humans are still around to make that distinction. So it is hard to not see it from a dualistic perspective.

So now I think I can knuckle down. Those are, to my knowledge, the questions I had really been shying away from. Just when I thought I had landed on something profound, the only thing holding me back was fear of letting go of a few things I really didn't find worthwhile in the first place. I couldn't really think about God or the afterlife because it's what my life was based around for so long, and I couldn't let go of it. I could be wrong, obviously. Everybody could be wrong. However, even if I were to return to Christianity, I'd feel good about admitting to myself that, for a while, I didn't believe in God.

I'm feeling better already.

Sorry about the J Lennon quote in the title, I couldn't resist. I used to dislike that song.

It's starting to grow on me.

From Christianity to Mysticism

I've been having a serious inner debate on whether or not to talk about a few things up here. Mainly because they are very personal, and partially because I'm not really done thinking about them yet. I haven't really put my thoughts together on this one (but what else is new?). This is actually a very sensitive subject, not just for myself but for some of my friends and family (some of whom actually read this thing).

This Easter season has made be start to think about a few things. Such as the fact that it occurs to me that I never have explained to anybody, myself included, the reasons behind what makes me so uncomfortable with Christianity, Catholicism in particular. So let me start out with talking about that for a bit, then segue into something completely different without really finishing any of my thoughts. Cool? Alright, let's begin.

For lack of a better description, I sort of drifted away from it in my mid-teen years without putting a hell of a lot of effort into it. That's not to say that I didn't think about it at all, far from it. Rather I just didn't have that sudden rebellion to it that most people do when they leave. The main reasons were the basic doctrines that I couldn't accept on blind faith. Contrary to popular belief, Catholicism makes complete logical sense after you accept a few things as truth without any proof. Some people call it "faith," others, "gullibility." I think it's probably somewhere in between (and also that neither is necessarily a bad thing), but that's not the point.

The point is I never had that feeling. I was never able to take that leap of faith. These days, I feel like I have a much better grasp on "spiritual" concepts than I have before, but even if I could grasp these basics of the faith it's now the things that are supposed to make sense that bother me.

There are several facets of the religion with which I take issue, but the one I would like to talk about is the belief that we are born flawed. Not just original sin, which can be overcome through Baptism, but the idea that no matter what is done we are doomed to never achieve wholeness in this life. There seems to be a concept that this life is, if not a test, a mere precursor to what we were created for. I find this disturbing. I don't understand the point of this life if we were flawed at square one because of something we didn't do. Do we have to prove our goodness to achieve peace?

Do I think we are perfect? I believe that the whole notion of "perfection" is insane. I don't think it means anything except as a descriptor for something that can't ever exist. If you asked me to point out the perfect person I would point at the nearest person (after slapping you), just like a perfect rock would be a rock that does what a rock does (which is the nearest rock). There is no Great Rock that is the rockiest rock that ever rocked.

Now, I also believe that a rock or tree cannot behave in a fashion that betrays it's nature. This is where people are different. I think it's possible for people to forget how to go about people-ing (to borrow yet another word from Alan Watts). I don't claim to know exactly how somebody persons perfectly but I know, in a similar leap of faith that the Christians make, that I can find out how and that I can find it in this life. I also can't claim to know why or how we got to the point of so many of us forgetting what it means to be a person, but I still can't shake the feeling that many people are pretending, or buying into a hoax, and admitting that is the first step.

Isn't it funny that the word "mystic," when used as an adjective means "mysterious, strange, enigmatic, obscure," and yet as a noun, a mystic is somebody who, regardless of religion, dedicates their lives to making sense out of life, most commonly the nature of the self? From yogis and gurus to the Saints, they search more for an answer to a person's nature than obscure rituals and hokey philosophies. Yet, if you were to call somebody a mystic it strips them of credibility in the eyes of most modern thought. They come to us and tell us that what matters the most to us isn't what really matters. They almost unanimously say that we are buying into the game, and they try to warn us that it's only going to bring anxiety. No superstition, no sacrificial goats, no hemp shirts, no psychedelic drugs (debatable), no homeopathy, nothing. Just a simple message.

To quote the ever immortal Bill Hicks, "They say 'Don't worry. Don't be afraid. Ever. Because... it's just a ride.'"

"and we kill those people."

Things Make Me Feel Cool, But Probably Make Me Look Like an Idiot

When I'm listening to a cool song and I'm going up/down an escalator, I like to pretend I'm in the opening credits for a really cool movie about me.

When I go to the beach and I'm coming back to land from the water, I stay horizontal in the shallow water and pull myself to shore and pretend I'm an alligator.

When somebody is driving a car through the snow at night, if I'm in the passenger's seat I pretend I'm on a space ship and the snowflakes flitting past the windshield are stars flying by at warp speed.

When I'm in the shower sometimes I sit down and close my eyes and pretend I'm in an alley in the rain and I'm the Maxx from that comic. Then the shower curtain sticks to my leg and the illusion is shattered.

When I'm listening to really exciting music I do the crazy dance and pretend I'm Andrew WK. Sometimes when I'm walking downtown.

When I'm running and I have my black coat on, I push my elbows inside the coat so that it billows out a bit and looks like Max Payne.

When I read I like to pull my glasses down to the end of my nose and pretend I'm a wizard.

When I was a kid I used to bite off bits of my toast until it was shaped like a gun. I still do sometimes.

When I think about things, I put them online and pretend I'm a writer.

Here is a picture of a somebody very cool

The Cosmic To-Do List

A little bit of a supplementary for the last entry. I had a comment from my sister and I was going to quickly answer in the comments section, but I feel as though this warrants some more careful consideration. So, Sarah's original quote was as follows:

"Not out of virtue or duty, but because this is another one of those contradictions. If one accepts and reaches out to people and remain unconcerned about having the same be given back to them, they will begin to feel a welling of happiness within them."

Do you suppose that this feeling of well-being springs from nowhere? Could it be possible that virtue and duty are in our nature and therefore give us feelings of well-being? A thing is best itself when it complies with its own nature. I think the virtue part is necessary, as it saves this magnanimity you speak of from being condescending and self righteous and prideful.
I love that prayer of Francis too (being a Franciscan)... Have you read his Canticle of the Sun? The language or ideas may first offend you but I am sure as you contemplate it you will love it!

Sarah:

I absolutely agree with you. Virtue and duty are very real and important things, but in being virtuous for the purpose of being a virtuous person I believe there is a danger of not just, as you say, being self-righteous but also of forgetting our nature. Similarly, doing things merely because they are your duty can lead to grudges and dissatisfaction. Putting names on positive qualities gives them a strict definition, which is good in many ways, but also makes them easier to corrupt and even easier to lose sight of what they really are. It's difficult for me to make sense of all this, because defining the attributes is a tricky and dangerous thing.

Virtue is close to the idea I'm trying to convey, but I feel like this nature is sort of inexplicable and even if I could explain it, then I would end up trying to pursue this explanation instead of the real thing. The closest thing I can say is that there are just Things You Do and Ways You Think that are either a part of your nature and therefore good for you (producing nice things like peace, happiness, satisfaction etc.) or they are contrary to it and will twist you in bad ways. It is my conviction that it is in our nature to be kind.

However, now arises the argument that we are all different emotionally, physically and even spiritually. Why on earth would our natures all be the same?

While it's true that there are no two people exactly the same, we all (typically) have bodies that function in the same. Our hearts pump blood through our bodies, our lungs take in oxygen, our livers cleanse our bodies of toxins. When one of these things stops working, we get sick and die.

I believe we are all different and that being different from each other is (sometimes) what makes this an interesting and beautiful world to live in (RAINBOWSBUNNIESSUNSHINELOVEPEACEHAPPINESS whew, I had to get that out of my system). However, much like the human body and it's organs I think we all have an underlying nature or "spiritual organs" if you will.

So there it is. I think.
I wrestled for a long time over how to end this entry but came up with nothing. Be well.