I've been doing some intensive "Krishnamurti"-ing work mentally and philosophically over the past year or so, but even more so the past couple of weeks...
I started deconstructing my personality, my self, my ego, my id, or whatever you want to call it...
Stripping away layers of conditioning from family, from culture, from country, from friends...
Dunno if any of this is making sense to you guys, the stuff I write... basically what goes on in my head 24-7. It never turns off... hahaha...
But we find ways to deal, and we adjust and adapt as we go along...
What have I decided? Hahaha...
Perhaps don't think too much about it?
That's perhaps one of the best things, I find... NOT being a deep thinker...
I was stripping away all of the parts of myself, my self, that I could see were affecting my ability to live and observe truly freely...
You know, working away at myself mentally, like an old whittler sitting on his front porch, chewing on his beef jerky, turning the wood in his hands this way and that, finding the best ways to reveal the true quality of the wood...
Could be a few double entendres in there... hahaha...
I keep coming back to this state that I have found myself able to exist in... pretty close to a selfless state...
I am still me... but either not "switched on" upstairs, or switched on upstairs but able to totally ignore it...
Just observing, feeling this deep joy whilst observing, feeling an eternal gratitude for this gift of sentient life...
Feeling connected to everything, but not in quite the same way as I get when I am hypomanic high... it "feels" totally different to the hypo one... much more authentic, but that's the world of my thoughts and measuring inquisition... that is not where the selfless self resides...
We can't fix each other but we're helping each other by fixing ourselves...
To me, that is the only way that we should help others... deep down I believe this too...
My journey is all about the self...
All that self evolution revolution stuff... hahaha...
Problems with ourselves to face and deal with...
It's difficult stuff that has to be faced...
Most people will shy away from it...
Most people will avoid it like the plague...
Most people will find any distraction and reach for ever greater short-lived pleasures, just so they don't face the hard truths and the work that has to be done...
Nobody else can fix me...
That doesn't scare me...
That excites me...
The power is mine...
I have been to dark places... somewhere Hell-adjacent... maybe the dodgy place round the corner... hahaha...
Where you feel totally Dead Ended...
Gone as far as you can go...
Or stumbled upon a problem that you cannot solve...
Thrown yourself, balls to bone, at it...
All of your might, your intellect, your conviction, your will power, your strength, your fortitude...
And yet, you're still standing there, scratching yer nuts... hahaha...
That explains the place I'm talking about...
It's not for me to solve now, for otherwise I would have solved it...
That's one way to look at it...
Is it really a problem? Or is it your YOU looking for a problem to get stuck into?
Is it lots of measuring and comparing, for we are all experts at that...
I spent a long time doing that in my life, having the projections of my father on me, or even worse... my projections of my father's projections on me... hahaha...
When does it end?
It doesn't...
It's like particle physics...
They keep finding smaller and smaller particles...
Same thing with our quest to be a "better" person...
It keeps going on until we are no longer a sentient being...
Sometimes the frustrations of not living up to our expectations of where we were expecting to be by a certain time tears us apart...
That's hard to deal with...
I say this truly...
All of my wisdom has taught me this...
Sometimes we just need to go "Ahh, bugger it... give it a rest..."
Hahaha...
Here is my take on it...
You know how I've been banging on about reality - the Really Real, or "what is"?
Hahaha...
Well...
It takes a lot of life energy for us to deal with reality...
We waste so very much of our precious life energy on constant internal conflicts...
Where there are no conflicts, we make them up...
I haven't got a job...
I'm overweight...
I'm kinda lazy...
I don't live up to what society expects of me...
If I was on a current affairs show bashing the unemployed, peeps would be spitting on me in the street...
Or "I lost my temper again. I promised myself I wouldn't do that!"...
... and then you go and lose your temper about that... hahaha...
Been there...
All this measuring and judging and comparing...
Conditioning from our society and from our family upbringing and from our friends and school and work and all around us...
Bombarding us with comparison... what's better... what's worse...
And here are we, the confused numbnut standing in front of the wall of toothpaste going "What the heck??? I just want toothpaste..."
Spoiled for choice...
Too much going on...
Failing and falling on too many fronts...
Getting worn down and confused and using up all of my life energy...
Trying to deal with life - the Really Real - and at the same time, trying to deal with myself...
And then deal with myself dealing with myself...
All this time, there's a constant fracturing of my "self" going on...
There's a new part of my self that says "Stop it! We have to do this in order to be better!"...
Then all the other parts of my self have to decide whether to agree or disagree with this bit of self that is currently trying to take authority and go in a particular direction...
All of this takes an inordinate amount of life energy you know...
And so we don't have enough energy to deal with life - the Really Real...
Hahaha...
Anyhoo... I've already spewed way too many words at you lovely peeps...
Sqwaaaaarrrkk!!!
Damn you Cyril!
[Wriggles shoulders uncomfortably as the pesky parrot poops on his back]
For the longest time, I used to feel that I was broken for not wanting to have kids...
What a dumb thing this is... feeling broken for something that I couldn't control...
That's part of what I'm rabbiting on about with the wasting life energy and the measuring and comparing and stuff...
Deep down, when I eventually got there, I just knew I didn't want kids...
I was different to most everyone else...
But not broken...
Definitely not broken...
But feeling like you are broken makes you broken, so paradoxically I *WAS* broken... hahaha...
When I let go of that... all of that thinking I was broken when I actually wasn't...
That freed up a hell of a lot of my vibrant life energy, to actively process and enjoy reality to the fullest...
Sheesh, Si... stop going on will ya? You're like a flaming broken record...
Giggle...
Love yer gutzes peeps...
That's what my mates used to say to me whenever I wanted to have a "real" discussion...
They just didn't want to talk about important stuff...
That's not a bad thing...
Everyone is different...
But alas, I was the only one who did want to talk about this kind of stuff, and so I became more and more alienated, alone in a crowded room...
A booming laugh and a dazzling vitality that sounded fake in my own ears...
At the same time, society (and one's missus - this was the reason my wife became my ex-wife) puts soo much pressure on having kids...
Almost all of my mates had kids...
My parents were pestering me every time we spoke...
"So... Si... when are you going to have kids?" became so common that my instant reaction was to just sigh, turn my back, and walk away...
I tore myself numerous new a-holes over the past 4 or 5 years, with guilt and regret and bashing myself...
But hey... enough...
Step 1 - learn to like yourself...
Step 2 - learn to love yourself...
Step 3 - learn when to fix yourself and when to not touch what ain't broke...
Step 4 - live...
As far as I am concerned, there's only one go at it...
What's done is done...
That broken rib from years ago... does it still hurt? No? Then why carry the memory of that hurt around with you forever?
That argument you had with your dad... does it still hurt? No? Then why carry the memory of that hurt around with you forever?
[Insert blank here...]... does it still hurt? No? Then why carry the memory of that hurt around with you forever?
The hurt is a thing that happens in the instant Now moment... do not confuse your memory of hurt with actual present hurt...
Letting go of the memory of hurt is a very hard thing to do...
The harder the hurt, often the harder it is to let go, but that is also an illusion...
I believe that insight into something will instantly free you from that something...
You can be a slave to domestic violence for years, for example, and step away from that horrible cycle of hurt and victimisation and power plays in a moment of clarity...
An alcoholic can put down the bottle in a moment of clarity...
All of this... where does that clarity come from?
It comes from insight... in that moment of insight, you are truly alive to the present moment and the reality around you...
There is no doubt...
There is just right action...
This is the power of insight, and it is what guides my ongoing journey of truth, for truth is a pathless land...
If that is so, then I am happy to wander and wonder...
Hahaha...
When we drop a rock into the pond, the ripples play across the surface of the water, going this way and that, forming and reforming as they bounce off the edges...
Hurt is like a rock dropped into a pond, except that we warp and twist it with the world of our thoughts...
We endlessly analyse the rock and the pond and the ripples...
We endlessly analyse our hurt... who has hurt us... how much have they hurt us... all of this measuring and comparing and endless conflict...
In the process, we confuse the hurt for the memory of the hurt, and the ripples keep playing endlessly across the surface of the pond, in contradiction of the natural order of things...
The ripples never end... the hurt never ends...
Where does this end? This is the question you have to answer, in order to still the surface of the pond and return to peace and calmness... return to nature...
Accept that the rock has fallen into the pond...
Observe the ripples...
Marvel that there is a rock and a pond and ripples at all...
Let peace return to the pond as rock and pond return to their natural state, and the ripples calm to mirror-flat...
