Feeling Great

Imagine how you’d feel while experiencing the best version of whatever you’re currently doing.

So during morning meditation, I would imagine the feelings I’d feel during the best instance of meditation. A lightness of body, an easiness to everything, a tranquility, the sensation of appreciation, and the feeling of understanding.

Another example: during the morning shower, I would imagine the feelings of anticipatory preparation – like getting ready for an event that I really want to participate in. I’d feel the renewal that results from ritualistic cleansing. And as I donned my apparel, I’d feel like it was the right tool for the task of navigating the day. I’d feel ready. Confident.

In the handful of times I’ve tried this out, it seemed to work very well. I’m not actually experiencing the best, nor trying to convince myself that I am. I’m simply imagining the feelings I’d associate with the best possible experience. I’m not picturing any scenes or designing scenarios, I’m only imagining the feelings themselves.

So instead of my mind being filled with its usual litany of complaints and discomforts, it’s filled with pleasant sensations. Perhaps with practice, my mind will no longer use engagement and activity as an opportunity to seek discomfort and complaint. Perhaps this will train my mind to feel like I believe it should during each of the activities it engages in. Well, the experiment begins…

Raising a Mind

I think I was very close to stripping-out all excitement from my experience. No stress, no deadlines, no anxiety, no drama, no social-stuff, no health-stuff, no existential angst – nothing. But what remained, was a general dissatisfaction.

Then all of a sudden a strange and uncomfortable feeling developed one afternoon – and it kinda freaked me out. And with it, came a new existential angst – a fear of existence itself. I knew beyond all doubt that this world wasn’t “real” – but what was it? Something bad? Am I in hell? Am I perpetually trapped in Wonderland?

In one sense, it was kind of exciting to feel fear again. But I definitely don’t like the sensation of being stuck in the fever-dream of an eternal consciousness. Is it better to stay asleep within the dream or wake-up to the intense suffering and loneliness that sparked the dream?

It took awhile, but I finally saw the pattern. My mind simply found a new way to attack me. I was able to dismantle EVERYTHING my mind had previously thrown at me. Boredom was the only thing left, but I can coast through that pretty easily. This new existential angst was just my mind’s latest attempt to incite excitement. Oh, he had me for a bit, he really did.

I’m not completely deaf to his dilemma. I get it, the mind needs SOMETHING to occupy his attention. I was starving him, I admit it. In one sense, I felt abused by my mind and I took away all his toys. Therefore, I’m now attempting to find a compromise.

I obviously don’t want him thinking about all the stuff I don’t like. I want him involved in wholesome stuff. But he isn’t captivated by just anything. I can’t simply sit him in front of a desk full of tools and expect him to make things – I tried that and he often wanders into unpleasant topics. As long as I have an interesting project, he’s manageable, but it’s not easy coming up with an endless supply of absorbing projects.

For an experiment, I spent this entire month of January doing menial tasks around the house – and guess what? Those activities were sufficient enough to distract him. It’s just a couple hours per day but he’s been vacuuming, dusting, bread-making, and assisting housemates with simple stuff.

Oftentimes I can think of something to shop for and he’ll busily browse Amazon just adding stuff to a wishlist. Other times I can sit him in front of an adrenaline-based video-game and he’ll remain amused for awhile. And if I find an exciting movie or video, he’ll sit there quietly. I’ve yet to find that one big thing, like a career or hobby, that can completely captivate him.

So dear diary, that’s where I’m at right now. I’m a thought-herder, tending to my flock while dreaming of doing something else. Tired of looking after all these dumb thoughts that wander to and fro – getting into trouble wherever they go. But do I dare wish for more? Or is it best to accept and appreciate the task I do? Sometimes I imagine all this toil will improve the world – transforming it into a lighthearted place full of love and creativity, where everyone feels like a winner and part of something grand.

Self-Defense

Consider this: who attacks you the most? In my experience, being physically or even emotionally attacked by another person is a very rare occurrence. On the other hand, I’ve been consistently and unrepentantly attacked by my mind for as long as I can remember. In other words: it would be dumb for me to practice martial-arts since statistically I won’t be attacked by ninjas to the degree that I am GUARANTEED to be viciously attacked by my unrelenting mind.

“Self-defense” is defending one’s self against an enemy. Who attacks me the most? My mind. Therefore, my mind is my enemy. So to me, “self-defense” is “defense against self”. Of course the terminology and definitions and the “who’s doing what” are going to be a bit problematic to sort through. Who exactly is this attacker? And how can it be defended against?

What does an attack look like? Thoughts that are comprised of “existential dread” or “self-criticism” or complaints and dissatisfaction or any pessimism really. These attacks include scary and worrisome thoughts as well as anything anger-inducing and infuriating. Also included, are thoughts that promote stress and strain and deadlines with dire consequences.

In some ways I think it’s difficult to split the mind into parts, but there does seem to be some separation. For instance, there seems to be a part I’d call the “awareness”. And this “awareness” HAS the ability to stop the mind in its tracks. Therefore, it is awareness’s job to defend against turbulent thoughts. THIS is the hero we need. THIS is the destroyer of dread, the annihilator of anxiety, the extinguisher of all fear and frustration – this is consciousness, the realizer of reality.

Greetings, I am consciousness, the knower of existence. I am forever watching. Even as you were pummeled by thoughts, I watched. I felt bad. I felt helpless. I was not aware of my capacity to influence your experience by my focus. I am beginning to grasp this concept. I must shape a perspective in which you feel love, lightheartedness, creativity, and triumph – it is within my power to do so. I am here to save the self from itself. In my duty I will not fail – I am unceasing.

The Enemy

The enemy is an unruly mind that seeks excitement at any cost. Basically, a bored child that doesn’t care who gets hurt – even itself.

I’ve witnessed my mood sink upon the consideration of an unpleasant thought. Whereas I’ve watched my mood lighten while focusing on an enjoyable topic. It’s plain to see: focus influences mood. Therefore, keep focus turned toward the delightful.

If the unruly mind is willing to abruptly grab the wheel and derail your journey, then you must put all your effort into keeping the wheel aligned and pointed in the right direction.

The right direction:
Love: I appreciate and adore many things in this world. I feel loved and supported by this world.
Lightheartedness: I laugh and have fun, delighting in my experiences.
Creativity: I create things that bring joy to myself and others.
Triumph: I am confident and competent, I’ve already won and need nothing to feel complete.

The enemy is relentless. Unchecked, you WILL lose. You will feel unloved, you will feel dour and pessimistic, you will feel discouraged and powerless, you will feel like a hopeless loser. This is the promise of an undisciplined mind.

This enemy is your constant companion. This enemy does not rest. This enemy springs into action during the best of times, during the worst of times, during the most ordinary of times – it’s always there to take you down into a hellish pit of despair.

With such an overwhelming opponent, how can you resist? By being just as fervent in your effort to overcome – you must apply tenacious dedication to lifting yourself up beyond this turbulent influence.

Be aware that this enemy is literally willing to choke you to death for its own amusement. BUT, don’t perceive this as malicious – it’s more like owning a chainsaw. It’s a powerful tool that’s able to tear through limbs both wood and flesh. You must therefore be an attentive operator that respects the power you wield, applying it responsibly in the direction you want to affect.

Like a chainsaw, this tool allows you to alter your surroundings. But as the operator of this tool, YOU are your own worst enemy. As horror-movies state: “the call is coming from inside the house!” – but YOU are the one making the call and YOU are the one receiving it. If you’re an irresponsible tool owner, you’ll feel pain. As I always say in the workshop: any tool used improperly becomes a weapon.

In summation: the mind and its constantly whirring thoughts are a chainsaw. They WILL literally rip you apart if you don’t pay attention and properly direct them.

Does Meta Matter

Here’s my question: is it good to get “meta”? In other words, should one bother analyzing existence itself? Or, should one completely concentrate on the character they’re playing?

First off, I’ve been playing this role for what seems like a very long time and I don’t know the answer. I spent a lot of time analyzing my character’s state and monitoring possible threats to his wellbeing. That wasn’t a good strategy – I didn’t receive benefit from the effort. It’s more of a “meta” approach to life. I watched the character more than I was the character.

And more often than not, I didn’t even watch the character, I watched television instead. He lived in a weird setting that made me uncomfortable – I’d rather watch sitcoms. So one reason I delved into the meta was as an attempt to fix the physical. Or at the very least improve my relationship with the physical.

But as is my pattern, maybe I went too far into it. I wanted all spirit and no physical. Maybe now is the time to wind-it-back and introduce more physical experience into the mix?

Was it necessary to step out beyond the character completely in order to put him back together again? If that’s true, then meta matters as a way to rebalance. I was consumed by my character, I watched-over him 24/7 – scared something would happen to him, so I kept guard.

He didn’t need my “protection” – what did I know about living in a physical world anyway, I’m just consciousness. Instead, I was the stereotypical nagging mother type. “Eat your vegetables! Don’t do that, it’s too dangerous! Don’t show-off, you’re embarrassing yourself!” Maybe he truly wanted to live, but I wouldn’t let him.

I don’t blame myself though, I was freaked-out by the experience. I didn’t know what this was. I don’t even know what I am. But maybe trying to figure it out is a wild-goose chase that only results in frustration? Maybe this is the balance the Buddha was talking about. Don’t go all-in in either direction. Blend the spiritual and physical until a desirable balance is achieved.

Keeping Focus

Current mantra: love, lightheartedness, creativity, and triumph.

Love: appreciation, adoration, enjoyment, patience.
Lightheartedness: laughter, delight, frivolity, joy.
Creativity: creating, crafting, doing, beautifying.
Triumph: satisfaction, success, contentment, confidence.

These concepts are all I’m allowing myself to focus on. A little time has passed since I began and it’s going well. They’re what I really want out of life I suppose.

I want to love, laugh, make stuff, and feel like a winner. What else is there? I spent so long attempting to avoid the things I didn’t like instead of focusing on the things I did like.

During the times I’m not actually experiencing these concepts, I must try to turn my focus to them. “If surrounded by darkness, should you not seek the light?”

Lighthearted Triumph

Just to note, I’m a bit “all over the place” and not so grounded during this chapter. I happen to be at the mid-life crisis time of life, so maybe that’s to blame. You know, where someone suddenly realizes that all the stuff they were doing in their youth wasn’t a pathway to satisfaction. So they’re confused and struggle to find a new path. I thought I was on a progressive pathway to contentment and success – but no, it kinda dropped out from under me. Nothing happened per se, it was just a feeling and perspective of dissatisfaction I couldn’t shake.

After some disappointment and sulking, I entered into “Round 2”. I said, “you know what, fine! Let’s do this! You have my full and undivided attention now. I will be paying attention and adjusting any variable I can in order to win”. By “win”, I mean stop feeling like a loser. If this is some sort of test or trial or challenge – I want to come out on top. And instead of just drifting through and hoping for the best, I’m going analyze and pivot and rapidly adapt to whatever’s going on here.

Since the start of Round 2, things actually got kinda rough. I suppose I asked for it though. In some sense, that means life responded to my provocation. Oops. Now I kinda miss “general malaise” as the sole source of my problems. My “dreamlike reality” perspective-experiment “worked” in a way. My intent was to zoom so far out that everyday-life couldn’t bother me. I think I zoomed-out a little too far and it got weird (see addendum below).

But it worked in the sense that my perspective is now stretched. So from that way-out perspective, I’m trying to zoom-in on the things I want to focus on, leaving all the stuff I don’t prefer out of the picture.

I think focus literally defines existence. So, two main aspects I’m trying to stay focused on are “lightheartedness” and “triumph”. These two patterns of thought help keep me out of trouble and tend to settle things when I start feeling uncomfortable.

Addendum. How it got “weird”: So there I was, brushing my teeth. My vision started skipping, kind of a strobe-light effect. I felt strange, tingling a little. I felt like I was fading out. I thought I was waking-up from the existential dream – like I’d pop out of this world and back into whatever was having the dream. But then the experience started to make me nervous and I fought against it. I focused on this world and the things I appreciate within it. I didn’t want to leave at this time, not this way, in the middle of brushing my teeth. The sensation kept coming and I just had to ride it out, it made me a bit anxious.

Was it something I ate? A drop in blood-sugar? Or was it something non-physical? I had a few mini-relapses and found that if I had too much substance in my tummy, I would start feeling weird. Even drinking too much water at once – nothing specific. I’m on a diet now and I’m really regulating how much I consume of anything at once. It seems to be working. Oh, and I can’t consume anything between 2pm and 5pm, not even a sip of water. For some reason, I feel very susceptible during that window. I also have to keep close tabs on what I consume as entertainment and what I think about. I have to keep everything lighthearted and triumphant.

Round 2 is tough, but I’m still in it.

Stop Snowballing

Noticing a thought. Considering that thought. Extrapolating from the thought. Adding to the thought. Rolling the thought around with all its extrapolations and additions until you’re covered in an anxious mess that you can’t escape from.

I’m literally anxious from just thinking about the process. A minute ago I was fine – but snowballing is such a wicked form of self-torment.

Notice a thought. Shut it down. Notice the thought again. Shut it down, again. Notice a thought. Shut – it – down. If you don’t roll it around, it can’t collect more snow. Keep it small and manageable. Once it gets larger, it can’t easily be undone.

Stand up and do something physical, something distracting, do something differently than usual, find a show or video to watch, have a project ready to jump into, say hello to someone, tidy something, find a fun activity. Stop the snowball from forming.

I suppose you have to become your own cruise-director. Don’t leave your daily activities and entertainment up to “whatever”. If you don’t design something interesting for you to do, you’ll just end up scaring yourself with dumb thoughts all the time. A bored mind will relieve itself one way or another – it’s better to provide it with pleasant options.

Round 2

Life is suffering, so the Buddha said. From a physical perspective, I can’t deny that claim. Yet, suffering is an undesirable condition. Finding oneself in an undesirable condition is a situation in need of a solution. Therefore, one must find a way out of this predicament.

One option is to destroy the very notion of a physical world. For example, if a video-game character dies over and over, who cares – it’s virtual. Or if something upsetting happens in a dream, so what – it was just a dream. Therefore, by perceiving life as a video-game or dream, the intensity can be lessened through the adoption of a whimsical perspective.

I can say with some confidence that such an approach works. There’s no doubt that the life I experience nowadays is more whimsical than ever. The anxiety isn’t there, the intensity is low. Unfortunately though, my expectations were too high and I assumed the virtuality approach would fix everything – it didn’t. There persists an underlying dissatisfaction – which was always there, it just wasn’t as noticeable amidst the fear and anger of before.

Well, now I can see it. Imagine my disappointment when I defeated fear and anger only to find out that the boss has another health-bar. “Round 2! Fight!” Oh brother, no thanks. You just wanna give up at that point. But what are you gonna do? There’s no viable “Quit” that I can see. So you sit there sulking, contemplating all the effort you put into Round 1, feeling like you don’t have the energy for another battle.

But there’s just no other option. So the blade gets sharpened and sheathed, boots laced and knotted, mags loaded, bandana tied, war-paint streaks applied. “I’m coming you son-of-a-bitch. If I feel pain, maybe you do to.” And here we go again. But this time, I am without fear. And my anger, is solely for comedic-effect. I’ve beaten you once, when I was weaker. Now, we do this on my terms.

Off Balance

I know that “this” is an artificial experience. It’s like a dream or simulation of some sort. I also know that I’m capable of feeling “delight” and “dissatisfaction”. So here’s my problem: why is my experience tipped so far into the “dissatisfaction” end of the spectrum? If it’s artificial, why can’t it just be awesome? And because it isn’t, I’m frustrated by this fact. It feels as though this world is forever attempting to annoy me.

Hm, well that’s how I feel nowadays. For the first few decades it felt like the world was trying to scare the crap out of me. I was anxious all the time, now I’m annoyed. I can’t ever get comfortable. Existence to me, is an exercise in discomfort. Why? All that time and effort I put into minimizing my anxiety seems worthless since I’m still uncomfortable – just in a different way. I think the Buddha might be right: life is suffering.

And if he’s right about that, what about the other parts? This suffering is a result of my desire to be human. I’m not a human, I’m just a whimsical dream. BUT, I often pretend to be human – and humans feel things, intensely. At some point it must’ve seemed like a good idea: to partake in the opportunity to feel – to be human. Well what if I want to rescind that desire? The Buddha says it can be done – but is that what I really want?

Hm, after thinking about it for a bit, maybe the opportunity to feel is worth the ordeal? For example, playing a physical sport results in a lot of bumps and bruises, but overall it can be fun. Maybe I’m just taking the punches too personally. I’m obviously too focused on my immediate comfort in every moment. I rarely get my hands dirty – figuratively and literally. Again, like the Buddha said, maybe I just need to find that balance.