For a while I have used writing as a tool. Although I did not get the idea from Anne Frank, the platitude she justifies the starting of her diary with is similar to what it is that is being attempted with a majority of the writing I undertake: 'Paper is more patient than man.' Behind the phrase is a concern I also deeply resonate with - that what is called normal is, in fact, mechanical living - an unconsidered existence in reaction rather than of action. The movement of writing, here, is a technique of self - a way to address felt needs and felt problems. Writing, in this way, is meant to narrow down what conflicts are in play, how it is the case that there is conflict, and how one is to proceed.
Normative life is disorder, it is fragmented, broken up, filled with silent and not so silent dis-ease. Techniques of self are ways of clarification. They are slaps in the face: they bring up the dis-ease within and invite a narrowing down of experience - a tasting of the raw/red hot hurt. But at the crucial point of the raw feeling, at the moment of reactivity, there is a suggestion to use the reactive energy in an alternative way. The suggestion may be at self-examination (what is uncomfortable? why? what is taking place?); the suggestion may be to observe and get in the shoes of, embody the other (to turn the outside into oneself, to examine the trajectories present in the other, to see you the way the other sees you, to be the other).
Whatever the technique that is in play there is a conversion of energy, a manipulation of mechanical reactivity, of momentum and raw feeling. What transpires is a stepping-back. In every technique of self there is a stepping-back so as to observe 'self' as a process. Only when there is a stepping back from the trajectory/momentum, when there is a starting over, a beginner awareness, is there understanding of what it is that is occurring in consciousness: filtering.
Reading: To Have or to Be? - Erich Fromm; On Heidegger - Patricia Altenbernd Johnson.
Wednesday, April 28, 2010
Tuesday, February 23, 2010
The Most Basic Vocabulary
The simple reoccurring momentum: what am I to do?
This momentum is noticeable when a break in ‘responsibility’ occurs, such as when there is a completion of a required task, or when there is seemingly excessive ‘responsibility’, such as when there is direct engagement –and thus conflict – in an unwanted task. Here, responsibility is referring to that sensation of resistance or unease chiefly elicited do to an unconsidered disagreement or repulsion to the situation in play. Responsibility is seen as a burden of some kind – perhaps a ‘social’ pressure requiring conformity (and as such, is a dependency: an unconsidered crutch). It is unwanted because of its requirements; its requirements are unwanted for to be responsible is to act without significant ground: it is to be fragmented, to act without understanding or agreement to that which is in play. To be responsible is not, as its most prominent attribute, to do the right thing; it is most prominently to react to the momentum. To act in accordance with one’s ground is to do the right thing; to act in such a way is to understand the effect the ‘requirement’ has on awareness, how the particular requirement dominates and filters the world in accordance with its particular ‘values’, and how to counteract or act beyond the filtering process.
The ground of awareness is not a permanent or innate set of values that may be called the self. It is rather something of an experiential databank of attempted and in-play life projects. It is the most basic vocabulary. To experiment experientially with this ground is to be a yogi – it is to investigate with completeness, not holding anything back – it is to investigate into both what the ground is and why it is the way it is.
What I have just described is a Technique of Self. It is a way to ‘remember’ the ground – to be in touch with both the various momentums in play and the most basic vocabulary in play. It is a technique of mindfulness, toward awareness and beyond unconsciousness or insensitive reactivity. As such, the most prominent feature is radical self-honesty: to see first hand the momentums and their filtering processes.
Emotion, desire, thought, and impulse – all of these movements are taken to be fundamentally the same. These processes are potential actions or potential momentums: they pull and dominantly filter or shape the world in its light, thereby attempting to elicit action. As such, the movement toward ‘freedom’ or toward action with ‘ground’ is itself a potential momentum, a project.
All potential momentums have a source, a story that puts form into its energy. The task of this Technique of Self is to notice the separation of momentum and awareness, to move beyond reactive fragmentation and into experimentation with the most basic vocabulary.
This momentum is noticeable when a break in ‘responsibility’ occurs, such as when there is a completion of a required task, or when there is seemingly excessive ‘responsibility’, such as when there is direct engagement –and thus conflict – in an unwanted task. Here, responsibility is referring to that sensation of resistance or unease chiefly elicited do to an unconsidered disagreement or repulsion to the situation in play. Responsibility is seen as a burden of some kind – perhaps a ‘social’ pressure requiring conformity (and as such, is a dependency: an unconsidered crutch). It is unwanted because of its requirements; its requirements are unwanted for to be responsible is to act without significant ground: it is to be fragmented, to act without understanding or agreement to that which is in play. To be responsible is not, as its most prominent attribute, to do the right thing; it is most prominently to react to the momentum. To act in accordance with one’s ground is to do the right thing; to act in such a way is to understand the effect the ‘requirement’ has on awareness, how the particular requirement dominates and filters the world in accordance with its particular ‘values’, and how to counteract or act beyond the filtering process.
The ground of awareness is not a permanent or innate set of values that may be called the self. It is rather something of an experiential databank of attempted and in-play life projects. It is the most basic vocabulary. To experiment experientially with this ground is to be a yogi – it is to investigate with completeness, not holding anything back – it is to investigate into both what the ground is and why it is the way it is.
What I have just described is a Technique of Self. It is a way to ‘remember’ the ground – to be in touch with both the various momentums in play and the most basic vocabulary in play. It is a technique of mindfulness, toward awareness and beyond unconsciousness or insensitive reactivity. As such, the most prominent feature is radical self-honesty: to see first hand the momentums and their filtering processes.
Emotion, desire, thought, and impulse – all of these movements are taken to be fundamentally the same. These processes are potential actions or potential momentums: they pull and dominantly filter or shape the world in its light, thereby attempting to elicit action. As such, the movement toward ‘freedom’ or toward action with ‘ground’ is itself a potential momentum, a project.
All potential momentums have a source, a story that puts form into its energy. The task of this Technique of Self is to notice the separation of momentum and awareness, to move beyond reactive fragmentation and into experimentation with the most basic vocabulary.
Saturday, February 13, 2010
Getting Over the Hill
I’m awfully tired. It occurred to me to develop a few things. For one, I keep thinking I should realistically compose an explanation of what Harry Potter/Me would do after the Battle of Hogwarts. Go figure out what to do. Leaves everything and goes and tries to figure out what to do with himself. Wander around. It should be written minimally. It should grapple with emptiness (Buddhism) and filtering systems.
Blah; so I sometimes arrest development because I get caught up in getting over the hill – getting over the hill is that anxious, dumb, dead, give-up tendency to stop before the real flow happens. Its like your attempting to get back to the parking lot before the sun goes down – they’re going to lock this gate at sundown and your car will be locked in – and your friends walking slow and is all out of breath because you’ve been hiking for so long – he doesn’t hike much and is out of shape - and you know you could make it without your friend but you can’t tell your friend to hurry up because he’s already all out of breath and you’ve already expressed your concern and said that you think perhaps they will lock the gate and he says ‘that’s ridiculous’ in so many words but really your not so sure about it and various thought trajectories or images for action occur but it’s a tough call because so many dimensions present themselves. You just end up going with the stream ‘it will work itself out’. You go: fuck this trying to explain something I can’t get out right but can see. You go: if I try to get it out I will lose some of the subtlety. It won’t ever happen the way I need it to. Too much effort. You go: I’ll go do something quick. Its okay, though. So there is that orientation.
Blah; so I sometimes arrest development because I get caught up in getting over the hill – getting over the hill is that anxious, dumb, dead, give-up tendency to stop before the real flow happens. Its like your attempting to get back to the parking lot before the sun goes down – they’re going to lock this gate at sundown and your car will be locked in – and your friends walking slow and is all out of breath because you’ve been hiking for so long – he doesn’t hike much and is out of shape - and you know you could make it without your friend but you can’t tell your friend to hurry up because he’s already all out of breath and you’ve already expressed your concern and said that you think perhaps they will lock the gate and he says ‘that’s ridiculous’ in so many words but really your not so sure about it and various thought trajectories or images for action occur but it’s a tough call because so many dimensions present themselves. You just end up going with the stream ‘it will work itself out’. You go: fuck this trying to explain something I can’t get out right but can see. You go: if I try to get it out I will lose some of the subtlety. It won’t ever happen the way I need it to. Too much effort. You go: I’ll go do something quick. Its okay, though. So there is that orientation.
Sunday, January 24, 2010
Trajectories
So, after hiking with Robert, we shower, change, and drive to his girlfriends house (Chaye) to have a barbeque. We ping pong, set the table, and eat: chicken, rice, broccoli, carrots, bread, ice cream, coffee. We play: apples to apples, play station 3. I end up getting home around 2am wanting to blog or meditate – consider. Its hard to describe what I want to look into – framing it simply or in a straight forward way will filter it too heavily. It’s subtle and shy. It’s grey and irksome. There are a few things floating around, contaminating it, muddying it up.
A few weeks ago I attempted to clarify my values. I wrote down a whole list of things that I deemed significant or of importance to me. I clarified this list, searching for the heart beat of each. Four values made it through to the final clarification process – a flourishing lifestyle (conditions situated so that vital feeling or sharpness may flourish), self-understanding (a clarified and open awareness of what one truly wants, what is influencing one, and a direct perception of the way that the world is, as a result, filitered), natural engagement (effortless and passionate work – doing what is most vital, allowing complete engagement in the world), and growth centered relations (intimate pockets of honesty – the capacity to show one another what they look like when it is necessary). In my mind, the heat of these trajectories sever ropes that keep one groundless and enslaved in expectational living. They point to Washington. Breathing deeply. Getting outside ones head. Dissolving the layers and layers of unease and inferiority.
So, Chaye’s sister Char is soft and shy and simple in the kind of way that brings up the forth value, growth center relations. I, however, have stated that I am going to be moving to Washington in three months (or so). A soft and shy conflict.
Things are never entirely dramatic, though. Such Drama is a either a tool or a mirage. I digress, meander, and dry out. I imagine unrealistic situations were I’m left to decide between a compatible, honest, and intimate relation as opposed to a something more pathless: stripping myself of attachments and getting down to what I should do with myself. What is the case here (the intention) is to investigate the attraction and see what it is that is happening. Cleaning away the mud and build up.
The trajectory of self-understanding – the trajectory of growth centered relations. There is a sense that in moving to Washington, I will get to know myself in a way that will not be possible here – with parents, old friends, expectation, and familiarity. There is, likewise, a sense that in pursuing an honest relation, a quieting down will come about. The space which I see off in another world, can be arrived at in being with another in any world. In coming to see another in every dimension, accepting them, nurturing them, seeing the tick tock, you come to see more clearly what it is that enslaves you. In moving beyond repression, you free what is buried, tangled, and disorderly. You can accept the disorderly tangled underground.
An aspect of self-understanding is experimentation, looking fearlessly into whatever comes up, actualizing one’s considerations. I have recently experimented with pushing myself into things: when there is anticipatory anxiety, I acknowledge it and then press on just a bit, feeling around, testing the water – like doing one more push up when it seems like that’s it. When you push on, you stop identifying with the mechanical thought, you dissolve the bite.
Char tends to get a bit embarrassed in a similar way that I do when potentially awkward situations appear to play themselves out. It’s also the case that I’m not sure if she has any attraction to me. But, at the moment, this seems irrelevant – it will, most likely, seem relevant when I am in a position to talk to her about this, but for now it’s beside the point. For now, what is relevant is deeply fleshing out the possibilities. I may attend their church service tomorrow morning. It’s very late as of now. It’s also a church. The obstacles, however, are reactive thoughts urging a may day in the moment – the dealing with second thoughts and potentially sever anxiety. So, what is most valuable? Can one look into it, consider something in a fundamental way, to such an extent that resolve blooms from tension? Is it the case, for instance, that when one really looks into something, when they face the ripe and red hot of an internal conflict, face it and see it completely, that a tentative acceptance drowns the immediateness of being pulled about in every which way?
In undergoing experimentation one must trust something, test it out, and consider.
Saturday, January 23, 2010
Deadend Feeling
I'm tired in a can't sleep, can't read, can't mindlessly indulge, or submit to the various expectational forces pulling me within their trajectory kind of way. I browse Youtube - first subscriptions, then related videos, then channels, then personal websites and blogs. My stomach growls and I need to empty my bladder. I need to get off the computer and do. I need to grow. I feel the momentum of growth. I feel also the momentum of indulgence. I get up, urinate, eat an apple. I watch TV for a short while. I am frustrated. I sit down on my zofu for a few minutes. After the usual few moments of not having any inclining of how to meditate, I go - oh, non-attachment, that's what this is largely about: during the 'day' there is mechanicalness - a disposition to react in an emotionally illiterate way, misreading ones thoughts/feelings and stumbling around groundless and dull.
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