Is This Real?

How do you see the world?

I began putting words to these thoughts a few days ago after feeling in these months of Covid – and past few years of low-key chaos – like we, society, have the wrong view of the way the world works, how badly we’re treating it, and how best to make it better. A recent meditation vividly reminded me how much my thoughts are projections out, and how looking within might clear my own vision. In the final seconds a simple sentence rang between my ears:

You are afraid.

My phone's timer chimed right then to end the session, punctuating the answer to my questions just before: Why can't I sink deeper in meditation? Why can't I get back to the extraordinary, metaphysical levels I've experienced before?

I hunger for knowledge, filling my mind daily (hourly if I'm honest) with as much as it can greedily absorb. I gather evermore informational ingredients into sense-making meals to satisfy my need for understanding. After gluttonous gorgings, I'm left ravenous, empty, haplessly filling a bottomless pit. The more I learn, the more I'm aware of how little I know.

I journaled after, noting how my mind's movements are defense mechanisms against fear. They blind me from it, or perhaps from seeing behind the mind's curtain. My mental machinations are both the spark and fuel of fear's fire.

The undercurrent of feeling unsafe is a primary component of my consciousness, often flowing unperceived. I'm keenly aware of it only after an action triggers it, usually by another person, sometimes on my own volition. Otherwise it rides as a silent passenger on my journey through this existence.

Imagined dramas unfold in my head, the dormant seeds of these thoughts hiding silently like wild dogs, ready to attack relentlessly and with increasing viciousness. The subtlest unconscious provocation lets this fantastical stream run loose until I can corale it with acute awareness.

My physiology constricts in a stress reaction to the danger my emotions elicit. I ask: Where is the threat? How will I be attacked this time? I'm on alert, needing out of nowhere to defend against no one, my positions, my knowledge, my stories, all of which I mistake for myself.

When existential threats from mental fictions aren't enough, I resort to a reliable supply from my body to feed this addictive fear. Worries of where to find my next meal can be induced by a hunger pang or the recent public response to the pandemic, tricking me to partake in the panic-buying at the markets. A traveler without a home living in a part of a foreign country where housing is short, I anxiously seek another roof and bed where I can sleep and keep my things. As hormones rise within or loneliness sets in, I wonder when next I can find a partner to fill my unquenchable chasm of desire, or to provide me with the love that only I can supply.

I have the means to live comfortably for the time being. Conditioned by past conversations with parents & friends as well as my cultural common sense, thoughts gnaw from the back of my skull, nagging me to get off my ass and start earning an income again. What if the amount in my bank account is not enough in the unforeseen future? What if volatile markets or world politics wipe it all away, leaving me to fend for myself with no survival skills or support network nearby?

———

Throughout my life I've sought approval from others, desperate to fit in. Paranoia over how I will be received and perceived accompanies my writing or any attempt to 'put myself out there.'  I just want to relax, to feel like I belong. My mind constantly questions how I look, what I'm thinking about saying, whether what I said or did was stupid or inappropriate. Shame and/or guilt usually accompany this low-grade fear otherwise known as anxiety.

Judgment helps me feel safe, at least momentarily. I try to determine if an action is right or wrong, whether I should feel superior or inferior to another. If I can identify, label and box something or someone outside of me, I know where I stand in the world and how to act appropriately. Judging isn't bad per se. Maybe it helps one move easefully from one point to the next. But when that particular motor runs in my head as fast and hard as it tends to, the parts overheat, eventually melting down.

I meet fascinating beings along the way, drawn into the details of their captivating stories. Over time I've learned that comparing myself to anyone else is useful only if I want to make myself miserable.

Still, I forget this potent lesson when a man talks about defending his cliffside community in the Australian jungle from apocalyptic bushfires that ravaged the country early this year. Listening to anecdotes within his heroic tale, each with potential to produce PTSD, I chide myself within: "How the fuck can I complain about my housing woes or any menial matter when this man spent six weeks under actual fire, fighting in warlike conditions for his home and life against a ferocious force of nature?"

I may have endured my own traumas living with an unstable, eventually suicidal mother, but I never had to consider killing one parent to save the other while witnessing them rage against each other in a drug-fueled inferno of dysfunction. Hearing a friend relate this experience from which he still heals, I put on my 'poor me' hat, invalidating my own experience, shrinking with self-loathing at my perceived weakness. I pity myself and my friend while fighting to hold open a space in my heart for us both, and our parents.

———

What is the best way to learn, through words to consume or experience to live? Which lessons stay with us, informing our lives years after graduation?

Trauma – and its offspring, suffering – are universal experiences of most every life I've encountered, particularly my own. It teaches with a potency paralleled by few others. Its legacies are among the most tightly intertwined with our beings, forming convincing identities and stories to react from.

In my life's education, I know I'm best served when I examine and question my sources of information. Difficult events occur, yes, but are the lessons we learn from them real, reliable, or true? Even when they are, is it useful to bring those events to the present rather than gleaning their wisdom and leaving their memory behind?

I hesitate now to hold firm to any position or knowledge when there is a possible alternate narrative or reality that I might be blind to. Did I invent meaning when there wasn't any? No matter the case, Life happens. It is, and I am. Perhaps there isn't more to it than that.

I see to a degree how focused I can be on what I don't have or what might occur. A few things are guaranteed, death for instance, but is it useful to drag them from the future to worry about now?

I try to feel gratitude for all I have, at least in this moment, but often come up short. Where is my faith that things will work out? Fear of loss infects my essence.

But when I pause, I see how everything is currently okay at this time. I'm here, now, breathing, being. Even if my past was difficult, all of it led me here to this moment, which I've noted is currently all good. If that's the case, as much as I might wish to change the past, I see it was enough as it was to lead me to this present place of 'okayness.' So what is it, other than crazy making, for me to believe everything won't be fine in the future too?

When I focus on my breath, I realize I'm aware of doing it actively on occasion, but mostly it's done for me. My heart continues to beat even when I'm dead asleep. My digestion flows without my knowing. My cells grow, then go to clear space for their replacements, all without 'me' lifting a finger.

This energy – Life – flows through me. It Is me. I often vacillate between ignoring this force and trying to fight it, thinking naively I can control it. The more I see how supported I've been in my life by Life, the harder it is to hold that it, and the world, is a threat.

Ultimately, having faith that my life will go on, that I will be okay, implies a mental action or doing. Perhaps there is a knowing which is beyond the mind. Moving into stillness, being at ease with the infinite unknown, I can rest, feel safe, find peace. Allowing. Surrendering. Being.