Catharsis

My whole life I have been burdened by the weight of other people. I've looked for approval in the eyes and hearts of other people. I don't know when it happened, but at some point in my life I blinded myself. I blinded myself to the reality of who I really am. I've allowed myself to be guided by other people's arrogance and emotion. My fault or others, it doesn't matter anymore. What matters is where I am right now in the present moment. I've found comfort in other people as a catharsis through this part of the journey. Not using them as a crutch, but just companions.

I rose out of the ashes only to have my wings melted and fall back to earth. My evolution is now ready to begin with my feet on the ground and with my ascent assured. I'm content to live in patience and inertia. I'm confident in the road forward and not backward into the chaos that is not knowing who one is.

There is fear in having to figure out who one is at this stage in life. There is also excitement in knowing that some people do not get a second chance and this is mine. I'm confident that this will be a satisfying process.

My sadness comes from the disappointment I have in other people. Also my fault for having overinflated expectations other people. I'm learning, however, to only have expectations of myself and those expectations can be as high as I want them to be.

Catharsis is a cleansing. A cleansing of the mind, soul, and heart. A necessary part of life that we take for granted. Not anymore.

Into the Mist

This morning I was sitting in my car waiting. What am I waiting for? I looked out across the dashboard to the outside world. After an acre of sand, waves emerged from the mist and crashed into the shore. Turning down Kanye, I threw a toothpick in my mouth, grabbed my camera and ventured out into the morning.

The air stung cold, but was tolerable. I put my hood up and strolled from the pavement to the boardwalk to the sand to the shore. What am I looking for? I strolled slowly on the hard sand watching the waves crash and the seagulls parting before me. Dew stuck to my beard, I inhaled the salty air deeply so it could penetrate my inner child. The child who had hoped to design space ships and play with giants.

I knelt on the sand and focused my digital. What will this image mean? Feelings, unlike photographs, change as quickly as the waves crash around me. Some of the water retreats, some soaks into the sand.

Finding ones self is like waiting for something to emerge from the mist. Maybe the answer lies in the dew on my beard and the salt in my nose, and not in the cloud beyond the waves.

All I know is that for the first time in a long time my feet aren't wet and the forecast is for sun. The trick is being patient enough not to jump into the mist.

Blinded by the light...

For the longest time I sat it my cave and pretended that the world and the sun did not exist. It was damp, cold, and dark, but comfortable. The sound of water running and falling onto smooth stone was at first soothing, but turned quickly to piercing and torturous. Finally, it just helped to numb my soul..................

I recently had a dream, sunny and bright, fresh and new. I was wandering through a field with lots of small farms. People were inspecting their crops happily, and I would just float on by with pure admiration. I ended up in front of sown dirt with a bag of seeds. The smell of the soil penetrated my being. I started planting the seeds. I've never had this dream before.

In a strange coincidence, I recently had a very deep conversation with a person who I have great respect for spiritually. We were discussing karmic qualities in our present day lives. He explained to me, very vividly, that karma is like planting the seeds to our future. Basically, how we proceed in every part of our life will have an impact on the future; whether distant or not. (Note: karma transcends time, place and person, maybe not even our own, or so I understand)

I've always been fascinated by gardening, planting, and nature. There is something very spiritual about thinking about how life can grow from such a seemingly small package.

..........The water in the cave started rushing faster and faster. I felt the air disappearing and began to hear the stone around me crack. The thought of suffocation or being crushed to death actually appealed to me. As the ceiling started to crumble and the shards of shale started to penetrate my skin I welcomed the end. Crushing darkness enveloped me, my nostrils filled with the acrid smell of death. In that last moment I decided to open my eyes. As the dust cleared and I regained my sense of balance and I could see a glimmer of blue sky. Pulling myself out of the rubble was easier than I thought.

As I rub the blindness out of my eyes, I pick up my bag of seeds, inhale the scent of soil, and set off to find my garden.

Now and the greater now

I read Siddhartha, by Herman Hesse, three times before I grasped the concept that there is no self. The first two times I just didn't understand what that meant, or I didn't want to understand. When I figured it out the meaning hit me like a wall in my mind crashing down on me. There is no self because self is a concept that is idle; it never moves. We are constantly changing and moving and breathing. There is nothing constant about us, even though we think there is.

Benjamin Franklin once said that the only thing certain is life is death and taxes. While that may be true change is also a certainty.

Reflecting on life I believe this concept, but I believe in more as well. I've tried to apply this idea of no self. It is most difficult. I've begun to realize that maybe if I was a monk, secluded from the world I could achieve this.

There are flaws to this plan however. Living a western, suburban life does not lend itself to this aspiration.

I think that it is more appropriate to include past characteristics and future aspirations in this way of thinking. Although these things do not exist, and never will, there is precious little time to come to terms with them.

There is no self, but I fear that apparitions from the past and fantasies of the future will always haunt my life.

Mosquitoes sting and leave welts. Next time we see one we're twice shy. The weatherman calls for rain and sun is out.

What's real and what's not is all a matter of what is happening now....And sometimes I don't even know that.

Why writing is an enigma?

The definition of a cliche is "a trite, stereotyped expression; a sentence or phrase, usually expressing a popular or common thought or idea, that has lost originality, ingenuity, and impact by long overuse."
Rather than face fear or use the confidence that I know is inside this body and mind I rely on cliche to get me through my days and nights. I self-depricate to get to the puch line about me before others do. I'm corny, but tough and good-natured. I rock the grung look ten years after it was in. I use it to my advantage, seemingly not to care what people think about the ripped jeans and over-used collared golf shirts. I try to emit the persona that this look works for me, when in reality I'm not trying to rock a look or be retro. There the only clothes I have. All other things being equal, clothes shopping for myself has not been a priority in my life, eventhough I know most people who see me are judging me on how I look. It's a constant source of obvious ignoration in my life that I always fantasize about changing, but never do.
I encounter many different people every day between work, the commute and home. I judge all of them. Anyone who says they don't judge other people is a liar. I don't want to judge, I just do. "People in glass houses shouldn't throw rocks", right? I've never seen a glass house and if I did it might just be too tempting not to hurl a stone or two.
Neitchze talked about life as an illusion, or at least most of what we are faced with in life is an illusion. Religion, media, government, all illusion. These words I type need to be stripped naked and taken for what they are worth; nothing. My words are an illusion the moment they are transfered from my thoughts to this page. This piece of internet, a virtual reality. "Virtual" meaning not real.
A cliche. A cliche is nothing more than the easy way out. Cliches are part of the illusion of life. I do know that there are moments in life that are real. As real as slicing your finger to the bone with a box cutter when all you wanted was a screwdriver. As real as the ripples on a lake. As real as a child's concern when they learn what it means to die. The real moments aren't told to us by some supposed authority, we experience them. My only authority is my skin, my tongue, my ears, and my eyes. "Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me." I guess sometimes it does work.

They call the Rising Sun.....

As a teacher I get to renew and reflect during the summer. This past week I went back to work. We didn't have students yet and the roads were relatively uncrowded so I decided to drive for most of the week instead of take the train. My path to work leads me away from the sunrise.
I would pick up my bagel and cup of coffee and head out. The radio was telling me about the Mets, the Yankees, the four alarm fire in a project in the Bronx, and the half hour wait on the Van Wyck. Staying in the lane is difficult when the caffiene hasn't kicked in yet and cars are flying past you so their riders can get to their job that they hate faster. I have precious little time to site see.
I glance in the rear view mirror as habbit, rather than courtesy. I see a glowing orange orb still married to the horizon wink at me. If I were to read all texts dedicated to the sun it would probably take me twenty lifetimes and then some. The sun gives life and takes it away on a daily basis. We are all connected to it, drawn to it, worship it in our owm way.
The sun reminds me of the begining and that nothing is permanent. We all look to prove our own strength, our own worth as compared to others around us. The insignificance of this is proven with one small glance at the sun.
It's mythical, constant, and unrelenting--like life. It brightens our spirits and burns our ground. Without it we die.
That one glance for me has stuck in my visual memory for some time now. I don't know why. All I could think about was the beauty of that moment, that glance. It makes me think of the beauty of my children, my wife, great works of art, verses from a certain song, or line from a poem. With all the harshness that infects this world there is beauty that balances it. I just wish I took advantage of that equilibrium more often.

Riding the Dragon

It took me reading Siddhartha three times and ten years to understand what Hesse meant by the concept of "there is no self." Because we experience we change, because we change we as people are not set in stone; there is no one definition of who we are as people . However, what I've learned about Buddhism is that it is like an onion, every concept has many layers. Reading the Dali Lama, he takes it a step further, or rather clarifies it by saying, yes there is a self, a foundation of who we are at the core, just like the core of the earth. But like the earth, the outer layer is constantly changing, moving, evolving in ways that are beyond our understanding.

Of course to come to this understanding Siddhartha had to go through a metamorphasis himself where he discovered suffering, basically the first step on the path to Nirvana; probably the most important one. I've been trying to think about my own suffering lately. It sounds easy, identifying your own suffering. Tonight I meditated on identifying my own suffering. I thought it would be easy and I could say to myself I suffer from A,B, and C, but again, the onion. I feel as though I only scratched the surface of my own suffering, not disappionting, but revealing and invigorating. When doing deep reflection the mind is unpredictable and takes you places you wouldn't expect to go.

The Dali Lama, in the Heart Sutra, talks about our suffering as empty, that we are all empty. Again the onion. We're not empty literally, or even in most of the figurative universe, but our suffering is empty (in my own interpretation). Our suffering holds this power over us that makes us angry, frustrated, depressed, and anxious. But, in most cases the suffering exists only in our mind and is a remnant of something that has happened in the past that still confuses and haunts us. How do you tell your suffering to leave? How do you free your mind from the suffering and start on the path to happiness?

Meditating, being on the path to end suffering and begin happiness is called Riding the Dragon. Its a curious phrase considering that Dragons evoke feelings of fear and death. But then I guess that alot of suffering comes from common fear and unlimately death. Confronting those fears and being able to control them is the key to conquering them, i.e. Riding the Dragon. Maybe thats where the phrase "Its not about the destination, but the journey" comes from. Enjoy the ride.