Reclusland

I have been slowly working through the realization that I do not act from a place of good motivations.   I have spent hours of furious energy in what I’ve come to see as attempts at compensating for a feeling of less-than-wholeness, rather than in trying to see my way through-and-out-of it.   Such a covering-up is impossible; these feelings only exist because I choose to give them existence.  As such, they are merely a waste of time, yet they taint everything I do with an inherent sense of weakness that has no basis in reality (that is, although weakness does exist, it is not something inherent in the self).  When I see my self as unable, any action that is manifested through/by that self is equally unable.  It is choosing stability over growth, and no wonder I am feeling so stuck.

Also involved is a false understanding of the self as something separate from reality.  Not only is that obviously not the case (where is the self if it is not in touch with reality), but because I see it as separate, there is a sense that the self must break through some sort of barrier in order to directly engage reality.  Creating such an imaginary barrier allows for all kinds of excuses when things do not work out, as imaginary barriers are great reasons for failing to get up and try again.  Since they are not actually there, you can make them as big and as complicated as necessary.  Yet all that is really required is a need to reorient and begin again, and only fear gets in the way of that.  There are no boundaries in nature, just requirements of time and effort.

The goal as of now is to find the feelings responsible for such a flawed view of the self, learn to recognize them without giving attentional belief energy to them, and then slowly starve them to death.  They are not the self, as the self is nothing.  It is a space within which patterns manifest.  Time to pull up these intruders by the root of the weed. Time to learn to chew through that machine.

During meditation this afternoon, the white wall I was sitting in front of kept changing colors, subtly.  Similar those colors you see when your eyes are closed.  After having spent part of the morning playing around in photoshop (a couple of new photo sets will be up here either tomorrow or Monday), I found this very amusing.  My mind is playing with the hue/saturation of reality…