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Journal Entry - September 2011

10/23/2019

Always outward facing. Always watching the results of my actions as reflected back by "other" people. But more than merely watching, I am concerned. . .obsessed. . .with their response--How are they viewing me? How are they receiving me? How do they perceive me? I put so much pressure on myself to perform in a way that manipulates the world into giving me something I think I need that I lose my very self in the process--an insatiable desire for praise, neurotic fear of critique. Even a neutral response from someone stirs up a frenzy: Oh no! They must be mad at me. I didn't say the right thing! I think they disagree with what I just said. Maybe I'm wrong! They don't like me! And when I actually get what I want, it never provides what I have convinced myself it will in my exhausting, wheel-spun attempts. Instead, I am even more determined to have it repeated--a drug of the most dangerous addiction.
Highly intelligent (perhaps well meaning at first) subconscious survival instinct: avoid at all cost that which I fear the most, and establish a program that ensures I never have to face such a (seemingly) awful feeling. It's the feelings I fear. But in order to avoid, I surrender my freedom and autonomy as a conscious, sentient human being. Still trying to do perfect, think perfect, speak perfect. For what? For whom? Nothing has changed. What do I have to lose? (Not in the cliche sense, but literally. Literally, what's in the gain that's worth all of this?) Still over-apologizing, still feeling guilty as hell for no good reason, still striving for the front line of heaven, just with a new label: Enlightenment! There is nothing to achieve that I do not have already in its purest form. If I can achieve it, I can lose it, and if I can lose it it wasn't worth keeping anyway.
Have I ever just been myself? Do I even know who I am apart from this insanity? Relatively speaking, am I anything at all but a product of my environment, upbringing, culture, societal structure, DNA, and collective and individual cumulative shadow? Am I trapped here? I have been made a prisoner by my own hand, and at the same time by no choice I consciously made or fault I intentionally committed whatsoever. My entire mood can change on a whim at a single glance or word from someone that I interpret as disappointment, disapproval, anger, resentment, gossip, or anything anti-praise, and I am suddenly surrounded, encapsulated, and suffocated by my own thoughts thought to be theirs (whether it's true or not).
In this very insightful inquiry am I still caught up in and perpetuating my little-me, separate-self story? In a way, yes, but on the journey from relative self to Ultimate Self, each stage along the way must be fulfilled before being transcended and included, with as little (if any, or as few as possible) fragments left by the wayside. I am perhaps now for the first time ever being healed of fear-filled baggage and patterns of samskara accumulated over a lifetime and lifetimes, turning the always-looking-out in, to my own source of seeing and being, and am for the first time being given. . .rather, reclaiming. . .ownership and responsibility (and maybe even enjoyment!) over my own life. Help me God!
Am I fracturing the Ultimate even now or am I closer than ever? Deficiency needs give way to actualization needs give way to transcendent needs. When will I no longer need anything? I want to dissolve into that Reality Which Alone Is. From fusion to discrimination to integration. From separation to togetherness to union. No longer enmeshed, enslaved, resisting, fighting, and lost.
Have I found a spiritually disguised way to get out of not doing what I am afraid to do or don't want to do in the first place? Am I the terrified little boy craving to be coddled and told how special I am? Or am I the Center of the circle, the Still-point around which Yes and No revolve and resolve endlessly forever? Am I both? Does the answer to these questions lie on the circumference, the dueling opposites converging before a conflict even arises?
I am angry at myself and angry at those who didn't teach me right. I am angry at myself for my own cowardice; my own depravity of confidence. I am angry at the fear I inherited from whomsoever passed it down, and angry that I so willingly bought and embedded the lie into my psyche, hook, line, and sinker. I have been uncontrollably trembling, whether I show it or not, since I don't know when. The world "out there," I am told and tell myself, is scary and can hurt me. But I am the one terrified; nothing is terrifying in and of itself. I am the one angry; nothing in and of itself has the power to make me angry. I am the one that hates the outside world; in and of itself, the outside world merely mirrors my own unresolved hatred back in my face. I am the one that plays outward-facing games, making up stories of who likes me and who doesn't and what they think of me, pretending it's "them" so I don't feel so alone in my loathing.
What is the dark root deep within, where does it end, when were the seeds planted, and how do I let go, uproot, and be free? The confidence, self-esteem, and security I seek is already here. I just have to find it.

And even if all of my worst projected fears were true, who cares? For holy is the Lord in the storm. And holy is the storm itself. "Shall we receive the good at the hand of God, and not receive the bad?"* Is there anything really bad? The headache, the suffering, the fear, the disappointment, the fear of the headache, the fear of the suffering, the fear of disappointment, the fear of dying and having not lived up to some idealized perfection I don't even know who put there, here. Killing myself trying instead. And yet God remains. I remain. I and God remain as One as ever. Same love, same breath, same steady heartbeat, more present than Now. Before I speak, You are. Before You speak, I am. Before I worry, You are. Before I worry, I Am. And after too. Always I am already in the deepest cavern of Your heart and of mine. I abide in You and I return to You. I do not breathe without You. I do not sleep without You. I do not wake without this Presence. I swallow the world in a gulp of Awareness and wash it down with You. Everything comes and goes in a cloud of smoke and mirrors. And yet You Are. And yet I Am.
O my dear soul, why do you waste your days in looking for what you already have, for who you already are? Love greatly, and love God greater. Let go of everything. Let go. Be annihilated in boundless boundlessness, and fear not, for the whole world is in my hands. God help! I cannot do this. I do not know where I am or who I am. I do not know the answers. I do not know where I am going. Quench my parched mouth on this long road to You. My soul has been blinded in this darkest of nights. Be Thou my eyes. Be Thou my feet. Be Thou my ground. Ultimately there is security in not-knowing, I know, and assurance in uncertainty, for sure. I am walking to my next death, more immanent than any before. And when all deaths have been died, there is only God.**

May it be so. Om. Amen.

*reference from Job chapter 2
**paraphrase from a Ken Wilber passage that I can no longer find

Journal Entry - August 9, 2011

10/2/2019

The monkey mind chatters endlessly away, and increasingly so. I forget what it's like on a full dose of medicine. Was it always like this or were the symptoms merely covered up and numb? Am I getting worse or were the chemicals actually helping?
Ever since I started teaching meditation, I can't concentrate in my own practice because I constantly slip into imagining how I would guide others into whatever technique I'm working on; especially when I'm doing it "well." But that's not doing it well. The blessing and curse of one's profession being one's passion, and the shadow fear of failing at either. I have a paralyzing picture that plays in my mind: I am in front of a group of people, trying to teach but the words won't come. I look at their blank stares of disapproval that say, "This guy doesn't know what he's talking about," and, "Why am I wasting my time listening to him?" None of this is based on actual fact (that I am aware of), but actual projection.
When I am physically in front of my students, if ever I'm not verbally expressing in the desired flow state that I presume makes them happy, the inner commentary immediately begins and all I feel is terror at the possibility of their not liking me. Who are they anyway?-—smoke-and-mirror reflections of my own self-esteem issues, inverted thoughts I clearly have about myself, glorified monstrosities of unresolved childhood trauma, caricatures of criticism from my never-satisfied, overbearing father, and every disowned fragment of what is already and always perfect, complete, and whole.
All I want to do is run and hide, preoccupied with a hypothetical situation happening only in my mind. There is no one to hide from but me! There is literally nobody out there! Hiding never helps anyway even if I could. I can't escape or retreat from what I can't escape or retreat from. In my constant attempts at avoiding this most awful, worst case scenario, I inevitably create more anxiety, which increases and magnetizes the likelihood of something like this actually happening. But it is actually happening--now, as ever, in my awareness, by my own hand, to my own self—-an autoimmune of the mind. It just may or may not be confirmed by an exterior correlation from "other people" outside of me-—for those do not exist.
Since I've been off the pills and meditating more frequently, the scared little boy that I used to be creeps up from beneath more often it seems. Scared of everything, nervous about nothing, worried over the wind, uncertain that life itself can be trusted, and obsessed with a wild and dangerous world that can hurt me and cause me harm. I'm lying in bed trying to sleep and a jolt runs through my body for absolutely no reason: Is there somebody under the kitchen sink?! Of course not! How silly. Well what if there is?! Maybe I should check. So I get out of bed to see. Nothing, duh. Walking back to my room, it comes again: Is there someone under there now? Turn around, walk back down the hall, open the cabinet. Nothing. I want to run away. I know it's ridiculous. It's a standard symptom of OCD, so I've heard. But how can a troubled and disordered brain fresh off of fifteen years of pharma even begin to comprehend the sublime truths that I now know full well?--Nothing is arising outside of my awareness; even this, even this, even This. Are there special compartments exempt from the work? That get special consideration? I don't want to use my diagnosis as a handicap excuse, but sometimes I feel disabled, like the basic functions just don't work right. Overwhelm and stagnation. Racing and pacing. Dizzyingly swirling, maddeningly magnified, daytime nightmares. I can't make it stop. Can I?
I had a reminiscent homesickness today that bubbled up from the distant past. Mommy used to fix what frightened the little boy; but I don't know if anything was ever really fixed--combed over and coddled. Mommy is geographically farther away than she's ever been, and it's how I planned it. How I wanted it. I want to do this alone. I need to do this alone. Mommy is not coming to my rescue to make this one go away. I won't let her—-she tried and I said no—-because I have to feel this one fully in order to heal this one fully. It must surface and be seen under the light of unflinching, unwavering, unconditional presence. Or at least I have to try, with no contrary, conflicting influences.
I will sit in my terror until I have pierced through its lies. Of not being loved, accepted, affirmed, and given expected affection, of not feeling safe. The trick is I've never known a time when this wasn't so, which breeds attachment and addiction to something seemingly positive. But I assure you it's nothing but poison to eat this forbidden fruit. The one tree God said not to touch is the only one I want to, and the single source of an entire human race's suffering, all the way down to me, in this moment, afraid to make a move or breathe.
But I have seen and know a Love beyond temporary satiation; the Pure Affection and Grounded Assurance of an infinitely benevolent and trustworthy God beyond momentary "it'll-be-alrights." All comes back to this. To This. Deconstructing, reconstructing, and retraining all that was innocently. . . or maliciously. . . programmed from the start. The little boy is still here, and oh how I love him so. How I want to be the friend, the father, the mother he never had. I no longer need him to go away unless going away means growing up, the re-owned pieces being integrated one at a time and all at once into my very being now. I look him in the eyes, the mirrors to my own soul, and pray. . .
Peace. Peace now and forever be yours. Peace. All is well as all ways well. Find the Center where Peace pervades, and until that day, it's okay to be a frightened and trembling little boy in big-boy skin. I love you more than I can say.

Journal Entry - August 8, 2011

9/17/2019

All that I do seems to be an expression of an endless, infinite spectrum—-shadow-light, shadow-light, shadow-light—-this side of the Absolute. Never purely dark, never purely illumined. I need the oscillation to catapult beyond, into immediate, trans-dual, impersonal seeing. Why are we taught that shadow is bad? Why taught to prefer the light? Why do I still look over my shoulder for someone looking back over at me, in anticipation of being scolded over one wrong step, blindly obeying what I'm told in rote behaviorism?
My biggest fear is the possibility of punishment as the result of such failure, so I order my life (and my mind) around obsessively ensuring it never happens. I wag my tail so you'll pat my head and cower for your approval. The truth is that this has produced a stalwart body-mind-persona complex that everyone loves!—-at the expense of not loving myself—-and a talented, capable facade that does everything right, white-knuckling through the performance with a smile. I have contrived a way in the darkest of shadows to be "good at stuff" in order to earn praise and accolade--out of darkness comes a distorted light. Or is it distorted at all?
What's so skewed about wanting to be liked and wanting to be proud of accomplishments? Nothing if it's not an addiction. Nothing if it's not an aversion. Nothing if it's not running away. Nothing if it's not all-consuming. But so it has become for me: The object of desire promises happiness, and when received refuses to give it. The poisonous need for affection, esteem, attention, and affirmation is actually never satisfied, and thus forms a toxic co-dependency where both of us--me and the need-—are left wanting. Left wanting even when I get what I think it is I want. Wanting and wondering what I did wrong or what's wrong with them for not noticing. The options are clear: give up, surrender, try harder, make it worse.. Has the shadow brought me to where I now am? Is this an auspicious grace? Is this new awareness the first step to redemption? I pray this be a true glimpse of freedom and not just a decorated prison cell.
For the first time ever, I am intentionally putting myself in situations that evoke my insecurity, trying new things that I don't instantly excel at and that don't feed the loop of "what they think of me and how to sway their opinion." This is the furnace of transformation induced by my will against my will, by the strength of my hand despite the squirming underneath, all guided by an inspiration and sustained by a Presence far greater than I can say. Can I stay here until the dross is burned away? Until all attachment is released? Until the clinging become an open hand? Can I learn to rejoice when I am not given the object of desire? When I don't draw attention for how special and gifted I (think I) am? May this become a beautiful crown of thorns, my drops of blood adorning the path of suffering all the way to liberation.
In this way, there is no such thing as a misstep or a mishap, for all is returning to the Source, and Love is driving the whole display. God has lost Himself in the world of form and is steadily finding Himself again. When all the layers have peeled away, nothing is left for fixation--nothing to be, nothing to have, nothing to hold, nothing to need, nothing to fear—-and all is seen clearly from the place that cannot Itself be seen. Mysteriously I am a part of this somehow, like it or not, a part of this force that's forcing me to let go, praise or no praise, success or failure, into my own transcendent obliteration. Who Am I? God finding God, even in these pages? Who am I to think different? Who am I otherwise? Who am I when all that I have known myself to be is gone? Who Am I. . .? Who Am I. . .? Who Am I. . .?

Journal Entry - July 19, 2011

9/2/2019

The buzzing-and-grinding has returned to my brain. How can a small pink pill make it stop? But it does. Can I allow even this? Can the buzz be a hum that sings me awake? Can the grind refine me to an easy surrender? To just this? All is aching for God. But the ache is in a fundamentally incorrect assumption that God is not here. The eyes are wide with searching; searching for what? All is already given. There is nothing lost; therefore nothing to be found.

Still stimulus everywhere! It's too much. Can I just breathe? Fragmented thoughts, swirling. Can I catch one? Watch the turmoil of my being, and contemplate its return. Returning, returning, all returns. I can clamp my eyes shut and try not to see while the entire process I witnessing effortlessly.

Probably the most profound realization is this: A pill cannot stop anything. Only I can. Unnecessary reliance on the exterior is shadow-hugging, ignoring my own capacity to stop the incessant obsessing. Somehow I was made victim of a monster called OCD. The anxiety and scrupulosity that have been for years "attacking me from the outside" are nothing more than cut-off and alienated parts of my self: Excitement to experience the world in its fullness, desire to create a life of my own, capability to make decisions for myself--all numbed and dumbed down by repressive rules and others' agendas. They turn against me under the insidious disguise of a diagnosed disorder that no longer fits, that I now disown.

Worry. Fear. Anxiety. Guilt. Dread. My whole lot my whole life. Every day, I wake up with a sour pit churning my stomach. "What did I do wrong?" "Who's mad at me?" are the first thoughts to rudely intrude my conscious mind. I was raised to believe that God is watching, and a little disappointedly at that, in everything I do. No one thing caused the belief--it was a perfect storm of poison, dose by dose absorbed into my bloodstream. Have to do right, think right, believe right, say right. . . Or what?! I don't know.

Though having left that world behind (I think), the leftover pathogens creep and crawl into my new habitat. The ego has changed costumes. Apparently I am "more aware," "more awake," "more mature," "higher up the mountain of evolved consciousness"; but it's the same shit: The "should" dilemma demands my very freedom and haunts my every thought, paralyzing my ability to fluidly act, think, speak, be. I feel guilt if I don't meditate, failure if I don't reach a particularly aimed-for state, worry if I eat something not organic, fear and paranoia of losing sleep if I drink too much caffeine, dread to fulfill a teaching commitment with hopes that no one shows so I don't have to deal with my own self-criticizing insecurity. . . "Is this okay? Am I okay?"--sheepishly looking over my shoulder for the proverbial head-nod from some authority outside myself. Still obsessed with do-it-right-say-it-right-think-it-right. . .even be-spiritual-right. And if I don't? I still have not found out. "Something bad for sure," it says. Something bad for sure.

I am now off medication for the first time in fifteen years and nothing is clear. The liberating power of having done it myself is intoxicating, but no clue what to do next; never functioned without the synthetic chemicals doing it for me. This goes deeper than neurological malfunction and pharmaceutical weaponry anyway--this is shadow itself; this is the mind, my mind, and the mind is only the mind is only the mind is the only the mind. This is the mouth of the lion; the mainframe motherboard; the heart of the beast; the root of disease. This is my wound dealt with a deadly blow that only the precision of a surgeon's hand can heal. And this is my offering to the world in its despair, my gladness to its hunger, the "touch my side" sign of real pain endured, my thorn of sufficient grace, and the wound by which I heal the world.

Journal Entry - July 17, 2011

8/25/2019

Coming face to face with my shadows of anger, hate, insecurity, and need for affection. Did I think the heartbreak wound healed me? Was only the inkling of a beginning. There is far more than at first it seems.

I have possibly, quite likely, managed to do only things I am good at so as to receive praise and avoid criticism--the poisonous program implanted by my father. And when the anticipated pat on the back doesn't come, which I never got from him and have in turn demanded the world to give, the shadow burrows deeper and deeper down, rooting itself in the dark subconscious soil of my soul in search of any food that might satisfy. But no such food to be found, anywhere, and the hunger grows into an insatiable frenzy.

I know first-hand that displaced and cut-off pieces of myself become the rotten inverse version of each: Wonderment becomes dread. Trust becomes despair. Excitement becomes anxiety. Charity becomes bitterness. Passion becomes rage. Clarity becomes hate, and I see clearly that what I hate in my father is what I hate in myself.

But the journey is fitting. Leaving home, I cut the cord of umbilical enmeshment, fall as far away as I can from the tree, and attempt to exterminate any sign of familiar familial qualities despised. Returning, changed, a new creation, I bless those who cursed me, and receive the blessing of embracing the very one I've been running from. I am so afraid to become my father, so I shove to the side and violently suppress the qualities in him that have caused the most hurt. But far from going away, they become the very shadow that thus potentiates my doing unto others what he did unto me.

Do I dare make peace with the parasite that's already eating me alive? Dare bring into focus what I would at all cost rather deny? Dare love and allow into my being what makes me most like him, thus healing and wholling all affected by the infection? Dare forgive, for none knows what they do?

I look unflinchingly into the shadow--
trembling, terrified, lost
Reciprocal threats
set out in search of food
yet losing the scent
We wandered into wilderness with no nourishment
Ravenous and desperate, delirious from the hunt
We traced a thousand circles 'round
forgetting that to be found is the most exquisite risk--
simultaneous annihilation into each other's arms.

Journal Entry - July 14, 2011

8/20/2019

I have become my own worst enemy, my own archnemesis. Has anything changed at all, or have I merely become an upgraded version of a fearful false self? Has the ego simply changed clothes into a custom-made camouflaged costume? Have I forgotten how to fall into grace? Am I seeking affirmation just as much or more than ever, dodging the disappointed glare of an always-watching, slightly-annoyed, parent-figure God?

I was always labeled gifted, different. Do I know what it's like to blend in, to be the same as all the humans, to fail? Have I become that which I have spent all effort and energy to avoid? Am I the hypocrisy I hate? The anger I abhor? Am I free at all or more chained than ever?

Have I found a system that allows me to remain separate, and permission to never be wrong; a vocabulary equipped to explain away every problem, disguised as a higher place on the mountain?

Who to blame if anyone for a hellacious year of so-called transformation? Point the crooked finger at an "other"; point it at a world gone mad; or redirect it at myself for not doing anything about it. Blame a three-lettered crutch called OCD. . .or DNA. . .or a medicine that depleted my happiness chemicals. . .or the shadow of an overbearing mother, an overcritical father.

Blame whom or what I will--and I will!--I am still left here, a culmination and combination of all that's gone right or wrong in twenty-five years of planetary existence. And because these pages don't care who I blame (they listen either way), I must at least proclaim: The world system is defective, defective, defective! Claims at ease and efficiency fall into keep-up-or-drop-out quicksand. The merry-go-round spins faster and faster with the illusion of getting somewhere--it's nothing but circle-backs on the same goddam horse.

My pace ensures a deadening limbo and I'm just dizzy and tired. Can I please get off the ride?

Journal Entry - September 2011

Journal Entry - August 9, 2011

Journal Entry - August 8, 2011

Journal Entry - July 19, 2011

Journal Entry - July 17, 2011

Journal Entry - July 14, 2011

Kemper Kaliana

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