Journal Entry - September 2011

     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