passage

sometimes i listen to ram dass in the morning when i'm waking up and getting my head into a better place.

i keep finding that so much is forgotten so much of the time...

how to be happy and how to not give in to the sway of temporary states, temporary obsessions and attachments.

i thought i'd include a portion of a talk that spoke to me this morning... enjoy~

charles rennie mackintosh - petunia, 1914

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Ram Dass: A Deeper Source

"There is a need for a certain humor about your own predicament.

If you take the room you're in (meaning the psychological room) too seriously, it makes it more difficult to escape.

But its walls are made of your thoughts. And a person whose heart is closed a moment later could have their heart opened by seeing a little bird fly by. Or somebody whose heart is wide open could suddenly have it turn icy cold by seeing an expression on somebody else's face.

You must realize by now how momentary all of your states are, and how little reason there is to cling to them, and to hold on.

The problem is, your attachment to your highs makes you afraid of your lows. Your attachment to your ecstasy makes you horrified by your negative states and your fear and your deadness and your turned-off-ness.

When you don't cling to one, you won't have to reject the other. And you will see them all as just passing show, passing states. And here we are.

We're each going through. It's like so many television screens, everyone has a different drama on it, including me.

When you're quiet enough, you see everybody's drama going down. If you watch somebody walk by you can see their whole drama, who they think they are and what's happening. Everybody keeps projecting in a thousand different ways their whole trip.

But that trip will be gone in a moment, and there'll be another trip.

Some of you have been very good at holding on to your trips for years. The same trip. And you've gotten to think it's real.

Some people can spend 40 years dying.

We all are.

Or 40 years 'finding what I'll do when I grow up.'

I decided I'd never grow up, so it's irrelevant.

Each day I start all over again."

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tsuchiya koitsu - views of mount fuji, 1940s

 

i am here to become aware. 

i strive to not be a slave to my emotions, feelings, and temporary states.

while navigating daily rituals and routines there are pitfalls and traps littered about for my ego (i'm not sure what else to call it...?) which in turn cries out that it's not getting everything it wants - and it must be everyone else's fault.

truly the words the ego chooses to say do not always have my best interest at heart, and sometimes may drive me to my absolute worst just for its benefit.

i have to create space to be better than what the animal self may want for me. 

i sometimes find myself so overwhelmed with negative states and feelings and emotions that i literally cannot move or breathe, especially in arguments with my partner, which are becoming more and more frequent.

i'm at the threshold of having to come to a decision of some sort, lest i continue down this path of pseudo-normalcy while in the background certain elements of my soul are not actually improving or doing the work of improving. in this state i am unaware that i'm still so far behind and very prone to the recurring theme of defeat by anger and sadness.

the work can only be done at the fire, the point of transformation.

if one avoids this place change won't actually ever happen - how could it?

what changes am i prepared to make so that i can start seeing results - longlasting results that improve my overall quality of life, rather than distract me or balm the pain while not addressing what's really wrong?

audrey niffenegger - with no thought, 1983-85

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so maybe i'll also include some of the music that's been carrying me around (and i've been carrying it around, too) lately. 

a constant soundtrack to my thoughts, as ever.

adrianne lenker - "anything" (songs, 2020)




this is the kit - "shinbone soap" (off off on, 2020)



haitus kaiyote - "nakamarra" (tawk tomahawk, 2012)



joomanji - "chasin' rhymes" (manj, 2013)



john coltrane - "naima" (giant steps, 1959)

 

 

pinback - "prog" (blue screen life, 2001)

 

lianna la havas - "paper thin" (lianna la havas, 2020)

 

 

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you've got god on your side, 

he's listening

the turning wheel turns

i am staying sober, for good this time! i will admit that i have renewed interest in committing to this new state of being because someone i admire seems to be doing very very well newly sober and is ecstatic about it, but the fact still stands.

to abstain from drinking altogether isn't extraordinarily easy or extraordinarily difficult, but it feels like the absolute right thing for me to do. the feeling i used to find so pleasurable is actually quite sickening - i can hardly even think about being in that place, two drinks or so in and already feeling the pull downward into a need for more, without a dizzying nausea.

nope nope nope.

and it may be more difficult this way. in order to fully face reality's absolute fullness, to embrace all of the confusing and painful and absolutely maddening parts, one must carefully create space to accept and a willingness to experience. the creating and the willingness are the key elements of the practice, they are where the central focus must go in order to become truly independent of desire/perpetual unfullfilment. to be open you must accept your own power to change your experience.

i think the less you hide from discomfort the more your body and soul will respond with a stronger resilience.

resilience is the mechanism by which perseverance thrives. if you are mentally and physically prepared to persevere, you are more able to do so without any thought of giving up. there is something in me, and perhaps in you too, which desires laziness. the monkey is quite apathetic and bratty about life in general, and would like nothing more but to lay in bed eternally doing nothing and hiding from its responsibility, generally hating existence and projecting nothing but negativity into the world. the more one faces this unfortunate and self-destructive aspect of their humanity with a trained mind and soul one is far less likely to succumb to it.

exercising virtue is how one gains virtue. it is in the practice, moment by moment, that we grow stronger, more resilient.

prosperity. compassion. purification. peace. knowledge.

yamamoto kanae - garden, 1918

☸️

my partner and i put up tibetan prayer flags yesterday at the front of our house with a shared intention, together. he said something about imagining that the flags, five-colored fabric squares blowing in the wind, are like the sails of a ship pointed towards our intention. on each of the flags is printed a symbol, some text, and one of the five words shown above ( ^ ).

the physical ritual can be incredibly important when done with full intention - a symbol is useful or effective only if properly understood, respected. to physically demonstrate that i am on this path, to be unafraid to share that with the world and especially myself, a new page is turned. a new awareness is cultivated, a new plane attained.

there's something very right about a ship set firmly on its course, i think.

if you have yet to arrive at your destination... perhaps it is best to keep going.

☸️

erykah badu - "sometimes," baduizm (1997)

^ can. not. stop. listening. ^

鳥

the tree must not be painted, but manifested.

true tree-ness comes through the painting as itself -
no process of creating the tree required.

as the wheel turns, 
realities merge
and that which was and will be now is.

there is no more distinction.

there is no more separation.

there is only the one unfolding.

the one, unfolding.

do you still resist?

yamamoto masao: tori 

                                                                                                                                                                    
lately i've been in that place of defeat. it really sucks. somehow i have accumulated so much negative energy either from others or from my own thoughts that a cyclical loop of these thoughts will often play in my mind without end, a constant dialogue of negativity that hounds me morning til night. i think i have just become used to it. on some days i find distractions through work, a hobby, or obligations and the voice gets drowned out. sometimes, though, these distractions don't really work, and the negative internal dialogue feels almost amplified out over the field of my life and it's hard to ignore.

when you have a bully constantly shouting at you, attempting to take away any power you might muster, it is very easy to completely collapse. to hide inside the shelter of your dark cave, to mistrust anyone and anything, to despise even yourself. in this place i do not come out for anything. it is too hard to imagine things going well for me if i do, so i project into the future that there will only always be failure and pain.

i know, it's not good, but it's real. it's really what i've been dealing with. and i have come to breakthroughs regarding this particular thought pattern many times only to lose track of my progress, bringing me back to a place of not being able to imagine a way out.

thankfully i have recently discovered something seemingly obvious but that had been hidden from me in regards to digging out the poison root once and for all. a way to actually be happy all the time, in any situation, at any point or place. and it is mine.

hashimoto okie

awareness is all. once my consciousness can be trained to expand outward so that i am looking at the looker, watching the feeler, seeing the seeker, holding the thinker - once i am beyond my immediate self - then i am tapping into primordial consciousness, the very fabric of the One that includes me but also includes everyone and everything else. and from this place i can start to see that i am not merely a victim of a constant mental barrage, i am a powerful creative being;

something i have begun incorporating into my daily and even momentarily experience is the diagnosis and calling to awareness of wasteful, repetitive thought. thought can be a great servant to the mind, and the mind can be a great servant to us as individuals, but without proper awareness of its power we are likely to succumb to wasteful and repetitive thought patterns. the great hamster wheel of the mind will turn itself ragged, endlessly, and take you along with it. there are no laws which prohibit the mind from turning and spinning, projecting and analyzing, idling and plummeting downward, all at a clip seemingly beyond our control.

More than those who hate you, more than all your enemies, an untrained mind does greater harm. More than your mother, more than your father, more than all your family, a well-trained mind does greater good.

Dhammapada

i didn't quite know all this starting out. i also didn't know that most of my depression was because i was stuck on the hamster wheel, turning and turning, slaving away in a repetitive cycle of wasted energy. i would almost constantly be wasting my waking energy thinking about the future, trying to imagine what was going on in other people's heads and hearts, trying to micro-manage my emotions and my life, all to the point of not being able to function, or at least with any degree of fluidity. it became a trap all too easy to fall into.

since making this realization (perhaps not for the first time in this lifetime, or even others), it all has become very simple, once you get the hang of it. it's very much like walking on a tightrope, this meditative state of consciousness - too much slack or too little can cause extreme imbalance, and the more times one cannot strike this balance the practice gets forgotten, and one feels defeated. it's incredibly hard to walk on a tightrope in real life, and i'm not good at it at all, but the metaphor still works well for how i have found taming the mind to be.

georgia o'keefe - light coming on the plains, no. 1

so what does this look like?

well, i can tell you that today was one of the best days i have had in a while. every moment has felt full, full of itself and full of my awareness of it, and my unconscious mind hasn't been secretly draining itself away in the background.

"but if it's an unconscious process, the mind wasting energy on worrying, how can one consciously attend to it?"

the practice requires that you are always looking at yourself, indelibly connected to what thoughts and projections are flashing across the broadcast of your mind. when we look out at the world we see what we want to see, we are concerned with exactly that which is related to our karmic destiny. if we are depressed, we look out into the world and see misery, poverty, suffering, emptiness. we are projecting that out onto the world, and of course it feels like it's confirming some truth we have created. but it's important to note how our thoughts affect our entire momentary existence.

Mind precedes all mental states. Mind is theirchief; they are all mind-wrought. If with an impure mind a person speaks or acts suffering fol-lows him like the wheel that follows the foot of the ox.

Dhammapada

i'm having to live this life in a state of relative solitude in order to heal the rift in my very existential fabric. i'm taking each moment as more important than my whole life put together, because in a way it is. when i feel myself start to ruminate over that which i cannot see or touch i gently guide myself away from that abyss, back to the present, and that includes the presence of my body. i listen to what my body wants and needs in this moment, and i obey, no questions asked. if i am tired, if i am hungry, if i am bored, if i am inspired, i am aware.

i am.

and that is all i ever need to be.

max ernst - paysage de choix