had started but did post several entries here over the past week or so, on torture awareness month; the "mean orange vmeme" -- the extremes of capitalism like exploitation, environmental devastation and a general lack of ethics and sensitivity, etc.; more about male sexual pathology . . . among other bright and cheery subjects.
following is a note i sent to a friend here at zaadz overnight -- trading notes on the "funks" we've found ourselves in of late -- more than you want to know:
doin' okay. :) really.
think i've more or less admitted to you my po' white trash habits -- my broke-down self-actualization project -- my ignoble dinacharya . . . depression, fatigue, strong coffee, smoking, bacon, too much tubage (internet and cspan) with all the requisite sitting on my ass . . . stress-induced resort to pattern . . . that pattern being the neurotic automatism i was reared in. gawd! in too many disagreeable ways, i look like my dad! (broken, beaten down, and seemingly irredeemable.) "anybody seen the remote?"
i love my dad.
took a "trend mill stress test" today -- EKG wires, blood pressure, heart rate -- in order to get a bold, bottom line for my latest makeover/shapeover adventure. i "passed" -- no glaring issues -- just what we'd expect from someone with my proclivities. "stop smoking!" (easier said than done.)
also picked up today a four-page "heath advisory" that dr. prasad had prepared for me. really thoughful and caring and generous on her part. yet, stuff we know. stuff i've practiced and adhered to before (was a vegetarian/macrobiotic cook in community and restaurant kitchens for a time). stuff i need to get right with again. stopped at an organic grocery on the way home. yada, yada. (eating some tamari with seaweed rice cakes right now!)
short story long, i thought, while sitting in the waiting room for the test, to rationalize to others "the state i am in" by suggesting the following:
- pick a couple of the bigger heartaches you've encountered along your way
- pick a multiplyer and compound those heartaches
- now, rest that pain in your heart not for hours or days, but for weeks, and months, even years, more or less, without respite. lay down a deep, dark vale of tears, with no end in sight, and crawl down in there.
- finally, consider: how would you come out looking at the other end? a little frazzled around the edges? a bit pressed down? maybe a little crushed by it all?
this is a bit like what this so-called "depression" track i've been on amounts to -- stuck, as i've restated this business, at the inhalation phase (breath in the suffering of all sentient beings) of the tonglen loop. ouch! did i just take this instruction too seriously?
yes, i'm arguing for my limitations here, but maybe there's some valid point in this little visualization. a bit histrionic too, eh? aggrandizing my puny little aches and pains into something they are not. making a little scene out of my pathetic "ordeal." yes, everybody hurts. i am no different and certainly no "better" for all this. this is simply where i've been at for too long, is all, and i am struggling to figure it out.
anyway, it isn't that the pain is "too much." i'm going with the notion that i've trapped my heartache in too small a box, too small a container all this time. it is inappropriate and doesn't fit within "this framewok," these "constructs" (namely: conventional wisdom). but there IS a bigger Space within which it is appropriate and does fit! "organic, synaptic dysphoria" just doesn't have that ring it once did.
refuge from the "news" (ie, humankind's irresponsibility toward humankind), like you said you sometimes practice -- some selective re-focusing of my attention, in other words -- would probably do me a world of good. sure enough. pondering our collective karma and samskaras in a more or less unguarded and, as it arises, unceasing, 24/7 fashion -- well, this is clearly a tough row to hoe. got my little karmic furnace cooking, but there's just no keeping up. and what the hell am i doing taken on "the weight of world" in the first place? somebody's got to do it? but what "good" is accomplished by rending myself into an emotional wreck? WTF? "pardon me. i'm just going to move out of everybody else's way as much as i can . . . over here on the sidelines . . . have this little fit i'm having . . . ride out this storm . . . i'll get back to you . . . [choke!]"
paris in the spring? getting good and laid? a new "career?" nope. doesn't cut it. indeed, no experience, high or low, can cut this. wouldn't matter if i was raking in millions and screwing goddesses. there is only one way out . . . !!!!
a seemingly odd, ironic, complicating, and lingering after-effect of my "One Taste" episode (i genuinely believe it was a real-deal, non-dual awakening, that persisted for months, right smack dab in the foreground -- everywhere and everywhen -- twas Grace that set me free!) -- it kind of branded me or recast me with no ambition, no strategy, no practice -- no "ism," no "ology" -- there is nothing "i" can do. does that make any sense? so, heaven spit me back out, and it's hell out here!
embrace, transcend, include . . . gonna stop (give it try, anyway) pushing the heartache back. gonna throw my arms around it and give it big ol' kiss, instead! bring it on!
rolled by my favorite, local, used, metaphysical bookstore today, too. alas, no "splendor," no allione, no bonder. gonna go retail! (great chat with the store's owner.)
i was deliberately, gosh, cruel to some latter-day, empire-loving fascists at a blog site earlier this evening. gave as good as i got. spit right back at them.
how's that for rounding out a day?
inching my way out of my rabbithole,
robert
* * *
for you masochists who are stil reading this:
background: have been on and off "anti-depressants" over the past 12 years. currently off, for the past year. ("my gawd! you're on a boatload of that stuff!") have been urged more than once by my "caregivers" to undergo electroconvulsive therapy (ECT).
related: "dark night" and similar testimony:
My Experiences with the Waking Down Work
by Deviki Shioshita, September 18, 2002
. . . All my life I have had an unshakable sense that at my core I am irreparably defective. Even though through incredible grace I had been shown so clearly by my teachers, Gangaji, Papaji, Ramana Maharshi and others, that the Truth of my Being is pure, unlimited, Conscious Awareness, and I had known this to be unshakably true for many years, I still could not reconcile this with the sense that at the core I felt irrevocably "bad". There were periods of time, especially after being with Papaji, where this haunting defectiveness seemed less palpable, yet it was only a matter of time before it would come undeniably into my experience again. I believed that it was just a thought, and not who I really was, but it felt like "original sin" that could never be erased. I also had tried many times to dive into and experience this defectiveness, but there was such huge defensiveness and resistance in my psyche that I was never able to do so. In the last year there was a somewhat hopeless resignation to the possibility that this might never change, as well as to the possibility that I might die and never fully live the Truth of who I Am in this lifetime. . .
thank you deviki!
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ken wilber
August 2009 
rhobherto
Access: Public
Good to have you back Rhobherto – was wondering about you when the posts slowed down. So I've gotten to know a bit about your consciousness streams here, but, if I may put in a request (as if you were a piano player in the hotel lounge), how about a post that's just “a day in the life?” I'm curious about the mundane Rhobherto, the “at 8 am I generally get up and have a cup of coffee, then take the dog out for a walk around the block” Rhobherto. How 'bout it?
Dude. You are on fire with your blog!
burning down the house?
Through many a birth in existence wandered I,
Seeking, but not finding, the builder of this house.
Sorrowful is repeated birth.
O housebuilder (Craving), thou art seen.
Thou shalt build no house (Body) again.
All thy rafters (Passions) are broken.
Thy ridge-pole (Ignorance) is shattered.
Mind Attains the Unconditioned.
Achieved is the End of Craving.
~ one of the first utterances of the Awakened Buddha