Samadhi

After moving this conversation to my blog, I feel the need to recap the past couple years since my last post here. At this time, I have too much to say about other topics that I feel more necessarily require addressing at this point, so I'll probably recap the past at a future date.

However, until then, here's a brief recap: so much weed, prozac sucks, wellbutrin's a life saver (literally), narcolepsy, two years at Big Boy, three years at LCC, racism, sex, magic mushrooms, meditation, mediation, remediation, rehabilitation, so much love, so much loss. Coping, acceptance, and peace.

I'll touch on those last three here.

The last week has been full of oddly inexplicable bouts of uncontrollable laughter. This Samadhi has gotten me more than a few strange looks at work; but largely, when people see the impregnable smile, radiating compassionate acceptance, nurturing confidence, and an indomitably jovial spirit, they cannot help but smile right back.

The most astounding shift in the past week has been almost what I would classify as a relaxation of expectations -- or possibly even an elimination of expectations. It all began with an essay I wrote for my philosophy class, which proposed the idea that "truth" could only be applied in the first person, in present tense. I think the pragmatics would say this is the truth "making itself true," or something like that. Personally, I wouldn't refer to the truth making itself. Not because it wouldn't work, but because it sounds odd. Picturing the truth doing any sort of thing doesn't ring true for me.  The truth is just happening. It just is, and then it isn't -- but it always will be, and always is, really.

And while that doesn't really seem like it would have a real sort of implication on my life, it's totally reshaped how I view... everything. I don't believe that anything must follow another -- every observation is a pattern, and learning that pattern is a reifying structure designed to reinforce patterns (the human mind). This is how we learn, and it is incredibly affective; however, what we learn is not necessarily as effective.

By recognizing this, watching the pattern it followed, and following them to the core of my "self," I've realized that this is not the core of my being. I am not who I am. I do not believe what I believe. I act. I pretend. I guess. I play. And that is all.

Mull that over for a minute and tell me what you don't think.

Just kidding. Keep reading and I'll tell you why I don't think: I do not have to presume what another person is thinking before expressing what I think. I consider what I understand their position to be, of course, but I recognize that my understanding is necessarily only as deep as my own understanding; therefore, any understanding that I have of what their position might be is as valuable as what I considered "my position" on a topic is -- or at least was, considering my previous understanding of any issue or occurrence that could be disagreed upon by seemingly opposing "positions." And, as everybody is just like me, whether they realize it or not, their understanding of "my position," too, is only as deep as their own understanding of the total "issue" at hand. Or, er, at conversation, depending on whether the circumstances ask for hands or tongues (or both, tehe). But seriously, dispute me on this. I'm interested to hear your opinion.

That was a bit of an overly complicated idea, which most likely came about by my new understanding of context, implied context, and what I have tentatively decided on calling "semiotically implying context." In that implied context, I took great measures to whittle apart a really abstract idea into something formatively valid. As I have yet to do with my idea of formative valitivity. It's a thing, though....

Kind of.

I don't know, that's the cognitive side of it. That's been incredibly profound and interesting, but I think the true profundity can only be seen in the radical emotional shift that pulled the ground out from under my feet. Well, truly, the shift was much more of a phenomenological shift than a cognitive or emotional shift, so it was the implications of the experiential, phenomenological shift that affected my emotional and cognitive cognition (that was an odd construct -- but I digress.)

It was like, before the shift I was trying to inject some impossible amount of happiness into my life to overcome this unbelievably huge emotional blockage, stagnating as crippling depression. What I realized was that I was looking at the problem wrong. The depression wasn't already there -- I had to choose for it to be there before I chose to combat it with happiness -- so I could combat it with happiness.

I realized I was processing everything backwards emotionally. It's very strange. I think has to due with how I learned to handle emotions: particularly those like fear, anger, and sadness. Rather than recognizing these as learned reactions to shifts in consciousness (the "consciousness of," which I have referred to previously) caused by experiences, I have variously processed them as "inescapable consequences of a life that's too hard to live" or "nonexistent" (repress, repress, repress). Turns out, that method of thinking has some pretty shitty consequences, hahaha.

When I turned to my heart, though, it spoke differently. Care comes first. The message was fairly loud, happened around last Sunday (May 12, 2013), and has resonated through my every thought and action since. From here, my anxieties have bloomed into genuine concern for myself and others in the future tense, my anger into the same in present, and sadness the same in the past. These used to be are unnecessary attachments that took up emotional space, sitting there, clouding up clear processing and Samadhi. But now... now they are why I breathe, why my heart beats, why I choose to live this life. Why I choose to care.

I hear this is the sort of shift that comes to a Bodhisattva, but I haven't sat in a week or two. My practice is awful, really -- but I try to stay present.

I don't think I've reached nirvana quite yet, but I can feel a phoenix rising:

My heart swells and crashes like the ocean surf, bringing with it love and rebirth.

With Love and Peace,
~Lee