Saturday, May 15, 2010

Haunted by Indecision: Getting all emo up in the piece

I’m fed up with the spin-cycle experience I am having on Twitter. I get this spinning my wheels sensation and the thrill has left me. Now I have long looked upon the social media landscape as somewhat fascinating, similar to how I have looked at so many things in this world as completely fascinating. The world in my head is a vast place and I realize in so many ways I am yet to truly share or activate so many aspects of it. Up until now I have contented myself with a periphery view of life, and allowed my dreams to sink in and out my consciousness with little of the persistent discipline that is needed to take my aspirations into the next level of outward fruition. In a tantric way I keep being forced to arrive back at the present moment to build back up something that resembles what I am looking for. As I look once again at the path of bridging my desire, accepting my present reality, and setting my ship in the direction I want to go, it forces me to take an inventory of the whole kit and caboodle.
I realize as I allow myself to express the thoughts that are rolling around in my brain in such a disjointed fashion that I got to get on the keyboard and type away what is up there. I have done so much writing of the spontaneous sort, and in many ways have given myself a tremendous gift in the process. The issue that comes up is that there is sense of wanting more, of feeling disappointment, of getting side-tracked. I get so damn frustrated with the repetitive cycle of not moving forward.
Now in some ways this is an illusion because I am moving forward all the time. My anger which once could spiral out of control with little urging has become quieted. As I look at the accomplishments that I have made I see that once something happens that I wanted, the thing soon becomes a shoddy replacement for the next thing I am looking to experience. This acquisitive attitude is more the problem than any means to the solution. I look at all the advice out there and see so much of it as not speaking directly to me. So many of the people around me who are the so-called experts are feeding me partial views based on worldly success and this seems to fall far from the mark. What is this constant disillusionment I am experiencing? I wonder aloud with you today because I want answers, and I mean ones that really satisfy my brain, not quick First Noble Truth ones about suffering and the path to liberation. Don’t waste your time telling me that stuff. I already bought in on that plan. What I need is real practical stuff, and I daresay that there is probably very little chance that it will come from the advice of others anyway.
Being the adult version of a once smart kid, I got the information logged. It is the experiential nature of things that conquers me sometimes. As I begin to open up and say to hell with it, this is what you got, and this is where I am at, I see the danger. I have always been willing to put myself out there in radical ways. I have always found ways to test my limits and test my experiences so I know that I don’t need to completely reinvent myself.
Actually what I need to do is write. I need to communicate, and I need to do it outside not only of that needling “need” insisting that arrives, as I continually second-guess my use of language and keep trying to put things in the right context with the right understanding. Communication is such a challenging thing because language can mean so many things to us in so many instances that some days silence makes so much more sense. I jabber endlessly to my girlfriend and attempt to express myself to her. I am so thankful for her endless patience with me even though it probably stresses her so much of the time.
I maintain opinions about everything and one of my odd gifts is that I can spot when things are wrong so quickly. My gift feels like a curse and I now feel like I am breathing in a claustrophobic box, but at the same time I do not want to leave. So here you have it, my emo approach to the whole thing and a rant about the frustration of the dissatisfied creative. Gosh I’m sure we hear this spiel so much before. And of course we have the other extreme which is to hide the frustrations we feel, and put on a good face. My heart yells bullshit when I think of that approach. I know that all of this seemingly “on the ball” folks can’t really be so on the ball as they seem because all you have to see is all the suicides, addiction, anger, mistreatment of each other, all the overblown egos, narcissists and self-referential folks around us.
I step out of my cocoon into the light ever so hesitantly not entirely sure what it is that I am getting at, but also with a sense that I am most definitely getting at something. I see that I don’t have to wait to find something to write about. Nor do I have to craft a perfect piece. Nor do I have to take my innermost thoughts and bury them in a journal somewhere. What I can, and apparently am about to do is make my clarion call to be released from my cerebral prison. Yes it will come through my practice as well. But I see that it needs to come out of my writing. Talking yesterday with Twitter User Luna June about what I needed to do made me see once again that I got to roll out my mind like a carpet and begin welcoming the world in. I can’t let fear of feedback, being ignored, or any of the sorts stop me. I can’t hide it. I am here to take advantage of the nature of the world wide web, and take advantage of the fact that as far as I know you will still not be thrown in jail for expressing how you feel. I got to scream, and roar like the Leo Lion that I am. I am ready to yell, but not in a way of releasing anger like some nouveau primal scream therapy, no this is the roar of recognizing I am me. I see when I write how the words come out as quickly as they arrive in my head, and then when they hit the paper they have a basic coherence, a basic underlying logic that is good. I see that I can let loose the cannon in ways that so many of my peers day to day never even begin to let themselves do.
One interesting mini-awakening that came the other day was while reading Midal’s biography of Trungpa where he explains how “first thought, best thought”, Is not crudely talking about just the first thing that arrives in your head as that first thought, but that it is the first good thought that comes form the relaxed or enlightened state, finding the pure thought. I was so struck by that because as someone who navigated thought most of the Artist Way program, free wrote a storm, have been free styling rap since my mid-teens, and all the other ways I have been able to openly express in the fire of the moment, that I am questioning if I ever consistently arrived at a "first thought" in the sense Midal framed it. But here we go again saying okay yes all those things happened and now we got to move on. We got to gather it all together, and in the process rest with this constant ”need” and “got to” thing that always seems to surface. In many ways I feel haunted by all of the success and personal development literature I immersed myself in as I voraciously went about conceptually grasping this “whole thing” and turn my dreams into ways to make money, or ways to be a focal point of others. I wanted to be successful. I wanted to achieve things, but now as I look at what does that mean the thing unravels a bit.
I have gone from distrust of money, success, and the wealthy to wanting those things, to now just wanting to be free in a Rudolf Steiner or Krishnamurti sense. I want to be released from the bounds of all this frustration, or in the very least be okay within the bounds of frustration if that is the place I really am at. Well now I must stop, and not worry so much about my results. The results will always still be here, it is the engaged attitude within the process that drives its message home to my space station. Give me authenticity, keeps ringing in my head from a song that comes on my internet radio often. I don’t even know what song it is, but nevertheless it haunts me. Today I really do feel like I am being haunted. So be it, now ends my rant.

6 comments:

Tom Howe said...

Thanks for sharing that, David, and hoping you find what you're looking for. One thing that helped me recently is reading Joseph Campbell's 'Hero with a Thousand Faces", a great exploration of the mythic father-journey.

Luna said...

Wow.. you do have alot to say...
so say it..
do not let anyone stifle the thoughts you wish to share..
but remember thought are things
what we observe is changed by the observing of it... and where you think you want to go is where your thoughts will take you.
I use to be angry, and bitched at the world and screamed it's not fair...and that was all I saw.
After a trauma I realized that I needed to fill my world with only beauty, love and wonder and humour, and refuse to pick or touch anything negative. Life still flows negative things my way I just jump, step over, step aside, duck .. what you hold... holds you... it realy is simple.

Applying that Philosophy has been a tough road.. but the belief that 3 weeks of doing anything makes it a part of your routine.

David "checkback" Meade said...

Tom: that has been on my to read list for some time now, sounds like now is a good time to crack the spine on that bad boy.

David "checkback" Meade said...

Luna: your words have been a blessing between last night, and here. thanks!

Camelia said...

Hello David.

I have enjoyed reading this post and a couple of your previous posts.

Sounds like youre on an awesome journey of self and you seem to be succeeding... Knowing you feel stopped yet are still moving forward is a weird concept I had to accept of myself recently. (I congratulated myself on this realisation. Haha.)

I like the way you write/rant, revealling your thought processes in the flow as well as the words themselves. I look forward to reading more of you. Would love to see a fictional piece... (=

May you flow.
(lovenunrg)

David "checkback" Meade said...

Lovenunrg: Fiction eh? We'll see about that. For now I am following the path as it reveals itself. Remaining in the flow is so important, and it is in that sentiment that I wrote another entry this morning. The response I am getting albeit a mere pocket of humanity seems so BIG!