"I've become a monk", they said

"I've become a monk", they said.

Silence.

"But...", she stuttered. "I don't understand."

It was sadness she was feeling. Triggered by her belief that the world just lost a soul. That her friend just turned their countenance away from the world, to instead devote their life to looking inward.

She stared at them in despair.

"No, Mary. It's not what you think."

A pause.

"I'm not turning away. On the contrary. I'm becoming a monk to fully turn towards it.”

Mary looked puzzled. They continued:

“What, to you, might look like standing in the midst of life - working hard in your job, planning the next holidays with your friends, studying diligently for good grades, striving to 'become something' - it's your way of turning away from the world."

Their voice carried compassion as they said those words. And their eyes, full of love, continued to speak:

"The world needs us, Mary. It really does.

It's not a children's game anymore. We might, or might not, get this thing right. We can't continue playing in this self- and other-consumed way.

We need to grow up. And get to work."

Silence, as the fleeting shadows of those words seemed to cause the air to shiver.

"Mary. I'm becoming a monk in order to turn towards the world, fully."

Marry stood there. Her friend's world slowly trickling through her consciousness. Eventually, they touched her heart. And she saw.

"I understand.", she nodes.

"The purpose you're devoting your monkhood to is...

It's life. Isn't it?"

“Mhmm”, they affirm. "Life and flourishing."

Mary's eyes meet her friend's.

"I have stopped clinging to this, my own life. And as a result, I found myself freed to care about all the lives, all the consciousness, that is yet to be.

Those future souls, Mary, they are our brothers and sisters. I can feel them next to me. I love them and care for them.

And in this love, I find the imperative to not only speak of love, but to act."

Mary inhales, holds her breath, and then exhales.

"I wish we all could see."

Novemeber 2020

Surrender

I came to the mountains in the hope to feel like my inner Max Frisch or Thomas Mann again. And then it didn’t happen. It felt like I had taken this entire world-y and work-ly baggage with me. And I felt resentment. Like I was wasting this chance for serenity. And rest.

In me, a coalition has been growing against any form of work; and they have been growing increasingly non-cooperative. Another part has been meeting this coalition with some amount of disdain: “Childish,” they say. “Worldly things don’t wait for you to have a break during the holidays. That’s not how that works. Get rest when you can, and work when it is demanded. And it’s demanded now. Of course, you can do it. Just do it.” And while I know I can do it, it feels as if doing it despite the coalition makes… makes a hole grows, somewhere inside of me; a pit in my stomach; and as it is taking up more and more space, I can notice it crowd out… something like happiness.

But today something interesting happened. Suddenly, like a bit of lightning, it just appeared inside of me. Surrender. Surrender to my own experience. The possibility that I can fight in surrender. A form of fighting that doesn’t ask for my soul as its sacrifice; that doesn’t threaten to make me bitter and angry all the time. Also, surrender to pain and exhaustion. And suddenly a space, a growing ability in me for seeing truth and love, in others, the world and myself.

Whatever it is my heart was trying to fend off… it feels like it has melted away. Feeling calmer. Feeling like I can talk to the mountains again.

Still not sure what’s goning happen. Things in the world and at work feel difficult and not exactly like there is some light at the end of the tunnel that I am steering towards. It’s more like a maze, or a plane, or a changing landscape; there is fog, there are hills and valleys, and threads and challenges and opportunities that just appear. There isn’t much of a sense of where things are going. I sure am getting places, but why those places rather than others? I don't exactly know. And I am 'getting myself' to those places or is the world getting me there? I don't know; feels like I am mostly just responding to and interacting locally with what the world is bringing to me.

Makes me think of life. I'm also not sure what life is directed at, if anything at all.

I wish for my soul more happiness and rest and balm. And I also hold fear; fear the trade will always, always be about real, worldy suffering, real-world chances of extinction, injustice or chaos. Don’t know whether this is true or not, nor does this feel like this is about that sort of truth, anyways. I think I am just feeling love and fear. And I don’t know what to do with it, or how there could ever be a solution to this.

But for now, I want to try to surrender to that.

…

I love the mountains. The cold air. The rawness and roughness of nature up here. I think it mirrors the mix of aloneness and separation, and belonging and warmth and love in my soul.

Freedom and Constraint

Feel more ability than usual to notice when the social web starts to tighten around me; and then just drop it. Freedom and unconstrained-ness. Feeling more in my power. Feel trust in the strength of the mast of my sailing boat despite the mildly stormy sea around me.

I love to want things I want. Makes me feel alive.

Life

Feeling lots of things. Excitement, hope, passion, infatuation, nervousness, indecision, fear, throwing-up-my-hands-at-all-the-small-mistakes-I’ve-already-made-today, in-friendship-ness, gratitude, failure, ...

On the meta-level, not quite sure whether I’m feeling gently annoyed at my childish, volatile state, or whether I feel bright-eyed at its aliveness. Wondering whether maybe that’s what it feels like to really live.

Feeling happy and okay with unresolvedness today. Sitting by a little pond that’s both peaceful and convivial. Was randomly reminded of this song about batman, and heroism, and brotherly love.. and it just, it just makes me happy, and I feel so silly, and a childlike lightness about that.

Feeling so much. Feels stormy. Also feels alive. Part of me thinks, maybe, that's what it feels like to be human. So fallible. (So fallible!) So many good things, so many bad things, and all of it in hundreds and thousands of different shades and colours.

Grateful to be alive, grateful to be able to feel. Also tired, also a sense of defeat. Defeat smells of sadness, and it also smells of peace. I welcome that peace.

Want to dig myself deep into my blankets and sleep until a new world welcomes me at the other side, in a hundred thousand imaginary years from now.


Waves crashing upon a rocky shore

A picture came to me sometime this night, and it's still with me now: of waves, crashing upon a rocky shore.

Of "those waves, fallen out of heaven onto earth, [..] the tumult of sound and the satisfaction of a thousand miles of ocean, giving up its strength on the sand" (from a poem by David Whyte)

I am in touch with what is a mixture of the mighty destructiveness of this image, the overwhelmingness of the waves and my powerlessness with respect to them; and, on the other hand, the release, the surrender, the out-breath, the void that occurs once the waves pull back again.

I want to be with this void now, just for a while. I feel a desire for it to not be filled, for it to be left alone, for it to remain in being mode, just for a bit. On the other side of that desire is despair - not violent or choking despair, relatively gentle despair, nearly healing, I want to say.

And I want the despair to be able to move through me, in its own time, undisturbed. And once it has done that, only once it has done that, the void will be willing to take in new things again.

Ponder

Spent the morning by the sea shore somewhere in the north of France. Feeling infinitesimally small under the sky, and held in that, in longing and oblivion, and glimpsing the feeling of being mere horizon, and some wanting of being able to hold that feeling more firmly, more robustly, more reliably.

Some unsatisfaction with how I often hold on to ambition which is not quite the true thing I want or something. Wondering what I will be like, and what I will think of, and feel towards this younger version of me when I am all old, and maybe wise.

Struggle

Feeling drained today. Like all energy has leaked out of me and all the remaining motion of my body or mind is mere reflexes, not real action. My parts aren’t that up for cooperating with me today. Banging my head against hard things, but the only effect that seems to achieve is to give me a headache...

Think I'm a bit afraid. Today things feel harder than what I know how to do. Feeling some judgement towards not doing more, not being more. I think I am putting a lot of pressure on myself right now and finding it hard to unclench.

Wishing for some sort of support, but not quite sure what it is.

Thinking of my dad. Finding solace and sadness there. Wondering whether he ever struggled when he was younger. Wishing I could see it, feel it, sense it. Wishing I could see what he did or thought. So I could believe it more easily. So I might know it’s okay that I struggle.

Feel some variant of « alone » i think. As if the world was made up of « things » not « people »? And as a result, it’s hard to spell « connection » (cause my building blocks are all « thing »-shaped). And I seem to find it hard to genuinely connect to people.

This world-made-of-things feels quite big, and kinda windy and not exactly hospitable. And I think I want something to be different in my experience but I don’t really understand what or how yet.

Self-judgement. A sense of familiarity, like recognizing a familiar face. It has been hiding and sneaking around me for a while now, and as if it was gaining courage, growing bigger and moving more into the centre of my vision each day. Now, It’s not hiding anymore. Just standing there next to and in front of me, unabashedly.

Most of the time it just hangs out, next to me, separate from me; occasionally it leans in and takes a bite. It’s hard to keep it to eating only those things I endorse it eating, away from consuming me more fully. Like I’m trying to push and pull at the same time.

Hard to hold myself if a part of me also rejects myself. Hard to be held.

Have some holding left for that, and some melting away of all that into the moment. There are things to do right now. Feel okay about that.

The memory of my body holding in pain last night. Some leftover feeling of nausea from the sharpness of it.

That pain has faded now, mostly, loosened its grip; left behind a sour, duller, inward pain.

My perception is flat and narrow upon waking; nothing and noone seems quite there.

I wonder whether this veil will slip away as the day unfolds, or whether it will stay, wrapped around my shoulders, neck, throat and head, for some more time.

Have been working really hard. Like a donkey at the construction of the pyramids of Giza.

Have a hard time making the pain and muscle tension leave my body. Affects my mood. Gives things a bitter taste. Makes me want for time to pass, rather than to experience it.

Feel a bit alone and unseen in my work. Like people assume that stuff just happens.

Feel angry and rejective towards the thought of people wanting to appease me, or tell me to take a break, or thank me for the work. Want to tell these imaginary people that they don't get it; that I don't work to be seen but because I care about the thing. Feels like their words try to undermine my caring and my dedication. Lots of protectiveness and anger here - feels hard to hold it gently.

Also a bit appalled by those thoughts and at how self-centred they are. Feel a bit trapped in my pain, aloneness and protectiveness.

Hush

Walking through the streets of Paris. Wanting to just keep walking. Feeling like I wanna get lost. (Also thinking that that’s silly, and how I have to be back in time for a call in a bit.)

Hard to feel hope today. Not exactly feeling hopeless. More like there is no space for the feeling if hope at the moment.

What is that space filled up with, then? Emptiness? Desire for emptiness? Sadness? I don’t know.

I want silence now. Hush.

White gold

There is fullness, richness, striving towards horizons; — nearly impatience.

There is love, much love; appreciation for so many deeply Good things and Good people in my life; — nearly infatuatedness.

And then there is also a bunch of "fuck you, world" energy inside of me; an unwillingness to engage with anything that isn't bringing fullness and richness into my life.

"No one can make me"; "no one can or will make me any more". A tinge of franticness, and reactivity.

Worry that the goodness will be taken away from me. Willingness to fight for it.

Then, moments of doubt. A feeling of confusion. A bit of shamefulness, and worry.

I'm wondering whether there is anger? But I don't think so. Not when I am still. Then, my experience clears up.

"I don't want to". It’s simple.

And then again: doubt. Do I have the right to?

And now upsetness: I want to go back to the love and richness. Maybe they just were taken away from me, for a moment, as I had worried. Sadness. Some despair.

The lioness is protecting her cubs again. I want it to stop. I want to make it stop.

Feels bigger than what I can hold.

Or maybe the other way round: whatever is trying to hold me is too small for me.

I’m spilling out. I want to make the prison bars explode. Shiva who destroys the world.

Disapointment

… have found myself pondering the experience of disappointment these days. How much it can sting and burn. A very nasty sort of burn.

But also.. how there can be something deeply sobering and cleansing about it. When I recognize it as a way of re-orienting to and re-coming-in-contact with reality. My expectations and predictions were wrong, reality turned out to be different. Then, disappointment is merely the readjustment pain, merely the sign of my belief having become slightly more truth-tracking.

I don’t think I can always and fully hold this latter view yet. Part of me still feels a burn beyond mere readjustment pain. But today I noticed how I had a small instance of disappointment, and then - to my surprise - it didn’t feel quite so bad. It felt nearly good, or grounding; I felt some part if me welcoming the update in that it may be contributing to making my sight ever clearer.