chill out

Ahh the mind ticks overtime….. One of my fish died (I have tropical fish), I got sick and everything seems really boring at the moment. I started thinking about the pets and the people that have died… what life means and the variety of experience that you can get in life. I started to contemplate all the usual ways of filling my time. I could start practicing the harmonica, exercise, go out, drink to excess, meditate, read, join the SES (state emergency service) or write but none of that is likely to float my boat. What ails me is deeper than that.

I came across a zen website that made sense to me. It cut through my haze and got me thinking about what would really make me happy. I’m not keen on having kids which seems to be the way that most of my friends are following. I think I have been focusing too much on ‘doing’. I think about how I can make my life better… more fun. Every time I see people in worse shape than me, severe disabilities, homelessness and just the absolute shit that life can throw at you I realize that I have nothing to complain about. Don’t get me wrong I know I’m whinging and the blog world is full of people who think that the world owes them, this is how I’m feeling now.

Alcohol won’t make me happy, business won’t make me happy, sex won’t make me happy (well maybe a little happy, but not as a life mission). I think I’m pushing too hard to extract meaning from things that have no meaning. Time to shut the brain down. I’m thinking too much, I need to just go with the flow.

To quote the website that got me thinking (http://www.deansluyter.com/pages.cfm?id=177);

No beer left.
I'll sit and drink
The sky.
- Josh Feuer
Pushing, Pulling, and Freedom

This one change changes everything. As we gradually learn to leave off distractedness and rest in openness, we stop looking for fulfillment outside of the way things already are. Till now we've gone through life pushing and pulling - trying to push the undesirable away from us and pull the desirable toward us. It's such an entrenched habit that we persist even when there's no payoff, when it only creates frustration. Stuck in the traffic jam, we keep trying to push the cars out of the way with our mental bulldozer; spotting the luscious babe (or hunk), we keep trying to extend our mental tendrils and pull her (or him) within copulation range.

But resting in openness, free from the agitation of pushing and pulling, we can just witness the situation. This doesn't mean to suppress our anger at the traffic if it arises or our lust for the babe if it arises, for those arisings are also part of the situation we're witnessing. But it means we don't get lost in the arisings either, don't fixate on them.

Elevate the scope of 360-degree global awareness.
- Lama Surya Das

To be open is to be receptive to all 360 degrees of our experience, not stuck in the five or ten degrees where we're pushing or pulling.


At the end of the day I need to chill out.