QUITTING SMOKING

The mind/will is like a boat in the sea (of both life itself and one’s own unconscious). It surely is a good thing to build a strong one so as not to sink in the first storm. Still better when the inner dynamics are so aligned that there is no distinction and  you ARE both the sea and the boat. The first and last time I quit smoking, I was doing meditation. At one point, I realized that my shallow breathing was hindering me from going deeper. I had to choose. I chose meditation. Quit smoking on the spot and didn’t smoke for 8 years. Wu wei! Waiting for another favorable alignment is my delusion. Instead, I may try to build an inflatable boat and row away from that smoking island of addiction. Wouldn’t it be a nice odyssey toward breaking a deeply rooted routine with all the difficulties involved? The sheer challenge of it would be the incentive one needs when it comes to making a radical change. For we mortals need one. A better tasting carrot or a more scary stick!

Still, the thought of this makes me feel like Felix Baumgartner (as I imagine he did) just before his jump.

LOVE YOUR MISTAKES

I acquired English through its similarities to French and German which I speak. That is, by osmosis. At one point, I realized I was grasping more and more not only individual bits and pieces but the very structure of it and going effortlessly deeper. It was like watching the morning mist disappear, revealing the landscape behind. A pleasant surprise.

Early on, no one really believed me when I said I didn’t know any English, not even my mother who was convinced that all I needed was to spend a couple of months in England to become fluent. And not even my bosses who dictated me their business letters or, later, let me write them by myself which I somehow managed to do.

True, I’ve got the feel of the overall structure as a kind of musical sensation specific to this language.

But this is an uneven development. While I am becoming more fluent in writing I’m still struggling with speaking. (Particularly when expressing the most ordinary things.) An oddity as frustrating as trying to tie shoe strings of which one end is extremely short!

Writing is my thing. It always has been. In writing there is no time, or it is I who set the rhythm with no outside pressure. In contrast, as soon as I open my mouth the gap is there: the discrepancy between the active and passive processing of language. Becoming paralyzingly self-conscious, I give up without even trying.

Yet all those mistakes I make –and used to hate- are not only inevitable, they are telling milestones indicating one is moving on even if slithering. And where there is movement, there also exists a potential for improvement.

And this is how I came to appreciate, even to love them.

DOTTING THE VOID

That’s because we’ve somehow got this extravaganza called mind, he said.

Look at the cats, dogs, animals, how they are content with what they get. Always in the moment.

We, on the other hand, are pretty clueless about what to do with that infinitely (and unnecessarily) complex machinery in our skulls.

Unable to turn itself off, it’s continually there. Endlessly producing anxieties, hopes, passions, thoughts.

If you’d strip the process down to its essence though, you’d see that all this is nothing but kind of a connect-the-dots game. Similar to the constellations we define in the night sky. Just as we cannot bear the void we cannot stand still.

We are connecting the dots creatively at times. Take Newton and his apple, for instance. Skipping all the other possibilities he drew a connection between the fallen fruit and gravity. Or arts, for that matter. But most of the time the void is filled with conflicting ideas. Religion. Ideologies. World views. Culture. My way of connecting the dots is superior! Truer!

And how childish is the mind in its pretense. Restless. Jumpy. Like a spoiled kid. Distract me. Entertain me. Approve me. Mirror me. Love me (and do it in MY way!).

Then he smiled gently and swam away leaving me behind, smiling, as well.

Seeing through phenomena and looking for the essence of things is liberating, isn’t it?

*

Sitting on the verandah, I’m watching the swift procession of the wonderful rain clouds.

Their continual formation, shape shifting, dissolution and filtering the light in varying shades offer yet another analogy for the mind with our passing attachments and detachments.

He hadn’t used the word mind, in fact. For him, it’s simply “the human brain” with all its odd byproducts, mind being just one of them.

I go one step (or a dot shall I say?) further and start to think about consciousness, the timeless counterpart of the childish mind. Where the one is time-bound, non temporal is the other. Non dualistic, unifying what the mind divides. Encompassing. Equanimous.

The sky beyond the clouds and the void itself beyond the sky.

Womb of insight.

HOW OLD ARE YOU?

How old do you feel, she asked.

30, I replied. And simultaneously ageless and ancient.

Where is biological time in all this?

Apparently just on the ID card.