Fail

It's easy to get the spiritual pride goin'. You sit there all the time, thinking these lofty thoughts, about not being attached, living simply; you read the esteemed writings, your mind is constantly filled with these virtuous things. It's easy to get caught up in that, because we identify ourselves with our thoughts, they are so fascinating. Pausing in the philosophizing, in between all these holy ruminations, sometimes you get a glimpse of your own behavior. You gotta be paying attention though, because it's easy enough to ignore.

But if you do look, you see that you aren't nearly so wonderful as you thought. You talk about letting go, but you hoard your money. You believe in being present in the moment, but you panic and freak out when you get a little lost on the way to a new coffee shop in an unfamiliar part of town.

Times get a little tough, and no longer can you coast along in a fog of holy thoughts. So often when it's time to test one's mettle, you fail completely. You weren't living the good life at all, you were just thinking about living it.

Down and Out

Recently I've been stressing a lot about money. I'd like to say that this isn't like me, but it is, sort of. I've always been a saver, always socking away cash. Even when I have a sizable store of it, I still fear not having enough, am reluctant to spend money even on the necessaries. For some reason I need a good thick cushion to feel at ease. I remember while I was on the AT-- I suddenly realized I was treating food the way I treat money: I would always have extra in the food-bag, sometimes rolling into town with a full day's worth of food left, while not actually eating enough on the trail. I was always afraid to run out. When you consider that food and money are both forms of energy, of getting things done, you start to really wonder.

It also seems to me that being down and out is much the same feeling as lonliness. Without money you are not connected to the civilized world.Surrounded by all the things I'm supposed to buy and people who all seem completely wrapped up in the ambition for more money... it makes me feel isolated, alone, like some working class stiff, the kind who's not just poor but who's also bitter about it. I'm not even of the same mindset, do not desire that life of striving; yet all the messages around here make me feel low. The energy of it pervades the city.

I never feel that way in the woods. Nor do I ever really feel lonely out there; it's only in the cities that the real ache becomes apparent, with all these people who will forever be strangers to me, people I don't relate to and can't fit in with. But it's like I'm seeing a life I've been excluded from; I could never live that way and live with myself, but that means I'm stuck on the fringes of society, which is hard. It's the longing, I suppose, of one who is banished to the island of the misfit toys.

But I don't know how to let go of this clutching at life. My belief is that it's necessary to let things flow; be free in your spending, the it will come back around. It's like closing an electrical circuit: act as if the money doesn't matter, and you'll never run out. But damn if it isn't a hard first step to make. For right now all I see is the cash flowing away, to mechanic bills, rent, food, gas...

I'm coming face to face with the nugget of fear that lives in my heart, but right now I'm having a hard time even looking at it.

Surrender

I'm in a decent mood. Kinda feeling happy. I think I need more comedy in my life. I think too much, worry too much. Right now I can feel the stress creeping back in, with repetitive thoughts about things I have to do, about money, work, school. But that's foolish. I'm happy now. I was laughing and smiling all evening. There are no worries. I have been spending way too much time thinking about happiness and not actually having any.

Acceptance and action, those two things seem to be the main ideas in religions and philosophies. I think acceptance really just means surrender to reality. You surrender to it, and in doing so, open up doors for action. Surrender and acceptance don't mean accepting bad things, or good things either. It's about accepting what's real, what's actually there. Notions of good or bad is our judgement and comes after.

Once we've surrendered to reality, we stop wasting energy complaining and worrying, stressing and fretting, and generally just being miserable. Once we surrender, we are free to act, because we're no longer busy pushing reality away. Acceptance brings access to action, and the energy to act. Or to not act, as the case may be.

Of course, we have already surrendered to everything, on the basic level; there's no escaping that, it's a condition of existence. No matter what our mind thinks is the case, we are part of the situation whether we accept it or not.

The point here is to make that surrender a conscious thing. All the strain in life comes from the mind fighting its situations, trying to believe things aren't what they are, and deluding itself with fantasy. We are living as a house divided. The body surrenders, but the mind has not. Therefore we suffer

Life of Subtraction

Having been living a semi-nomadic existence of late, I have had to be able to fit all my stuff into my truck, an extened-cab Ranger, not a very big space. This is a source of pride for me. I, unlike most Americans, am always looking through my stuff to figure out what I can get rid of next. Thoreau said, speaking of possessions:

It is the same as if all these traps were buckled to a man's belt, and he could not move over the rough country where our lines are cast without dragging them — dragging his trap. He was a lucky fox that left his tail in the trap. The muskrat will gnaw his third leg off to be free. ... If I have got to drag my trap, I will take care that it be a light one and do not nip me in a vital part. But perchance it would be wisest never to put one's paw into it.

My sister laughs at me, because while when she's standing in line to buy something, she often finds herself picking up one of the "impulse buy" products lining the checkout as well. Meanwhile, I'm standing there fretting about whether I need the thing I am about to buy, half the time leave the line to go put it back, then leave the store with my wallet intact.

Possessions are a burden. You have to take care of them, think about what to do with them, house them, labor for them. They clutter your dwelling. There are people who will break themselves with a too-big apartment or house, just because they have all this furniture and stuffthat they need to do something with. Myself, I feel a relief every time I lighten my load, drop one more thing on the side of the road of life.

I believe one's outer reality mirrors one's inner reality. Possessions can clutter the mind, too. I try to apply this minimalism, this life of subtraction, to my mind as well as my physical world. Simplifying my surroundings helps me to simplify my inner life, and that then helps me to see things I can further simplify in my outer world. It goes back and forth, ideally at least, though more often in fits and starts, with moments of accumulation, and others of dissipation. Sometimes I live amid clutter, my few things in a chaotic jumble all over the floor, and it is at those times that I cannot be bothered to organize it, that I sometimes stop and notice that I'm currently stressed and unhappy, my life in as much chaos as my room.

I try to pay attention to these things. Like in a previous post, where I talked about the body and its messages, one's surroundings are also always are talking to you, giving you clues about your inner states, and often showing the way forward. And sometimes just tidying up can help clear the mind, since the two are basically one anyways.

I'll end with what the Tao Te Ching says in chapter 48:

In pursuit of knowledge,
every day something is added.
In the practice of the Tao,
every day something is dropped.

Pebbles and Burning Bridges

Reading this excellent post at a favorite blog of mine, as well as recent events in my own life, have me thinking about the future again. Right now I'm adrift. I had a job, moving and cleaning rental cars down by the airport, but ParkWest, the company who was doing this work for Enterprise, had its contract terminated. So we all got laid off, myself only a week and a half into employment. This is alright, the job wasn't great anyways, nor the pay. But it was something, useful especially since my truck needs some somewhat pricey repairs.

Now, I'm wondering, looking at all my options: Should I keep looking for work here in Dallas? I like being around my sister and brother-in-law. Should I WWOOF, and learn about farming? Should I go back to Florida, where I have residency, and try to go back to college? Should I just go piss away the winter in the desert, like a friend of mine is suggesting, then hike the PCT as I still intend to do?

Any choice I make rules out others. Right now I'm thinking work a few months, then PCT, then school. But It's a very hard thing for me though, because school means leaving behind the freedom of this more or less bohemian, hiker-trash lifestyle I've been living-- having adventures and trying to do the things I want to do. To saddle myself with a 3 or 4 year obligation, complete with massive loans (being in debt scares the shit out of me) is an extremely difficult move. I know it's the rational thing for me to do-- I know I'm better than the minimum wage jobs I'm looking at, and the future, though not guaranteed, is as it turns out pretty likely to occur. I'm not going to die next year, probably, even if the future to me still continues to look like a giant Void.

If I continue to forgo education, I may never climb out of this hole I'm in, yet how do I balance the fact that it's only a "hole" if one measures life by money and material success, a ruler I'm not prone to use? That's society's measure, not mine. I'm happy as hell out on the trails, with next to nothing. Mountains, sunshine, simple, down-to-earth people. It's all good. It's just the inbetween time, the winters and time spent saving for the next adventure, living in the slum that is modern life, around selfish, frustrated people that is so depressing for me. I have dreams of being a writer, and of having a little "homestead" and living more or less off the grid, the simple life.

But it's hard to live against the grain, being on the fringes, looked down upon, having your entire lifestyle put down constantly even by those close to you. It's also hard to live with the grain, and be so lonely and unfulfilled. But who knows? Maybe the choice to continue this life of "adventure" would lead somewhere great for me. Or maybe it will crush me. It's all so uncertain. As stated in the first link, he ripples from that pebble (choice) hitting the water will go out, and who knows what it will do out there.

What's both deeply frightening and madly exhilarating is to know that every decision we make, in every moment, is going to make more ripples, have more unforseen consequences. Ripples making ripples of their own. Every moment we live changes our possible futures, by closing some doors forever and opening others. How does one make rational decisions when the information needed is infinite, and the outcomes completely unknown?

I've never been decisive. The future is a wild adventure, enjoyed in the present. This is the cutting edge. And I'm afraid of burning bridges.

Absolute Freedom

Sometimes, if rarely, in the middle of a conversation, and for no apparent reason, out of no animosity or anything... it occurs to me that I could just... take a swing at my friend, knock him right to the ground. Or sometimes that it'd be kind of fun to just walk away while the person is in the middle of a sentence. To just intentionally do something extremely antisocial. Sometimes I get this sudden objective appraisal of the scene I'm in, and the countless options available, most of them absurd. It's a weird feeling. I've never acted on them. I wonder if this occurs to other people.

This isn't about desiring to do these things; but it's interesting, that you are free to do whatever you want, whenever. You could go down to the airport and get on a plane for Argentina or something, right now. Or just go out your front door and start walking, to see where you'll end up. You could bark like a dog at the next person you see.

What's stopping you? Nothing but the rules you have written in your mind, rules you have let society write in there. Society in the guise of well-meaning teachers, parents, friends, and others, of course. Mostly they make life livable and sane; imagine the chaos if people were really free. But there's always the option. Not that in the next break in the conversation you should kick your friend in the crotch. I'm not saying that.

But wouldn't it be fun to make use of that vast freedom now and then, albeit in a somewhat more constructive fashion? It could-- it would change your life, from the flow of countless consequences and effects. You never know where it might lead.

Blown Away

How could this cosmic autumn be so fair?

as falling, every beauty ceased to be

but little more than flowers at my feet

there doomed to die and whither endlessly.

And who could help but weep to see it go?

as melancholy seasons take their turn

to die one to the next, and in the flame

of Time’s dread passing leave the world to burn.

The leaves, the days, the years all pass me by,

the stars once hung through heaven drift away,

and in the quiet space behind the breeze

there’s but the empty sound of ending days.

It’s all so soon, this flowering of the world;

we’re blown away as soon as we’re unfurled.