Dear Robyn,
If you could control thoughts and emotions, are these the thoughts you'd be having?
Haha, yeah right!
How are you now?
I'm okay, although I'm a bit burnt out. My sister was here to visit twice for multiple days in a row these past couple weeks and I spent the entire day with her yesterday, which is the most time I've spent with someone, talking and being with them, in years. It was good, but it was far more social interaction than I'm used to. My mind's still kind of crowded with the recent impressions my family's made upon me. I'm looking forward to feeling like I'm by myself again.
Rereading some of what I wrote on Sunday, the feeling I get is one of expectancy. There's supposed to be a moment when I finally get it, at which point something is meant to happen that changes everything. There's nowhere in direct experience in which the I can be found. There are just sounds, images, bodily sensations, tastes, smells, thoughts and feelings. The sense of there being a subject inside the forehead looking out from behind the eyes is based on an illusion. The mind has tricked itself into believing that a bodily sensation belongs to or
is it, without any reason for doing so. It's like the illusion where a person is made to feel as though a rubber hand placed out in front of them belongs to or is their actual arm. The illusion isn't a sign of something faulty with our brains, it just happens because that's an aspect of how the mind works. Everything's already doing what it needs to and being how it is without having to check in with "me" to see that everything is going according to plan. It's not just that life is constantly going off book: there isn't a book to begin with. There is no such thing as a life script. The script is a story the mind has built for itself out of various thoughts and feelings in order to construct the semblance of a narrative centred around the imaginary existence of a character called Zechs. It doesn't reflect the reality of who or what the living being who goes by the name Zechs actually is. I am; the living being is real, but who I think I am is not. The content of thoughts having to do with the thought of me does not refer to something real that can be found in direct experience. Thoughts come and go without ever pausing to attach themselves to things and get stuck there as permanent labels upon the constantly changing feelings and sensations that arise as experience. Nothing is happening that needs "me" to make it happen, or to which my attention needs to apply itself in order for my existence to become more stable. My body and mind are perfectly capable of becoming more or less grounded all on their own. Nothing special is going to happen, no new thought or feeling is going to appear that makes this real, because reality already is. The only life I can miss out on is the one that's happening right here and now, and even that can't be lost because nothing comes up in experience that is not it. This is it. This is real. This is me. This is the thought "me" that was here and gone away. I'm here. I'm real. I am.
But am I here? Am I real? Is that not just the delusion reappearing alongside the thoughts that are supposed to symbolize or represent the delusion having been seen all the way through? What's behind that - what's behind the feeling in between my eyes - what's in 'there'? Nothing. It's just a feeling. There isn't some room where the I lives, nor is there an empty room where it isn't. The bodily sensation of the inside of the skull is not special compared to the sensation of any other part of the body felt from within. The meaning of sensations is fluid, contextual, indeterminate. Two people sitting side by side on a roller coaster could give the same ECG results and still one of them could report having been completely thrilled the entire time while the other said they were terrified. I'm anxious right now, does that mean this is a bad experience? When that anxiety goes, will that mean experience is good again?
Perhaps the "I" does not exist. I focus on the sensations at the forehead and repeat the thoughts "me" and "I", over and over again. They pass through those sensations like waves through a dense foam. The sense of self is not fixed. It can become dislodged from its apparent centre, shift and be pushed askew. The anxiety feels like a desire for something that can be called "mine". It craves fixity, certainty, knowledge, reason, an explanation that justifies why it's there. It's drunk on its own dilemma. If something brings it pleasure, it wants to cement that procedure, make it reproducible and own its product. If something threatens it, or is harmful or unpleasant, it wants to explain that, make sense of it with a reason sufficient for assuaging its fear and coddling its pain. Ideally, however, it wants to destroy it, make it permanently go away. When it can't do that, it becomes resentful, cold, disconsolate. It tries to turn itself away from the source of unpleasantness as much as it's able. It's afraid to face its own unreality. The sensation is real, but "anxiety" is just a label. You said we can relax, Robyn, is that true? Earlier, I tried asking myself, "What kind of thoughts would you want to be having?" and nothing came up. It was clear to me what I'd want my thoughts to be like, how I'd want them to make me feel, but I couldn't actually make a thought appear that was that. The best I can do now is think of the kind of experiences I enjoy having and reproduce snippets from those moments, like choosing to rewatch episodes of TV shows that I know I liked with the feeling that it's likely I'll have a similar reaction as when I first saw them way back. But what actually entertains me more than anything is being surprised by thoughts; the most satisfying part of watching familiar programs is discovering things I hadn't noticed before, finding novel interpretations and developing new relationships with characters I formerly disliked as their reactions begin to reveal deeper levels of emotional complexity in their lives, thus giving me greater insight into my own. But does that mean I can feel good about what already feels like it's bad? I want some kind of authority to confirm or legitimate what I think is right but which doesn't feel like it is. That was the function the "I" was meant to fulfill, but in its absence what I think makes me feel like I'm standing on top of a building whose foundation is crumbling, and both I and it are moments away from total collapse. Ahaha, and then it's written, the energy that made up whatever thought just occurred passed through the resistance that was inhibiting its release and now that it's gone the truth value of that thought is gone with it. That happened on Sunday too. It's like the emotional and psychological equivalent of wringing out a towel - what your guide called refrigerator noise.
I read what I'd written here so far and I think I spotted something. The energy that I've been calling anxiety keeps getting expressed over and over again as doubt about what's known. The expectation is that, if the truth is known, then the sensations associated with the feeling of doubt should no longer occur. I'm supposed to know something, be in possession of a certain fact, that will make it so that those sensations will immediately resolve themselves without difficulty. When this doesn't happen, there's a feeling like something goes offline, I tune out to the world and the refrigerator starts humming again. There are alternatives to the expression of these sensations in the form of an experience of a moment of doubt and uncertainty seeking to be assuaged by an external authority or conceptual resolution. For example, I can move my body and find new ways of being at ease with the feelings that are occurring then and there. At the same time, that's alright that that's the way it's happened to play out most often for me. I can honestly say I didn't know any better, because each time I've gone through this brain swamp I've felt like the problem I was troubling myself with was of the utmost importance. After all, its resolution represented total freedom from anxiety, negativity and harm for the rest of my life. Now there's room for something more fun than never-ending melancholic obsession and neurasthenic soliloquy. It occurs to me that even those could be enjoyable, occurring as they do for their own sake without having to be perceived as a means through which "I" will attain some sort of permanent relief. There's something natural to it, even to those moments of uncanny feelings that come up as I risk the thought that somehow anything could be or remain natural after this moment. But then, there's no need to somehow tense my being into forcing the next moment to come up in line with my hopes or expectations. I don't know if this will last, but I feel like I can appreciate, even love, something painful, such as anxiety. It's a new feeling after all, unique to this moment, and I enjoy novelty. Not altogether what I was expecting to find, but now that I have, it's nice.
