The path, it is full of struggle, full of toil. The sooner you accept this, the sooner you accept the work, the sooner you shall reap its fruits.

Like the allure of a passionate love affair,

I need to fight to hold my ground,

for my natural wanderlust stirs.

The desire to transcend can be satiated without escaping.

I can transcend the mundane while still being part of the mundane.

isn’t that the secret?

that the holiest of holies often are placed on the plainest of altars?

Christ born by livestock, a manger of hay.

I enjoy writing contradictory posts. 

Consider how my previous two posts advocate for opposing approaches to life:

one, of crafting an empowering mental narrative. Of becoming something definite, of defining oneself and the world around you, of becoming a hero to conquer some sort of outer circumstance. 

The other of completely surrendering all narratives, of living in simplicity — a form of living with an empty mind, of manual labor being a type of meditation, humility not as an idea but as a lived reality. 

I think both are true. Both are important. Both have their place. 

There is a time in life to live high and nobly, from the heart, to live with utmost purpose, never to allow oneself to be small but to shine, to shine, to shine grandly from the heart. 

There is a time in life to chop wood and carry water, to put your head down, to cease the mental chatter, to identify with nothing, to move silently. 

This does point to the transitory and eternal alike — for we are asked to rise to the occasion when the occasion is presented, to have such fluidity of expression that we can happily become what it is that life is asking of us when it is being asked. The self remains the same, whereas the transitory does what it does, shifting and ebbing and flowing.

This is like the Sun continuing to shine — the constant self — whereas the season of life is like the current phase of the Moon, holding and reflecting that light differently based on current circumstances.

Contemplating the transitory nature of all things is overrated.

It, to me, is like watching a movie with someone who, every few seconds, leans over and whispers, “it’s just a movie.”

For Christ’s sake, I know — now would you let me enjoy the movie while it lasts?

The highs and the lows alike — both are important for the formation of a good story. 

Riddle me this: a movie without a central conflict, without some struggle, without an antagonist of some sort, without elements of negativity for the main characters to surmount —

Is this a movie that could really hold your attention? Is this a movie that could truly capture your heart, that could keep you emotionally invested?

There is no such thing as a truly good story without the duality of good and evil, or hero and conflict, or protagonist and antagonist — 

this is my answer to those who would question why evil and suffering exist. 

There is simply no story without odds to overcome. 

This is how one wields the power of their mind to become their own protagonist. Your life is a story. We are each our own main characters, each in a supporting role for another, each an extra for billions. 

View your life and all of its elements thematically. Write your own narrative beautifully, as you see fit. This is divinity.

A life of simplicity is a life that breaks the chains of the ego. The ego revels in high and noble purposes, spun narratives becoming webs that entrap the spirit. 

But a life of simplicity, of wood chopping and water carrying — 

this is a return to Source, for from where do we come but from dust, from Earth, from water; 

is this not a return home?

And once was I told, 

by a fairy of the unconscious, an emissary of that forsaken nation, an ambassador of those badlands,

that antidepressant research will be propelled forward by dark matter. 

Let me ask you this: if Hermetics is true, and the inner world truly does reflect the outer world,

and 85% of the universe is dark matter,

and 80% of our oceans are unexplored, 

what do you think this says about the workings of the psyche?

Can a hero embark on their journey without a descent first into darkness?

Are not gems forged in the abysses of the Earth?

Riddle me this: how can anyone be whole and complete while allowing shame to sever themself in two?

I’ve most often found that those who shy away from difficult conversations with others, are those who are denying the most critical conversations with themselves. Depression is so often the unconscious begging us for raw dialogue. What a critical position, a critical state — when that dark night falls, what will you do? Will you sit by the campfire and enter conversation? Truthfully do I tell you that doing this is like taking the weights that burden you and casting them into the flame — but oh, if you shy away from those hard conversations with yourself, if you deny what it is that the denied parts of yourself are trying to tell you, if you cannot listen, if you do not have the heart for it, 

then go ahead — spend your lifetime running. Run off into the night if you will, make haste, for that shadow cast by the Moonlight will always pick up pace in accordance with you.

…

But do you not see? Do you not see how these myths of old contain the very same wisdom? How many times, how many forms, how many different stories need to deliver the same moral before we listen? How often must we be told that there is gold in lead, that the hero must descend into the pitch, that it’s always darkest just before dawn, how often must we be reminded that our shadow will always remain right behind us until we turn and face it — how often, how often before we listen?

How many dreams have you had where you were being chased? Have you ever been brave enough to turn around? Have you yet given yourself the privilege of bearing witness to the miracle of the monster, the pursuer, altogether vanishing?

So great is the light of the conscious mind, yes — but so too is the greatness of the darkness of our psyche. And what I am trying so desperately to tell you is this: that if you send parts of yourself into exile in that great darkness, you will not feel truly alive until you brave the expedition of retrieving yourself. Go ahead: try and forget all that you like. Do all that you can, spend your lifetime with pacifier after pacifier numbing the ache. Live in this dystopia of distraction and ignore it if you will. 

But if you are brave enough. If you wish to truly live. If you wish to know what a life truly lived in light is like, then you must encounter your own shadow. Bring all of yourself into the light — shine the light into the darkness. Step into it and look. You must make the two one, for the schism holding yourself into two is the border between light and dark. That is the border that is so oft unwittingly drawn — but it is well within our rights to erase that division, for our hearts are always sovereign. Will you or will you not use your inborn sovereignty, however?

So, once was I told by a messenger of where antidepressant research lies: in dark matter. In our own psychic dark matter. In the undiscovered 85% of our own minds. If depression is symbolically the dark night of the soul, where else would the work be but in the darkness? How can we intelligently work with this, to do it properly? 

Oh! For anyone to suppose that they know themselves while being too afraid to explore 85% of themselves. 

Hear me clearly: just how on Earth can anyone embark on a true journey of discovery without embarking into the unknown? How can a journey of self-discovery happen at all without a foray into the unknown depths within? Discovery by definition lies where we have not yet tread — nowhere else. 

Today do I honor light and dark alike. Today do I honor the shadow. I want to love what is in my shadow, and integrate all of myself, to love all of myself, light and dark alike. Therein is wholeness.

Therein is completion.

a lovely aching in my heart. a longing that never seems to abate. 

last night, as one of my closest friends and I sat in my backyard under the twinkling stars, whose radiant beauty still hasn’t been swallowed whole by the curtain of modern light pollution — still there to be appreciated, though without a doubt with ever more splendor to be discovered elsewhere for those who may seek, and I may be one of those people —

I thought to myself something that stirred, and has before stirred, something like a panic, a jolt of awakening, a jolt of “just what in the fuck have we been doing, this is deeply, deeply wrong” — 

I thought of the immense tragedy of modern living estranging us from the heavens. 

Stargazing, stargazing, stargazing, it is not done enough, it is not done enough. How quickly does human pride vanish without a trace when reclined in a patch of grass, eyes trained upon the celestial. 

How quickly does the insanity get wiped clean. 

How quickly does the incessant chatter within the skull, the ping pong ball bouncing within that defies Newton’s second law, somehow gathering momentum without being acted on by an outside force, come to a standstill,

when confronted with the majesty of the universe. 

There is a song that goes, “when you feel life coming down on you like a heavy weight… take a stroll to the nearest waters and remember your place.”

Last night, my buddy told me that, when he was a kid, he thought the night-sky was the ocean, and the stars were buoyant pins of light floating atop. 

Yes, staring upon that grand sea that is our sky immediately reminds me of my infinitesimal place in the cosmic web. I’d love to sit upon the seashore ever more. Ah, in this pursuit for truth of mine, how can I ignore what it is that the starry night sky declares? That, there, is truth. It is the nexus point of awe and humility. 

So, last night, as I sat there, I was taken by a fear. A fear, a fear, a fear, for FUCK, we have been sleepwalking. It isn’t right, it isn’t right, it isn’t right that we should be so disconnected from the immense majesty of the natural world! It simply isn’t right! I cannot bear the fact that it has become normal for us to fall asleep to twinkling pixels in our face and not twinkling stars. 

This is my re-commitment to a life in pursuit of awe, of adoring the miracle of creation. Long ago were we wed, though perhaps I’ve not been as faithful as I could. So here am I renewing my vows:

Oh natural world, you have my heart, and I cannot wait to sing my praises.  

Siddhartha, pg. 32-33. On seeing divinity in all things:

“River was river, and if the One and Divine in Siddhartha secretly lived in blue and river, it was just the divine art and intention that there should be yellow and blue, there sky and wood — and here Siddhartha. Meaning and reality were not hidden somewhere behind things, they were in them, in all of them. 

“How deaf and stupid I have been, he thought, walking on quickly. When anyone reads anything which he wishes to study, he does not despise the letters and punctuation marks, and call them illusion, chance and worthless shells, but he reads them, he studies and loves them, letter by letter. But I, who wished to read the book of the world and the book of my own nature, did presume to despise the letters and signs. I called the world of appearances, illusion. I called my eyes and tongue, chance. Now it is over; I have awakened. I have indeed awakened and have only been born today.”

…

so much time to learn who I am. why rush into a relationship? this is my youth. so much opportunity to learn and to grow. yes, it is possible to do that with another person, and i hold no attachment to the idea of being single nor being in a relationship, though i am open to both — but this is moreso commentary on observing the limitless opportunity of my youth. it doesn’t even necessarily have to do with being single — the opportunity for self-discovery is always there — 

but perhaps there is an element of self-discovery that cannot be fully realized in a relationship, and perhaps there is an element of self-discovery that cannot be fully realized without being in a relationship. 

both are true. 

but for now?

i am young. i have so much desire to learn and explore and live. 

…

Primary theme of Siddhartha as I am seeing it right now: 

No teacher can lead someone to themself. A teacher can show you how to live; a teacher can equip you with language and templates with which one can interpret and frame the world; a teacher can do a lot of things, but what a teacher cannot do is teach you who you are. 

No spiritual teacher has a monopoly on your self-definition. No human other than you can ever be the expert on who you uniquely are — 

this is Siddhartha’s dissatisfaction with worldly teachers. His thirst is for his true self; therefore, no matter how much he sips from the cup of the teachers he comes across, his yearning will not abate unless he follows the inward path. 

In the ultimate desire for truth, it appears that one must eventually give up teachings as a whole and find the lived experience of it. his critique of worldly teachers and religious ritual appears to be that they have a preference for symbol rather than the symbolized; for language rather than that which is spoken about. the lived experience of the ultimate, however, is very very different. 

speaking of enlightenment is very different than experiencing enlightenment. it is like mercury, it seems — slippery. every time a solid definition or fixed descriptor is assigned to it, it eludes it, it slips from one’s grasp. it strangely appears that one can only hold it without a clasped hand; one can only contain it with a loose fist. 

so he leaves everything behind and follows his heart. in self-discovery, he allows himself to do the discovering. 

“While no single framework of the psyche can truly capture the whole, which is without a doubt greater than the sum of its parts, the Big Five model – also known as the Five Factor Model – is certainly a useful tool that can effectively shed light on critical dimensions of personality. In this study, we will be focusing on the first of the five aforementioned: openness, or rather openness to experience. Individuals who score high on openness tend to have a more broad approach to life, being far more receptive to novel ideas, experiences, and approaches than those who score otherwise. Those who score high on openness tend to not just crave but perhaps need more broad mental and experiential horizons, while their counterparts, those who score low on the metric, tend to prefer what is tried and true, likely finding comfort and satisfaction in adhering to existing models.

“Creativity, the second of our variables, is not a new term to anyone. However, science does not like easy answers! Rather, it prefers to hold a magnifying glass to pre-existing notions, re-examining, refining, and perhaps completely revamping them with its critical eye if necessary. So, with that being said, the question then is: what truly is creativity? Creativity is easy to recognize when it happens – it’s easy to pinpoint a creative person when we see one – but it most certainly is more difficult to define. I would argue that creativity is a measure of novelty and meaning as they intermix. Creativity is fueled by originality and innovation – the more creative something is, to use it as a descriptor or an adjective, the more unlike its predecessors it is. Creativity can be a means of taking existing parts and rearranging them into something completely new. However, pure novelty is not enough – something can technically be novel even if it is purely random and arbitrary. When novelty combines with meaning – meaning defined as something that can touch the emotions and make the viewer feel something – we have a truly creative work. Creative individuals, then, are those who can engage in the act of creation by bringing novel, meaningful ideas and works into being, with the measure of their creativity perhaps being equivalent to the novelty, meaning, and beauty of what they manifest.”

What does it mean to truly love oneself?

What a question, what a conversation to be had. 

To love oneself… it informs how we approach the world, it informs how we allow the world to approach us. Self-love is a form of opening. We open ourselves to receive goodness without shame. We open ourselves to receive respect, knowing that we deserve it. We know what to ask for; we know how to say no. 

Self-love is about opening an avenue to receive love. Self-love teaches us that we are allowed to receive. This is what is meant by the statement that we cannot truly love another nor be best loved by another if we do not love ourselves. If we do not love ourselves, we cannot receive the gift of another’s affection for we will not feel like we deserve it. 

Self-love has so much to do with how we define ourselves. Our self-definition and our self-image has everything to do with how we feel we are best suited to approach the world. If we hold ourselves in a high esteem, we will not sell ourselves short; no, we will instead instinctively go after good things, for we know on a deep level that we deserve it. 

Self-love is about meeting the beauty that exists inside of every one of us. We recognize that there are things worth adoring within; we find our personal genius. We recognize that this exists inside of all beings. We do not fight the natural impulse of this creative force within; we meet our own spirit, and let go of any possible conditioning that this world has forced upon us that tells us we cannot allow it to come forth. 

Self-love necessarily leads to authenticity, for in the wake of genuine self love does shame of who we really are wash away. You can simply be you, and if others do not like it, that is on them and is met with a shrug. There is no greater power than this, there is no greater wealth than this. The true self is the spiritual Sun, it is alchemical gold, the most precious of metals.

How does one find their truest self? As Joseph Campbell put it: follow your bliss. Find that which inspires true joy, that which makes you radiate, you will know it, you will feel it. Where one’s bliss lies, so too will you find your truest self. 

So, then, the act of reclaiming our self-love is in finding the blocks we have erected towards joy, towards the pursuit of our highest bliss, and in demolishing them. There are many ways to go about this, but the passion inside of me declares that it is an act of demolition that is necessary. I approach this whole process with a sense of urgency, for I believe that time is of the essence. The time is now and always has been now. 

It is usually fear, and only fear, that keeps us from expressing our truest self. This appears to be the case always. Ask yourself: when the desire to express what will truly bring you joy arises, what is it that prevents it from unfolding? I cannot conceive of any other possible block than fear. It is the fear of discomfort, of judgment, of ostracism, of rejection, of failure — any number of things, but their commonality is fear. 

This is the duality: our highest bliss, and fear. I will say this: there is no easy way out. Risk is a prerequisite for reward. Let’s define risk in this case: risk is acting alongside and in spite of fear. Risk is acting knowing that a negative consequence, real or imagined, is a possibility. But it is precisely these situations that have the highest returns to be yielded. 

I am not advocating for foolhardiness, nor advising that anyone place their life in danger. It is usually intangible threats that prevent us from expressing our highest and best self and that prevent us from pursuing our bliss. It is not physical danger; it is abstract consequences without any real weight that often keep us stagnant. Failure, judgment, rejection… what power do these consequences really hold? We fear them as if our very heartbeats may cease if we are at their receiving end — why? 

Again I say there is no easy way out. It requires bravery and the decision to liberate one’s mind to love oneself. 

Consider one of the five love languages: acts of service. What if self love required acts of service to ourself, too? What if one of the best of those acts of service was in letting ourselves follow our bliss?

Actions speak louder than words, and if you declare that you love yourself, then act like it. Act like it by going after what you truly desire, by living a life that will genuinely bring you joy.