THE CLOSET MYSTIC

something I love about certain moments of epiphany is that it can be set off by the most mundane of things— 

the most profound of realizations can be had through the unassuming, the dull, the drab, the plainest of circumstances. 

the tipping of the domino was a Reddit thread — so, then, let me explain to you what the rest of the dominos in that sequence were:

modern ease of living. 

is it possible that our biological equipment is designed for hardship and strife? is it possible that a prerequisite to simply existing is some sort of conflict and struggle, and if we do not have that adequately met in the outside world, our minds will conjure its own? 

it’s like an imaginary friend. a significant number of humans condemned to social isolation may end up creating imaginary friends to stave off the sense of loneliness. connection and conversation is such a deep, fundamental need that, if it is not met, the desire will become a mental projection. 

is it possible that adversity is the same? is it possible that, if our lives are too easy, we will create problems where they do not exist? i do believe this to be the case, and i believe i’ve done it myself. 

i was reading a reddit thread on how fucking amazing life is for the average human today. i… really think we are extremely out of touch with reality. extraordinarily so. so fucking many people who use social media as a soapbox to complain that “we were not meant to live this way. 8 hours under an artificial light is not natural.” 

i was pleased to see dissenters of this narrative in the comment section. they remarked on just how fucking hard life was for the average human pre-industrial revolution. they commented on how one bad winter would mean starvation; they commented on how much more manual labor living required, for even scarcer returns. consider, too, the reduction of infant mortality; consider, too, advances in modern medicine that make illnesses that once were death sentences, lesser than the common cold. 

all of this kept building and building in my brain. all of it. then, i had an extremely embarrassing moment: 

i sat down to shit. i finished, then started my bidet. and there, as i was having my ASSHOLE automatically cleaned by this machine, i was like… what in the fuck? this is EMBARRASSING! i now understand what Dwight from The Office meant when he said “don’t even get me started on how coddled the modern anus is.”

the ease of living made me feel disgusted and mortified in my own private company! i looked around at the complete and total luxury i live with and felt HORRIFIED that i could ever complain about anything. I AM NOT WEAK BUT GOD DAMN I’VE ACTED LIKE IT. i was just appallingly confused! i feel like i need to shed the blindfold i’ve worn more and more — perhaps the greatest disillusionment i may experience in my life is that my life was never hard 

so what if my family squabbles? so what if there are extended relatives that would bat an eye if i wore makeup around them? oh nooooo my life is so hard! boo hoo! seriously, i feel like i need to get a fuckin grip LMFAO. my life is GOOD. idc if i’m “disrespected” by my family, idc if they act shitty to each other. who fuckin’ cares? so often i looked at them and i’m like “how can they be so unhappy when life is clearly so good?! they overlook their blessings!” meanwhile, i ruminate on their actions, becoming unhappy and overlooking my own blessings myself. 

idk, man. i feel embarrassed by how much of a pussy i’ve been, but good things are coming and happening. life is good, i’m working hard, and feel enormously grateful. 

And I became happier as soon as I began expecting less from others and more from myself…

for my happiness is in my hands — not theirs.

What truly is kindness?

I believe that we live in a world of cheap substitutes. We live in a world plagued with artifice. Just as our tastebuds have become accustomed to artificial sweeteners and unnatural levels of sugars, I believe our perception of kindness has become just as false. There are so many people with “kindness” like candy, meant to stimulate the senses, but without any real nutrition.

Actions speak so much fucking louder than words. Give me people who communicate their kindness with substance.

I’ve known people who communicate like assholes, but are actually fucking there, with a backbone, when it comes to the points in life when it genuinely matters. I’ve known people who communicate like saints, like angels, but perform disappearing acts when it comes to those very same critical junctures.

Judge people more by action than word if you want to know their real character.

I’ve actually learned that people who speak like assholes are often those who wear the scarlet letters. The common-man is like the priesthood, performing unspeakably perverse deeds in private, but will condemn a woman publicly found out to have had premarital sex as a worthless whore. The common-man may shame those who are simply voicing what they already think. This is why I appreciate those who do not hide from the way they truly feel, and who will offer it a voice: you’re already fucking thinking it. If you verbalize the thoughts and feelings that feel toxic, they actually become capable of great healing and growth once they’re brought into the light of day. But if you keep them inside, they fester, fester, fester, and the infection spreads through your blood.

I love those who wear their scarlet letters proudly.

Bring me people who are kind of a cunt to me. I don’t want “kind”, I don’t want “gentle.” I want real, I want loving. I want someone who will actually help me fucking grow, and I won’t grow if you coddle me, I won’t grow if you pay me lip service, I will grow if you tell me what my blind spots are, I will grow if you snap me the fuck out of it by slapping me and getting me to accomplish great things. I will grow if you tell me bluntly when I am fucking up. You do me a disservice if you do not do this.

once we have purged what it is that we truly think, I believe the love, gentleness, closeness, and kindness will be that much more real.

Who have I been? Who am I becoming? Is there anybody out there who feels the way I do? Where are those who share this longing? It’s an itch that can’t be scratched, a well that cannot be filled, a darkness that swallows light shined into it rather than being illuminated by it. This is darkness that fills spaces of light; this is darkness that pulls down, down, down, a psychic maelstrom — 

but,

once I stopped fighting it, 

I became free. 

Once I accepted the reasons why I was unhappy, I became free. Once I accepted that it is perfectly okay to be dissatisfied, I became free. Why be satisfied, why be perfectly content with how things are? Why not strive for betterment within and without? This force of darkness: what is it? Can death not be a force of transformation if wielded with a benevolent hand? To bring death to what must go — psychological structures, its shoddy scaffolds, to be demolished — and erected will be monuments of goodness. 

These passions were only problematic when they were without an outlet. But oh, how blessed have I become to have a place to channel the rage. Why not rage? Why not rage? Why not rage against a life lived in doubt, in fear? I believe. I believe strongly. 

…

I am done. Done. Done. Here’s what I believe: 

I believe that I am done with a life lived on the surface. I believe that I am done with surface-level, superficial interactions. What am I to do when I see to the heart of things, to the bottom of things? This so-called “psychic maelstrom” that pulls me down — what is it doing but getting to the bottom of who I am and who others are, what it is that I truly want, that they truly want? 

These nights spent out on the town — suddenly, suddenly I am nauseated. Suddenly I am beyond nauseated. I’ve been consuming, consuming, consuming. Intake, intake, intake. Suddenly, my stomach has grown a distaste — “no! this is poison!” it tells me. 

I harken back to interactions had in passing. I harken back to friendly waves, I harken back to brief scenes re-lived in my mind’s eye. 

These people: who amongst them truly care? I ask these questions because I do. I fucking care. Do they?

People who would gladly stab me in the back. People who would don facades of gaiety, singing praises after we run into each other, then gladly speak behind my back after I turn away. 

Bring me the people who do not hide their toxicity. I’ve become convinced that toxins only become toxins when they cannot be cleared from the body. I want people who will speak their toxicity to me directly, because then, it is no longer toxicity. Bring me people who will challenge me, who will call me out on my bullshit. I don’t want approval, I don’t want false niceties. So much more respect do I have for someone who will be a prick to my face than someone who will seek to lull me with words of kindness then show their true colors once my back is facing them. 

But, even then: are there not those who still yet don masks of defensive anger? There are still those who have their guard up, who attack first before they are attacked themselves. 

I simply want truth. I simply want raw, vulnerable truth. I want unyielding, unforgiving honesty. That is what I want. That is what I find the most attractive — truth without shame. 

What do I want on this Earth but realness? Done am I with people who wear masks, and done am I with the one I’ve donned. 

Neophyte and aspirant,

Fool and wanderer 

A flimsy raft 

On rivers of wonder 

Blunder after blunder

By the elements, torn asunder:

my heart does remain, 

Like fixed Polaris, 

Bearing witness to your splendor. 

Today, while meditating, I contemplated the following:

the experience of aging and maturing seems to often involve the reduction of possibilities. Youth appears to be full of possibility, full of curiosity, full of the curiosity of possibilities. But it appears that, as we age, we grow towards certainty; more often than not, the personality appears to grow in fixedness. Our “yeses” and our “nos” become more and more clear; the bounds of the personality become definite in how and where they are drawn.

However, I felt a sense of fear considering this effect of aging. Curiosity, possibility, and openness appear not to be a feature of my youth, but rather a feature of my identity. These are traits that I value immensely, such that I cannot consider a life that is truly living without them.

I began to wonder:

How do I age and mature gracefully? How do I age and mature accepting the natural rootedness that comes with adulthood, while preserving openness of heart and mind?

This is what long kept me running away from “the 9-5” and becoming “an adult.” This is what made me run away to a commune almost 3 years ago now. Granted, glorious disillusionment soon followed, revealing to me the atrophy that accompanies a life without a solid foundation — the staunch pursuit of freedom is its own prison — though I comment nevertheless on the character traits that led me there:

There has been an element of Peter Pan syndrome in my way of living that I’ve only relatively recently begun to shed. I’ve learned that the freedom I desire does not accompany being at the mercy of every whim and impulse. I’ve learned that the freedom I desire requires work, for if independence is freedom, and if independence means being self-sustaining, how can I be self-sustaining without my own income, my own place to live, etc etc etc etc — (a note. This is why I associate Saturn-ruled Aquarius with freedom; perhaps true freedom also necessarily involves self-mastery. Do we have free will if we are ruled by animal impulse, or the pull of instant gratification? Perhaps Saturn, in this way, presents to us the keys of freedom, through discipline.)

Still yet, however, I feel I must keep a place for the youth who lives in my heart. As the senex introduces himself and guides my path, I wish to maintain a relationship with that curious Mercurius who seems so intrinsic to my identity.

Attachment is intrinsically related to suffering for the nature of all things is transience. Attachment desires the permanence of a specific phenomenon; however, if the nature of nature is impermanence, what do we call the birth child of these two opposites (attachment desiring permanence, reality innately impermanent)?

Suffering.

However, then what? So often, I’ve advocated for this high and noble ideal of perfect nonattachment, of going through this life appreciating it without holding on. 

And, while such an ideal may have use in itself even if we cannot meet it — aiming high and shooting low — who amongst us can truly say that they live (and love) in perfect nonattachment?

Every action has an equal and opposite reaction. None can protect themself from sorrow but through protecting themself from joy — and just who on Earth would do such a thing?

To truly live is to love. To love is to suffer. It is not only to suffer, mind you, for to love is also to know the highest of highs — but we all must bid farewell to the object of our affections one day. 

This is life. 

Perhaps the meditative mind is not about protecting oneself from pain, nor finding some cognitive loophole to avoid the experience of pain.

Perhaps the meditative mind is about developing the ability to experience all things to their highest and fullest and most profound depths possible.

Not to hold joy nor pain at an arm’s length, but to embrace them fully, to experience them both, to experience life, to their fullest extent.

Perhaps embracing both fully, somehow, is true liberation from suffering. To love it all — to love the highs, to love the lows. 

What higher virtue exists than playfulness? What purer expression of joy exists? Joy for joy’s sake. Joy as a cause, joy as an effect. 

What more do I want than playfulness? 

What sunshine could make the petals of my heart unfurl quicker and more fully?

All these words, all these words. This blog, a sliver of the verbosity I wield, like a dual-edged sword — I must point it outward into the world, for if I contain the thoughts, the nearest point presses into my chest, drawing blood — 

this is the harm of containing one’s thoughts when one’s dharma is word. the dharma of a bee is to pollinate, the dharma of the Sun is to shine, the dharma of a bird is to fly —

Identity based on what one does — the action is not the same as the identity, but it is a clue of identity, the purest expression of the self that exists —

this, for me, is what words are. I must communicate, must express myself, I must exercise my mind — to exercise the mind is, for me, exorcising the mind —

for all these words, let me listen more, that when I speak, I’ve truly something to say, that I not draw from an empty well. Reading and listening, the filling of the well. Speaking and writing, the outpouring.

But don’t you know that there are more ways to listen than through the verbal? Don’t you know that the expanses of language extend far beyond what the tongue weaves?

Meditation is placing one’s ear upon the pulse of creation. Meditation is the greatest act of listening — meditation is the act of clearing ourself out of the way, that we can listen unfettered by personal distortion. Meditation allows us to experience beauty with greater clarity, for to see things as they truly are is to bear witness to the sublime.

Meditation is the mind’s adaptogen, a medicine that adapts itself to the nature of the imbalance. Whether we are possessed of hyperopia or myopia, every breath of meditation is a step towards 20/20.

hear you child,

the toll of the bell —

the midnight of your life strikes,

and you are called —

do you lay,

tossing and turning?

do you sleep, 

ignoring the yearning?

your spirit cries!

feel you its burning —

destiny will not wait,

no,

the clock keeps turning.

up you go.

what will you do with this life?

it’s now or never.

rich men and poor men alike

live equal

in the economy of the universe

where the only currency

is time.

how will you invest yours?