weirdway

It was hard for me to appreciate the psychological values that materialism offered to me back when I was almost completely in materialism's thrall. Eventually I grew to see materialism as a nasty ball and a chain on my mind, and so I enthusiastically set about to rid myself of it, not just intellectually, but to eliminate all the mental habits that are part of the materialistic package deal.

In the process of being youthfully enthusiastic I was exceptionally fearless. Part of the reason for my fearless attitude was my complete ignorance. I wasn't afraid to go into deep states of concentration or alternate realities because I had no idea what it was like. It's like someone who sees the flame and thinks it's pretty and wants to touch it, without knowing what the full experience is like, and without fully understanding the implications of what I was about to do.

So my extremely exploratory and extremely open attitude very quickly led to a series of very extreme experiences (sober, no drugs). And then I realized that I was getting overwhelmed. At some point I actually had to give up certain kinds of concentrations because I couldn't accept the experiences that would follow them. Many of my experiences are instant intent manifestations. I just lay down, intend to expand, and bang, it's done. There is no laying around and cajoling. So literally the only thing that restrains my mind right now is fear. There is no mechanical restraint on my mind. If I wasn't afraid, I could fly up into air right now, instantly, without preparation or gradual concentration and none of that cajoling stuff.

So what is it that's making me so afraid?

That's the topic of this post: stability! I need some kind of stability.

For a very long time my materialistic assumptions and mental habits provided a rock of stability that made everything in my life ordered, clear, understandable, predictable, reliably repeatable. This quality of experience was the source of me feeling psychologically stable. This quality of experience made it feel like I had solid ground under my feet. I open the door out of my apartment and a very boring, predictable, expected corridor meets my eyes. I never realized how much I depended on that feeling for comfort until I lost it. I sit on a chair and I know my butt is not going to fall right through. I know that 20 bucks in my pocket will remain 20 bucks unless I remove it from the pocket. This almost boring predictability had a kind of reassuring and comforting quality to me that I was taking for granted.

And yet materialism had very serious problems in my eyes too. So I came upon a very important conflict in my own being. On one hand, the rigid patterns of experience felt suffocating, like a straight jacket. I wanted out. But on the other hand, that very same rigidity was the source of intellectual and emotional stability! I was leaning on that rigidity and solidity for support and for comfort. It also grounded my sense of identity. Even if my identity is a piece of shit, but at least I knew who I was because my human body appeared to exist in a stable materialistic context, and this was comforting.

Then I realized that if I ever wanted to make total experiential freedom my mainstay, I had two choices. Either I needed a new source of stability. Something else had to become my rock. I could no longer lean on materialism and its associated experiential qualities for support. Or. I had to learn how to give up the need for stability altogether.

Currently giving up the need for stability seems like a very far fetched goal. I try to be as honest as I can be with myself. I must move forward, but even if my limitations are temporary, I need to be honest about my limitations. So I don't think it would be honest to shoot for a complete giving up of the need for stability. So I decided I needed to find a new source of stability.

I've been contemplating intent or volition for what feels like a very long time, almost as long as I've been involved in spiritual life in general. I guess the solution to my problem was here all along. It is my own will! My own ongoing, beginningless, endless, timeless intent! This is what I must take as my rock. That's what I must learn to lean on for support. This is something I can trust and rely on no matter the circumstance. My own intent will never leave me.

I've been gradually realizing that one big mistake I've been making is associating my will with a struggling effort, with some kind of overcoming of resistance idea. But relaxing is just as deliberate as tensing. Forgetting is just as deliberate as remembering. In other words, intent, I now realize, has a clearly effortless aspect. I would even say that true intent, deepest intent, is always effortless. In my innermost being there is no resistance that must be overcome through effort.

I can even say that the effortless appearance of the external world of solidity is the ground-level effortlessness of my own will, effortlessness which I have been disowning! In other words, everything about the world of solidity that I found comforting was produced by my own will anyway, even from the beginning.

So learning about the hidden qualities of my will, effortlessness, smoothness, ongoingness, timelessness, no beginning, no end, no limits, has enabled me to relax more and more into my own will and to trust it as my new (and also old) rock. Maybe I could say, actually, it's the original rock.