SLUGS/WINDSHIELD BUGS/SAMSKARAS/HABITUAL THOUGHT, An Essay

A practice I think I’m going to begin to do is sit down at my computer and go into a meditative state, meaning I will be reminding myself to observe what’s happening in my mind. Not to control anything but to passively audit it, noting what it is thinking about. There’s no “achievement” to it. It’s just the ability to objectify your own conscious experience and watch it like you’re watching an animal. It’s not a special achievement or divine. It’s just an additional state of knowing/sense a human can have. The Knowing of the Sensing of the Conscious Experience of Self. The awareness of your consciousness experience is still a state within consciousness. It’s nothing outside other normal developments a living organism can experience. all this anguish and drama we put into our spiritual pursuits isn’t evidence of there being a spirit but it is evidence of our human nature and tendency to think in irrational ways. That we aren’t perfect or special just because we are in control of the planet and have culture and language. Self-righteous monkeys.

So anyways, I was just explaining that I think I will be starting a new writing practice of going into transcription mode. Meaning, I’m going to use my attention to actively pay attention to my experience of consciousness and thought and dictate as much of it into text as I can; attempt to use attention and non-judgment to be honest as possible about what is being experienced. because i don’t know about you but i have a really hard time doing things like writing stuff or saying stuff because I sense all these possible judgments and perceptions people may have of what I say or how I say it and so then I will left-swipe on dozens and dozens of ideas from my mind if I don’t feel like it will be safe to say or whether people will judge me. so a very small amount of what is truly happening in my mind is making it out to the world in its original form. i had been unconsciously rejecting a lot of the organic content in my mind and letting out only small parts deemed acceptable after being cleaned up and rehearsed dozens of times. so i want to begin to rehearse more frequently that freedom, that inner permission to acknowledge the truth of what is being suggested to me in my mind and felt and thought inside, truly. Instead of having to hide your experience of you from not only others but yourself as well.

one of the basic beliefs that permeates my unconscious ruminations is that “my thinker's not working how it's supposed to”. so there is a really loud voice in my head that talks all the time and very loudly, in front of my waking experience, that my mind doesn’t work right. You’re trying to just do your job of existing and there’s this thought in your head that distracts you from just following your animal instincts for existing by making you think that you don’t work right. A sentient being that could consider the thought that it may be broken but it has to keep it a secret from others because otherwise they may reject her as insane. For a thinking mind that can conceptualize itself and consider the hypothesis that its very machinery, the thinking mind, may exist but will one day die.

we justify looking for spiritual explanations to undergird our experience of consciousness but I think science can explain consciousness, too. if we allowed ourselves to truthfully look at what is happening in our minds and we'll see we are full of our own shit. We aren't so special or unique or divine. We are an animal with animal instincts including the mind. because if you're honest about how your mind works, you'd have to admit you're an animal instead of something more because of how irrational we fundamentally are and how we functionally have the same tendencies at our core.

survive by your instincts, not your reactions.

I feel like I'm playing keep away in my own head. just trying to distract myself from seeing too much of my mind's activity.

maybe instead of everyone trying to achieve some kind of universal enlightenment as an ultimate achievement or sophisticated level of personal freedom from the mind but as a psychological development milestone (like learning to speak) where you become aware of the content of your experience. it doesn't need to be revered and worshipped apart from us but something to be personally proud of because you developed into this advanced psychological state of an animal becoming aware of its own experience. to be able to think abstractly about the experience of a conscious animal. For thoughts to become so complex they can begin to think about the idea of thought.

I am considering creating a persona that allows me to embody all the nasty, snarky language that I usually edit out. The more aggressive part of me that I do have but I repress. What if I didn't feel I needed to hold back my angry reactions that I feel but don't express? what if I didn't feel like i couldn’t express that level of indignation or that i would lose my reputation, my friends, my opportunities. what if i can change the fucking world with my exquisite mind but you planted a bomb in there that says my brain doesn't work right and I shouldn’t upset people?

it’s kind of like the really amazing parent that, when they found out their child is secretly hiding something or struggling with something, they don’t emotionally infantilize them. they personally relate to the fear of rejection and relate to their child as a human being who is having human problems, not as a fragile human that will bulk up over time. it’s not exceptional or pathological to be afraid of rejection to such extent that you hide or hurt yourself.

one thought i keep thinking is that if I finally understand what self-acceptance is, that means I’m going to have access to the truth of what I’m experiencing inside because I’m not going to shame myself anymore for seeing parts of me that I learned to reject to survive. so that means it’s going to look like my personality is changing. and that scares me. because i believe you see me a certain way. if i really started speaking from a deeper, unfiltered place, I would lose the control I believe I have over the perceptions that other people have of me. Some of you may think I’m crazy. Some of you may think I do too many drugs. Some of you may think that I think too much. Some of you may be intimidated by me. Some of you may look down on me and remember back when you were this dumb. Some of you may be sickly amused at watching me be so publicly unfiltered. Some of you are going to feel your heart whistling with every word i write because you know in your heart too that you experience your unconscious in a very similar way. And this variety of reactions is likely what is already the case, it’s just that I believe I’m controlling your perception by molding or filtering myself in some way. what if i’ve been holding myself back because i thought none of you could handle me? because i have too much awareness, too much honesty, too much perspective. what if all revolutionary thoughts I have had, I have automatically filtered out because I knew that I would be ridiculed or judged for pushing on such an abstract topic so intensely. makes me presumptious, nerdy as hell in the bad way, a bore, and not “cute” at all.

i’m truly a much sloppier thinker than i show externally. if i really write from the feed in my mind, i am not nearly as organized in thought or language. i’m all over the place. people who listen to me rant know this. is this something to be proud of? I’m guessing not because when I ask myself why is my mind truthfully so sloppy?, the answer seems to be because of those big habitual thoughts that just keep yelling “your brain doesn’t work right”, “your thoughts machine doesn’t work right”. It makes it hard to be aware of anything else in the room with that much generalized perceived danger.

if a dog is born and you tell that dog, “you have an eating disorder” and so from a very young age, you bring that dog to eating disorder clinics and center a lot of attention and daily life accommodations around the idea that this dog has an eating disorder, this dog WILL GIVE ITSELF AN EATING DISORDER. And it will spend its life conditioned to live in a state of knowing it is ill. If you tell a human being through words or community that they are fundamentally broken in their identity at a fundamental level, they will act broken. and the community will support the idea that that person is broken because it serves the purposes of those in charge to psychologically subjugate those they take advantage of.

what if my ideas are what the world needs and what is holding me back is the fact that i learned that you all hate my ideas (which come from my true self) from a very early age?

What if i have second guessed publishing this a dozen times, and feels so utterly risky to publish this because of the damage it could cause my reputation (????) I dunno. I just live in this brain. I just read the news it sends me through mindfulness. Maybe this mode of blogging should have a name. Heck, we label all kinds of ideas nowadays. What if I gave a name to the state of mind one is in when one is transcribing their thoughts straight from the awareness feed, as pure from the source as you can get it. Like what if that state of mind is called … well, I bet you some people would call that channeling. But that makes me feel like it’s something you do to empty yourself or get yourself out of the way so that something outside of yourself can come in. A sexy possession. But I’m not channeling. I’m just removing the editorial layers on top of a free flowing stream I have no control over what comes out. It’s just view-only. And, no, it’s not a pure state of writing down everything word for word. That is ludicrous. Our mental activity is so cloudly and liquidy. Or at least mine certainly is. Nothing really starts or ends, there’s just constantly merging and pivoting. so the process is just trying to identify as much of it as you’re capable of doing (not as a competitive thing) because anything you can admit to yourself that you see in there is incredibly valuable data about who you truly are in a given moment and what is motivating you so that you can use that prefrontal cortex to gain access to your own internal experience and exert your will on it should you have a different way you want to be knowing the truth of how you are being now.

i’m terrified to share my actual thoughts and feelings because i expect criticism and I’m worried they’re right. my idea filter has become so bad that i force myself to let go of a big idea before i can even hold it long enough to write it down. i immediately shoot down the thought with dozens of possible criticisms by what I would call “professionals”. i’m scared to make a mistake because I’ve learned mistakes aren’t tolerated. and where do you think I heard that? and where you do think that was reinforced? And you know what the scariest “mistake threat” I ever had to conceptualize? The fear that if I made the fatal mistake of not thinking the thought “I believe this” consistently for my entire waking life until death, that I would experience unending suffering (hell phobia + psychological trauma). Just imagine what a psychological threat like that would do to a young consciousness living in a human being? so i spent my childhood despising my mind because i couldn’t get it to save me from the only thing that mattered: eternal damnation. it couldn’t just shut the hell up with all of its questions and doubts. it just had to fucking keep on talking and finding holes in christian logic. i learned through a painful series of lessons that my mind is not on my side at all. that it would rather i burn in hell than work with me to save me from the worst pain I can imagine. of course i felt betrayed! of course i had to take measures within my mind to protect me from the awareness that I am not living in a safe vessel. this vessel is insane and will not do what it is told despite the worst imaginable threat I can conceive of. i am fundamentally broken. But no one must know or they will think you are crazy and stop treating you with respect and privilege. You will lose status if you show the truth. and it’s not that i am motivated to climb endlessly up to get more status. it is more than I feel i’m on the precipice of falling off the social hierarchy and I’m desperately trying to act like i actually fit in.

i thought to myself, am i going to read this again in the morning and see if i can understand it? and then I thought, I worry that if I read it again, I’ll judge myself and carry shame at having publicized and compromised the social mask that I believe I am so carefully managing. I’ll chastise myself for letting my guard down and then I’ll hole up again in my self, not letting it out again until a later period which i will arbitrarily choose based on having forgotten the shame I felt last time and learning nothing about regretting letting my walls down. and then i thought, nah, i shouldn’t read this tomorrow because this was never meant for consumption or reflection. this is the exhaust. the actual product of this blog is my increased ability to communicate from an unfiltered place within me. and you, friend, can’t consume that and aren’t meant to qualify it.

why isn’t it a demonstration of growth/enlightenment when a monk is able to, not simply sit in meditation for 10 hours, but can transcribe honestly directly what’s going on in their mind? which seems more productive? passively auditing or gathering the data into awareness and applying the industrious nature of humanity!

so what if people judged this? so what if they used what i wrote here as a way to decide who i am and what my values are? even though this isn’t a blog where i’m typing words to tell you what i stand for or what i say i identify as. this is a blog to transcribe to you what’s actually happening in my mind whether i agree with it or not. again, it’s not pure white, but that’s the practice,… trying to do it as honestly as i can

get in the habit of being open and honest about what you’re noticing in your mind. the achievement isn’t shifting into a state of permanently noticing but to activate your ability to notice what’s happening in your mind SO THAT you can become more honest with yourself about who you truly are. It’s okay to admit to our minds being all over the place. we need to de-stigmatize being irrational. it’s one of our core features. we are ashamed that our minds are irrational and disobedient. and so then we hide our playfulness and adventurous spirits away from our awareness so it doesn’t leak out. so we can maintain our image of being modern, American, and civilized.