Learning to lose myself
This other world I peer into: I do not know how to access it — not all of the time.
And the truth is, even having peered into it, I’ve always left one foot outside the door.
It’s not that I’ve done so purposely.
It is simply that, I am still learning.
And part of me still succumbs to the illusions of the world, and the delusions within.
I want to make that very clear.
I do not wish to speak to you from a high horse.
I’m a soldier on the battlefield, deep in the trenches, just like you are.
If a “teaching” happens, it is only because we teach best that which we need to learn the most.
The things I write about are the things I seek to have deeply ingrained within myself, to the point that life filters through it, automatically — no thinking involved.
Most of my writings consist of these things. I tend to leave the personal out of it.
This is not purposeful either.
It is simply that my energy has been completely directed toward understanding.
But this really is my life.
This is really, all that I do.
I suppose you could say I’m devoted to it.
But is it enough?
Certainly not.
If it was, I’d already “be there”.
And I am not “there”.
I continue to succumb. I continue to struggle.
That one foot outside the door?
It’s battered and bruised, turning an ever-increasingly purple hue.
I write about brick walls because I tend to learn best by running into them, headfirst.
I’ve seriously come to entertain that learning “the hard way” is the only way.
Perhaps some find their way around these brick walls on first pass.
As for me, I tend to go full force. And sometimes the tailwind sends me over the edge, wreaking havoc in my wake.
I have my share of scars from playing with fire.
But oh, how I love to be on the bleeding edge.
It’s true, a part of me does not value peace.
Peace does come, and when it does, I certainly welcome it.
But I don’t know that the word best describes what I’m really after.
Because what I’m really after, is the Otherworld.
No, it’s not a place. For it can be accessed anywhere.
And it may be “experienced”. But it’s not really an experience.
I suppose it can be described as my own “personal brand” of deep engagement.
Is it losing myself?
Maybe.
But I don’t end up “nowhere”.
Because I find myself “there”.
Something that’s become very clear to me, is that even when we think we know, or understand something — and even when we do — the conditioned mind can, and will, still take precedence.
And perhaps this is why I’ve continued to leave one foot outside the door.
There are significant attachments, of course.
But really, the heaviest are the remnants of the belief that the world has something to offer me.
It doesn’t matter what we believe, you and I.
Only our actions matter.
Because our actions spell out the truth, loud and clear.
This Otherworld, I long for it.
But I long for other things as well.
This is the truth.
The visions I have are often memories of this Otherworld.
Not of specific events, but of a specific quality.
It is this quality I long for.
A seriousness takes over.
Time slows down, and becomes dramatic. Mystic, even.
But it’s not this pleasurable thing. This I cannot stress enough.
It’s just . . . waking up.
And on the momentous occasion I do — when I wipe the sleep from my eyes — I am alive.
I know one can live like this permanently.
And this is what I’m after.
This is why for the past two years, this is all I’ve done.
It’s all I’ve really cared about.
Have I been derailed? Have I gone off the deep end?
Indeed I have.
But I always return.
Because this is the only thing that matters to me.
I’ve moved on from societally sanctioned chases.
Do I chase?
I do.
But this chase is fueled by a wildly different motivation.
And I have become intimate with the detriment that often arises, even from this.
I am learning every single day, when to lift off the gas, and when to step on it.
I am most certainly cracking the code.
I wake up, and watch this mind of mine.
I watch to learn what it does, what it wants, what it fears.
And so while my actions spell out very clearly, where I continue to go wrong, and the things I remain unconscious of, by choice or otherwise . . .
They also reveal the truth about who I am.
And I have been doing nothing but training in the shadows.
Learning.
Obsessively — compulsively — possessively.
Dare I say . . . Disorderly?
Why?
Because I’m not lying when I say that nothing else in this world matters.
Life is about living.
And if I’m not living, what could be more deserving of my attention?
This hope I hang onto: it’s my greatest problem.
I often have romantic delusions of finding others like me.
And sometimes I feel like I have.
But this hope removes me from the Otherworld by coaxing me into the belief that it can only accessed, by their “knowing of it too”.
I suppose this is a sort of validation in of itself.
Almost like . . . I need you to believe in God, so that I can.
What I have just written above, is something I did not understand, until now . . .
This need for others to see, how I see, so that I may continue to . . .
And this new understanding: I feel it will serve me greatly.
Another chain severed.
This Otherworld quite literally speaks to me, if I’m apt to listen.
It is urgent . . . it is unlimited . . . it says come to me, NOW!