I did have an issue just now where TG started reading her book at her desk and began ignoring me. It’s that sense of mindlessness, insensitivity that fucked up our chances at having successful poly. I felt transparent and angry, and when I brought it up I don’t even think she was paying attention to me, that sort of careless flippancy.

Attachment

It is important to note that desire is not attachment. Craving is the attachment.

The three Attachments that Causes Suffering are called Klesha in Sanskrit. They are referred to as the three poisons in the Mahayana tradition, or as the three unwholesome roots in the Theravada tradition.

1- Craving (Raga)Craving can be described as intense desires that people have for pleasing their senses, experiencing life, and protecting their ego.

Cravings are not simple desires, they are very powerful, disturbing mindsets that should be understood more as uncontrollable thirsts or urges.

Three Kinds of Craving

In his first sermon, Siddhartha Gautama – now the Buddha – outlined three sorts of craving: the craving for sensual pleasure, the craving for becoming, and the craving for non-becoming.

A. Sensual desires are easy to recognize, they are attachments to sex, food, objects, entertainment, comfort, etc.

B. Craving for becoming is am attachment to the desire to be famous or powerful.

C. Craving for non-becoming is an attachment to the desire to getting rid of something, whatever that something is.

2- Aversion (Dvesha)
Dvesha is a Sanskirt word meaning “aversion”, “repulsion” or “hate”, and is one of the obstacles that block a practitioner toward achieving Awakening. It can be defined as a fear of getting, or to be in contact with what we don’t want or what we don’t like.

The symptoms of aversion can manifest up as aversion and dislike, all the way up to anger, hostility, and wishing pain, harm, or suffering upon someone.

With aversion, we tend to resist, deny, avoid, and oppose unpleasant emotions, events, and people we do not like. Our ego wants everything in our life to be pleasant, easy, comfortable and satisfying all the time.

This disturbed state of mind only strengthens our perception of duality and separation with the world, with reality. It also imprisons us into a vicious cycle of continuously experiencing conflict and finding enemies wherever we go.

3- Ignorance
What is ignorance from a Buddhist perspective? True ignorance has nothing to do with someone’s level education, but with one’s incapacity to see the true nature of the self and the world, to see things as they really are, without the filter of the discriminating mind.

The Buddha believed that there are numerous truths in the world that people are unaware or uninformed of, because of the limits of their comprehension and knowledge.

From a Buddhist perspective, we’re having all those desires because we seek happiness. We try to find happiness in money, consumption, food, alcohol, drugs, sex, etc. We falsely believe that we’ll finally find it by eating more chocolate cake, by drinking more red wine, by buying the latest iPhone, by having a raise, by having a bigger house or by having more sex with more partners.

By being a slave to desire, we become complicated, disturbed, frustrated, and angry, which in return creates even more suffering.

When we’re no longer obsessed with satisfying our own selfish desires, we find that our mind transforms, and compassion and kindness grow in ourselves.

This liberation from attachment and clinging free our mind from troubles and worries. This attainment is called Nirvana in Sanskrit and Satori in Japanese.
——-

When we’re worried, we are tightly attached to how we want things to be, rather than relaxing into accepting whatever might happen when we put forth our best effort. When we’re frustrated with someone, it’s because we’re attached to how we want them to be, rather than accepting them as the wonderful flawed human they are.

At the heart of things, attachment is about not wanting things to be the way they are. You want something different. That’s because there’s something about the present moment, about the person in front of you, about yourself, that you don’t like. By meditating, practicing compassion and interdependence, you can start to trust that things are OK just as they are. They might not be “ideal,” but they are just fine. Beautiful even. And you start to become more aware of your continual rejection of the present moment, and open up to the actuality of this moment instead. Over and over, this is the practice, opening and investigating the moment with curiosity, accepting it as it is.

When we detach from someone, we stop expecting so much from them. Also, our happiness becomes authentic. Instead of looking outside ourselves to complete our happiness, we understand that we are already complete and can achieve full happiness on our own. Any happiness coming from the outside is merely an addition to our already existent happiness—but it’s not dependent on the absence or presence of the object or person.

Let’s not forget that that the person to whom we are attached becomes happier as well, because they’re no longer pressured to fit into the image we have of them, or what we expect of them. They start giving as much as they can, not what we expect them to give. In this way, we can experience true love for people, which is quite different than the attachment kind of love.

In order to let go of attachment to others, Buddhists advise us to start looking within, so we can love ourselves. The fact is, we always seek in others what is missing within ourselves. It doesn’t mean, for instance, that if we start loving ourselves, we stop wanting others to love us.

On the contrary, we still want to be loved, but we also appreciate the nature of love that’s being given to us. We accept whatever we are receiving, instead of trying to manipulate it.

When you start practicing non-attachment in your intimate relationships, you will have found one of the pathways that leads to unconditional love. Only a non-attached person can love unconditionally, that is, without expecting anything in return.

When you start practicing non-attachment in your intimate relationships, you will have found one of the pathways that leads to unconditional love. Only a non-attached person can love unconditionally, that is, without expecting anything in return.

Being attached to someone means that you love him or her primarily because of his or her proximity or convenience, which makes you feel good. But what will happen when your loved one does something that upsets you, or simply decides to leave? All too often, attached love then turns into bitterness, anger and resentment.

When you love with non-attachment, you are not concerned with the results of your loving, which emanates from you just like perfume from a flower. You can love out of a genuine overflow of energy from the heart, without any conditions or limitations. If attached love expresses itself by the words “I love you, because…”, detached love just says “I love you,” without any conditions. Going one step further, you will realize that pure, unconditional love, is best expressed by the words “I love.” As a great mystic once said: “Love is not a relationship, it is a state of being.”

Our problems don’t lie outside ourselves; they’re inside us. Whatever your mind makes up right now, realize it’s a lie. The only truth is your naked experience right at this moment.

7/26/20 I’m here for me

“I know you can believe in me, I want you to believe in me, you’ve done it before and I know you can do it again.”

“I don’t know if I want to believe in you.”

This past month has been an enigma and that sentence was the key to make it all make sense.

I don’t want to encouragement from someone that doesn’t believe in me. I need for someone to put faith in me. I have made strides and excelled in so much, I have walked paths of molten lava and burned my legs, yet here I stand bloodied and bruised. I love myself and I am a fool for allowing myself to be someone’s afterthought.

It makes sense why these little issues were not being resolved, why the marked improvement didn’t matter, why I felt I was talking to someone who wasn’t there. She wasn’t there. I was talking to a ghost, a projection and the meat of the person was lost in another planet. I was alone before we even started talking. I had been abandoned before she even knew she’d done it. I’ve never felt abandoned by a person staring me in the face before.

Wait here, be my plan b, suffer in silence, while I explore other options and decide if I even want you in my life.

Shingo Nakamura – There For Me

She is not my best friend. She does not love me, she does not believe in me, She is a caricature in my head. She is someone I don’t know. She is an aberration I’ve created to soothe my insecurities.

I am real, I am my best friend, I believe in me, I will make it through this.

I love you Albert. Forever.

Converting this internal quaking mess

I woke up at 6 this morning, after having a nightmare of TG, where I was stuck in a dreamland, I couldn’t move my body, but I was awake and tripping. I kept saying “I’m tripping can you hear me” and she could see me and my body and was very callous, as if I was something gross that she was forced to deal with because of my own inabilities. That was definitely an echo to the feelings I have toward this relationship right now. I had a day or two of solid stomach relief from the stress of thinking how likely this relationship is over, and my stomach hurts again. Fuck this quaking mess inside me.

I guess it also didn’t help that when I went to the bedroom at 3 or 4, she didn’t really give me any affection. I’m not sure what will become of any of this. A little more raw again today, but I feel like I’m being very deliberate with everything I am doing, and that feels really good. Journaling feels good again.

I love you. I miss you. Someone out there is ready to cherish you. I know it.

 

I think more than being specifically sober, it is more important to be sober minded. I think, being able to be with yourself without needing stimulation, to calm yourself and appreciate the moment without guilt or hurry or an inner welling desire to have to be is a greater mindset to have. The more I go to these Aa meetings, the less I want to never drink again.

The second time after Aa

Sometimes time feels impatient. I met with Sean yesterday and it was truly an enjoyable conversation, I must have more INFP friends. I know often times I do get trapped in my own thinking, get stuck in my house. I should bring out my friend to a park more often – a book of mine, and fellowship with him with this beautifully cold dead text we call script and journaling.

Sean said that he probably wouldn’t have put up with the shit I did in this relationship. A sobering thought. I have put up with much too much and it has made me a weaker man. I have traded in my self worth for the idea that a relationship would build me up. I need to build me up. Especially when the emotional depth is not enough to even feel understood. How can I invest my identity into someone who doesn’t even know who they are? It’s putting my psyche willfully into the shadows. It’s plucking three eyes out to combine two faces. That might be a terrible analogy, but I get it.

It was very odd going to Aa, so much pain and suffering in that group that has destroyed so much, it reminds me of spending time with the homeless, it reminds me of how much I desperately need my own Sangha, it reminds me how emotionally unfulfilled I am, it reminds me how not so bad of a problem I have, it reminds me how hard it is for other people to disentangle their emotions from their perceptions.

I really do enjoy spending time with myself. I forgot how much I don’t need my friend alcohol to be the third wheel in that time. I don’t think I ever stopped loving myself, but I did forget to show it. I was careless with myself. I did become mindless. I need to saturate in a park and read. I need to saturate in a park and write to myself to remind myself how much I love myself. I need to remind myself that peoples’ biases have no reflection on who I am and what I’m worth and how much I actually try. I feel like my house has been dedicated to the god of Chaos, and not the cool one Sheogorath, but the shitty one from Mexico, SheoXactlatl.

I do feel I own TG and TG feels she owns me. We purchased each other with the currency of blood, sweat, tears and the surety of each others’ future. We became the caretakers of each others decisions. We Loaned out our future prosperity to pay for our current suffering.

If I would have gone to Aa earlier, I would have been freed. Not by the shackles that alcohol has gripped me by, but the disease of hopelessness and powerlessness that this relationship has fettered with us both. I do not own TG, but it feels like I own her future displeasures, her future mistakes, her future embarrassment. How do I let go of these agents of guilt and mania? These tribesmen of internal chaos and deceit? These creators of internal quaking messes?

What is suffering that compares to a future without you (TG)? How is that seen as romantic and not a hedonist sickness (Medical term for behavior that is very unhealthy)?

What to do now. Not sure, with still about a month and a half before we go, Not sure how I can deal with these emotions and still stay here. I need to figure out how to let go of TG’s future or it will continue to make me sick.

The CCP Coronavirus might not actually be a bad thing – hear me out.

1. Pandemics were and continue to be expected.

It’s always been the case of when the next pandemic hits, not if. Almost invariably when something like this happens the world gets severely affected, everyone scurries

ie; when the pandemic response team in the US vacated and wasn’t re-filled. Countries have a rich history of being short-sighted and not learning from past events and mistakes.

2. Infection vs Death rate.

Now, I’m not saying it’s not bad but it could be much much worse and this makes us realize how woefully we are prepared for a catastrophic incidence of infection.

2.b, Case mortality rate will always be higher in the beginning, because as we try to figure out how to test everyone, the only people that are getting tested are those that have significant health issues as signs of the disease. As time goes on, we will begin testing those who have less signs and figure out how many carriers there are.

3. The CCP’s treating of the virus.

This is making the west’s ties with China more skeptical, Huawei may not be setting up the UK’s infrastructure anymore.

3.b, We rely far too much on external manufacturing for critical things like medical supplies, which, when borders are closed or quality matters can’t be trusted from inferior production sources like China.

4. Realize the flexibility of work, and what actually matters.

mass adoption of remote working should have been done years ago, but employers are too stubborn to change. Which ends up negatively affecting people with health issues, when workers are sick and a general inconvenience to anyone that has no legitimate reason to be required to work inside an office.

4.b, Since people are working from home, housing prices have a chance of flattening, which we’ve needed in the states (and many other places) for a loooooooong time.

Marqui De sade

There are few times when a downtrodden man is not understood by the crook. The crook has more than sympathy with the man, but often times rare and recent memories of him. He is what he was and what he so diligently wants to get away from.

Fractured thoughts

Being part of a romantic relationship is the us vs them aspect, the Oxytocinic influence of keeping a secret. Feeling able to do anything you want with the person around your arms and no one else.

Trance at that youthful time encompassed romance, secrecy, loyalty, a thick sense of camaraderie. Knowing something that no one else knew outside these four walls. A sense of purpose a sense of understanding, a sense of pure acceptance.

Growth feels uncomfortable. But what does it mean when you just feel pain?
30 days of sickness with another ten days of medicine.
What does forty years of contemplating about having a disease inside you feel like? Not very good, I can tell you.

Sometimes I think I really should try to see the end of what this story is. Just to sit there dumbfounded, disabused at the moment, and watch it all unfurl. Like a wicked tapestry to deceive the kindest of souls. What do you do when the mind is your jail?

Sometimes I think my love of trance is just an unhealthy attachment to that moment. Living free in the forgotten space of a broken down warehouse, there was no judgement, just love. A ceo who brought in a keg of beer surrounded by loyal admirers to his island of brew, on the other side, a pool boy who had managed to salvage lights from a mansion on Biscayne blvd emitting a beautiful ghostly hue of blue around his neck. All of us moving slowly, through each beat enveloped in a loving synchronicity, all speaking the transcendent sound of four on the floor.

A person with glowsticks, creating wheels and angel wings around those he cared about, and of course, the chill out room. The most relaxed area in the house. People who had just been through life times, encompassed in a few moments. You go in with your problems and they coach you through each life time. Once you understand the arrangement, you aren’t free to go, but free to help the person that just walked in. Passing down the karmick baton, the line of understanding and refuge was never broken. Bodichitta bodichitta bodichitta.

I was told that the world needs more love. I’m not sure that’s accurate. People need more love, animals need more love, trees need more love. The world… doesn’t make any sense to me, it seems like it just needs to end.

Does love mean you will listen to the word vomit someone expels?

I need to find a way to cultivate this mindset again

Sometimes there’s just a simple need for tender comfort in a Love’s arms. I remember sitting on the farm outside and having an overwhelming sense of unease with my spirit. My emotions like bubbling over magma inside of me. The only thing I could do at the time was meditate, alone. The practice that yielded the most results was empathy practice. Though quieting the mind and connecting with the body did create some sense of ease, the feeling was somewhat flighty and finicky. The monkey brain was winning. I remember around my second or third hour of empathy practice, I started to feel a connectedness, to the collective unconscious of love and well being.
It wasn’t that feeling alone wasn’t hard, but at least it made sense, and I had a balm for the wound. I also felt a certain clarity, like a sailor amidst bad weather, I could see how to take advantage of the wind.
I feel like I don’t have access to that mindset again, and I’m not sure why. It makes me feel a sense of loss, and I feel sad for it.

—

I also remember waking up to them fighting and Randy being upset at the dogs, semi-yelling almost every morning. Sometimes he would say the same thing to Melissa as had said to the dogs. Classic family statements in anger “You never listen!” “How many times do I have to tell you!”. Every morning was like seeing small cracks in the perfect family, which made them perfectly normal. For as much as I envy their choices, I do not want that family. Many friends who have given valiant attempts to develop those families are also families I don’t want. I don’t want Jessie’s family, or Lindsey’s or Josh’s or Mari’s. They are like shipwrecks staying afloat by the use of buckets and sheer force of will stuck in my mental diorama of relationships. That leaves me where? Where are the successful relationships in my model of beings given to love?

Is it in avoiding the fracturing of meaning with inaccurate sentiments? Overheated speech during an emotional moment?

 

I also find myself waking up in this house with an overbearing sense of dread. Not necessarily that something bad will happen, as much as something bad is happening. Similar to my night terrors I used to have. Is it this place? Is it the ghost of my mother?

Light sick

Sometimes that light sickness feeling is a bit euphoric. Getting actual information from your body reminds you of it’s ability to communicate with the higher consciousness. Kind of a reminiscence of a living spaceship that is our physical relationship with this existence.