opposite of escapism?

september 11, 2021

answers: i did everything i ever wanted to do. considering the number of serendipitous experiences, i gather there is a lot more that i could discover, but i don't feel i missed anything. i think we're all doing the best we can do at each moment. i definitely don't need anymore skills. i did software engineering, writing fiction and non, ceramic design, wheel throwing kiln op, sewing, carpentry, machine repair, plumbing, electrical, construction, language translator (khmer), whoa. the past year i practiced serious meditation and essentially disconnected all ideas as triggers from emotional reactions. i suppose all these things can be improved but as i said we're all doing the best we can at each stage.

here's a chat with vivienne who asked about my progress in meditation today...

have i improved with meditation? i'm answering this question. it has several chapters which i think will interest you. and maybe you can contribute to this... until 4.5 years ago, i had a problem with emotional reactions, fear and anxiety which actually caused my breathing to slow and nearly stop. i was not aware of it until one day walking along the river in kampot i discovered the painful feeling in my chest and realized i wasn't breathing normally. i began breathing practice then, never stopped. during the last 4.5 years i have never experienced the fear and anxiety pain again. if i stop the story there, then yes, i have improved. but...

at that stage i was using breathing practice to treat a symptom in the way you put medicine on a rash. it makes the rash feel better, but it does not resolve the source of the problem. in my case there was a set of habits, trained habits, unconscious habits of thinking and behavior which i was not aware of. this set of habits i have now labeled "ego." because that's a fairly common practice among the meditation teachers. when i say that my ego was bruised, i mean that someone treated me unfairly. that's a reaction which may sound reasonable, but in meditation i have discovered that those reactions were the source of the fear and anxiety which caused my breathing problems. since that realization about a year ago, i have removed a lot of the habits. if i stop the story there, then yes, i have improved. but....

pause for a moment, because i am referring to the page of a book you sent earlier, about brushing your every tooth with joy and focus and being of service to people. that is a very practical use of meditation to bring about positive changes. you (vivienne) have practical problems with overthinking, critical analysis, negative thought patterns. the meditation teachers say you "believe your own ideas are true." and the result is the problems you know very clearly. following these practical steps to change your habit of negative thoughts to positive ones is an improvement, and it will feel good!

so, before last august i had a similar set of problems. i believed my ideas were real and true. they were vexing. "why doesn't that client reply to my message? they don't really care about me." that was not fair, blah blah blah. now we have learned that those ideas are not the absolute truth. every other person has a different idea. none of those ideas is absolute truth. so just let them come and go. no reaction. that's fine! that's very practical, and if you achieve that then yes! you have improved. but…

you are 40 and i am 60, lets' say for the moment. we are at different stages of life. you could still have a nice long partner relationship, and i have past that stage and don't want that anymore (a moment of wanting that now is a relic of the ego mentioned earlier, and i am moving away from that ego). for me, there is a new day when the sun rises, but i am challenged to see it as new right now. mingyur's last book i read, "in love with the world," he describes a method of realizing all these different relative realities. for example, you work at a bank, and everything is labeled in very definite terms, accounts, debits, credits, interest. those are the terms of relative success and failure. but if you walk up into the forest and talk to a durian farmer, they use completely different language. their world is not the same as yours. their feeling of happiness comes from more direct experience of their world, sweetness of fruit, sunshine, signs of agreement with nature. i think their happiness is less impacted by the schizoid internet, social media, opinions of others.

but that is yet another relative reality. it’s not absolute either. and what i mean by “improve” right now is to enter into flexible, relative reality and stay there, and not get stuck in another mistaken concept of absolute, which the teachers describe as an illusion.

the chapter of life i am at now, i am looking for this view of everything as relative reality. i know it’s relative, but i want to live that instead of glimpsing it for an hour or two. how to un-subscribe from the definite labels of my usual soho/foreign/engineer/vegetarian/kk/freelancer reality and all the language and stories that i use to say who i am. because i know that story is just one of a million possible ways to describe this world i live in. that's where i am at today.

i can see a gateway in front of me. all i have to do is take the step and pass through it. that's where i am right now. i've been here for several months. there are two alternative realities i've tested. one is the soho engineer and one is the kayak live outdoors (examples). the longest i did live outdoors was a month. long bicycle ride up california coast. i was then on the same boundary of two different realities, but then i saw them both as absolutes. i still feel that i am straddling the fence. so that's where i am right now.

the point of all this is that if you stop at chapter one and say, "my thinking and behavior are more positive," then yes you have improved. but as you continue this journey, it feels like departure from this reality. during the past 3 months or so i have been standing at this gateway, vascilating, not improving, stuck, not stuck in a lockdown, but suspended in my own indecision.

i honestly feel like departure from this reality is the same as sleep. and sleep is the same as leaving this physical body. so that's where i am. right now, i am using the benefits of meditation to keep fear and anxiety away outside the fence. that's good. but i can see them out there. they are camped in the grass outside the fence. and if i let my guard down they jump in.

ok a practical point here: if i depart, it means dropping my computer, freelance account, bank card. i don't want to think about coming back to those things. i might end up living in a little grass hut on the beach.

the problem i have right now is a combination: lack of creativity to come up with a new idea to live plus exhausted with all the prospects. when i went kayak camping overnight it really felt like just another difficult absolute reality. i never could get to the meditation i wanted to do there. at that moment i was reading mingyur's "in love with the world." he stayed through those very difficult moments and applied his methods of staying present and not resisting transformation. i got frustrated and ran back to the comfort zone!

i am so absolutely exhausted with the software engineer/freelance/traveler reality that i never want to have those thoughts in my head again. but if they come, i will let them go. the sooner the better.

and i just talked to my friend doug yesterday and he is caught in exactly the same self-critical loop of anxiety that he was in when we lived at the cottage 5 years ago. if you look at that as a frame of reference then YES i have improved.

(referring to picture of questions at top)

these meditation questions you sent perfectly illustrate the difference i was pointing out when i wrote that you are 40 and i am 60... you've lived the responsible life, the "loop" as you call it. and that is the perfect word to describe peoples’ lives here. esp those sitting in the loop of traffic 3 times a day going around the bay road under my balcony...

we actually live in a kaleidoscope of transformation but somehow human beings have carved a little circular trench in the ground and just go round and round day after day. they rarely do anything new.

as for me, i am tired mentally. i have done so many new things that i am out of ideas.

i explored everything to the limits of my creativity. i lived in cambodia for 7 years total and khmer became my first language for the last 3 years. i experienced actually being of service to 20 poor kids for several years. that was my ultimate career goal. and i did it. and i know the limitations of that "being of service" idea too. in cambodia there were a lot of NGOs that mean to help people. i am fairly sure now that we can’t help anyone because the world is this way and we can’t substantially improve that setup. and i don't need to do that kind of project again.

so the anwer to those questions is: none.

i could never stay in that loop .. it is anathema!

PLACES of INTEREST

my travels and places of residence are were many and scattered, but i realized one way to piece the chronology together is with a list of the places i lived

greensboro

stone mountain

athens

winston salem

hanes park
sawtooth ceramic design warren heather 1st prize jury award
old salem

williamstown

brodie mountain snowboard wednesday nights

san diego

torrey pines
cowles mtn, alpine

winston again baptist hospital contract

bicycle ride memorable places:

morro bay start, san simeon camp
piedras blancas motel elephant seals
monterey point lighthouses hostel
point reyes hostel, pigeon point lighthouse hostel
bodega bay

arcata

shasta snowboarding
lake tahoe, alpine, squaw
exuma islands kayaking
tulum hiking beaches
costa rica
crater lake, or

tucson

salome
huricane gulch
saguarro

battambang

siem reap

milledgeville

kampot

otres

mondul kiri

oxford -> tucson

carrabelle

tallahassee

perdana garden

kapas island

** can't even list all the places in several cross country driving camping trips!

tucan in tucson

learn from sepanggar island kayak trip:

rain was a solution rather than a problem: when i ran out of water i was able to catch and drink 2 liters of rain water using my rain fly. i also saved enough to have a shower (saltwater and soap don't lather).
paddled too late. sunburn through my long sleeves? yes, it was bad.
decided too quickly to leave first beach, thinking there was no hammock spot, and because i originally planned for the other beach. wasted too much energy and then more sunburn, all of which made it hard to sleep. i had forgotten that excessive physical fatigue makes it hard to sleep.
relax, breathe, think, before making a decision to move again: before heading for the other beach, and also before leaving at night. the mistake was thinking the water would be calm at night, but it was after a storm and the water was choppy. didn't think of the storm before leaving.
tide charts. should have checked the high tide before setting up the hammock.
monkeys. still not sure what i could do about the monkeys in camp during daylight. one actually got on the back of my boat. i didn't wait to see if they would try to open my bags. the one relief was that they went away after sunset. fire is probably the most practical solution, but i didn't think of that until the rain has already soaked all the fallen wood. i should bring some kind of fuel. an article states that macaques are diurnal; that's good news. there were many.
when does 9 = 45 ??
i would like to sit on the kayak seats in the evening, but they were soaked. i could bring a sheet of extra tarp to put over them after i shower and wear dry clothes.
water in the supply bags. REALLY would like another dry bag.
the round hatches are not waterproof and apparently that's how all that water got into the hull. and made it difficult to haul up because i didn't realize there was water inside. need to seal those hatches.
i didn't do the breathing exercise when i was getting frustrated in the hammock. craving comfort, thinking i'd return tomorrow, used phone battery, didn't practice non resistance. mingyur did all sorts of practices to stay in the moment and not resist. he resisted resisting very well in the varanasi homeless area.
as a caution, that orange can of deet is going to last about 4 days.

need for next:

tape hatches, check that beach for the tarp and line, gloves, white shirt, other pants? trade in blue shirt, waterproof bag, plastic cover for wet seat evenings, caution about NW coast: no dev, food, water? fire fuel? mosquito net

i believe i will be fine. i can do it.

exhausted by people - including myself

exhausted by my own thinking patterns

residue of past and funneling into future

online freelance lifestyle was working

lockdown covid messed up everything

learned meditation and new openness

remember how airport security changed after 9-11

now they're doing the same with covid

people complicate simple things

phones and text messages

reduced real human contact

env. pollution, global warming, AI surveil,

omg people!! enough!!

injuries, aging, reduced senses, olfactory

why hesitate? same reason that interferes in all of the above

second guessing my decisions

in fact, that is the main thing i want to terminate!

don't wait till circumstances prevent!