From Am I? to I Am

“You are an aperture through which the universe is looking at and exploring itself.”
― Alan W. Watts

I’m back on a TOOL kick, and it’s massaging the brain again.  Listening to Forty Six & 2, I finally had the aha I’ve been missing, or at least I forgot I knew.  Or maybe I just found the questions to help me find the answers I forgot?

-In trying to be anything, aren’t you then the opposite of what you want to be?

-Are the things you fight the hardest the very things you must embrace the most?

-Is it possible that thoughts are the narration of someone else?

-Are the things you fear the most the things you desire the most?

-If everything is a choice, does that mean reality changes with just a choice?

-What is reality?

-Is it I think therefore I am, or I am therefore I think?

-What color is the sky in other people’s eyes?

It is in realizing that I don’t know the answers, and no one can give it to me, that I’m finally finding the peace I’ve been searching for.  I’ve wasted too much time asking people to help me answer my own questions.  I suspect the mind is akin to an oyster turning sand to a pearl, and no other tongue can do it for you.  I suspect coincidence is merely another lie you tell yourself.  And anyone who claims to have the answers is a bigger liar than most.

“Why are we here?”, “What is my purpose?” no longer seem like fruitful questions.  What if my purpose is simply to observe the hummingbird as it flies by, so the hummingbird knows it’s purpose is to hum? What if my job as a mother is solely to lay the boulders I carry on the ground ahead of my children, so they can walk without the weight of my mistakes on their shoulders?  Am I their teacher or are they mine?

As I start dropping all the weight I was carrying…What if the very notion of perfection is the ability to continue living, as every mistake creates another step on your journey?  Is perfection the truest nature of zen? Such that no history or future exists, because every moment is the sum of achievements – successful failures?

Have we all become so obsessed with labeling ourselves, in a desperate attempt to uniquely fit in? Every color, shape, and experience must have a description applied, or it won’t actually be observed? Every experience must be an extreme of classification, because the middle seems to be lost. It seems like prayer or meditation is the only place to find your center, among the chaos of it all.  But the harder I tried to do either, the less I understood.  The quieter I get, and the less I understand, the more wisdom seems to emerge.  The wisest saying seems to be “I don’t know”.

In every answer, I think it’s quite simply, I was never right and I was never wrong.  I just never asked the right question.  Or, I guess more importantly, I kept asking everyone else.  The less answers that arise to increasing questions give me one clear answer: choose.  Am I crazy? I am crazy, I am not crazy.  It really doesn’t matter what anyone else says, since my choice would dictate my reality.  The second you observe it or label it, you’ve changed the reality.  Maybe the hummingbird believes it is a waffle, so by telling the waffle-bird otherwise would alter the hummingbird.  Maybe all birds want to be waffles, as I wish I was a bird.  The greatest irony is we all seem to suffer for the endless possibilities, even though they were meant to be gifts….

I am still just a wise ass who spends too much time on YouTube 😉 and now I want some waffles.

 

 

“Trying to define yourself is like trying to bite your own teeth.”

“We seldom realize, for example that our most private thoughts and emotions are not actually our own. For we think in terms of languages and images which we did not invent, but which were given to us by our society.”

“Man suffers only because he takes seriously what the gods made for fun.”

“The meaning of life is just to be alive. It is so plain and so obvious and so simple. And yet, everybody rushes around in a great panic as if it were necessary to achieve something beyond themselves.”

“Muddy water is best cleared by leaving it alone.”

“To have faith is to trust yourself to the water. When you swim you don’t grab hold of the water, because if you do you will sink and drown. Instead you relax, and float.”

~Alan Watts

 

“Advice? I don’t have advice. Stop aspiring and start writing. If you’re writing, you’re a writer. Write like you’re a goddamn death row inmate and the governor is out of the country and there’s no chance for a pardon. Write like you’re clinging to the edge of a cliff, white knuckles, on your last breath, and you’ve got just one last thing to say, like you’re a bird flying over us and you can see everything, and please, for God’s sake, tell us something that will save us from ourselves. Take a deep breath and tell us your deepest, darkest secret, so we can wipe our brow and know that we’re not alone. Write like you have a message from the king. Or don’t. Who knows, maybe you’re one of the lucky ones who doesn’t have to.” ~Alan Watts

 

“Forty-Six & 2” ~TOOL
My shadow’s

Shedding skin and
I’ve been picking
Scabs again.
I’m down
Digging through
My old muscles
Looking for a clue.

I’ve been crawling on my belly
Clearing out what could’ve been.
I’ve been wallowing in my own confused
And insecure delusions
For a piece to cross me over
Or a word to guide me in.
I wanna feel the changes coming down.
I wanna know what I’ve been hiding in

My shadow.
Change is coming through my shadow.
My shadow’s shedding skin
I’ve been picking
My scabs again.

I’ve been crawling on my belly
Clearing out what could’ve been.
I’ve been wallowing in my own chaotic
And insecure delusions.

I wanna feel the change consume me,
Feel the outside turning in.
I wanna feel the metamorphosis and
Cleansing I’ve endured within

My shadow
Change is coming.
Now is my time.
Listen to my muscle memory.
Contemplate what I’ve been clinging to.
Forty-six and two ahead of me.

I choose to live and to
Grow, take and give and to
Move, learn and love and to
Cry, kill and die and to
Be paranoid and to
Lie, hate and fear and to
Do what it takes to move through.

I choose to live and to
Lie, kill and give and to
Die, learn and love and to
Do what it takes to step through.

See my shadow changing,
Stretching up and over me.
Soften this old armor.
Hoping I can clear the way
By stepping through my shadow,
Coming out the other side.
Step into the shadow.
Forty six and two are just ahead of me.