Well emotions are running high and that usually leads me to churn things through in my head, between recent conversations and the books I read.
So in the last post I already tried to explain how important it is to remove ourselves from the ideas of permanence, stability, past and future in order to live in the now. So now let us look closer at the de-construction of self, the unraveling of the fabric we call reality and our own world.
Over time I worked myself through a lot of the big stuff and hence get a lot less railed up about a lot of things. Home, future, family, security, success, career, it's all pretty meaningless to me and I have moved on. I mean some of it still gets me but mostly only on a surface level.
Sure there still is plenty that can infuriate me outside my own little world like climate change, women's rights, basically anything from throwing away plastic bags, over forbidding women the right to decide over their own bodies to excluding non-straight couples from healthcare. Plenty to get railed up about when you look past your own nose, not to forget the orange tangerine that creates daily outrage. However if I accept the premise that the universe is just one big entertainment unit in order not to get bored (and alas I'm actually quite likely to agree with the concept by now) I'm doing all that stuff simply and ultimately for that very reason = avoiding boredom. Of course at the time when you are railed up about a cause or emotions it's all real to you, and you are all for it/against it/on an emotional high/low and it feels important and big because that's the magic of attachment.
Over all on a personal scale, concerning my own little stage play, I started to get a bit more in line with the forces that be and try to float along (most days, i after all am still attached to people too). Living as much as I can in the moment, just seeing where things go, practicing yoga, eating, reading, sleeping, teaching, conversing with my fellow stage crew all very low key stuff. Really one week is much like the next. And nine times out of ten tomorrow doesn't bother me.
Of course that means my life is more on the boring side I guess, not really much drama. However that's what you have the other actors on stage for and for as long as you keep some form of engagement with the play and the players and hence interact with the other actors (be it to script or not) drama will find you. So I find my own drama by interacting or sometimes drama finds me.
How much you let that effect your own appearance of emotional huha of course depends on how far down the rabbit hole you go and how involved you are with the character you play.
Generally I'm in an ideal place and time (as far as these things go and the ideal place and time always being now) that lends itself to the total deconstruction of "self" and reality as I got used to it/learned to understand it. As I said I've done a fair bit of stripping away the dirty layers that society has forced on me and even some I choose to pick up myself. Some layers are stickier than others and some you cling to just because of habit. Discarding various masks and layers I peal myself like an onion, having moved though recent years a tiny bit closer to the truth, that really on reflection life is absolute meaningless and that what I consider to be self, does not exist.
There I said it! Self does not exist and life is meaningless!
For most people it's an ugly truth and of course most of us delude ourselves in thinking otherwise. I mean that's what we've got all our values, beliefs, emotions, and spiritual/religious crap for right? The good stuff and the bad stuff that's really all it's for, delusion! However we hold this that's it, really we still get railed up about things and well do stuff, imagining ourselves to be of importance because a stage play in which nothing happens and without any actors is...?
yes indeed - Boring!
We need context, the illusion of meaning and being as our prime direction for our play.
For me this truth is still sinking in too! I admit the idea of life as meaningless and myself just being a loosely woven fabric of nothingness does not sit well with me either, it's like bursting a bubble that up to that moment I was more or less happily and self-deluded floating in, but unless I close my eyes really hard, stick my fingers in my ears, humm and imagine myself to be back in a different time it's very difficult to unsee the truth of it.
In many ways it shattered my world as it was supposed to and my relationship to things, values, expectations, society, the world overall, life and death and even family and friends has changed a great deal and I am more aware of the role/s I'm playing and the masks I'm wearing (although sometimes I don't want to admit that either of course, my role is comfy and I like it). For the most part I try to hold the threads of my life's tapestry lightly and untangle knots without necessarily fully letting them go, see relationships for what they are and stay more on the observer side realizing that I could just as easily pull the thread de-layering the onion a bit more. But still human relations sometimes rail me in big time and by Tartarus if I play along I give it my all. I was made to tread the boards. It's all about attachment hon and I still can be like an octopus's tentacle when I get myself involved. But I'm working on stepping back and seeing things for what they are and so should you!
So yes of course understanding this and actually living fully afloat of un-reality are still two different things. Personally I do still think that to keep going until the last curtain, that hides the void, is very tempting. After all who doesn't want to take that peak to finally go: I knew it! It's all a hoax, now I have proof!
However I'm not so sure I actually want to leave the stage (because there is nothing beyond it, certainly nothing particular entertaining) and peaking behind the curtain will be just that, leaving the stage for good. Opening the exit door and never returning, while knowing that the show goes on without you and that the show is all there is. Luckily as the show does go on and I still hold my script my fellow actors try their best to keep me in character, so I'm still treading the boards. I still like being in character, after all it's what gives life substance, it what makes it multicolored instead of black and white. However my acting skills sometimes get less good as the mask just doesn't fit as it used to.
Sometimes my character interactions lead me to reflect anew on some subjects that I had mostly closed the lid on for myself. I mean I still open some of the boxes regularly and go through them thinking: Yup need to remind myself of this more (only the now can be considered to exist), or ah yes I knew it was in here somewhere (all attachments are just verification of ego) or gosh I thought I'd binned that (my gods too are just a figment of my imagination and so is science).
So here I am thinking about fear!
Fear of life, fear of loss, fear of letting go, fear change, fear of love, fear of loneliness, fear of trust, fear of the future, fear of disappointment, fear of disappointing, fear of pain, fear of death, fear of not counting and so on!
And that brings me to attachment. They really are quite a couple and always go hand in hand. We attach ourselves through fear and attachments create fear.
Attachment to stability, attachment to people/things, attachment to self, attachment to the past, attachment to emotions, attachment to the idea of love/friendship, attachment to loneliness, attachment to security, attachment to ideas, attachment to the value of being seen and recognized, attachment to the body and it's functions, attachment to the stage play we call life, attachment to success and so on.
Attachment - Fear - Fear - Attachment. It's a vicious circle. Throw in our continued delusion of the existence of past and future and that's it:
Lights, camera, action! Drama till the curtain goes down.
All we consider good or bad in life derives at it's core from attachment. The main ones being attachment to ideas, to objects, to values, to constructs, to emotions and of course to people as I already mentioned in the beginning.
I mean try taking away a babies dummy or tell a republican his religion is a hoax, or watch what happens when someone's spouse dies and see what happens! All of a sudden the fear of change, the fear of not being right, the fear of loss of self, the fear of deconstruction of ones reality sets in.
From childhood on we get so accustomed to take the stage we call life for granted. With every step we take our performance on the boards gets more and more intricate and layered so that by the time a piece of our world crumbles we are still unlikely to wade through all the muck in order to find the core of it all and unplug ourselves from the system.
Our strongest attachments are probably the constructs and people that create our direct character, everything that gives our personal stage play substance. In particular our human interactions (even the ones online or imaginary ones) help keep the layers in place, help to keep us playing our role 24/7 as only by being beheld in the eyes of others do we gain realness and only by beholding them and our other vital constructs (ideas and values for example) does the world become real to us.
So you see, even if we agree that attachment is a bad thing it's basically what we yearn, what we are programmed towards because attachment validates us and gives us the illusion of self and meaning. It's our onion layers. Anything to feed the ego, anything to create context for our stage play. Attachment whether good or bad creates our reality and our selfs. Therefore of course having any of our layers removed must involve fear. It's the natural instinct of the illusive (or non existent) self to keep the covers pulled tightly over our eyes by stirring us away from de-layering ourselves.
And here we tie in with the previous post as well (Reality is a hoax) as our world often falls partially apart (experience of fear and disorientation) when this construct is being messed with through some kind of loss usually, when we start to realize (or at least gain a short glimpse of the fact) that nothing is real, stable or permanent.
But despite such quick glimpses soon enough we hold on to our illusions again and keep living in the past and try chasing the future. One will never come back the other never arrive, really quite ridiculous when you think about it. Our house of cards can cave in at any moment but we like to delude ourselves into thinking otherwise.
And even if we are prepared to "soul search", to dive into the muck, we usually live under the false idea that deconstruction will free us and make everything better. Give life a shinier venire. The great sages and philosophies do after all talk about detachment, finding the real self, going to the center and on to a better, purer self! Becoming one with the universe and melt into creation. Sounding all zen, calm and tranquil. Understanding what it's all about, connecting with ourselves fully and returning to our daily shopping mall experience with a calmer happier mind.
But will it make things better? It's really more like a life size game of jenga. It's all fine and good removing the first few blocks, seeing the light shine through the empty spaces, appreciating the structure anew, but once we get to the foundations and see it might all be coming crashing down on us we might not like to continue playing. All of a sudden the journey does not look so blissful anymore, but painful and agonizing as we come to the realization that the solid core we expected is not solid at all. And really we would have to take every brick down in order to get to the point of the exercise. That means letting the tower tumble, crush us and then remove the debris and then to finish it off throw it all in the fire until nothing is left. Now burning the house down while you are in it doesn't really sound such a great thing, does it now? So you can see why ego tries to pull the wool over our eyes and gives us ever new bandwagons to hop on.
But understand basically all we are, I say it again ALL WE ARE is the sum of our attachments, of the accumulations of illusions that the world has thrown at us since birth, including the people we love and cherish, but every single one of them is an external construct and as such can be removed and destroyed until nothing is left but the fact:
I am aware therefore I exist.
Complete de-construction leaves us tumbling into the abyss of consciousness to utter non-self (and therefore, considering our reality, non-existence) while sill inhabiting the flesh blag we call body. De-construction, detaching doesn't just mean realizing that our lifes are just a big grand stage plays but saying goodbye to all the actors long before the final curtain comes down.
Now this sounds all very deflating and unpleasant but understanding this or at least accepting this and reminding ourselves of it all the bloody time may help to keep a looser hold of life and our attachments and therefore lessening the fears as well. Not letting go of everything but only holding onto our masks with gentle fingertips, barely touching them.
Depending on how far you want to take the journey of course it doesn't mean to stop living your life but to re-adjust into it, to wear your masks with purpose and a sense of lightness and fun, not letting yourself believe that the masks are you.
I said in my previous post to choose your attachments well now I take this a step further and say not only choose them well and pick the ones that make life interesting for you but think of them in a new way.
If you like continue with McKenna's idea of the stage play and think of them as roles you play/masks you wear and the script in which you write your own character/s.
Every interaction you have involves a different mask, a different role. But that is all they are, roles. You might really enjoy some of them like the role of daughter or athlete or husband but they all end eventually or twist in unexpected directions and even if you give an Oscar worthy performance it's still just a role. The highest emotion and the lowest low is still at the core nothing but a way to create duality from singularity.
So really see your interactions for the masks, the un-realities they are and get used to taking them off when your character isn't visibly on stage and look at them, deconstruct them. Exam them as to when you started wearing them and why, and how they have become meaningful to you, how you have attached yourself to them. Go further until you see the pointlessness of it all.
Strip as many off of you as you can each day before you go to bed and notice how you put them on, how you change them from interaction to interaction. It might just be subtle changes in some cases and in other quite drastic. Try to differentiate between the different roles and pick lesser mask to use at any one time, discard some of them and thin them out until you only have your favorite ones left and wear them like loose garments. And even then hold them up each day examine them, see their non-permanence and un-importance. See them for the tools of entertainment they are, how their sole purpose is to keep boredom away from you. How all you do and are is just for your own entertainment and entertainment works best when you are at the edge of your seat when the fire burns brightest.
Accepting this and trying to live by it might mean that when one mask breaks/one character leaves the stage you can just let it go without much more as a:
Well played!
