DoaD #27 - The Return
Okay, been a couple of days away from the mic.
This is the return, Episode 27 of Diary of a Daoist.
I have been more with my pen than the mic the past few days, there's certain things that I've needed to work through in silence, without any blocks of verbal communication. I was noticing just then, that I was getting very fractured, and I've been very impulsive and splintered. I've bought so many books in the past few days, even though they're like two quid, one quid, it's linked to something and my need for knowledge. I think, with what’s going on in my life right now, the obsessive student who thinks that knowledge can fix all is desperately searching for answers and head solutions to my current situation that I've led myself to believe is a problem to overcome. That's not at all what's gonna help, only time can tell. Realistically it is only gonna get more difficult later on if I don't simply slow down, feel,
and allow myself the space to exist in this time. Not seeing a couple of hours in the mornings before I go to work, as a need to go out and start a new project and do something and WORK and GET OUT. I've been getting pulled along by these parts in my head and other people's voices that have left their imprints. I've been getting pulled along.
A year ago, was a different time, but I was very introspective and aware of the movements of my mind. But I hadn’t quite got back in touch with my body, and now I've really, really come over to the body side, the physical. Tapped out a little bit of mastering the mind and listening to the spiritual. I've lent back into knowledge, knowledge, knowledge, books, books which, it's not a bad thing, it's okay, but an excessive amount of knowledge only adds more to the brain. I need to take away and reduce what I'm putting in. I'm so quick to judge people my age on their phones who absorb countless amounts of information but I'm doing the same. It's just not metal but paper.
The prospect of a living environment has really affected me. I don't know why, my nature and my centre are cleanliness and order but also having a balance of moments of chaos in between that. For me, it always comes back to - the state of my room is simply a reflection of my mind. Right now it's very fractured and all over the place, and I keep taking advice from someone who's extremely fractured. I'm telling myself their way of their nature it's got in my head a bit too much and made me feel bad about mine.
It's something to balance, extreme cleanliness and order and the need for control is not good. It's not healthy. But there needs to be a balance. The prospect of living with a bunch of unknowns [is terrifying] because I know how sensitive I am to outside influences, and even though I've done a lot of inner training, I'm not quite there yet, because I am human. I’m simply looking for harmony within myself, and it's greatly affected by the harmony outside. I don't want to move into a place where I retreat into my room again that's not healthy either.
Past few days have been so nice, but so rough, in between those moments of… that meet up with those beautiful minds, couple of builders who are on it! It so nice, so good to see people thinking the same way that I am. In between, those moments of teaching, which is so fulfilling, takes me away completely. In between all of that, I'm taken back to this depth that is hard to be in right now.
Wow.
I was very manic before recording this. Left to my own devices, lightning going from one thing to the next. Stressing about this festival, even though, realistically, there's no infrastructure that needs to be put in place. I don't need to do this big idea that I've thought of. I can keep it simple with simply doing what I need to do, but then I don't have the elements to even do that. So then I'm keeping myself in this trap of, “I need to go do something, but stuff to do it. What can I do? I need to get out.”
Having all this stimulus in my room and having everything a mess, it's really triggering for me. It's great at some moments, the bounce from one thing to the next, my creativity definitely needs that. But my state of mind right now, I need reduction and minimal stimulus so I can actually feel this.
A lot of changes going on, and I almost gave up on my commitment to this by starting something new, which I thought I should have been doing. It should have I could have been doing I just haven't. This morning I was beating myself up thinking I need to do this! I need to do this! Nah man take it slow. I'm not stressed at all about this poetry reading tomorrow, but because of it, I’m then thinking, oh shit, I've got this reading so I need to start this Instagram and start posting this and start getting this out. People can follow it for that. Still caught in a desire to be see, and that ambition is clouding the actual moment of what this event will be.
All I want to do is connect with people's hearts by speaking straight from mine. So if I'm lost in headland, in my h(e)aven. Then, how can that message be communicated clearly?
That's why this magnet always pulls me back to Daoism, all I've learned through the study of this part of the world from these thinkers and feelers, the one thing is its helped me slow down. From that slowing down comes simplifying and reducing. So I now have the broader vision to be able to see what I've been doing, and I've been working manically and moving so fast from one thing to next. Slowing down, bringing more of that air element into it really balances out that flame. It's never, ever, ever gonna be perfect. It's never gonna be a completed mission. It's the greatest trick that my Western conditioning has taught me, that this will be complete one day and I will have it done full stop. It's not. That's never existed in nature. It's never done. This is a continual process. I've come to terms with the vastness of that cyclical nature that is terrifying at first to a western mind like mine. (”Western mind” still don't know about that).
It makes so much more sense. This whole thing is a circle. It comes back around the same lessons return each year. It's a seasonal cycle, and each year you're given a chance at learning how to live within the rhythms of this season. Is it expanding? Is it contracting? Is it rising? Is it falling? Is it conserving? Is it stabilizing? Are you living in accord with that? Whenever I haven't like just now, my mind starts to fracture and splinter and I get ill. I've had too much of that in my life. Only made 23 trips around the sun on this planet but I've known this for longer than that, so it's no surprise that I've come to this realization earlier than some others. Through my pain and my experience, I can spread that understanding, not through words, even though that's what I'm doing now, these are just little keys and clues for myself. Really and truly it comes from these small, small minute changes that happen moment to moment, from being present and aware of these constant pushes and pulls. Becoming aware of it, and moving with it, allows the cycles to be ridden a little bit easier, not less painful, but just with a bit more ease. I guess it’s like learning to fly like that lovely little bird up there. You learn to see that you've had wings on your back all along. You slowly learn to feel, how to get them out and how to then ride with the wind rather than get blown over by it, because you're blindsided. Feeling is the way man and this mind and body is not accustomed to it. Well, not in a way that is easy to communicate. I feel violently deep, whatever that means, I feel everything, and it's very intense sometimes. That's why a lot of my life, I subdued it with a lovely substance. But now I feel it all, and it's fucking hard, but I would never go back. What is life without these little deaths, these little rebirths that make it all worth it these new levels of seeing and feeling.
Yeah, fuck, man, it's hard.
Does not get any easier.
It's getting to do it with ease makes it a little bit more enjoyable.
If I can have love for this moment, right here and these times, and what they're teaching me, how could that ever be bad? I know even later today, I will probably slip out of that thinking, but to be able to have that acceptance and realization right now is…. ahhhh
a little white butterfly as well just flew past the window.
That's all I need.
Peace
