Begin again
Begin again.
These might be the two most important words in my life, in the history of my life. Each moment of life is a new beginning, a chance to act, to be, to live. Realizing that moment is an experience of beauty for me, and my meditation practice helps me stay there in that present moment. Through my practice, I have come to a deeper understanding of why I hold that phrase and that concept so dearly.
I hate myself.
On some deep, fundamental, lizard-brain level, my brain, for whatever reason, is simply wired to make the most perfectly irrational conclusion it is possible to make as a sentient being: hatred of the self. I don't know why, I don't particularly care why. It just is.
This self-hatred has played out in so many ways in my life: from not caring about school work to starting smoking to my devout religious days to suicidal thoughts. It spoke to tell me that I couldn't handle the schoolwork if I tried which made me not even start and then criticised me afterward for not being smart enough to get A's. It facilitated fear countless times that made me not start, not engage, not act on my desires or on what I knew was a better course of action for myself, because that path would be hard.
It spoke to me through Christianity. I bought into the idea of being a disgusting sinner, because I was already disgusting before I was introduced to Christianity. The salvation of Christ meant that the Creator of the Universe saw me in a way I did not see myself: clean, righteous, forgivable and forgiven, love-worthy. My gratitude for that drove my devotion. My intoxication of bathing in God's presence started to decline as I uncovered that I could not rationalize the religion, and that coincided with a decline in my mental health, as I no longer had that external structure to battle my self-hatred. Worse, it left me unprepared to deal with life without it.
It spoke to me for years - and still does - telling me I suck to some degree on any level about anything. It tells me I cannot do what it takes to achieve my goals for any number and variety of reasons, and many times it blocked attempts to create goals in the first place, because I was never going to meet them anyway. Difficulty itself is met with a deep-rooted, guttural, child-like panic, like being suddenly immersed in spiders and having no thoughts whatsoever other than to flee in horror and self-preservation. Other times it judges my past and present for not meeting some random criteria of "success" or of "justification for feeling proud and happy" with myself.
It has no real sense to it as a concept, because it isn't really a concept at all. It is just a framework in which thoughts arise in my head, a part of my state of being conscious. Sometimes it's thoughts, sometimes it's emotions, but the end result is always the same: to withhold action in a direction I desire to go in exchange for taking action in a direction that is not that and often is in opposition to it. It is hatred taking action, and it is a constant presence.
My relief from this self-hatred comes in meditation and Buddhism philosophy. Buddhism teaches that the brain is merely a place where thoughts occur, like bubbles in a boiling pot of water. They simply start to be, grow, rise to the surface, burst and cease, in an endless cycle. Buddhism also teaches that the present moment is really the only moment in which reality is reality. There is no place on a map where one can point to locate the past. There is no compass that points to the future. The history of the past and the speculations of the future exist nowhere in the universe other than in the gray matter in our heads.
To begin again is to recognize the moment as being its own independent event with conditions inherited from the past but not defined by them. To begin again is to embrace the current moment and to choose to act in accordance with your intentions. To begin again is to recognize that the past does not necessarily resemble the future and that my focus should not be on changing from something in the past which doesn't exist but rather on simply acting rightly in the only moment in time that actually does exist: right now. And part of that action is to allow the self-hatred voice to speak without yielding to its power and influence, without allowing it the stage, without succumbing to its temptations.
No matter how loud the voice or how deep the fear, self-hatred is just a bubble in the water. Look at it. It's just like the other bubbles. It will bloom and it will fade. Let it be, but if you happen not to let it be, then just return your intent to go down the road you want and start once more to walk down that road.
Begin again.
These might be the two most important words in my life, in the history of my life. Each moment of life is a new beginning, a chance to act, to be, to live. Realizing that moment is an experience of beauty for me, and my meditation practice helps me stay there in that present moment. Through my practice, I have come to a deeper understanding of why I hold that phrase and that concept so dearly.
I hate myself.
On some deep, fundamental, lizard-brain level, my brain, for whatever reason, is simply wired to make the most perfectly irrational conclusion it is possible to make as a sentient being: hatred of the self. I don't know why, I don't particularly care why. It just is.
This self-hatred has played out in so many ways in my life: from not caring about school work to starting smoking to my devout religious days to suicidal thoughts. It spoke to tell me that I couldn't handle the schoolwork if I tried which made me not even start and then criticised me afterward for not being smart enough to get A's. It facilitated fear countless times that made me not start, not engage, not act on my desires or on what I knew was a better course of action for myself, because that path would be hard.
It spoke to me through Christianity. I bought into the idea of being a disgusting sinner, because I was already disgusting before I was introduced to Christianity. The salvation of Christ meant that the Creator of the Universe saw me in a way I did not see myself: clean, righteous, forgivable and forgiven, love-worthy. My gratitude for that drove my devotion. My intoxication of bathing in God's presence started to decline as I uncovered that I could not rationalize the religion, and that coincided with a decline in my mental health, as I no longer had that external structure to battle my self-hatred. Worse, it left me unprepared to deal with life without it.
It spoke to me for years - and still does - telling me I suck to some degree on any level about anything. It tells me I cannot do what it takes to achieve my goals for any number and variety of reasons, and many times it blocked attempts to create goals in the first place, because I was never going to meet them anyway. Difficulty itself is met with a deep-rooted, guttural, child-like panic, like being suddenly immersed in spiders and having no thoughts whatsoever other than to flee in horror and self-preservation. Other times it judges my past and present for not meeting some random criteria of "success" or of "justification for feeling proud and happy" with myself.
It has no real sense to it as a concept, because it isn't really a concept at all. It is just a framework in which thoughts arise in my head, a part of my state of being conscious. Sometimes it's thoughts, sometimes it's emotions, but the end result is always the same: to withhold action in a direction I desire to go in exchange for taking action in a direction that is not that and often is in opposition to it. It is hatred taking action, and it is a constant presence.
My relief from this self-hatred comes in meditation and Buddhism philosophy. Buddhism teaches that the brain is merely a place where thoughts occur, like bubbles in a boiling pot of water. They simply start to be, grow, rise to the surface, burst and cease, in an endless cycle. Buddhism also teaches that the present moment is really the only moment in which reality is reality. There is no place on a map where one can point to locate the past. There is no compass that points to the future. The history of the past and the speculations of the future exist nowhere in the universe other than in the gray matter in our heads.
To begin again is to recognize the moment as being its own independent event with conditions inherited from the past but not defined by them. To begin again is to embrace the current moment and to choose to act in accordance with your intentions. To begin again is to recognize that the past does not necessarily resemble the future and that my focus should not be on changing from something in the past which doesn't exist but rather on simply acting rightly in the only moment in time that actually does exist: right now. And part of that action is to allow the self-hatred voice to speak without yielding to its power and influence, without allowing it the stage, without succumbing to its temptations.
No matter how loud the voice or how deep the fear, self-hatred is just a bubble in the water. Look at it. It's just like the other bubbles. It will bloom and it will fade. Let it be, but if you happen not to let it be, then just return your intent to go down the road you want and start once more to walk down that road.
Begin again.
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