when i was a kid i used to take my cats infront of the mirror and was amazed that they didn't seem to react in any kind of way to their reflection; they didn't seem to recognize or comprehend themselves. for the past couple years i've had this premonition that i might be guilty of the same thing.
i believe it was a mon or tues of this past week. i was watching einstein�s e = mc^2 movie that came on PBS and really enjoying it. i believe i also had drunk a beer. the show went into depth on each of the scientist�s lives as well as their theories. i was really fascinated and into understanding the world thru physics and how incredible it is. then i went to use the bathroom and saw myself in the mirror and something very unusual happened. it was like i didn�t recognize myself. like i had forgot that i was a person at all. its like i all of a sudden became a person or realized i was a person. i was in complete awe. i kept opening and closing the door amazed at my ability to control the things i was looking at in the mirror. they were all real and i was really in this young man�s body affecting them. i just gazed at myself in awe and started crying. but for some reason i felt myself holding back. i didn�t break full into a crying fit like i would so like to do, but i was crying. i spent a good bit of time just looking at myself in the mirror with my jaw dropped. i can�t really describe or understand it. maybe i�m going crazy maybe not. maybe its the placebo effect from reading about zen, maybe its not. it was very close to the experience i had had as a kid (probably 8 � 12 yrs old i guess). i can still remember the stretch of road where it happened. all of a sudden i was in complete amazement that i was real, and a person just like everyone else i had ever seen or read about, just living out my life like they had lived out theirs�. it was a weird feeling and interesting how the state of mind could come and go. that night when i was a kid i seemed to be able to bring it back after it happened, but this time once it happened (15 min or so) it seemed to be over for the most part. i still retained everything logically, and could say the same words i had said before, but the knock me off my feet sense of awe wasn�t there anymore, it was like it gradually left me. but when i was little that night it seemed like i could bring it back. funny, i can still remember, as soon as i got home i went and looked in the mirror in complete awe. i think i remember laughing. but bringing it back and holding it seemed a bit like playing a very difficult rhythm on guitar or drums. or like looking at a dim star. if you look straight at it, it disappears. same with the music, if you focus too directly you mess it up. somehow you have to let it all happen together. when i was a kid i would get so into it that i felt more and more distanced from the person i was. all the stuff i felt was so important no longer seemed so. but eventually i would always go back to living my life and eventually that sense of awe became only a memory.
This time i think the movie triggered it because i was so into what was happening to the characters from a 3rd person pt of view. when i looked at myself in the mirror its like i applied this mindset to myself. i felt separate from myself and then amazed at the fact that i was inside controlling things. it seemed like i felt sympathy and love for myself as if i was an outsider looking in. i remember checking my phone messages and hearing a message from my parents. look at this life you�re living, i remember thinking. any evidence of the life i was living, the way i had arranged my room, my keys, the piano music i had been playing seemed to give me this warm feeling, like the feeling you get when you see a kid doing something cute.
another very important thing to note is the meditation i had prior to this on Sun evening after i had written the following:
�right now i feel like: its depressing when you realize theres nothing more to talk about. no more new things to find. that there are no answers. this is it, and thats that. you can spend your whole life trying to figure it out but you might as well spend all your time describing a pen in as many different ways as you can. no matter what you think about it, no matter how high or low you hold it in your mind its still just a pen. i want to understand the truth so badly. i want this to make sense. i want to know where i came from and where i�m going. i want to know if there�s a God who loves me. I want to know how i was created and why i�m here. but most of the signs seem to be pointing towards there being no purpose. nature doesn�t seem to care about us anymore than it does any other animal. we�re born lame, we can die by the thousands or millions from disease, we�re born retarded, people get tortured and sometimes no one comes to their rescue. its all so sad and lonely. and what can you do to comfort each other? theres no getting around the reality of the situation. yet i am here having this conversation w/ my self. it seems funny in a way. that so many things had to happen for me to sit here and have a conversation w/ myself about the pointlessness of everything. its all so incredible.
maybe you can�t say its good and you can�t say its bad. good and bad exist in our minds and the world is bigger than that.�
afterwards i meditated differently than i had in the past. it was more like prayer really than meditation but using the focusing and waiting aspects of meditation. every now and then i get so distraught that i work up the nerve to really bang on God�s door. my soul was burning with desire to know and understand the predicament it was in. I can�t seem to recall all that i prayed. other than it was centralized around telling God that I wanted to know. I don�t want to just live out my life like i see others doing. its like i knew that theres so much more than this and i want in on it. i want to start experiencing it. it was neat to see that deep down i do have a very strong sense of there being more out there. that theres so much more than just what we see here. that this is just a certain stage/place we�re at and is not the whole show. with such intensity i would say, �I know you�re out there God, I know it. I�m right here God, where are you. I�m right here.� As if i was inviting / challenging God to show himself or show me something. And then i got to a place where i had been before in periods like this. i go from having lots of courage to being very scared. when you really believe that this world is real and significant on a higher level its a scary thing. the possibilities are beyond the imaginable and the consequences beyond your happiest dreams or worst nightmares. i guess it feels kind of like believing in ghosts when i was a kid. and then i feel that if God were really to �show us� we�d probably burst into a thousand pieces. then i feel like i�m trying to do more than i�m capable of. maybe we�re here because this is the means for revealing the truth to us. i bet there�s further levels where we are revealed more (or experience more) and quicker but we�re just not ready for it yet. and then i realize that i barely feel able to handle what this world has to show me. and i believe it was the next day i had the experience described above.
another way to describe the feeling i had was: You know when you get so completed wound up in your circumstances, be they good or bad. its kind of like the opposite of that. i just felt so distant and separated from �my life� that i was so caught up in.
i was wondering how i would react around others after this happened. it surprised me how quickly i fell into my life again. it seems to slip away like a dream and you�re back there again doing your day to day tasks. all tho the memory of it is still there. the memory that i had that experience and all the things that i understood logically from it. like there will be times when i try to recreate it, or just grasp it in my current situation. for example, i�ll be in a room full of people and just meditate on the amazing thought that i�m surrounded by other consciousnesses just like mine, and i could just as well be any one of them (in that fundamentally there is no difference between them and me). and i have had feelings of awe but not of the intensity i had while staring at myself in the mirror.
part of me had hoped that this would somehow greatly improve the things i struggle with socially. (basically being nervous and shy around people and scared to do things like get up and speak infront of a lot of people). but i had no such luck. i was the same shy person, only now i was a little more amazed at the world than before. maybe it helped some, but old habits die hard i guess.
i really hesitate to put this in dland because it probably makes me sound crazy, or delusional, plus its so personal to me. but i feel that if i don�t share it then this diary is no longer fulfilling the purpose i had for it, which was honesty, showing that side of yourself that you normally don�t show.
in pursuing this type of thing i worry that i might go crazy. i think thats part of the thing i�m afraid of, when i mentioned earlier about how i became afraid. maybe this is what happens before people become schizophrenic. interesting how schizophrenia happens in the early twenties. i wonder if its because thats when the �realness� of reality can really start hitting you. that process of becoming aware is really powerful. and its also the age when you question what you�ve been told (religion for ex) and often no longer believe it. sometimes i worry that maybe we�re not meant to try to become as aware as i was trying to become. but i guess it comes down to my belief that there is more out there, lots more. and that looking for it can bring you to it, rather than make you crazy.
10:10 p.m. - 2005-10-24
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