"Oh, instincts are misleading
You shouldn't think what you're feeling"
How many times have I come to this conclusion yet I always find my way back to crazy thoughts which should have no place in my life? I think weird things, wrong things, disturbing things, and know that I shouldn't be thinking them. I also think great things, wonderful things, things which fill my heart with joy. I have fantastic realizations yet am constantly bombarded by disturbing thoughts. Thoughts about people I love, people I hate, and people who I really don't know. In a perfect world these thoughts wouldn't exist, or they'd at least be benign. In this reality those thoughts are malignant. They seep into the world around me and infect what was once healthy. They take something pure and destroy it with desire. They take something satisfying and ruin it by making me want more. They make me suspicious, they make me second guess people's intentions. They try to put bad intentions in my head, when all I really want is to be happy with everything. I want to be at peace, but I'm almost always at war with these thoughts or at war with something else because of them. I take pleasure in being innocent, I love being "pure", a good person. These thoughts however, always find a way of taking that from me. They come out of nowhere, and invade my mind. They take over and soon I begin to believe what I'm thinking. They turn me into something I'm not, and then make me think that I'm what they've made me.
I need to stop thinking again. How many philosophers have said: "Don't think" and yet I can't help but fall back into this hole, over and over again. I've already covered this in an earlier post (where I also talked about how what you think is different from what you feel), but apparently I've learned nothing from it. I've told myself over and over again, and I've even gone long stretches without thought, but somehow thinking always comes back. Like a virus it lays dormant and then flares up again. The longest I've ever gone while actively trying to suppress my thoughts was about a month. What can I say about this month? It was arguably the best month of my life. I was entirely happy with life and myself. What happened? One morning I woke up hungover, and spent an hour or two thinking while lying in bed. At the end of that session I picked up my cell and replied to the girl's best friend who told me not to say anything about her making out with my friend's best friend. I had initially decided to not reply, but my thoughts told me to do it, so I did. Over the course of the next hour everything came crashing down and it was three months before I saw the girl again... and she acted like nothing happened. She had deleted me off of facebook (funny, I know, but facebook meant a lot to her) and left an angry message for me. This is where thinking gets you. I'm going to try not thinking again.
Monday, March 5, 2012
Friday, March 2, 2012
I've figured it out.
I used to think that death was something new. Something I've never faced before. I didn't know what it was like, and I was afraid of it. After all, what could being dead be like? Do heaven and hell exist? Is there some other place that people go when they die? Is it an eternity of blackness? Does consciousness just end when you die?
All these questions left me fearful of being dead, and the fear of being dead led me away from accepting myself as temporary. I put thoughts of a finite life out of my head, and only came back to them occasionally, where I would cut myself short of a conclusion because I was missing a piece of the puzzle.
I failed to realize that I had been dead for an eternity already. How long had gone by without me existing? And all of that time went by as if it were nothing at all. The creation of the earth, the beginnings of life, and the age of the dinosaurs, they all went by without me, and it felt like no time at all. That all went by without me even catching a glimpse of consciousness, and then one day I awoke to this world. I remember being in kindergarten, and I was astonished when my teacher said that it was the year 1998. I could hardly believe that so much time had gone by. It seems like unconsciousness is exactly what they say it is.
"There was a time when we were not: this gives us no concern -- why then should it trouble us that a time will come when we shall cease to be?" - William Hazlitt
"Would you not think him an utter fool who wept because he was not alive a thousand years ago? And is he not just as much of a fool who weeps because he will not be alive a thousand years from now? It is all the same; you will not be, and you were not." - Seneca
This is where I find comfort in death. It is not something new. It's going back to the way things were before. I know what being dead, or rather, not existing will be like. I was dead until I was alive, and I will be dead once more. Death isn't something to be afraid of anymore. It is simply an ending to the story of my life. I accept it, and I find comfort in it.
I am all of a sudden perfectly happy with this life, and the nothingness that will come after. Every breath tastes sweet, and even the feeling of my fingers against each other is pleasant. How wonderful it is to be alive and breathing. To be seeing, hearing and feeling. I'll know everything there is for me to know and go without any fear or regret. I've been there before; I've spent an eternity in non-existence, and when I think about it, spending another doesn't seem all that bad.
It seems like it's just a part of life.
All these questions left me fearful of being dead, and the fear of being dead led me away from accepting myself as temporary. I put thoughts of a finite life out of my head, and only came back to them occasionally, where I would cut myself short of a conclusion because I was missing a piece of the puzzle.
I failed to realize that I had been dead for an eternity already. How long had gone by without me existing? And all of that time went by as if it were nothing at all. The creation of the earth, the beginnings of life, and the age of the dinosaurs, they all went by without me, and it felt like no time at all. That all went by without me even catching a glimpse of consciousness, and then one day I awoke to this world. I remember being in kindergarten, and I was astonished when my teacher said that it was the year 1998. I could hardly believe that so much time had gone by. It seems like unconsciousness is exactly what they say it is.
"There was a time when we were not: this gives us no concern -- why then should it trouble us that a time will come when we shall cease to be?" - William Hazlitt
"Would you not think him an utter fool who wept because he was not alive a thousand years ago? And is he not just as much of a fool who weeps because he will not be alive a thousand years from now? It is all the same; you will not be, and you were not." - Seneca
This is where I find comfort in death. It is not something new. It's going back to the way things were before. I know what being dead, or rather, not existing will be like. I was dead until I was alive, and I will be dead once more. Death isn't something to be afraid of anymore. It is simply an ending to the story of my life. I accept it, and I find comfort in it.
I am all of a sudden perfectly happy with this life, and the nothingness that will come after. Every breath tastes sweet, and even the feeling of my fingers against each other is pleasant. How wonderful it is to be alive and breathing. To be seeing, hearing and feeling. I'll know everything there is for me to know and go without any fear or regret. I've been there before; I've spent an eternity in non-existence, and when I think about it, spending another doesn't seem all that bad.
It seems like it's just a part of life.
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