Meditation does so many different things to different people. I lost my aggression and that meant I started receiving love and compassion from people like never before. It was reflective of what I was giving to them. However, it left me astray from my path of aspirations. Aggression was a fuel that had propelled me forward. While a meditation retreat helps you prioritise an essential part of your life you'd been missing, which in my case was casual compassion, it also takes away the stuff that was taking its place for so long. It took me ten years to make space for both, because I realise I need casual compassion AND fuelling aggression in life together to make sense of it.
Thanks for sharing. It can certainly take a while to reconstruct or redefine relationships to motivational sources when they suddenly go out without immediate replacements present. It sounds like you eventually brought back the "aggression" but I imagine it was in a new form?
Yeah. The new form was about accepting anger as a pure emotion. Instead of feeling ashamed of rage, I began to accept it as a necessary outlet, albeit a right. It became about calling out the BS, without being a perpetrator myself. It also started surfacing in my exercise routine. I began to push myself physically by channeling aggression in that direction. Mostly it's about honoring the emotion and cultivating the wisdom to release it where necessary.
Very much recognize exactly this. Even had the experience where my sudden lack of aggression made a loved one think I was weak, which highlighted the co-dependency we had actually created before this. Very enlightening. But it also took me some time to re-integrate a healthy form of "aggression."
A post nearly as critical as the one in which you described your "permanent shift." And somehow the end of this one left me a bit sad. Sad that you are no longer unmoored, and that maybe you are now closer to the productive and practical and reasoned and organized set. Having not managed to make "flow state" my dominant state for very long, I still want that for myself. Looking back at the post, though, I'm glad to hear that you made this change by choice to address the "got old" issue and are now sensing your life advancing again. The sadness dissipated.
Would you say that you’re re-learning to constrict the apparent selflessness and spaciousness that you are now into set schedules and goal orientedness. Vs a normie like myself who is using spiritual practice to try to loosen the default vice grip of set schedule, selfness and goal-orientation?
Yes, but unlike before it's not from a place of fear or insufficiency. I am reconstructing my relationship to structure to be a healthy one so that it can support my growth and genuine desires. I think experiencing the lack of structure and urgency allowed something new to come of it (i.e. if I don't *have* to do anything, what is left and what would I still want to do with my life?)
great essay!!! that idea of coordinating attention to a higher good anchors and reconfigures us - Aristotle talks about the soul not in a Christian sense but more in the sense of an organizing principle, and he had a hierarchy where at the bottom are plants which are purely reactive, then animals who can sense and act, then humans who can reason. Each stack includes and organizes and structures the prior in a new way. If calling upon gods are attention organization mechanisms, then what we devote ourselves to are soul organization mechanisms.
Of late, I've been thinking a lot about nostalgia, and it's great power, the way it makes us recontextualize everything; theirs been thoughts that I've had for years that I'm finally putting pad to pen, and it's so rewarding to see some of your meditations realized in some sort of form. When you said ” I remember standing next to the tennis courts in Dolores, furiously scribbling in my journal mid-walk as the sky darkened. ” I really felt that. I don't usually meditate, but I've always considered my writing ( and long walks ) my form of meditation. I'm glad that you're figuring out that your words are an integral part of your perception of being. And I always appreciate your thoughts in general. Cheers! :)
Interesting. I've definitely been looking to be more " lost in the present " these days. I've struggled with being in the present for years now, but I'm starting to come around, and realize that I to also have a sense time to function in society. I don't understand the abstract concept of balance, but I do believe I need to be more spiritually stable.
Meditation does so many different things to different people. I lost my aggression and that meant I started receiving love and compassion from people like never before. It was reflective of what I was giving to them. However, it left me astray from my path of aspirations. Aggression was a fuel that had propelled me forward. While a meditation retreat helps you prioritise an essential part of your life you'd been missing, which in my case was casual compassion, it also takes away the stuff that was taking its place for so long. It took me ten years to make space for both, because I realise I need casual compassion AND fuelling aggression in life together to make sense of it.
Thanks for sharing. It can certainly take a while to reconstruct or redefine relationships to motivational sources when they suddenly go out without immediate replacements present. It sounds like you eventually brought back the "aggression" but I imagine it was in a new form?
Yeah. The new form was about accepting anger as a pure emotion. Instead of feeling ashamed of rage, I began to accept it as a necessary outlet, albeit a right. It became about calling out the BS, without being a perpetrator myself. It also started surfacing in my exercise routine. I began to push myself physically by channeling aggression in that direction. Mostly it's about honoring the emotion and cultivating the wisdom to release it where necessary.
Very much recognize exactly this. Even had the experience where my sudden lack of aggression made a loved one think I was weak, which highlighted the co-dependency we had actually created before this. Very enlightening. But it also took me some time to re-integrate a healthy form of "aggression."
my friends learned to retrieve me if they saw me from across the room talking to someone long enough » this is very sweet :')
A post nearly as critical as the one in which you described your "permanent shift." And somehow the end of this one left me a bit sad. Sad that you are no longer unmoored, and that maybe you are now closer to the productive and practical and reasoned and organized set. Having not managed to make "flow state" my dominant state for very long, I still want that for myself. Looking back at the post, though, I'm glad to hear that you made this change by choice to address the "got old" issue and are now sensing your life advancing again. The sadness dissipated.
Going through a bit of disillusionment these days, so this felt good.
Would you say that you’re re-learning to constrict the apparent selflessness and spaciousness that you are now into set schedules and goal orientedness. Vs a normie like myself who is using spiritual practice to try to loosen the default vice grip of set schedule, selfness and goal-orientation?
Yes, but unlike before it's not from a place of fear or insufficiency. I am reconstructing my relationship to structure to be a healthy one so that it can support my growth and genuine desires. I think experiencing the lack of structure and urgency allowed something new to come of it (i.e. if I don't *have* to do anything, what is left and what would I still want to do with my life?)
G N O M E M O D E
great essay!!! that idea of coordinating attention to a higher good anchors and reconfigures us - Aristotle talks about the soul not in a Christian sense but more in the sense of an organizing principle, and he had a hierarchy where at the bottom are plants which are purely reactive, then animals who can sense and act, then humans who can reason. Each stack includes and organizes and structures the prior in a new way. If calling upon gods are attention organization mechanisms, then what we devote ourselves to are soul organization mechanisms.
Haha you really saw me at my most gnomed up. I didn't know Aristotle said that, thanks for sharing!
:)! I should say the last sentence on gods is grant morrison's take, and the bit on devotion & soul a riff on your essay, Aristotle, and Morrison
thanks for sharing this.
Of late, I've been thinking a lot about nostalgia, and it's great power, the way it makes us recontextualize everything; theirs been thoughts that I've had for years that I'm finally putting pad to pen, and it's so rewarding to see some of your meditations realized in some sort of form. When you said ” I remember standing next to the tennis courts in Dolores, furiously scribbling in my journal mid-walk as the sky darkened. ” I really felt that. I don't usually meditate, but I've always considered my writing ( and long walks ) my form of meditation. I'm glad that you're figuring out that your words are an integral part of your perception of being. And I always appreciate your thoughts in general. Cheers! :)
Interesting. I've definitely been looking to be more " lost in the present " these days. I've struggled with being in the present for years now, but I'm starting to come around, and realize that I to also have a sense time to function in society. I don't understand the abstract concept of balance, but I do believe I need to be more spiritually stable.