(Taken from an old journal entry dated Thursday November 17, 2005)
I'm going to leave the "goal / guarantee" topic for now and think about forgiveness... There are so many things, embarrassing moments, that I constantly think about. These things I have done in the past. Sometimes the remote past that I cannot let go of. I need absolution bit I don't know how to get it. I need to absolve myself but I just can't seem to be able to do it. Perhaps meditating on this will give me some answers.
(Taken from an old journal entry dated Friday November 18, 2005)
Do goals, guarantees and the need for absolution all relate in some way? Goals and absolution relate in that they both are concerned with the self and making the self better. I suppose there are no guarantees that goals will be achieved or absolution will be attained. The link here is the nagging doubt of life (aka suffering or existential anxiety).
What can be done about it? I guess I hold out hope that meditation will open some doors. I don't know.
I'm beginning to think about Lent. One vow I'm considering is to wake up at 5:00am and either exercise or work on TT. Of course this will be in conjunction with not drinking. I'm also considering reading Aquinas...
Commentary:
Reliving embarrassing moments is not as much of a problem as it used to be. I think I can attribute this to being more aware of my mind and how it functions. Embarrassment is a form of anxiety usually centered on past events or the present situation but in both instances there is a perceived awareness of the disapproval of others. At this point I am better able to distance myself from those thoughts or observe them and this seems to have robbed them of most of their power to recycle themselves and generate more anxious feelings.
The absolution I spoke about had to do with forgiving myself. In these situations my embarrassment and related anxiety were a form of self punishment for the wrongs that I had committed. I had to forgive myself in order to stop punishing myself. I've often thought that the Catholic confessional was a ritualized way of allowing the self to forgive the self. Many things about Christianity seem to be external metaphors for internal truths. Perhaps these metaphors are easier to digest than the actual reality of the situation at first. That is of course if the metaphor is true. I'm not entirely sure about that but it is of interest to me.
Finally, I see that there are glimmers of hope for me to escape these prisons I have created for myself. One is meditation and the other is Lent (which in a way is really a drawn out period of meditation). These seem to be the keys to the prison somehow. At least I am drawn to them as such. The jury is still out on that one.
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Question: When you say that you want to "meditate on" a topic of some sort, what does this mean? Would you describe it as thinking deeply about that topic? I ask because my understanding of meditation is more about not thinking too deeply, but rather observing your thoughts as they pop up, without trying to control them. If you are "meditating on" a subject you would have to control your thoughts too much, no? I am a novice, so I am curious about about this. Thanks for your insight.
ReplyDeleteFirst of all, I am a novice as well. I make no claim to have any sort of mastery over the subject of meditation. I can only tell you my best understanding of it. That said, I think the word meditation can be used to describe a wide set of inwardly focused "mental" activity. Observing one's thoughts is certainly one of them. At its core, however, meditation is about being aware without overlaying awareness with additudes, opinions, judgements etc. and observing one's thoughts is an exercise to train the mind to simply be aware. But also, when one is simply being aware of one's thoughts and thought process the mind eventually begins to calm down. Eventually the mind reaches a point of mere awareness and nothing more. Now, another method to focus the mind in this manner is to give the mind a seed of some sort, perhaps a mantra or perhaps an idea or concept or visual cue. The point (as I understand it) is not to direct the thoughts in a logical (or other) way but merely to focus the mind on that idea and to allow awareness to unfold in that way. This is what I was speaking about when I said I would meditate on the topic. It is not an exercise in logical thought. But it does often lead to a new or unexpected insight into the object of meditation.
ReplyDeleteThanks. That's helpful.
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