Goals, Guarantees and Absolution

(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.

Guarantees

(Taken From a Journal Entry Dated Tuesday November 15, 2005)

There are no guarantees in life. Even that statement is not a guarantee - because I suppose under certain circumstances there are. Let us say that as a general rule there are no guarantees. But sometimes there are exceptions.

So what is the next step? I suppose it is to make the best out of what you have. I am not ready to give up on success. I don't think that's what this is about. You have to do what you like doing. Let's define success as doing what you want to do.

I meditated for 20 minutes on the concept of no guarantees. Hughey barked at something. Part of me was frustrated that he broke my concentration. Part of me tried to treat it as a learning experience. That is, there is no guarantee that I will have 20 minutes of peace and quiet to meditate.

I did a few minutes of yoga un-timed. It felt good. I would like to get back into that routine. This gets us into the goal dilemma. How do goals relate to guarantees?

I have several goals. I want to be healthy. I want to be creative and productive. I want to be a valuable part of a team. I want to be successful and financially secure. Right now I do not feel like discussing how to achieve those goals.

Commentary:

This entry (as memory serves) was inspired by a meditation seminar I attended while going through my yoga training. The instructor made a point of emphasizing the fact that there are no guarantees in life and (I suppose) to the extent we expect them and they do not materialize we suffer. Interestingly, I made a connection between goals and guarantees. I think goals are a type of guarantee we make for ourselves. If only I can achieve this goal then I will be happy. That may or may not be the case. But then again, is having no goals a better alternative? Perhaps it is in the way we approach our goals. It is the mindset, or what we perceive is hanging in the balance depending upon whether the goal is or is not achieved.

Another observation I made while reading this is how "in my mind" I was when I wrote this. This is particularly evident to me in the third paragraph. I was trying to achieve something by meditating. Hughey was getting in the way of that somehow. I'm not sure I was aware at the time of what it was I was trying to achieve. I think that now I would say I was trying to achieve "mindfulness" or a higher level of awareness of how in my mind I was at the time. However, being so in my mind I was not able to see this. And yet, I still meditated. What a long (and tiring) unfolding process this has been.