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.

Hope Revisited

A tunnel without light at its end is a misery and the journey is difficult if not impossible. But a tunnel (however long) with a light at its end (however faint) can be traveled one step at a time. This is hope. It is not belief in an outcome, necessarily. It is a type of knowledge and a feeling at the same time. Hope is indeed a good thing.

Day Forty Two - End Game

Having passed the forty day mark, I feel like these last days of Lent are gravy (so to speak). This, of course, conflicts with the idea that Holy Week is the most intense part of Lent. However, I will be out of town this weekend and it will probably be a good time to break the Lenten fast at that time. Thoughts of "I am cheating" shall be ascribed to the chattering mind and will recieve a knowning wink in return.

That said, this end stage brings forth a familiar mental dialogue which chatters about carrying forth the Lenten disciplines into the ordinary world once I leave the special world of Lent. From my perspective now, it seems that should be a relatively easy task to perform. However, my experiences from Lents past suggest otherwise. The usual pattern is that I fall back into my usual self destructive patterns once again over time (perhaps not imediately but eventually for sure). That is a problem. On the other hand, this Lent seems markedly different than prior Lents. For one thing, the struggle and temptation was for the most part absent. Second, my mind although troubled by my usual hang ups is also quite stable and peaceful. So I suppose I will adopt a wait and see approach. It might also be useful to adopt some rules to keep me on the right path. I have a history of becoming obsessive with rules of this kind so I must also be on my guard not to fall into that trap either. There are many traps.

In any event, I consider this Lent to have been very, very successful. I am pleased with what I have accomplished (while being cognizant of the ego implications). There is always hope that things can improve. Hell, we went from eight years of George W. Bush to a Barak Obama presidency. We shall see. We shall see.

Day Forty One - Crests and Troughs of Belief

I posted a blog entry entitled "Hope" a while back. In it I talked about how I have been purchasing lottery tickets (specifically Powerball tickets) as an exercise in hope. The idea was that I was not so much interested in winning the lottery (although I certainly would not mind that outcome) but rather I derived some comfort in the knowledge that the lottery ticket sat in my wallet. The ownership of the ticket was the ownership of hope. This is actually true. Having the ticket in my wallet does for some reason act as an anxiety release valve and presumably that is because hope existed where it did not exist previously. However, checking the numbers the day after the drawing does produce mildly negative emotions in the form of feeling let down. The question is, does the positive emotion of owning hope outweigh the negative emotion of being let down? The answer is, I'm not sure. So, I have found myself in a belief trough in terms of this lottery ticket / hope experience. This however, is enlightening in itself in that by participating in one exercise I have opened my eyes to a larger pattern. So where does that now leave me? I have no illusions that insights such as these carry me one inch closer to my goal (or even knowing exactly what that goal is). It is E-Value rather than HP-Value. (E-Value being "that which makes the passage of existence more pleasurable" i.e., Entertainment and HP-Value being "that which serves a higher purpose than E-Value" i.e., Higher Purpose Value). These are terms I have carried with me for some time and perhaps will be further elaborated on in another post. So in conclusion, I suppose the lesson learned is that one should not confuse E-Value for HP-Value as I did by rationalizing my purchase of a lottery ticket as serving some lofty philosphical purpose when in actuality I really just wanted to win the money. Then again, perhaps there is no moral to this story and in the words of Homer Simpson "it's just a bunch of stuff that happened" (in my head mostly). But then again, perhaps I a merely in a belief trough and will think differently about this when the wave crests again.

Day Sixteen - Hope

I've been buying lottery tickets lately, no more than $2 per week. The idea struck me that this is an exercise in hope. It is not that I believe that I will win the lottery. But for some reason having the lottery ticket in my wallet allows me to relax a bit. I feel like there is an iron in the fire somehow and that makes a difference. This I think is the power of hope. It is not a knowledge of iminent pay off. Nor is it a desire for the possibility of payoff. It is the possession of the possibility. I tried to explain this to someone once but I did not feel like I was getting the idea across. He kept rephrasing my idea as "buying a lottery ticket with the idea that I was going to win." That's not it. That's not it. There is a peacefulness that is achieved with hope and it does not have much to do with the end result. Faith, hope and love.