I Am in Great Pain, Happily So!!
05/29/2006 10:26 p.m.

May 28, 2006

It’s 5:50 on Sunday, and I’m sitting here wondering what next to do. Little “do,” that is. Just enough to get me by this minute and then the next. But how silly a thought this really is. What choice is there but to get through the next minute? Hahaha! It’s like the seeming ridiculousness of the statement - “take it one day at a time” – as though one can take it two days at a time! Hahaha! Well, but this is a trick for the mind, rather, it is a way of revealing the true nature of the mind, and a subtle suggestion on how to UNDO its detrimental effect on our potential to LIVE. What it really means is, “don’t project an assumed situation. Remain HERE fighting only this moment’s battle and no other, because there IS NO other battle but the one you have to fight now.” And yes, this statement is really the practical message, and closest to the less subjective truth.

Things were so dark earlier, so I went out into the bright sun. Even under that hot burning star the world still seemed dim, though not as black as the darkness before it. I tried to talk to him, but it’s not easy to listen when you feel helpless, so I let him off the hook. I decided to work on the floors. “I have to anyway,” I thought, and then laughed at the thought of “have to.” Such a thought is contradictory to the earlier angry reactionary thought of “I don’t give a damn.” Well, you can’t “not give a damn” and be angry at the same time hahaha! I realize that these reactionary erratic and paradoxical thoughts reflect the least subjective of the observable truths: I am behaving like nature’s machine, programmed with the relentless will to survive.

I worked for almost two hours straight, struggling to keep my thoughts from drifting. Most of the time I wasn’t successful, but when I really failed it seemed intolerable – “intolerable” seems such a strange notion suddenly. Isn’t one who “can’t tolerate” the moment still forced to tolerate moment after moment? So what does intolerable really mean? Hahaha - In those moments I observed a funny thing. When one is feeling an “intolerable” pain that is not stopping, the mind will force a relief, no matter how brief. Seeing seeing is how it flashed before me. At the climax of the “intolerance” I suddenly saw the ugly projecting thoughts passing through my mind, as an observer. As a result, the pain stops for a flash and then dulls, and it takes a little while to build up momentum again to where it was before in the blackness. Back and forth it goes on like this. Tolerating the intolerable, expanding and redefining the threshold of pain.

When my back started to ache a little and the momentum began again, I decided to go upstairs and read. Another trick. I ended up making two calls, both of which led to answering machines. I left pleasant messages. One person just called back a few minutes ago, and it felt better to know someone I love feels light. It made me feel happy that I held tight and didn’t give myself away. I didn’t intend the calls to give myself away, but the thought did cross my mind as an attempt for some relief. Sometimes we have to admit a small defeat in order to get back up again, even if it’s at the cost of your ego hahaha! And sometimes, even at the cost of worrying someone you love. But this time I felt more relief in not worrying than I would have in talking out.

In this moment I find that the ultimate defeat is not hopelessness, it’s apathy. That’s because with hopelessness comes a profound pain that one feels is “intolerable,” but nonetheless tolerates for as long as humanly possible out of sheer will to survive, with a dim hope within this hopelessness that things might get better. “Intolerable” is not the language of one who wants to die, on the contrary, it’s the language of one who wants to LIVE. What “intolerable (pain)” really means is “STOP so I can LIVE!”

Apathy says nothing of the kind. TRUE apathy is incompatible with pain, and says nothing at all because it desires nothing, it relishes nothing, it cares nothing either way. It’s not that there’s an empty vessel not being filled, it’s just that there isn’t a vessel at all. To free one’s self of pain through physical death is to declare the final personal threshold in a single completely illogical moment of overwhelming “FEELING” of intolerability – this is a completely paradoxical reaction to this “intolerable” (ironically hopeful) state of mind, and becomes a permanent solution to a temporary problem. This is a life that still has living potential. But to exist in the world in a state of complete apathy, feeling nothing at all either way is really the ultimate death as I see it right now. This makes me glad to be feeling pain.

A friend of mine once told me he’d rather “go out” with extreme pain than to die in peace, because that final moment before death would be the LAST living experience he would ever have. How could he possibly pass up the final experience he would ever have, no matter what it was! “After physical death,” he said, “I have an eternity to feel nothing at all. I’m not going to blow my final chance at an experience, even if it means the worst pain in the history of mankind!” Hahaha!

I always liked that argument and am decidedly sticking to it! After all, I’ve always wanted to expand my horizons, to grow. So why not let it be the threshold of pain which expands and redefines its borders. As long as there is pain, there is no apathy, and I’m totally up for the experience! Hhahaha

SMILING…and suddenly feeling much much better hahaha :-)

I am in great pain, happily so!




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