improvements

Man...it struck me this morning how many of my choices and outlooks still revolve around not feeling good enough as I am. I suppose it's all part of the process of learning by experimenting and going towards various extremes to experience the limits of what's really tenable, necessary and fulfilling. Overtime it brings me ever closer back to center, back to who I am, who I have always been and who I, in all likelihood, will always be.

The more I meditate and learn and reflect and experience, the more I come to see that nothing essential, nothing true, ever really changes. The form, expression and appearance of things may change but not the underlying reality. I don't really change. The world doesn't really change. It just appears to. The contents change but not the essence. Things are piled onto the essence which obscure it but the underlying and unchanging truths remain the only really sustaining and significant factors over time. Everything else is basically clutter that comes and goes.

Everything I've done to improve myself was set into motion by a few simple misconceptions:

1. That there's something to improve
2. That it needs to be improved
3. That it can be improved

None of these beliefs have held up overtime when it comes to essential nature. Despite all surface improvements it remains, underneath it all, essentially as it was from the beginning. Mannerisms change, habits change, hobbies change, dynamics change, environments change, relationships change, ideas change, beliefs change, superficial external things change. But who/what I am underneath doesn't really change. Underneath it all I have the same quirks and tendencies, the same sensitivities and preferences, the same basic challenges, needs and ways of interfacing with life as I did when I was a child. If anything, many of the efforts to change and improve only ended up creating more distance from my basic instinctual nature by strengthening the belief that I'm still not okay as I am - that I still need to improve myself to be good enough, happy, peaceful, content, etc.

Humans are unique in that we're capable of crafting and wearing a mask - a cultivated personality/persona. This is almost ubiquitous, it's a socialized normality to suppress certain aspects of who we are while expressing others. The mask is the version of us we choose to show to others. We can enhance this mask, make it more talented, more attractive, more knowledgable, more experienced, but underneath it all remains the same basic individual - the same basic being that first emerged into the world. Only now our attention is so preoccupied with externals, including this mask and the interactions it has with others, that we've lost sight of the being underneath.

One aspect of meditation overtime is a gradual and steady movement inwards/backwards. A shifting of attention away from externals and towards that primordial self/reality that remains unchanged across time, yet which had long ago been forgotten and abandoned in the noise of the world. An aspect of this is what can be called "the inner child", which represents who we essentially are in terms of our basic human personality and need structure. It's who we are underneath all the conditioning we've taken on while going through life. This essential part of us is simple and hasn't changed despite everything we've done and been through. What has changed are all the things around it that now influence the way it feels - the thoughts, experiences, traumas, lessons, knowledge, ideas, conditioned values and such. All of it creates a constantly shifting shell that obscures it to the point that we can hardly connect with the underlying intuitive/instinctive truth anymore. Most of the time this collection of accumulated data only serves to inhibit and make it so that our real wants and needs are hardly ever expressed or met. By the time they reach the point of expression they've passed through so many filters of conditioned junk. And no matter how appealing this shell/mask may look, it can only lead to psychological/emotional/spiritual starvation. Nourishment only comes when the reality within connects with the reality without.

I think that's partly why so few of us feel happy and at ease in our lives - we've lost touch with ourselves and have increasingly surrounded ourselves with clutter, believing that it will make us happier/good enough. The majority of the time it's the mask that's engaging with our life, not us. The mask gets attention, the mask gets approval, the mask gets desired, the mask gets loved, the mask gets promoted, the mask gets liked and followed. Underneath the mask we're starving just to express who we really are, how we really feel and what we really want and need. We're starving just to be, really.

Just to be, without fear or pretention. Without needing to appear attractive, smart, accomplished, wealthy, powerful or whatever it is that we think we need more of in order to feel good enough.

So the question is, what am I doing to subvert and delay the expression of the truth of who I am? What practices, passtimes, habits, dynamics and belief systems are really just accumulated clutter that cause me to avoid the truth of myself and living my life as I am? How am I implicitly showing myself that I can't be the way I am, do what I want and get what I need because first I need to become more _, to have more _, to do more _? What stories am I buying into to avoid really being honest with myself and others?