feb23

So the body is basically an empty vessel that's hooked up to the mind. When the mind is empty of thoughts, the body operates simply and efficiently. It automatically does what it needs to do. It feels hungry, it eats. It feels tired, it rests. It feels energized, it plays. It feels horny, it fucks. It feels, it responds. Simple, animalistic. In these cases the mind seems to work primarily in service to the body. It generates images and sensations of whatever's accessible that would most suit the body's needs and projects basic plans in relation to these. Simple. And the body remains satisfied and contented by this. Everything else is basically a bonus or an unnecessary nuissance/source of pain that can be avoided or let go of without strain.

But usually, things are made a lot more complicated. The mind is programmed with all these ideas of ways the body should be, things the body should have and needs that aren't true needs, even ways the mind itself should be that it simply isn't. And thus arises the great confusion, the great split, whereby the mind begins driving the body like a slave towards unnecessary and often impossible ends. Coaxing it with powerful emotions that have nothing to do with its needs but with the attainment or loss of the programmed desires. Pleasurable emotions for the body when it acts in accord with the programming and distressing ones when it doesn't. On and on the body is dragged, here and there, to act in ways that are unnatural to it to acquire, hold onto and do things that it doesn't need, that aren't actually good for it or that can't actually be had or held onto. And so the poor body suffers.

I noticed that when my attention is lost in thoughts, the body is tense. Even if just in small ways like lips or eyelids tightening or abdominals clenching, in some way or other the body is in an unnecessary state of tension and strain. It's wild and kind of sad to think that that's how it's being made to feel almost all the time, for no good reason. Even sleep is often restless, because the mind produces dreams by which thoughts continue to assail the body.

The body itself is innocent and simple. It knows what it really needs, and its needs are simple and can generally be met in abundance with what's available. But the mind has been made incredibly convoluted and complex, and it is always judging and scheming. One thing after another, never quite there, never quite enough, never quite right. Always driving the poor body for some unnecessary thing or other. Until finally it runs out of energy, dries out and drops dead in exhaustion.

In rare moments when the mind is silent and the body is relaxed, it feels intrinsically sufficient. This itself is the feeling of fulfillment, contentment, completion, wholeness that the mind is seeking in all these unnecessary things and circumstances, whether in being something it isn't or having something it doesn't. This baseline satisfaction is already here and abundantly available. But the mind soon fires back up its programmed thoughts and images, thereby generating all these convoluted feelings and methods for getting it back.

I know this on some level and have for a while, yet I continue to fall into the trap. Soon after writing this, it'll likely continue as usual. In fact, just by thinking about and writing this it's happening in a sense. It seems that getting the mind back into harmony with the body isn't going to be as simple as I once expected. Understanding alone doesn't seem to be enough.

Over the past couple months, I've slowly been realizing all these various ways that I'm denying the body of its basic needs in favor of acting upon programmed "needs", desires and fears. All of these programmed influences are basically illusory - they came about by limited/immature interpretations of past events or outside influences. Yet they remain powerful drivers of my actions and choices. And no matter what I do, I remain unsatisfied because my basic bodily needs aren't being met. Until recently I didn't even allow myself to freely feel, let alone respond appropriately to them. Everything was being corrupted, suppressed, controlled, diverted. The basic causes are familial and societal conditioning along with trauma, so rather than the body feeling free to feel and respond as it naturally would, the mind compells it to seek "safer" alternatives. For example, rather than connecting with another living being right now for mutual enjoyment, I'm trying to get my social/play needs met by typing into a computer. A safe and ultimately unsatisfying alternative. Rather than feeling whatever emotion was coming up, I might act incongruently (like acting calm when I'm upset) or do some other neurotic alternative (like eating or watching TV) instead of letting the body respond appropriately and naturally to the feeling (like crying when sad, smiling when happy, fuming when angry).

By this I've realized that until my basic bodily needs are freely and consistently met, there's little use in aiming higher. I mean, I already have been and continue to find whatever I do to be unsatisfying or unsustainable. It seems you can't skip levels, you can't bypass the body's needs. At some point these needs naturally evolve and change, but that only seems to really happen by experience, not by thinking. If the involvement and exploration of these needs are held back and stunted by mental distractions or fears, they tend to linger. So that's what I'll be focusing on for a while - working towards establishing better access and outlets for my basic bodily needs, and setting up a solid foundation whereby I can feel consistently satisfied and satiated rather than in the constant underlying state of restriction and deprivation that's come to feel normal.

These basic needs are simple - acquire enough resources to keep the body sheltered, clean, clothed and fed, and find some compatible humans to mutually meet interpersonal needs as they arise. Once that's in order, I suspect things will open up naturally since energy should be flowing in abundance. But until then, I'm basically following the dictates of a poorly programmed mind that's seeking in all the wrong places for what it really needs. My current lifestyle is basically riddled with all these alternatives that are safer and easier but never really satisfy. It might keep me going for now, but just barely.

Beyond that, we'll see what happens, what follows naturally. Since I'm increasingly realizing how unnaturally I've been conditioned to live, there's little point in thinking too far ahead right now. All I know is that I'm not really who I thought myself to be, and that all these ideas about myself are just that - ideas. All these judgments, beliefs, misinterpretations, misunderstandings tossing me to and fro, filling the body with endless bouts of superfluous pleasure or pain by its illusions. It all needs to be gradually identified, discarded and replaced with simple truths so the clarity and contentment that comes with being in harmony with reality can continue to arise instead.

One of these truths is that humans are constantly in a state of flux - there is no fixed self which can be pinned down and defined. Meaning that all my ideas about myself are based on transient events by which certain responses arose within particular contexts and were interpreted subjectively depending on my understanding and thoughts at the time. None of it actually provided reliable data about "who I am" in a fundamental sense, only how I and those around me thought, felt and acted at particular moments in my life. It's all better off let go of in favor of remaining open. I'm better off not defining/restricting/judging myself based on past data and instead letting myself/life evolve and be however it turns out as circumstances change. The same applies to my impressions of others - these are better off relinquished in favor of the truth that I don't and can't really know anyone fundamentally. I only know some things about them relatively, contextually and fleetingly. The rest of the time, I'm really only engaging with my own limited ideas and impressions of them - with my own thoughts and interpretations based on who they seem to be in relation to my own past impressions and other highly subjective data. This includes the basic idea of independent self and others even being existentially accurate in the first place, which it turns out isn't the case. The apparent I and apparent others remain fundamentally mysterious, unpredictable and uncontrollable. The awareness/remembering of this dramatically reduces the amount of superfluous mental activity that would otherwise pointlessly derail and toss me around. It shuts the mind up and allows the body to relax and focus on what's tangible and present, and to express itself more naturally, fluidly and authentically.

Another is that the body's needs have a great influence on overall wellbeing and energy, regardless of what the mind might have been led to think. This is something objective and relatively simple, unlike the subjective and convoluted programmed needs/desires/fears of the mind. Therefore it's worth investing time, energy and resources into adequately satisfying the body's basic needs rather than diverting time, energy and resources to programmed ones based on egoic interpretations and conceptions, especially prematurely. Once the body's needs are taken care of without obstruction or diversion, its relationship with the mind will change. It and life as a whole will be experienced in a different context. Most of what the mind/ego seeks in spite of the body aren't really needed, and these can typically be identified by their ephemerality, the fact that they're conceptual rather than tangible. Things like social status, power, fame, esteem, reputation, popularity, security. They're all based in the programmed mind/ego's comparative ideas of itself in relation to its ideas of others (is my idea of myself better or worse off than my idea of that person?). These ideas are not rooted in reality, but in programming and fluctuating data. They are subjective rather than objective, and therefore untenable and unreliable. Unlike bodily needs, these can be seen/felt through and let go of to greater benefit than pushing the body to work to satisfy them, which ultimately proves impossible since these ideas are constantly changing according to context, incoming information and even mood.

And that's about it for now. Life made simple and effective. Right now the greatest/only real obstacles are my own habitual ways of thinking, feeling and reacting. But it's only a matter of time. With awareness and time the superfluous programmed mental activity will decline and gradually be replaced with simple objective truths, which will naturally ease the amount of stress and emotional ups and downs that once plagued the body via the mind. And relaxation and contentment will increasingly be experienced as natural and abiding, which will allow the energy and path for deeper actualization/fulfillment of higher potentials to emerge. I won't get ahead of myself though. We'll cross that bridge when we get to it.