Wu Wei

I oftentimes have trouble looking back at my own moments of darkness… or into the depression of others; when I’m not depressed I find the world to have an almost blinding level of joy, activity and excitement. Too many things to do, think, write, taste, smell, feel, sense… it’s profound how much there is in life.

Taoists have for centuries sought out “wu wei” or non-action. Buddhists have sought Zen; that clarity of the moment when everything slide into place. Even the modern new ager has derived new words like “intention” to describe the fundamental moment when we are aware of the fullness of life in one moment.

How many moments do we get like that in a life? How many times before we die can experience a moment of true fulfillment… true happiness? I know I since my first moment of Wu Wei; i have sought it in everything I have done. When I am in battle against a worthy enemy: an enemy of honor and understanding… I can find Wu Wei. I know that when I am with a pure and loving women: I can find Wu Wei. I know searching the depths of my soul with meditation or cleansing my body with Tai Chi I can find Wu Wei.

It is not permanent lasting perfection, that simply isn’t possible. It’s a taste of perfection. When the ring of the spatula is musical and the sizzle of the fire hackles above it. Everything is automatic and yet intentional. There is no thinking, and yet the mind is strangely excited. I have had hundreds of these moments in my life; some I have sought and others have been happenstance… but all showed me something profound about life.

Then one day I had a moment of Clarity, a second of Zen, a taste of Wu Wei that wasn’t connected to any feat of skill or technique… you see I was driving home from a frustrating night of work. It was late and very dark. But the moonlight shined beneath thick black clouds. I saw my exit on 1-15; same as I did every night. And instead of turning like I always did… I realized that I could drive it forever. All the way to Mexico if I wanted, I was free to decide everything in my life.

It was a perfect metaphor; Life as a road. But the cliche was washed out by insight. The road branched, the road turned, the road was crowded or empty. The entireity of all human thought on the matter crowded my brain as I sailed past my exit: Too much knowledge had already killed my moment of clarity. But I gleamed from it a secret; an important piece I had been missing.

What’s the secret? I’m not sure I would tell you if I could.

Check Baggage: Part One

I stopped for a minute this week to take stock my life; to look forward to the challenges immediately before me and those I’ve recently conquered.

I love my job; but I have difficult classes coming next month that I have to master my management skills for. Which conversely means less and less time to devote to my varied hobbies of gaming; my spiritual quest, school and finally my efforts to cut my emotional baggage free.

Trying to live; trying to push myself in all aspects… its so hard with this weight. The weight of heartbreak, failure, betrayal, sacrifice, doubt… it pushes me down like super gravity to the soul; I feel crushed and anchored to the world unable to rise  into the realm of the spiritual and creative.

The danger is the gravity crushes me… leaves me an empty black hole. I have to relieve it and face the sources of my pain.

Sidequest

As a writer, I feel a great sense of both pressure and duty to write truth and fact. Each time I write here I feel as though I skirt what I really mean to say. There is no malice or deception… but a lack of fortitude to confront certain things. To say certain things. However a few drinks and an iron-clad determination are sufficient in cutting my way to the truth.

Despite all the progress I’ve made in healing myself, and putting things back in order… sometimes I feel empty; like my soul died and my body lives on. I’ve gone from a hopeless romantic to a jaded misanthrope, a spiritual Taoist to a more secular consumer. Those are not small changes.

I haven’t fully faced my problems, I keep my mind busy with games, shows, books, work, study, family and a dozen other activities. I stopped meditation and spiritual self-cultivation because I was afraid. Afraid to face myself; and of what I could find if I looked deeper.

Those feelings have been locked away for such a long time, which isn’t right at all. We shouldn’t be the wardens of our passion, but rather its sculptors. I keep saying it and saying it. Each time I do, I’ve taken a step to finding what happened. I steel myself for the soul searching I know is coming. But sadly I’ve taken too many thousands of steps in the sand, I look around and I don’t know where I am or what I’m doing.

My soul, my passion… that ruthless lustful drive that fueled me is missing. It guided my life and my work and now I need it back. I’ll be gone for awhile. Think of it as an important side quest.

-Yours in silence, Wesley James Rands

A corner

When an animal is cornered it fights tooth and nail to survive, it taps into it’s will to survive to perform outstanding feats… it’s a maddening and short lived burst of action that in the wild often means survival.

It’s been a long time since I’ve been a creature of emotion; The passion bleed out of me quickly when I learned how to survive in the world. Nothing more then a machine programmed for survival and to seek pleasure. It’s not an uncommon existance in this era, not uncommon that we sever our emotional bonds and build walls to protect ourselves… that we turn our trusted lovers into targets of mistrust.

In regaining my passion and purpose in live, I’ve also regained my sense of urgency… and find myself painted into a corner. My choices were poor because they were not guided by my sense of purpose. They did not fit into my life plan… because I lost the sense of it, you could call it my sense of destiny. The destiny I averted was of a machine, an empty soulless pleasure seeker. It took a great deal of healing and self-realization to reach this point, and without help it would not have been possible.

I am however still painted into a corner, fighting with all my heart to find a way out of the maze I’ve staggered into. The magnitude of fixing an entire life that has fallen into disrepair is staggering. But nothing is more troubling to me then the finacial problems, especially going from a large surplus to nothing because of the unexpected, it inspires nothing less in a person then guilt and shame. Everything else is great, but this one massive clusterfuck threatens to bring down my entire life.

Just like an animal I will claw, bite and push my way to the other side, but I worry how much will I have left by the time I get there?

A story of some note

When my world fell apart months and months ago I fell into a deep depression. I had enough problems and they were compounded when I simply gave up trying to fix them. The only thing I could do was to put one foot in front of the other in the vain hope that I would eventually recover; but in my heart I didn’t believe I would. I merely went through the motions of life trying to hide my pain.

That changed when I moved in with my uncle. Looking at him was like watching what I used to be… what I should have been. He was very much in his happy place; just like I used to be, and it forced me to confront the sadness that was eating at me and the lethargy that kept me from doing anything productive. But more then that he was able to challenge me… something I hadn’t felt in a long time.

I used to live to be challenged, for the thrill of personal combat, a battle of wills, Verbal sparring or breathless debate. But I wasn’t the same as I was, all it did was draw attention to the fact that I was hollow. Although my recovery from near death was impressive and improbable… it had left me with deep scars. I felt disconnected from everyone I loved… which lead to the collapse of my relationship. Those events haunted me despite all the healing I managed with my new surrogate family.

For the last few months my sleep has been haunted by those events. Like the shock and horror of those events etched them deep into my sub-conscious waiting for sleep to bring them back out. Then one restless night I dreamed my entire life; all the highpoints and low. It didn’t finish because I awoke in a cold sweat from the intensity of the dream. But somehow it jump started a long forgotten thought in my mind. I decided there and then that I would join the United States Air Force.

I felt different almost immediately, I felt like I had a purpose again… like my life could find it’s meaning again. I had succeeded before against countless trials because I loved, that love gave meaning to my life. That night awoke another long forgotten emotion: Duty. It was a different kind of motivation for me… it seemed somehow pure and untainted in comparison to the twisted mockery of love that still ate at me.

I pushed myself twice as hard. Starting with 5 mile runs every night with pushups and situps to follow. I studied twice as hard in school and managed to score high on the practice ASVAB. I was able to push my limits for the first time since I fell ill years ago. I felt… impossibly good about myself, flushed with well deserved pride and confidence.

Even with that strength, the hole in my soul still ate away at me. I felt alone and disconnected at times. Sorrowful that I could not share my world with people I loved, or people that I wanted to love. I can’t help that my greatest desire to hold someone… or to be held. To simply feel the warmth and comfort of a loved one near me, that particular weakness and one other remained.

Although my migraines are nearly gone, and my fatigue has lessened over time… I’m disqualified from military service because of my Asthma. Once I realized my goal was impossible I felt crushed but went through the motions a bit longer while I tried to find the alternative path I needed. The challenge and patriotic duty that called to me couldn’t be answered there… but I have other skills and there will be new opportunities.

I feel like I am at the vista of a new era of my life. Despite the setbacks I incurred I still feel confident in myself and my abilities… and I will need them for whatever challenge I do set my mind to.