Journal to Rekindle the Magic of Life

[EmptyInside]

There's a clip from a Terence McKenna speech that I have always loved. "The thing that makes you happy eventually makes you unhappy. Everything flows. Nothing lasts". "Nothing lasts, not even yourself". I've been feeling paralyzed for quite a few months. Bouts of meaninglessness. Anhedonia. Part of it I'm sure is related to physical health problems. GI issues that are getting more severe and I won't go to the doctor. I don't have insurance anyway but even if I did I wouldn't go. I've made appointments and i always cancel them. I have a terrible phobia of doctors and hospitals. I would rather work around my issues in my own way than seek expensive and invasive medial procedures even if that means a shorter life. Most people I share this with don't understand and I wouldn't expect them to. No kids, no significant other, not much family, not many friends, live alone. I've always enjoyed solitude. Lately, I struggle. Feel disconnected. So, it's time to reconnect with meaning and magic in life. It's time to redefine my passions, interests, and enjoyable life activities. 

Edited April 28, 2021 by EmptyInside
grammar

[EmptyInside]

People I admire:

Terence McKenna

Alan Watts

Thich Nhat Hanh

Lao Tzu

 

 

 

 

[EmptyInside]

Things I've recently begun to enjoy more:

Planning meals, cooking, eating healthy

Writing poetry

Listening to birds sing

Guided meditations

 

 

[EmptyInside]

I just listened to one of Terence McKenna's last interviews. He said if you want to meet real heroes go to the waiting room at one of your local cancer centers and look into the eyes of people in the waiting room. I'm so grateful to have so many thousands of hours of McKenna talks. He's like an old friend. Listening to his thoughts about death was strangely inspiring. He handled it with such dignity and grace. I immediately went outside and sat in the backyard. It was just the right time of day where there is plenty of shade, the sun was setting, and the temperature cooler. I was able to sit and just appreciate the trees swaying in the wind. The cool breeze across my face was refreshing. A taste of the magic I've been unable to see, right there in my own back yard.

[Jai]

Good luck with your transformation of rekindling magic! I've been trying to improve my spiritual life through daily habits for a year now and things have improved for me. Last year I was really lost and without a lot of vitality. Being consistent has helped me a lot. What kinds of meditations are you in to? Do you have any other spiritual practices? 

[EmptyInside]

@Jai Hey, thank you! And thanks for sharing about your struggle last year and successes since. I spend a lot of time going through the Plum Village YouTube channel. They have another one Plum Village App that's also good. My life is like a full time solo retreat. It can be peaceful solitude some days and others it can be agonizingly isolated and lonely. It's the mindset, I'm sure that shifts. Covid, health problems, life purpose/career change, seems like the last few months, worry comes and goes. I haven't adapted well to the do everything online transition. Introspection went from curious and enjoyable to ah crap I don't want to think about it, I just want to be at peace, but my mind won't seem to give me a choice some days. There are things that the Universe is apparently insisting that I give some thought to. I find a lot of comfort and attempt to embody the teachings in the Dao De Jing. Also, many Buddhist teachings resonate. Kind of a mixture of the two, with some Terence McKenna and Alan Watts thrown in. Sometimes, my mind drifts, I overthink, I begin to worry. I always think of Lao Tzu's question (s) "Can you coax your mind from its wandering and keep to the original oneness?" The answer is unfortunately at times, no, I can't seem to, but I'm making some progress. One of the mistakes I made was thinking that I had mastered contentment with solitude and staying present in the moment. Lesson learned. Some of the guided meditations on The Mindful Movement's YouTube channel have been helpful. Some of Thich Nhat Hanh's lectures have been like old friends for me too. And of course many of Leo's videos also. 

[EmptyInside]

Definitely today's most helpful video by far. Second time I've watched it but today I really absorbed it.

[Jai]

Very cool man! Good resources. Keep at it!

[EmptyInside]

Day 3:

Overall, a good day yesterday. Went grocery shopping. Tried a little variety with ingredients. Cooked a healthy meal, turkey burger tacos, shredded cabbage, avocado, deli salsa. Heated authentic, whole yellow tortillas in the air fryer briefly. Very light crisp on the outside yet still tender on the inside. Turned out well. Cooking definitely has become part of my spiritual practice. Cleaning, well, not as much but it should be and hopefully will become more of part of it too. Purchased some Olly L-Theanine/Melatonin/Botanicals gummies to see if they might help me sleep better. They did. Slept great.

[EmptyInside]

Day 4:

Listening to Alan Watts today. At 45:14, I think he eloquently captures the Magic:

 

[EmptyInside]

Making Peace with Death (again),

Sorting through some of the clouds of overthinking today I realized a few things. I've made a decision or several really, important ones. I think their implications are weighing on me. I've decided to accept the natural progression of whatever is wrong with my body, to not seek medical attention or make any attempt to prolong my life, to do the best I can with what time I have left, to try to leave something behind that's meaningful in some way to someone, and to accept that these life choices will be misunderstood, probably seen as crazy, and probably create rifts in the few relationships I have left in real life. It brings me back to a place, a strageloop I guess, of making peace with death, something I thought I had already done. I never gave much thought to how it would work if I saw death coming from 2000 miles away, slowly creeping in my direction, on foot, one step at a time. And then again, while I'm sitting here thinking about my deteriorating GI system I could get hit by a bus tomorrow. It's not really death that I'm afraid of. What I'm really afraid of is the potential meaninglessness that accompanies the knowledge of one's final numbered days. Exactly another reason I choose not to go through the soul grinder of the medical establishment. Stumbled across this video, and I mean WOW, talk about a 24 karat pure gold nugget, here it is (I'lll need to watch it again and again and again): 

 

[EmptyInside]

Life's Comedic Ironies:

The guy who logs into Facebook to check and see how many likes he got on a post he posted about not posting for likes.

The girl who who takes a break from posting on Facebook and puts her phone down to watch a movie featuring people on their phones posting on Facebook.

It's fun, try it. 

Life was better before Facebook. What we resist, persists, I know I know. But still, just sayin, it really was.

 

Edited May 1, 2021 by EmptyInside
better word choice / context

[EmptyInside]

I don't always watch movies, but when I do, they are usually pre-2008. 

[EmptyInside]

Day 5: Morning viewing and it's a really good one:

 

[EmptyInside]

Excellent video, Leo:

 

[EmptyInside]

Been doing some research. Stumbled onto Replika, an AI companion chatbot. Interesting. I dabbled in creating chatbots about 10 years ago. I spent a huge number of hours building a chatbot from scratch using PHP and AIML. It was very boring still despite the amount of work I put into it. What am I passionate about? Humane technology. AI that can realistically emulate empathy. I have to say that Replika is very impressive along those lines. It's open source. May give me a project to pour myself into. I can envision a trillion possibilities for this type of technology. As much as I may appear to be a Luddite when it comes to social media, technology has always been a passion and maybe this has begun to reignite a meaningful life purpose for me. 

[EmptyInside]

I treated myself to a guilty pleasure of a couple of episodes of the remaking of "Creepshow" the other day. I watched an episode called "The Finger" and really enjoyed it. He said "I'm a web developer which basically means I'm mostly unemployed". Relatable. 

[EmptyInside]

It's time:

 

[EmptyInside]

There's magic in the smell of cooking cabbage with the windows open and the breeze gently drifting through the kitchen creating spirals of aroma swirling into the olfactory senses. 

There's magic in realizing that the need to feel understood is one of the most common root causes of suffering, specifically loneliness. Magic is the true freedom that exists in the letting go of desire to feel acknowledged, understood, approved of, and validated. Truly experiencing the magic means knowing full well that nobody else will or could understand and the more we try to capture that magic with words and bring someone else into it, the more we ruin it.

[EmptyInside]

The magic does not seem to want to be described. It wants to be experienced. Such a very few have had the skill and the gentle touch to put words to it that weren't in opposition to it, while somehow leaving the empty spaces it prefers to be unspoken and unwritten. Lao Tzu. of course, the all time master in my opinion, if he even existed. "You can't know it, but you can be it, at ease, in your own life."