A Formula

Either you are wrong or I am right – David Gilmour

What this knowledge offers you is nothing but fear. Understand that. Because if you have to wait for the response you can’t be half pregnant, you have to really be there waiting in your power. And it can be so frustrating because you think you may never be asked, and that when you are asked you will not be asked what you want to have asked. It takes courage to become yourself. And for you, you need the proof. And you can’t get the proof unless you just see for yourself that this is the way it truly works for you. You are here to respond, that’s your perfection.  - Ra Uru Hu

Whenever a new idea rushes into the mind, it smashes into a mass of distorting elements; like a ball tossed hard against the walls of a closet, the idea bounces against our fixed attitudes and opinions. – Vernon Howard

This is going to be a rather long post.  I have been organizing my computer files and archiving.  It has turned into an oracle experience.  I keep running into things I wrote or saved that tie into what I am experiencing or contemplating. 

Without going into details, I have been seeing more levels in the deep conditioning that was involved in the creation of the primacy of my mind in my life – especially the long years I spent in school.   I spent over 22 years in the academic world.   A lot of that was shed pretty quickly but not so much the underlying paradigm.  Deep in the logic world.   I keep circling back in my work to a point of doubt about all of this.  But these are basically logical doubts – definitely not strong enough for met to give up.  Then I am allowed to see where I am acting from the paradigm that there is always an explanation, an answer, to the phenomena of life if we just keep learning.  Along with this is an implied hierarchical model – that there are set paths to attainment.  I suspect it is tied rather intimately with the need for certainty that I discussed in an earlier post.  I cannot speak to the legitimacy of any of those approaches.  When I feel a strong resistance to a formula, I have learned to let it open up as cracks in my cosmic egg, my conceptual framework.   It is a paradox though.  Letting go of those frameworks and the idea that there is no universal path - that it is fluidic - conflicts with my intuitive belief that this is all an immaculate design.   I do not wish to go down that hole right now except to say that paradoxes don’t seem to bother me much anymore.  I am in an experiment with my life – one that involves surrendering to that design as my unique Self. 

So I found the following piece I wrote in a journal some time ago – obviously in one of my many melancholic moods as I was shedding the layers of what doesn’t serve me.  But it mirrored the idea of living in that world of formula.

I always mistrusted the abilities of my mind – not the concept of mind itself, but of my individual mind.  Outside of academics or other intellectual pursuits, I never knew how make decisions or even what questions to ask.  Whatever I did was in response, but in response through pressure – the fear of failing, of being humiliated in others’ eyes, the fear of not knowing what to do, of not really wanting to do anything.  As far back as I can remember I just wanted to play, to create worlds – first with my toys, then creating cities and lands outside in the sand, dirt or the creeks by which I lived.  Or to go off by myself in the woods and live imaginary adventures.   Everything else I did because that is the way of the world.  I may have appeared to be creating my decisions – I wouldn’t have been comfortable admitting that I didn’t have a clue about anything in this world.  So I bounced from one thing to the next.  I followed the stream as it was given to me and created a niche in every crack in those worlds.  For all intents and purpose, from the outside I did pretty well.  I was always well-liked but always an outsider.  In high school, I was friends with everyone in all the typical circles – from geek to jock to the socially popular.  But after school was out I wasn’t a part of those circles.  I was rarely invited to anything in the social realm.  I was an undercover loner.   Home was similar.  I didn’t cause problems.  I was a good kid but never felt like I really belonged there either.  I was always escaping – either moving around (walking or later driving in my car) by myself.  Or I was in my room, reading mostly.  Music and, later, drugs allowed me to stay in this mode of life for decades.

But even then almost every decision about my life was made because I was forced to make a decision and then making a decision between the alternatives that were given to me and then making the decision just to ease the pressure.   But then of course going through the next level of fear about how I was going to do it when I had no idea how.  I did well in school because I mainly stuck to things that were essentially formulaic.  Fortunately for me all education in the public realm is like that.   Science and math – all the problems were the same.  The formulas were known – all the equations that were needed.  In the problems, you just took the formulas that were appropriate, the variables were always in the problem, disguised in various ways (the so-called “word” problems).  So just put in the numbers and get the answers.  You could even check your answers. 

History, language, civics – these were primarily matters of memorization.  Even essays were just an extension of the formula idea.  I got good at knowing what the acceptable answers were.  How to play the system even if I didn’t think of it in those terms.   The gist of the answer was contained in the question - informed by the classroom work, the textbook and the lectures.  This gave a sort of equation.  Then just plug in the variables which have been memorized.  Take a position (i.e. pick one of the acceptable equations) and solve.  The effect though was all about survival and defense.

So now I see myself doing the same thing.  Creating my little worlds inside of cracks.  But as old age approaches and I find myself increasingly alone – after intentionally throwing away the old safety nets - I now sometimes face, especially at night, abject fears about my survival.  It was easier being the loner, the hermit, when I lived within a protective shield – whether it was supportive or healthy was not the issue.   

Decisions were made, in essence. for me, at least – the framework - in other words, the range of decisions that were possible.   I only had to do the work.  I became an embodiment of that process of problem solving.  I was one of the variables.  Now I am in the position of not having those safety nets and find myself still incompetent in creatively fashioning a life, a path, a direction.  And I am so afraid of failure.  Failure seems so much more real and dangerous now.  The stakes are basic things like health, a place to live, food to eat, etc.

So enter fear and still seeing through these lifelong lenses and doubting my decisions.  Right and wrong decisions are no longer in the realm of doing what fits, what relieves pressure, what makes my protectors happy so that I am safe.  I am the child thrown out into the world again, unprepared with the skills needed.  Not knowing the questions or the answers.  Alone – the orphan.  But still unable to express the fear.  Just do not appear weak, do not reveal the fear, the helplessness.  That will only make matters worse.  It is one thing to live in that reality – another to compound it by having others know that you are that helpless.

So, yes, I doubted the wisdom behind my actions.  Following dreams and concepts derived from others and then seeing them as if they were smoke - Increasingly hard to see and grasp.  Still just coninuing from the momentum after recognizing that I am no longer following something substantial.  No one can help me here.  My actions were a bridge-burning.  I am alone and afraid.  There are no more working equations and I don’t understand them anyway.

Well, I have come a long way from that nodal point in my life.  A lot of the fear has dissipated and a good chunk of the victim outlook.  It is still daunting to face the intensity of fully accepting and surrendering to the fullness of life without the comfort of all that conceptual dependence.  But when I hit those moments of pause, where I very briefly get to touch the reality of the sacred geometry of this existence, I see the fragility of that doubt and conflict and turbulence and the value of having gone through them so that I could open up to those moments.