Personal Pain

Sometimes when I am courting excess drug use and party atmosphere, I fall into a kind of "spiritual exhaustion". It feels like a wet, uncertain sliver opening up in my breastbone. I find it difficult to feel confident - a slippery nervousness that gets jostled with every breath. Usually it will close after a good amount of sleep, or after a relatively sober time passes. It is undesirable state, of course.

But recently I had opportunity to more deeply explore this feeling. The circumstances and influences were manifold: a bit of drug use, but also premenstrual tendency toward weepiness, a ripening moon, and mounting sleep deprivation. All this mired in the middle of 24 hour Twin Peaks marathon, and exacerbated by intense interpersonal social scenario.

Possibly the most important factor here is the Marathon. Twin Peaks is a serious piece for me, and I developed this event - open to the public, put on at a community center - primarily because I had a desire to ... realize the series as a complete work in time, a whole. What would that be like? Though I've viewed it a dozen times, I have never dedicated that full chunk of time ... it was an experiment of sorts. ... I would do it differently in the future. The series is simply too uneven to be consistently compelling, with the extreme dramatic climax happening midway and losing steam afterward. But that climax ... with all its horrific, overwrought, poignant sorrows ...

With the progression of episodes happening in succession, it was easy to let the terror and despair compound upon themselves. And I was feeling emotionally unstable. AND there was the aforementioned "intense interpersonal social scenario". I can't be too specific there - suffice it to say that I was perceiving, experiencing, what (in my paranoid state) amounted to a complex but thorough rejection - personal insult - through a group of people whom I had found myself growing complicatedly closer to over the last month. All my delusions of blossoming friendship ran up against this cold wall - I felt so disrespected - and yet - what was my behavior? I could not resist - I got closer. I sat myself in a chair right outside the knot of this group of people. The feelings of betrayal that their chatter inspired in me blossomed ... the sliver of nervous exhaustion grew! To a full, round disk of raw, wounded insult. I would realize this intense sensation in moments, blinking on with each burst of their laughter, and I was fascinated by how huge it was in my body. It had grown from a sliver to command my entire chest, from shoulder to shoulder.

Finally, I took control of this feeling of emotional wounding, and sustained focus on it. When it rose like a tide, I seized it and held it in place. ... My entire chest felt ripped, trembling, agonized from this absolutely pure Rejection, and somehow, I began to savor this feeling. It made so much sense - the deeply horrifying murders on the screen, the portrayal of extreme and devastating loss, and my own sudden ability to really, truly experience Intense Personal Pain, to hold the horror in a ravaged body, to feel the depths of something so terrible. This concept of garmonbozia - pain and suffering - established in the TP universe guided me, no doubt. Having achieved some kind of revelation in my being, suddenly the offending social circumstances - still quite present - sunk into the background. It was all no less insulting, but being trapped in this vibration of something so Wrong, so Awful, brought a detaching transcendence, a grievous personal suffering crystallized in a perfect, unstable, degraded physical sensation.

I have always felt quite tenderly towards grief, and been comfortable in the presence of depressed individuals - I mean I don't try to create depression or grief. These things naturally occur and I guess I "enjoy" the subdued feeling they create in others, and my inclination is to help find some measure of relief for that person. I suppose it amounts to something more than hanging out, when depression is present - there is a goal, there is emotional work, there is the opportunity to change and shape circumstances and response. But this was my first experience of "crystalline, transcendent grief". I don't know why this should be a positive experience for me, but I can return to the memory with fondness. The recently cultivated feeling still echoes in my chest, and I am proud of it. Why would this be?

Steps

Hey there.

The problem is the existence of belief. I am certain that it is a false construct, or a minor tendency inflated by ... what force? The survival instinct of men alone? Or some dark insidious force that has no problem understanding "humanity" as a mass of energy that can be manipulated for its own benefit? Are they the same thing? Are there others inside us?

I often think about the actual makeup of the human body, as opposed to what we give credence to. I am not interested in arguing, and perhaps that makes me boring. But arguing - who needs it? It betters us as it hones our individuality, our ability to "know ourself" ... but what about all these other forces and energy centers located right with in our skin, sharing our internal space - really, the only property any of us can own (and how briefly). What is this "Actual Makeup"? Well, we house a lot of living things that work within us, machining this body as we machine the earth. General health is determined by how well we can balance our relationships with these little invaders and homesteaders through a daily intake of air, food (nutrient, matter), water (and, perhaps, spirits). And more - who knows how more subliminal intakes steer us? - The scenes that pass over our eyes, words drunk in, sounds and textures.

Another thing I am certain of is that the brain is a major organ, but that we have done an enormous disservice to humanity by disregarding the sophisticated and mysterious ways of our other organs, all operating under the deep cover of permanent blackness, should you be so lucky to never split your skin. Surely strong light permeates and cells drink that vitamin d directly, but always the shadow of the skin. This shadow contains a mighty force, as all shadows do. Maybe shadow is not quite the right word. It is a sealed shadow, a complete shadow, a shadow that contains and protects an unknown quantity. Or maybe it is more like a little self contained ocean.

Anyway - we are only here to navigate the mystery, and that requires admitting that there is a big mystery afoot. The tactics of science are often accurate but contain just as much folly in application as techniques of mystics, magicians, simpletons and guessers alike. Any path can be chosen and executed. Generally the thing to say at this juncture is that true result is gotten foremost by the whims and accuracy of the heart or gut, not the mind - but I don't want to relegate this chunk of words to the new age bin. However, I do stand by it. What is the other conclusion to draw here? Aren't I just poised upon my own preaching pinnacle? This is just some stuff I need to get off my chest. As they say.