This all started with an attempt for right action. However martial arts oppressed me. I wanted to give them up. In giving martial arts I gave up discipline and order and etc. this is a re accruing event. It led to the events in Prague. So I always come crawling back to discipline and order, out of fear for my life. This time I wanted to make an attempt at health and progress and strength without the oppression of the order. I only had vague images and ideals of Siddhartha and Walt Whitman to go off of. After navigating my indecision, I established some makeshift order and identity, as I have done thousands of times. However after I night of drinking and self abuse I realized how extreme I have been becoming. And how detrimental my ideology was to my survival. My philosophy had to sober up. Without some sort of balance I could not stop abusing myself. I was aware of this danger. I saw how my philosophy had slighted me, had made hurt me, had cut me. If I did not change something I would go on hurting myself. SO I developed a reverence for balance. I fell in love with moderation, and small steps. Almost immediately a system came into place. As long as I had some goal, no matter how present how far away, how close, how remote, if only I did not compromise one goal, than whatever I do is trial and error, and then I don’t have to hate myself for failure, therefore no more binge drinking or stress, or binge eating. With this sobriety, I recognized the absurdity of right action. I laughed at progress, and scoffed at morality. I wanted to find the truly appropriate way to spend the time in our lives. I realized there is no right way, no prescription, so any action at all, as significant or insignificant as another. Therefore absurdity, nothingness, meaninglessness, anti right action, chaos became my central object. I cut all strings, all laws, all standa4ds, all expectations, all advice, all truths. And I stood for the first time with all faith fully on a platform of lawlessness. Within the chaos, I relaxed. I stopped abusing myself with expectations. But many motivations came within the chaos, such as the motivation for right action. And because chaos has no law than all that comes is justified. So in my irrational love for right action, developed a desire for the checkpoints of imagery, a self justified desire for right action. (no development from this yet) At the same time I have become aware that the cure will be in dropping all feelings of seriousness for life. If I could laugh at the consequences of failure or success, then sureley I could return the the profound living I did as a child. The full living. The sucking up of all moments, and the complete investment/ erelishing of life. (I have grown to revere and idealize unconveluted vision, a full experiencing of life and moemtns un clouded uncompromised by distinctions brought about by meaning, judgement, logic, morality, expectations.) I realized that maybe this could never happen until I trashed my goals (that were previously in place for my own security). This is dangerous, it is riding without training wheels. It is me trying to keep health strength and progress without order, and judgements. However killing these goals really means killing all concepts and ideas of progress. To truly give up, to truly give up, to give up, like a student drops out of college, like a marriage divorces. (no development from this yet) I reflect on my childhood, when my mother struggled to instill balance, and sobriety into me. However I have been violently determined to follow my own whims since birth. I vehemently insist on being a vigilante, a homeless man, an outcast, a rebel, or I insist on being the son of God, the just, the prodigy, the one. I lapse between these two extremes. I have a complete inability; I have displayed complete failure when it comes to taking advice. I spit on advice. And advice givers offend me. My mother struggled to instill some order into me. Although it may have not been her intention to turn me into one, I reviled the normal simple mild boy, who did his homework when he got home, what a waste of birth! This mildness, this mild discipline, to do homework when the sun is shining, almost made me want to vomit (literally) the discipline to stay inside, and not go outside and get in trouble, that small mild discipline. I could never master any such discipline without the call of God behind it. Discipline for me can only be large judgmental, like lighting, with wrath, and force, and trembling, and fear, and destruction. How can those kids sit at home with their quiet mild little discipline doing their quit little homework in the shade in the dark, with the dust floating about in the stuffy room, when the SUN IS OUT SHINIGN GODDAMIT! Side notes— Martial arts gives me order with its intention to survive, Zen lets me progress. And I know these hobbies are meaningless and irrelevant. Their practice enables me somehow to let everything be light and meaningless. However I frequently quit Martial arts due to various reasons. Most recently it was because I became confused by the imagery of MMA fighters and the goal of martial arts. Nor did I have a good place to practice. So I quit. And without this order I cannot bring myself to practice Zen. I don’t know why. But hypothetically if I go back to them I can solve the problem, and long as I am making a product out of my health and body. I don’t know why. And I don’t know why its not the same for everybody. And this vexes me. I despise this order, I revile it. It s all that works for me, and I don’t know why. Because ei don’t understand it I reject it, I can’t just accept it. Sometimes i can —————————– Well, I think you pretty much understood what I have written. What I had originally wrote was a document to establish some order, or map, of how I could understand things. But it became much more uncontained and spontaneous as I was writing. It was certainly a stream of consciousness writing process, but originally I was undoubtedly calculating in trying to reach a picture of what I had gone through/am going through. It was not at all an engagement. You could say crisis induced. But more so than any crisis it was induced by any ernest attempt of mine to find some appropriate way to live.. I am really curious, about your finding joy in each moment. Did it work for you? Could you let yourself have any given moment on your own terms? This is something I have aimed towards without giving a real effort. I don’t know why First of all I feel like its a leap of faith. I always need a purpose to back up my action, so that I have a framework with which I can put my enjoyment into context.My words are becoming so vague, I don’t even know what Im talking about now. But I feel that this sort of letting go requires a special kind of discipline. Maybe even a leap of non faith. Its like you have no god, but you’ll still jump anyway. Just for the moments sake. This I think is my fundamental fear/challenge/problem. I lapse between a realm of absolute order/discipline/expectations to a realm of absurdity/disorder/undiscipline. I can’t survive without purpose. But with purpose I can’t live freely. On the other hand, without purpose, the pieces fall apart, I cannot help myself, I’d probably fail out of college, and do do a lot of drugs (this side of the problem is especially dangerous because of my philosophical trials my concepts of morality have been significantly eroded or turned upside down/inside out). I really think the two vehicles you mentioned relate to my situation very well. I feel like I want to find the appropriate work, that any “progress” calls for. I’m too scared, or by nature so in need of discipline, that I cannot handle the waiting for the thunderbolt. All of this makes me reflect on my younger ages. I understand my skateboarding was so good for me. It was absolutely meaningless, but the aesthetic goal of tricks, forced me into discipline. And yet there is no practical application for tricks, so it was impossible to trick me into thinking that my life was anything more than serious. Before skateboarding I dwelt completely in irrationality and impulsiveness, but I sure did enjoy and relish life. And then after I was struck by my absolute faith in the samurai and all Japanese’s which led to increasing levels of meaning/philosophy/virtue I have ended up where I am now. As My mom has always suggested I need to learn some moderation. But I am incapable. I have always been disgusted with work or discipline without god to back it up. More than anything I think I am cursed by seriousness. As child I would laugh at this mess. I have never been a person who valued or respected those who take themselves seriously. How ironic that I am engulfed/drowning in seriousness and even self pitty. If only I could laugh at myself. In order to reach that nonseriousness, I recently realized I will even have to give up my goals of enrichment and respect. Again my coordinate system is lost and I fear that nothing will come of my life. Must something come of my life? and what will happen when I am inspired I wish to become something better, more pure, more skilled than I am? I have been slighted by my self doubts. I gave up on skateboarding, and recently Judo. (and this is one of the largest paradox’s for me: my dependance on martial arts to offer me morality.) In a Herman Hesse book, there is a guy who is scared of forgetting some events, so in order to save them he writes them down, however after writing them and establishing order in the events, he loses the originally meaning or essence of what he wished to preserve. I have written a lot, but I hope I haven’t digressed to much. I’m sorry if I have become confused in my writing. Its more than likely. But write me back, and tell me what you think when you can! I’m sure spring in Virginia is wonderful. I recall how impressed I was with the countryside of virginia. I always assumed that America was urban sprawl all the way to california. But Virginia really resembled Japan or Germany to me. Anyway talk to you later Uncle Ben
