Posts tagged with "Taoism"

Psychoanalytic Reflections 01

It’s a full sev­en days between ses­sions, and at this point, my pschol­o­gist is just start­ing to know me. In between, I can nev­er stop reflect­ing. I’ve always believed that I know myself well, but these ses­sions are prob­ing ideas and mem­o­ries I haven’t thought of in a while, and open­ing up com­plete­ly new areas of reflec­tion.

And while I could write for days about these thoughts and epipha­nies, I sim­ply don’t have the time, so I fig­ured I’d briefly touch on them in point form.

  • I need to respect my psy­chol­o­gist in order to accept help from him. i.e. If he was a Freudian and I was a Jungian, I would­n’t be able to agree with any of his meth­ods.
  • I get very anx­ious when I’m in his office. This is because I don’t like to admit to myself that some­thing’s wrong with me, but when I’m in there, it’s a very tan­gi­ble reminder that I have men­tal prob­lems.
  • I’m very con­flict­ed on sev­er­al issues.
    • I don’t want to lose my emo­tions because I need to suf­fer to cre­ate. Yet the emo­tions are bad enough that I don’t want to have them any­more (or have them in mod­er­a­tion at least).
    • I want to love and be in a rela­tion­ship, and at the same time I cling to being sin­gle because I’m scared of being hurt (in addi­tion to the fact that the free­dom is intox­i­cat­ing). I do this by push­ing oth­ers away from me or cut­ting them off.
      • This stems from two sig­nif­i­cant child­hood mem­o­ries, where I felt betrayed in friend­ship, as well as my rela­tion­ship with my par­ents.
    • I want to be set­tled and have some sta­bil­i­ty (in terms of sched­ule, rela­tion­ships, finances etc.), but the strug­gle to be set­tled is what makes me grow and be stronger.
    • Many of these issues can only be resolved from deci­sions I should make. (i.e. No one else can make the deci­sion for me)
    • Turning to Taoism, which is very para­dox­i­cal in itself, has only helped so much.
  • Without my cre­ativ­i­ty, or my desire to express myself, I’m noth­ing.
  • I don’t want to “blame” my par­ents for con­fi­dence prob­lems or per­fec­tion­ist ten­den­cies, but I’m slow­ly start­ing to find out that they’ve affect­ed me even more than I thought before.
  • As a hedo­nist, my great­est fear is los­ing my joie de vivre. If this hap­pened (and it has once), I would con­sid­er killing myself. This is because the joys of life bal­ance out all the bad and makes it worth liv­ing.
  • I’m depen­dent on oth­er peo­ple for hap­pi­ness. I don’t see my friends often enough for me to be sat­is­fied, and it’s a sim­ple fact of life. They all have sig­nif­i­cant oth­ers, and I’m the only one left sin­gle. I don’t blame them for not spend­ing enough time with me, but it makes me very sad.

Becoming Pat

At the core of our beings, Pat and I are the same per­son.

What sep­a­rates us is our emo­tion, or lack there­of. Pat’s the log­i­cal one, I’m the emo­tion­al one. I’ve always looked up to him — his strength, his morals, his per­son­al­i­ty — with­out real­ly under­stand­ing why.

It’s only in the last year that I’ve come to real­ize Pat is a Taoist. This comes with the real­iza­tion that I’m a Taoist myself, and explains why I try to be more like him.

The inter­est­ing part is that he does­n’t even know that he’s a Taoist — sort of like Winnie the Pooh — which is exact­ly what makes him a true Taoist.

One of Chuang Tzŭ’s para­bles illus­trates this point. In an abbre­vi­at­ed ver­sion, Knowledge seeks a con­scious reflec­tion to know the Tao, and asked Silent Do Nothing and Reckless Blurter, before ask­ing The Yellow Emperor (ahhh, the Romantic per­son­i­fi­ca­tion of Chinese fables):

Knowledge said to The Yellow Emperor, “I asked Silent Do Nothing and he kept qui­et. Not only did­n’t he answer me, but he did­n’t even know how to answer. I asked Reckless Blurter, and though he want­ed to tell me, he did­n’t, and even for­got my ques­tions. Now I’ve asked you, and you know all about it. Why do you say that you’re far from it?”.

The Yellow Emperor said, “Silent Do Nothing was tru­ly right, because he did­n’t know any­thing. Reckless Blurter was near­ly right, because he’d for­got­ten it. You and I are far from right, because we know far too much”.

The same is true for Tai Chi1, or any mar­tial art for that mat­ter. Dissect it too much, and you lose the mean­ing. Think about it too much, and you don’t react. As Michael Babin wrote in his arti­cle on self-defense train­ing:

It is sad but true that real skill comes from seem­ing­ly end­less drilling of the basics and then learn­ing how to transcend/forget most of what you have so patient­ly learned.

In oth­er words, learn­ing struc­ture is essen­tial to learn­ing to react to a com­plete lack of struc­ture (i.e. a real fight); but if you focus on struc­ture for too long it becomes counter-pro­duc­tive to “being with­out struc­ture” in mar­tial terms. One of the many annoy­ing para­dox­es in the inter­nal arts.

One of the many para­dox­es in the Taoist phi­los­o­phy as well. As much as I try to study it, learn it, and apply it, I find myself think­ing about it too much. As a result, I occa­sion­al­ly stray from being cen­tered, and lose my bal­ance.

It’s the con­scious reflec­tion which Knowledge is seek­ing that pre­emp­tive­ly dooms his search. This is my prob­lem as well. I buy Taoist books with a thirst for knowl­edge, but they’re all telling me the same thing now. Not that the books haven’t helped at all, but I feel like I’ve reached a lim­it. Perhaps even the sim­ple act of writ­ing about this is counter-pro­duc­tive.

I have the under­stand­ing, but I can’t apply it with­out think­ing about it first, and it’s the attempt to apply it that ruins the point. I’ve yet to reach a stage of pure reac­tion and spon­tane­ity, like Pat.

But I’m get­ting there.

  1. Yet anoth­er exam­ple of how Tai Chi is the phys­i­cal expres­sion of the phi­los­o­phy. Or per­haps this could be reverse-gen­er­al­ized, and said that the Taoist phi­los­o­phy is reflect­ed in every­thing, such as mar­tial arts. [↩]

Privy To All The New Shit

I’ve been in the strangest mood late­ly. Killing my Top Rated playlist every­where I go, yet I skip through 90% of the songs, try­ing to find the right one. Talking to myself. Replaying con­ver­sa­tions in my head.

I don’t quite feel at one with the Tao. I’ve been let­ting small things get to me. It’s as if I’m falling back into my old destruc­tive habits, but upon real­iz­ing this, I fight against it. The strug­gle, when observed objec­tive­ly, is quite amus­ing.

These are excit­ing times. Along with the excite­ment comes ner­vous­ness. It’s turned me into a jum­ble of emo­tions, bit­ter­sweet, and unlike any­thing I’ve ever expe­ri­enced before.

Wish I could do some­thing with this feel­ing.

Hurts So Good

I’m exhaust­ed. It’s late. I should be going to bed, but I want to write. Here I am.

Vanilla chai, this time. I nev­er drink this tea, so it seemed some­what appro­pri­ate.

My limbs are sore. I’ve been prac­tic­ing my Tai Chi on a reg­u­lar basis, and my under­stand­ing has sur­passed my phys­i­cal abil­i­ty. I’m start­ing to over-exert myself. I’ve also been using my arms instead of my whole body when advanc­ing in sin­gle push hands, caus­ing my arms to work more than they should. Tonight, it got to the point where they were com­plete­ly weak. I sus­pect Elizabeth could feel this, and she switched arms before I had the good sense to do it myself.

It’s get­ting cold in the house1. The ther­mo­stat says 20, but it feels more like 18. I stood in the show­er for a good 15 min­utes, let­ting my skin burn under the hot water, to the point where I stepped out of the show­er into the cold air and start­ed to sweat.

No edit­ing. No back­track­ing. Just type, and pub­lish.

I hap­pened to come across a video today by the Grass Roots.

When I think of all the wor­ries peo­ple seem to find
And how they’re in a hur­ry to com­pli­cate their minds
By chas­ing after mon­ey and dreams that can’t come true
I’m glad that we are dif­fer­ent, we’ve bet­ter things to do
The oth­ers plan their future, I’m busy lov­ing you

One, two, three, four
Sha-la-la-la-la-la live for today.
Sha-la-la-la-la-la live for today.

And don’t wor­ry ’bout tomor­row, hey hey hey hey.

Maybe I’m just read­ing into it, like a born-again, but the lyrics struck me as very Taoist, and the idea of detach­ment in par­tic­u­lar2. Darren jokes that I’ll start preach­ing to him the next time I vis­it him because our con­ver­sa­tions always stray to Taoism.

I’ve been feel­ing decid­ed­ly dark, decid­ed­ly yin, late­ly. Not sad or upset, but in an ener­getic way. I’m boun­cy. Maybe this is the way my brain adjusts to my pre­vi­ous­ly cheer­ful upswing. The fun­ny thing is that I’m no less cheer­ful, just in a dif­fer­ent way. I feel more bal­anced. It’s as if the mind aches from some unknown force, expressed through an emo­tion­al state, yet rel­ish­es and wal­lows in this.

And I’m lov­ing every minute of it.

  1. I’m try­ing to wait as long as pos­si­ble before turn­ing the heat on [↩]
  2. Something I’ve only recent­ly been able to achieve to any rel­a­tive degree of suc­cess. [↩]

I'm Up

Yes, I’m up again. Not even, but up.

I think it’s pret­ty obvi­ous that I don’t think straight when lack­ing sleep. I get very grumpy, and Bronwen knows not to get in my way when that hap­pens (and not to call me “Mr. Grumpykins”). Still, even with enough sleep, I don’t think it would have changed how I was feel­ing.

So I picked myself up by read­ing the para­bles of Chuang Tzŭ1. Though it’s still well beyond my grasp, I’m slow­ly learn­ing how to achieve utter empti­ness and sin­gle-mind­ed still­ness.

I like to think that I’m aware enough to know that I’m not delud­ing myself into this state-of-mind.

Sometimes I won­der if I sound like a born-again Christian, only with Taoism. One of those peo­ple who gets preachy, where every­thing they say relates to their new-found faith. It’s as if my brain process­es every­thing through a Tao fil­ter, and I see every­thing in a dif­fer­ent way. I try to be con­scious of it in con­ver­sa­tion, to avoid bor­ing some­one who would­n’t real­ly under­stand any­way, but I can’t help but write about it here.

Nevertheless, I feel enlight­ened, though still human2; I’m not sure if I’ll get the rug pulled out from under me again. It’s a strange feel­ing. In this mind­set, it’s as if noth­ing can stop you. Until some­thing hap­pens.

Part of me wish­es I was­n’t feel­ing this high. That I was more even, like Pat. It’s a bal­ance of emo­tion that I seek, not the dra­mat­ic ups and downs. I’ll be con­tent when I can achieve that.

Hence it is para­dox­i­cal­ly said, “Perfect hap­pi­ness is to be with­out hap­pi­ness; the high­est praise is to be with­out praise”.

  1. Dave helped talk some sense into me as well. I think part of my recov­ery was that our dis­cus­sion led me to feel as if he’s a kin­dred spir­it. [↩]
  2. When look­ing back on this entry, I real­ized that I wrote about pick­ing myself up twice in one month. I don’t even remem­ber writ­ing it the first time. [↩]