Why am I still here, alive? The question has started to almost haunt this month, arising in my mind, whispering in my ear with everything I do. I ask it of the universe during morning sitting and to send me something I could interpret as a sign. Like a winning lottery ticket. It might not quite answer the question, but as signs sent by the universe go I wouldn't complain too much.
August last year I was hoping to hop off the conveyor belt of routine that took me from day to day in furtherance of getting to my goal of exiting this illusory existence. Not only was that endeavor a complete failure, but the conveyor belt has morphed into a veritable treadmill. I have no responsibilities; no job, family or friends to whom I'm accountable, yet every day is filled with inconsequentialities that make me feel I don't have enough time. It's totally neurotic.
At the same time, there is no "haunting". There is neither conveyor belt nor treadmill. Those are mental formations and descriptions that only describe assumptions about reality that can't be assumed; the illusory life. It's just neurotic.
"Neurotic" is a word that I've noticed popping up quite a lot in my Vajrayana readings the past few years, referring, I gather, to our conditioned thinking, reactions and behavior. Basically, a vast majority of our thoughts and behaviors are pretty much neurotic, with not just a hint of irrationality implied. Perhaps from a pure Vajrayana point of view, whatever that is, all. If we're mired in treating reality as it's presented as absolutely real, all of our reactions and interactions are neurotic. It's irrational to treat reality as presented as definitively real, solid, permanent. But that's a little extreme since only a slight percentage of humanity has been exposed to Vajrayana teachings and even a slighter percentage, including real Vajrayana practitioners, whoever they are, would consider all of their conditioned thoughts and actions as irrational.
A larger slice of humanity have family, and therein lies the low-hanging fruit to demonstrate how afflicted we are with our neuroses. We can choose our friends and form our social tribes who understand us better and who don't step on our every last nerve, but go home to blood family for the holidays (I'm no where near them, mind you) and see how fast you become neurotic about various things they say, do, imply and/or insinuate. With our friends, it may be to a lesser degree, but it's there. I'm here alone with neither friends, family nor acquaintance and the neurotic is totally right here, front and center.
I'm trying to start working on lessening my neurotic. Emphasis on the 'try' and 'start'. I haven't even started, and I'm only trying to do that. It's not enough to know myself that it's nutty and irrational. I already know it and that's not doing anything. It's not cognitive. I'm searching for the starting point.
For years I've been working on myself to reduce negativity and confront internal anger issues. It's ongoing work, but I think I can feel alright about being a lot better than I was. It's not like I was a gloomy Gus or a hair-trigger rager. It's in my personality to give and take my share of laughter and I don't think anyone would describe me as a particularly angry person. My bar for anger or negativity is pretty low, though. I don't want any of it; it's all bad, shut it down. As soon as I recognize it, it's *stahp!*. That happens all the time.
Those techniques were Vajrayana-inspired, if I dare say so, but a good deal of it was cognitive mindfulness, watching the energies and processing them to cognitively transform them rationally. Working on transforming neurotic obscurations is a lot trickier since they are by nature to some degree irrational. Rationalization isn't going to help because I already know they're irrational, yet freely maintain them.
I appeal to the energies to help purify or clear obscurations – karmic obscurations, negative obscurations, neurotic obscurations. The energies are the many intangible things about us, but subjectively verifiably real. All thoughts and feelings are energies, but feelings are more potent. I think we think of feelings as things that just happen and pass, but recognizing them as energies makes them something to tap into to enact change on subtle levels.
Anger is a favorite example. If when angry we can stop being angry for a second and examine the feeling, it's an energy. You might even be able to locate where the energy is in your body. Once you stop and examine it and recognize it as an energy, . . . well, you've already just stopped being angry and you're in new territory. It's now a lab experiment and you can go, oh yea, there it is. What's it doing there? I don't like it. It feels bad. That's how it starts getting transformed.
Sexual energy I've mentioned before as possibly the most potent human energy, but working with it requires a high level of discipline, removing all animal aspects of it and any idea or conception of desire, lust, attachment, self-gratification. Focus on just the energy aspect of it. Very difficult to do, but the same principle applies. When the energy arises, arousal, you stop and identify it and try to get to the point where you realize desire is not what you want. Lust is not what you want. Attachment is not what you want. Self-gratification is not what you want. Needless to say, spouse, house, mortgage, rug rats, etc. are not what you want. It's not about sticking your dick in someone else or someone sticking their dick into you. They may seem to be what you want, but where does it get you? If those are what you wanted, fine, you're there. If you're trying to get beyond it, then you have to realize they don't get anywhere and they're not what you want. I think I've said too much already. But it doesn't take too much to recognize that feeling as a very potent energy. Surprisingly it isn't located where one might obviously think, but activates the entire central energy channel. Oh, and the energy is subjectively pleasing. That's alright for some reason! There's no throwing out the pleasing aspect as something you don't want, but there's still no attachment and no object of pleasure. It's more like a communion or oneness of masculine and feminine energies.
This is not Vajrayana. It's my own personal voodoo. It might even be psychological self-brain washing. I don't know if the results I've noticed are an actual result of practice, or the obvious result of concentrated, psychological mind power. But even in Vajrayana practice, I think, whatever methods, techniques or visualizations are used, whatever deities or dakinis are entreated upon, it is emphasized that any results stem from not any outside source. Whatever outside source used is just oneself, and there's no separation from the self and the "outside" source.
