I realize that all the activity, all the effort, all the focus on the state of mind, the activity of thinking, the calming of the mind, the being aware of the process, that all of this is preliminary.
That all of this is just the most basic preparation for other things. I don't even pretend to know. I imagine deeper experiences. I tend to imagine more comfortable experiences. And a more desirable waking life.
I cant help but notice that all of the commotion about consciousness is really focused on escaping much of the misery, uncomfortableness and undesirable parts of our daily lives.
Clearly, this is only preparation. But preparation for what? And we can guess all we want, but in truth we don't know. And even when we have references from people who happen to have gone beyond the daily struggle of simply developing a meditative state of mind. It varies so much in what they report. And tends to be connected to whatever path they happen to have assigned themselves to. And is many times subject to interpretation in the context of that path. Or the particular practice of that path.
That is difficult to differentiate or distill out the aspects of that which are meaningful, and true for everyone (if that is even a reasonable assumption to make).
We like to say that all paths ultimately lead to one path but we really don't know what that is. Its probably just a guess anyway. Maybe a good one.
It sounds or hints of something true, its seems logically true, in a weirdly intuitive fashion, which is kind of ironic in its own right. But there is nothing explicitly requiring that. We just tend to assume that all things ultimately come together in some common way that we can then explain how one thing is simply the instantiation of some more generic thing.
I want to talk about the difficulty in choosing or finding your path. Because I have had terrible difficulty with this all my life. I suppose that makes me somewhat qualified to talk about it, because it is in more or less the center of my struggle, to come to grips with my own consciousness from day to day and moment to moment.To explore my experience, and to grow as I think I want to. As I imagine I want to, into a higher being. I don't think that is very well stated.
I am guessing that there is nothing special about our evolutionary state, in that whatever progress we make is incremental to what our fore bearers may have made. And that there is no great leap, and also, no step too small to take.
We just all find ourselves at one particular point, lost and somewhat confused (me anyway). And imagine that there is some greater, freer clearer less fettered path awaiting us if we can just get our shit together and stop distracting ourselves from the essential aspects of our own lives.
So getting back to choosing a path, I cant help but think that the difficulties that I have had certainly related to whatever deeper issues I have with being connected to things, with making commitments etc. Maybe its fear of making mistakes (so don't do anything!) or just getting lost in the sauce of some path, in that it may bring you along the way but it will also skew your perception by the whatever apparatus surrounds it.
This may be rationalization, may be inevitable, but still I resist it.
So I have skimmed around a lot, taking up study in several different paths. Always when I get to the point where what I perceive is a ritualistic change in my life is required, I bow out.
Yet those changes cannot be insignificant in what they mean for a person to change their life. I am searching for a way that doesn't connect me to something I can identify as 'out there' and as a 'member of', just because that's what they call themselves.
I do think that the difficulty I have had can work for me. I think it defines a perspective of non-participation, yet with the very strong impulse to proceed. In my own experience, to a more enlightened viewpoint, to achieve a deeper understanding of my life and life in general. To experience others in a deeper fashion, at least in a fashion that is less peppered with the bits of uncomfortableness which I tend to feel.
Its a way to finally understand oneself in a simple form of just being comfortable with oneself and with others. To come to understand things through reflection and focus of consciousness.
The problem with all of this is that at a certain point you have to leave the ground. You have to establish certain things in your daily life that end the struggles which make up most of your daily life. Struggles like calming your mind, struggles like watching your thoughts.
I think the practice of that has to be comfortably understood and comfortable in its own way, before these other things can happen, because the struggle with this is so persistent in the daily life, that until its approached, I cannot imagine how you can really make any progress except perhaps in the one off-ness of the awakenings we experience throughout our lives.
