The hole I dig is bottomless but
nothing else can set me free...
Robert
Pollard, I Am a Scientist
It is true we love life; not because we are wont to live, but because we are wont to love.
Friedrich Nietzsche, Sprach Zarathustra
...a friend posted something on Facebook about how baffling
it is to see people...middle-class, educated...who should know better in this
day and age...eating at McDonalds...I told him I could relate...it’s the same
way I feel about cigarettes, and people who don’t exercise beyond the effort
required to walk to the car or find the remote....but that a lotta people I
know feel the same way when they see people eating pizza...(which my friend passionately loves)...(real
pizza...not that soy crap)...
Dairy and gluten and
grease, oh my!
Dorothy Gale, The Yoga Teacher of OzIf I don’t know I know
I think I don’t know
R.D. Laing, Knots
...I mean...I’m more than aware that a handful of raw
organic kale grown in the backyard garden I’m too lazy to cultivate, in an extremely
rural region where with a minimal quantity of carcinogens and other toxins in
the rain and groundwater, would be a far better choice on just about every
truly conscious kinda level than a cupcake or a beer...and yet, I’m probably
gonna both eat the cupcake and drink the beer, anyway, for the sheer momentary
pleasure of it...(though I will put a handful of
store-bought-and-probably-not-organic-‘cause-that-shit’s-too-expensive kale in
my daily smoothie)....just like I won’t spend nearly as much time meditating as I do getting into idiotic
arguments with relative strangers on-line...
...with so many sinkin’ now you gotta keep thinkin’ you can make it through these waves:
acid booze and ass, needles guns and grass, lotsa laughs...
Joni Mitchell
...Thoreau wrote that most of us live lives of quiet desperation...(and Pink Floyd, somehow, a hundred years later, appropriated that and called it the English way)....Freud’s death instinct...mean, grumpy old thanatos...often powerful as the life instinct, more upbeat and personable eros...sometimes more...no matter how many ridiculous positive affirmations we in the yoga crowd try to force-feed ourselves when we’re not trying to blame it all on being modern and western and thus trying to shed our modern western skins...(without realizing, of course, that there’s really nothing more modern or western than the romanticism that causes us to think that becoming ancient and the far away other will cure us of our despair)...(and now, it seems, I’m pointing the finger of self-righteous judgment in the opposite direction)....(I’ll stop)...(but not quite yet)...
...(here, without further ado, is my own painfully pissed off and horribly self-righteous Facebook post from a week ago, following the news of Robin Williams, dead of chronic despair: If there's one aspect of the yoga world that I absolutely loathe, it's how many people there are—including teachers, yoga bloggers with tens of thousands of "likes," and major revered gurus--who seem to think they're experts on depression even though they clearly know absolutely nothing about it—thinking it's synonymous with being bummed out and can be fixed with positive affirmations or an "attitude adjustment" (clearly unaware that depression might be defined as the inability to take on a positive attitude), or that it's synonymous with sadness, and thus, is something we all experience from time to time and should be seen as a natural and beautiful part of life. No, it isn't. And if you don't know that, you should keep your mouth shut on the subject, no matter how many people fawn on you and tell you how wise and spiritual you are.....harsh, but, if nothing else, it’s my own blood in which I’m writing)...
....ultimately, I think it all points to the incredible necessity for
compassion...for all of us...in all of our junk-food eating, time-wasting,
un-compassionate, judgmental, self-righteous, sometimes flat-out nasty glory....because of all that, in fact...because
we have pain and because we all do what we do, however unmindful,
however counterproductive, to make ourselves feel better...right here, right
now...
4 comments:
Me: avocado fries, peanut butter cups, & fast cars.
I'm positive that I affirm to know what makes me happy & sad, but I can't name it for anyone else.
i wish positive affirmations or just giving in to the pleasure of the moment fixed depression. But it fucking doesn't. The only fix i know for depression is don't let on that one has been depressed for 20 fucking years,
Thank you. I often read your writing. I am a fan. I've never commented before. I used yoga to fix my pain. Sometimes nothing works. Like today, I'm wearing my sadness like a 300 lb jacket. Getting out of bed is too strenuous . I find a lot of the yoga world to be phony and wrapped up in ego, vanity and bs feel good sayings some guru or poet wrote. Look at me. I'm so compassionate and enlightened when most cases, they're neither. I was meant to read your blog today. I felt understanding.
Catching up some here at your blog because I felt the need. Not that you are my guru or anything like that, Jay, but I must admit when I am feeling really down and I think to come read you that I leave feeling more connected with myself. And chocolate ice cream does not do that for me. Namaste' :)
Post a Comment