Tuesday, March 16, 2010

The Confessional of Doubt

My faith wavers. I try to think of the world as I used to and it just doesn't fucking work, anymore. Every emotion comes with four of five contradictory ones, and I have to sift through to figure out which one will serve me best in order to have a discussion with anyone. My mind's filled with reactive, self-aggrandizing doubt. My body communicates something of which I'm not aware and it unnerves me. I don't know if my instincts act in truth, or if I just want an excuse to keep lying around, unable to display basic fucking human affection without repressed narcissism swirling around the corners.

I miss invisibility, and I have no idea what the hell I'm supposed to be doing other than babysitting middle-aged men and their infantile power fantasies, deluding myself into thinking that this job is something I find fulfilling, psychoanalyzing loved ones while trying to sound as right as possible and fucking up any communication, doing everything in my power to make sure I have neither home nor resources, accepting advice only based upon the delivery of it, and whittling away the hours in front of a screen, watching everything else do something instead of me. I don't even fucking know what security is, and by that admission I've done a great job at maintaining a persona of centered spiritual wisdom. Said persona remains just a well-painted but shitty papier-mache mask that's starting to smell and peel.

How can I pull my weight in a relationship when I can't even pull my weight on my own? How can I balance this idiotically overwrought sensitivity with an underdeveloped sense of center and a vicious, pompous misanthropy? How do I get over myself and start fucking living with the rest of the species? I feel weight and irritation, and all I know how to do is treat it like some kind of necessary trial to burn off this unpayable debt I owe the world. I keep wondering if I have something wrong with me, if I've invented something wrong with me so that I won't have to deal with the world, if I have such overweening pride that I choose to defend against any intrusion into my life. I don't feel like I've rested at all, and I don't know what to do, any more.

I wish that my love didn't come with these conflicting insecurities and doubts. I hate it. I want my heart clear and true. I want some fucking clarity. I want what others seem to get from me, but I cannot seem to give myself. I feel drowned, cannibalized and thoroughly vexed. I want to be in the world just as much as I want it utterly devastated, and while I hear and understand the Great Big Tree o' Love and Light branching through the layers and levels of existence, I mostly feel despair at its distance from my ego, and an unceasing urge to submerge my senses in the grime and despair of it. I speak of optimism and hope to disguise my dearth in both categories.

I just wish I could be like Batman and throw off my identity, devoting myself wholly to a cause that comes from Within and Beyond instead of grasping at vaporous phantoms only to uncover a venomous trap I'd laid long before, without my knowledge. I keep trying, and I keep feeling this sharp pull in the opposite direction. I just want some mercy from myself. I just want to know what I have to do to make this life work. If it's right in front of me, just... can I maybe get the eyes to see it, or maybe some little happy glowing signposts so that I can figure out how to devote myself best to that path? I haven't been the best fellow, and I haven't always acted in the most conscientious manner, but I really try to keep myself feeling okay with what I'm doing, and I try to keep my eyes open for what you say, but I fuck up, as humanity does, and as we've built ourselves to do. I neither want to sit next to the Divine, nor do I want to languish in cold, dark Hel; I want, in my deepest heart, to find my Work. I want to find that Work that consumes every fiber of my being, that nourishes both my being and the Great Being. May I ask for these things? May I demonstrate my adoration through my work? I would really appreciate and feel honored for the chance to help.

2 comments:

Amanda said...

Ben! Do you really think if you were as terrible and worthless as your false ego tells you you are, that you would suffer like you do? You are possessed. We all are. The possessing entity is psychopathic and cruel. It fattens on your pain, and it LIES. Everything it says about you is true of it, not of you.

I know this because "my" false ego says all the same things to me. The last thing it wants is for me to remember what I truly am. It's hard to do, but when it starts having a go at you like that, you need to tell it to shut the fuck up. If you refuse to feed the entity, it will become weaker. It will even start leaving you alone for extended periods. Easier said than done, I know. There are a few things that can help. If you know anyone who can talk you out of it, you should let them. Don't worry about bumming people out if you do this. You probably won't. I'll bet you've helped others in this way more than once. Did you feel worse for it?
The right kind of music can help as well. You've got to go with your intuition on that. Sometimes you can listen to music that expresses how you'd like to feel. Sometimes picking something that exaggerates your feelings to the point of silliness will break the spell.
Just remember, when you're doing these things, you are not lying to yourself. You are recalling what you know is true. You would not be here unless your presence was required. If you need a purpose, let it be love. The world and everyone in it (including yourself) needs that more than any other thing.

Ben said...

Thank you for the encouragement! Since the penning of this entry I've come to terms with this Doubt thing clouding over, which, not unlike Rumpelstiltskin or Mr. Mxyzptlk, becomes vulnerable once named. I feel like, for a while, I was shining a flashlight in a mirror and blinding myself before just turning off the damn light for a sec and letting my eyes adjust to the new light. I guess a parallel comes from Jake Sully in Avatar losing his torch in the forest and noticing all of the bioluminescent plants and fungi.

The adversity seems to have brought about and indicated a crazy amount of growth. Existence is as axiomatic as ever, and I feel... centered, for once. At some point, I just had to ask the Other, "How exactly are you helping me?" and the situation came less as adversity and more an objective challenge, simply mapping a terrain with which I feel unfamiliar.

A lot of this feels like closet-cleaning as my psyche makes room for this new relationship I've entered, one rife with participation mystique and growth. Rotted matter falls away, painful as it might be, and allows that pneuma to ignite the processes once stagnated. Woohoo!