Let Be What Is
I finally finished the book: "A Million Little Pieces" by James Frey. Despite the controversey about fabricating parts of the story, it's still fucking good book. It still made my heart pound, and my gut wrench, by my face smile, and my eyebrows furrow, and my heart resonate, and my eyes tear, and my mind turn. The unfortunate part is that I must write a paper on it. But here I wish to have an informal space to write all my comments, all my reactions. Raw and straight from the head.
Wow. It's all converging. All the information is all converging to this one huge arrow that I can't ignore. This big fat signpost that says "Hey, follow me. This is the meaning of life." Irena pointed to it, The Way of the Peacful Warrior Pointed to it, Eckhardt Tolle pointed to it, Waking up in Time pointed to it, Acceptance and Commitment Therapy pointed to it and now James Frey lifted a finger and said, "it's right fucking over there." (On a side note, it's kind of funny how I wind up writing and speaking like the author of whatever it was I just read or watched. James Frey had many opportunities to use the word fuck.)
I'm going to stop trying to write this journal like some beautifully crafted novel, though, because that's not what exists in my head. What exists in my head is a concaphony of disordered thoughts, bouncing around like atoms in a cup of boiling water.
After I finished this book, I thought: "It's all the same. Everything is the same. Everyone is saying the same damn thing." Yes, the "everyone" in my conceptual world, which, in actuality, is probably just a handful of people. But a handful of people that I tend to find extremely wise, extremely brave, extremely compassionate, and have been through hell and back again. That's the one thing common to them all: they have been through hell and back. I found myself left with this:
Let come what will
Let be what is
You don't have to be afraid
You don't have to be afraid. Fear is a choice. It's a choice. IT's been so clearly demonstrated to me through so many sources and so many ways. Fear is a choice. It is as simple as experiencing fear, being engulfed in the fear, and fully feeling the fear, allowing it to be there, allowing it to course through your body and your veins without it taking a hold. Just let it live, and then choose not to be afraid.
In James' case, it was the Fury. The fear, the Fury, the anger, the phantom beast that seemed to control him. Even at the end of the book, he called it a Phantom. He called it the Fury. He described it as this beast, this horrible creature, this monster that would take possession of his body, and make him drink, and snort, and snuff, and smoke, and whatever the hell else he could get his hands on until he destroyed himself. THe book, again, was about separating himself from that. Externalizing it. But he always acknowledged it as part of himself, I think. He still took responsibility for all of his actions and all of his choices. And he then realized that it's really just as simple as that: making a choice. We do have the choice in the end. We always have that choice.
People choose negativity or positivity, fear and chaos, or love. Tolle called it unconsciousness. This word makes sense to me, but even talking it over with Nick, the idea of externalizing something like a "Pain Body" as Tolle likes to call it, seems to deny that it is a part of yourself. It is a part of you as a whole, that needs to be accepted and forgiven. I suppose the debate is whether it really is a part of you. Or really, whether you really exist in the first place. I don't mean, disappear in a puff of smoke kind of non-existance. But a dissolving into everything kind of existance. Dissolving into everything or dissolving into nothing.
The thought I have, the idea I have, that was also sparked by my discussion with Nick the other night is this business of chaos or love. Tolle, and so many of these books and people say that if one truly had all the information, and understood everything, and had the courage and the awareness and the strength, he or she would choose love over chaos, over fear. But even this you cannot know with certaintly, but the thought was, and the idea was, and for lack of a better way to explain it, people would choose love because they would be aligned with it, this greater energy this force this god or what have you that exists in a uniform way and acts in a uniform way. People would all make the same choices and do the same things because they would no longer be themselves, but they would be this one God entity which only has one action and one choice and one way of being. Chaos is different. Chaos is everything else. Chaos is separation from the God entity. It is choosing anything and everything that the God entity would not. Shit, this Christianity shit almost makes sense to me. But I feel like they got it all wrong. The ideas are there, but they got it all wrong. And even as I type this, I recognize that most of this will be misinterpreted, and most of what I say may not even have any semblance of truth in the real world. But this is what i feel, this is what I "know". It's what Nick has always known. It's what I have always known.
I digress. This book. Back to this book. It was love that brought him out. It was Love that helped him attain such a strong sense of Presence in the moment, that he was allowed to sit in his fear and sit in his Fury, and simply make a different choice. His love first gave him hope. It allowed him to be non-judgemental and non-evaluative, at least towards Lilly. But it's all the same damn shit. He was able to look himself in the eye, to see who he was, to accept his whole self, and no longer judge himself. He was able to love himself, and so became filled with love, as it would seem. And upon becoming filled with love, he acted as love and chose as love, and saw each choice and each step along the way. He really saw it. He was fully aware and fully consciouse and simply saw the choice. And he chose love. He chose because, as I've said before what I think the reason is, he became love for a second, merged with love and love sort of chose for him. Because that's the choice that love would make. I don't know... all these ideas are very fuzzy, but this gets back to the idea of who we really are. Are we anything at all or are we everything or nothing? Because it seems we are either love or we are chaos, but never "ourselves." This idea of a self, is starting to look extremely illusory to me. We are either chaos, and choose everything that love would not choose, or we are love, and we choose what love would choose, because we become love, and we act as love. Or we become chaos and act as chaos. So then where do we fit in? Who are we in the scheme of things? We have this mind, this cognitive mind that allows us to think, and we can feel, and we can have emotions, and we are born into this world and we are separate. We are all seperate individuals with our own bodies and our own conceptual worlds and we are taught to separate ourselves from others because our perceptions display to us that we are physically separate, that we are emotionalliy and consciously separate. There's I and you. I feel this, and you feel that. We are allowed to exist differently, and so we must be seperate. But we all have consciousness, we all have awareness. We all make choices. But we make those choices as love or as chaos. It is as if these two greater forces, matter and anti-matter are constantly creating eachother and annhilating eachother, in this seething froth. The froth is chaos. The destruction of the froth and the unity into one is love. But to unify into love we must destroy ourselves. We must refuse this illusion of separateness, our physical bodies, our internal cognitions, our individual minds. Me must let all of that go, because its very existance is chaos. Our very existance is chaos. The big bang, the universe shrinking back and converging into one point. The bang and the expansion is chaos, the convergence and the shrinking is love.
These are all thoughts. They are all ideas. They exist in my head and now electronically on this screen, on the hard drive of the servers of livejournal. They are what they are. True or false, right or wrong, good or bad, love or chaos. I could be totally off the mark, but this is what I feel, this is what I resonate with. We are either chaos or love. Chaos is everything that love is not. So in the rare instance in which we merge with love, we chose as love, and since love is a single entity, it only makes one choice, and so we only make that one choice. Otherwise, we are merged with chaos, and we can choose anything, randomly, as long as it is not the one choice that love would make. the world of separation and individual differences is chaos. a world of clinging onto our single identities is chaos. the world of unification, of letting go of who we think we are, of letting go of our differences and our separation and allowing everything to converge into one point is love. These are just words. They are arbitrary but they represent ideas. They represent truth, they represent falsity. They represent something that exists, but doesn't exist. They represent something that I feel, something that I resonate with. Something I feel I just "know." The danger in translating it into language is that it must be interpreted by others. But the same words and the same way of stringing words together for one person, does not represent the same thing in another person, and so misconceptions happen, and misinterpretations arise. What if the bible is one big fat misinterpretation of Jesus?
James read the Tao and resonated with the Tao. He didn't believe in any higher powers or the 12 steps of AA. HE didn't believe in replacing one addiction with another. Because either way you are still unaware, you are still unconscious, you are still not in the power to make the choice. To sit infront of a big glass of your favorite alcoholic drink, feel the fury, feel it course through your body and feel it's compelling urge to control you, and feel your compelling urge to be controlled by it, but still choose not to drink it. That is awareness, that is consciousness, that is control, that is love. Let come what will, let be what is. Everything is disorganized, and will probably remain as such. Somehow i'll organize it for my paper, but for now, it stays as is. Well, it will always be as is, it will always be what it is. Thoughts, streams of thougths, ebbing and flowing, and coming and going, and floating away. Let them float away, let them come and let them go. Hang on to nothing, because nothing is yours because you are not you. you are either love or chaos. another thought, another idea, let it come, let it go. you are a container for thoughts, a container for feelings, a container for consciousness. you are a way for love to be born into existance, or for chaos to be born into existance. these are just thoughts. they are neither right or wrong, they just are. they exist. they dissolve.
can i let go? can i let go of myself, of my existance, of my fear? can i choose love? This morning, after I brushed by teeth and washed my face, i sat down on the floor infront of the toilet and i just stared at it. I followed the curve of the bowl, and saw it's shine. I saw the bits of dust and hair that were caked on in places. i saw the pure white. i saw the shadow under the edge and the water beneath. when I was a little girl, I couldn't even look at it. I couldn't even sit infront of it. they started me on a hierarchy, and i couldn't even do the first step. finally, after thirteen fucking years, i did it. i did the first step. all while playing over and over in my head like a broken record: let come what will, let be what is, you do not have to be afraid.
I guess what I'm wondering, is whether i should mention this in my paper. whether i should mention my years of anxiety and gripping fear around emetophobia. my continuing struggles with it. it is so personal, and so vulnerable, and so tender. but it is what it is. the professor will not judge me. it is the only way i can truly write how this book affected me and what it meant for me. it is the only way. however, the assignment calls for something else. although, perhaps i could tie it all together. my life, his life. somehow drawing a comparison between addiction and emetophobia. forming a theory of all mental illnessess and all psychological diseases. i don't suppose that is too far away from what the assignment calls for. well, i will decide.
for now, i get the thoughts down, and i will have this for later, to piece together my reaction to this book. this amazing and wonderful book that is so amazing and wonderful because of what it did for me, or what it showed me, along with all the amazing and wonderful books i read that were so amazing and wonderful for showing me the same thing. the same thing. it's all the same. its all the same in my conceptual world.
I leave this for now.
If you have a chance to read "A Million Little Pieces" by James Frey, i recommend it.