Awareness, happiness, and attachments

[cjsmith]

[Pieces of my side of a conversation elsewhere, stitched together here.]

There's a lot of happiness to be found when one is oblivious, but then when one begins to see things a bit more clearly, it can hurt like blazes. So is there a stage past that, where one sees more, and is okay again? I'm thinking there is, but I have only a few shards to go on.

Lots of people ignore bad stuff. (Deliberately overfocus on good stuff to drive the bad stuff out, or are in denial. (And maybe also unhappy, maybe not.)) I ignore a lot just to stay sane, and somehow I think I'm missing a piece there.

I want to see it all, be aware of it all, and be okay. Some few humans can. I cannot (yet). Perhaps I don't have enough lifetime left to get there; that's okay. I firmly believe that people can.

I'm thinking of a very few people: Dalai Lama, maybe. I read him as truly happy -- that is, he is content, serene, happy, but not due to ignoring shit. Not due to making up a sweetness-and-light "good outcome" that no one actually knows will happen. That's a dependent, weak happiness. His is not.

The more I think about all this, the more I start to surmise that the attachments we hurt ourselves with are ideas. "Other people should meet my needs even if I cannot articulate them." "People should be competent at what they do." "Life should be fair." I've got that last one and it is going to cause me pain until I jettison it. I am deeply attached to it.

I would guess that this is a teeny tiny step on a really long road. I have peeled one layer of a very large onion. I suspect there's more onion in there and I can do better.

Comments

[kennita.livejournal.com]

I've found that I can lower my blood pressure by replacing "x should" by "I would prefer if x". That puts the focus back on me, since I'm the one having the negative feelings, and those are what I can do the most good by changing, since x often doesn't give a good goddamn what my feelings are, except to manipulate them, perhaps.

I like the idea of going to the Shambhala Center, too -- I'm contemplating the feasibility of not just being up, but being somewhere, by 10 on a Sunday morning :-) . I wonder if this Sunday is a particularly good day, or a particularly bad day, for such an excursion?

As far as ignoring bad stuff to stay sane, you say that like it's a bad thing. Most bad stuff you can't do anything about. In my experience, I have no desire to ignore bad stuff that I can do something about -- it's fun to fix it. That's the problem; there's enough of it that I have no choice but to ignore some of it. Oh, and there's that word "can" -- how much of my energy is it worth it (to me) to solve any given problem that I "can" solve?

People can think of any number of reasons why you "should" (i.e., they would prefer if you did) not ignore their pet causes. Yes, you're missing pieces -- get over it. In any case, you'll want to make sure the pieces are to your puzzle, not theirs.

[cjsmith.livejournal.com]

I would prefer if x

I like that one. I'll try it.

As far as ignoring bad stuff to stay sane, you say that like it's a bad thing.

Oh, it definitely has its advantages. I guess what I'm really exploring here is fear. If I am ignoring some bad stuff to stay sane, then what happens when bad stuff jumps up and says boo? I am imagining some pluperfect* state where I've done all my emotional processing and then nothing else can ever take me down again. Hah. :-)

* Yeah, I know I used that word wrong, but it sounds so almost-right there.