timboucher

Something has happened to me. Something awesome.

I stopped suffering.

Suffering, I have unilaterally decided, is not actually a real emotion. It is the repression or restriction of the real emotions: Love, Joy, etc. Those ideals are what is really real. I came to tell you that we weren’t sent here to suffer. That’s not part of the plan.

I don’t, however, expect a single person to believe me. The grip of suffering on the mind and heart which it enthralls is so powerful that it feels as though it is the only thing which could be real. Platonic ideals of Truth, Joy, Beauty, Love, etc seem ridiculous or childish in the face of devastating problems which threaten constantly to overwhelm us in a tidal wave of pain and confusion.

Hopefully, you can at least believe me that I have “been there.” I have not only suffered, but shared a great deal of it in public spaces - perhaps foolishly and embarrassingly so. Maybe you’ll remember or happen upon during your travels through this website the trail of emotional trash I left during some of the worst periods of my own suffering: when my own ideas about what Love should be came crashing down on me as false, as just hollow ideas without any life of their own.

If suffering comes from repression or restriction, then it would follow that you can’t overcome it by attempting to stop or slow it down. Of course, during the worst times of our suffering, we feel as though giving in to it will wash us away. That is, in a sense, what I found that I needed: to be washed clean. It was no easy process because I discovered that the things which I feared, which I hated, which made me angry, which hurt me - I found that I clung to them far more tightly than the things I supposedly loved. That is, I defined myself for most of my conscious adult life according to the things which I suffered at the hands of.

But no more.

I don’t want to give the false impression, though, that I have somehow “risen above” or transcended “mere emotion.” Far from it. If anything, I feel the beauty of human emotion much more keenly than ever before, both in myself and reflected back from others. I also still get annoyed, or think certain things are “stupid”. I just don’t cling to it. The emotional response arises, I witness it, and then let it go. It’s simple but it takes a lot of discipline to practice. The price of liberty is eternal vigilance, Thomas Jefferson is credited with saying. I believe this is what he was really talking about. The American Revolution was merely a side-effect of a group of men (and women) who came to a place of awareness and self-mastery. You can see it in their writings: the poetry of the Constitution, the humble yet noble spirituality of the Declaration of Independence.

I draw the line at getting sad about things, because I realize now that emotion is a choice and I recognize that I have nothing to be sad about. Although I do still cry sometimes: simply becoming overwhelmed with the raw power of the moment, of the majesty of existence, of the good things and good people which I have somehow managed to surround myself with. I count myself as infinitely lucky for what I have experienced up until now, and if I were to die right this second, I would die completely fulfilled and at peace. I recognize that I am responsible TO what I have been given and not necessarily FOR it. This is what is meant by Grace: what happens to you is so impossibly good that there is no way the sum of your good deeds and strivings on this earth could ever possibly have warranted such beautiful fulfillment.

The gifts I have been given are threefold, and by their power combined, I feel as though I have been given super-powers:

1. Clarity of perception and cognition: discernment, the ability to see and communicate Truth.
2. Tranquility of emotion: total inner peace, and the ability to make peace with others through the right exercise of clarity and the third gift:
3. Harmony between intentions and actions, between myself and others: the ability to take Right Action and to effectively understand and utilize cause and effect relationships to increase clarity, tranquility and harmony.

I group all of these changes loosely under the heading of “Self-Mastery” which I have been writing about on this site from various directions for these past few months. Self-Mastery, to me, is complete awareness of first yourself. It requires total honesty and the discipline to make that constant: a way of life. When you become aware of yourself, you also become aware of habits and patterns within your life, and you begin to observe how they control you - how they cause you to slip into automatic unconsidered behavior: in short, how they cause suffering. Self-Mastery, then, is awareness of and the discipline to actively change habits and patterns which cause suffering.

To master oneself is to end suffering. The Buddha taught this: to overcome desire means to not act automatically from habits, be they biological or otherwise. The Jesus of the canonical and Gnostic Gospels taught the same thing: don’t lie and don’t do what you hate; align your intentions with your actions to live in the Kingdom of Heaven while here on earth. Sun Tzu teaches it in his Art of War, along with all the great Chinese and Japanese strategists and sages: the Tao Te Ching, the Hagakure, the Book of Five Rings, the Art of Peace. See also: The Bhagavad Gita, the Freemasons, the Illuminati, the Founding Fathers, the Rosicrucians, Aleister Crowley, Bruce Lee, Carlos Castaneda, Rumi, the Wu Tang Clan - we could name names and point to philosophies which dressed these same teachings in a billion different cultural and contextual costumes. But the point of such an exercise would be simply to say: there is an answer. Truth exists - even if we try to deny or run from it. It is not only perceptible, but can and should be lived. It is, in fact, the only way to live. It’s what we are here for; it’s the “plan.” Without Truth, nothing is.

What then of suffering? What of anxiety, fear, anger, hate, annoyance and all the rest? Simple: those aren’t really living. Every one of those feelings comes from failure to accept things as they really are: suffering is caused by rebelling against reality; it is the same as the Buddha’s teachings against desire. To desire anything is to say that this moment right here is not enough. It distances you from your own experience, dampens your awareness, drops you into recursion. To really live you must be able to die completely fulfilled at every single moment. There must be nothing missing. You cannot seek completion in anyone else, in any other thing: even in ideals such as God. (There can be nothing external!)

Depending on where you’re at though, that may sound like the most pompous kind of bullshit. I fully accept and expect that, which is why I have also prepared a list of more concrete changes which I have noticed accompanying the above in my life. If you know me - either through my writing, or through my person in the world - maybe you’ll have noticed some of these changes as well. More important than what has happened to me though is what can happen to you if you master yourself. I am not a “Master” by any means, but I have begun to master my self, and maybe we can compare notes on this process in each of our own lives and derive some kind of value in so doing.

Specific changes I have noticed:

1. Weight loss, increase in muscle mass, flexibility and overall improvement in health. Eating better without feeling like I am “giving up” favorite foods.
2. Dramatically increased ability to perform physical tasks, dexterity improvements, understanding of how to root out bad habits and reform them by encoding new muscle memory.
3. Increased acceptance of self-image, leading to dramatic boost in confidence, ability to interact with people socially, dressing better, presenting myself more accurately to others - elimination of conflicts between internal and external “me”.
4. More manageable sex drive, with healthier expressions of same as well as increased ability to “handle my shit” when it comes to women: I am no longer seeking physical or emotional fulfillment from others, but value enormously what contact I do have with others - in whatever form it takes. See also: healthier, more realistic attitudes towards Romantic Love and relationships.
5. More direct and clear in my communications with increased ability to encourage other people to do the same. More honest, authentic.
6. Clearer thinking, better problem-solving skills. Ability to think through (and take) steps required for accomplishing specific types of actions. Better organized, cleaner surroundings and environment.
7. Ability to really enjoy and appreciate other people. My capacity for accepting, and loving others has exploded along with my ability to express those feelings to them without feeling embarrassed or “weird.”
8. Learning where my limits and boundaries are and express them without reserve where needed. Understanding what I am good at, recognizing that I don’t need to do *everything* and that other people are much better at certain things than I am, and recognizing that we’ll get further working together than competing.
9. Ability to see through and not be wounded by other people’s emotional games, cons and manipulations. Learning how to circumvent same by being honest and direct and by giving other people the space to make mistakes without needing to hold them to those mistakes forever.
10. Ridiculous desire to share, help, teach, give to and care for others. Money has become completely illusory for me: adding value to people’s experience of life is much more important.

Also, it may not sound like it after all that, but I am also much more modest than I have ever been before. I said it already, but it bears repeating: I realize now that I am responsible to what I have been given and not responsible for what I have been given. When people say nice things to me now, I just smile because it is beautiful when people feel good, not because I am some kind of hero for doing what we all should have been doing all along!

Remember: The only part of you that dies is the part of you that suffers. Everything else is eternal.

• Wordplay? More like word-SLAY, I’d say
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