Today I am fairly depressed. It is a strange state that I
feel myself to be descending into, as it seems distinctly chemical. I can feel
the rolling turmoil of the imbalanced cocktail of hormones coursing through my
body. It is strange because the cognitive mind wants to approach this from a
rational angle in order to be able to diagnose the problem and offer solutions
to it from its cold and detached lofty perch of reasoning. And yet nothing the
mind thinks of in its discursive tradition has the power to console the
tortured glands that overflow with bitter juices. Therefore, the purpose of
this journal is to list all the reasons that my mind can come up with in its
rational mode in order to see if any of these, or their collective effect,
merits the agony that my endocrine system is currently undergoing.
The event that kick started this downturn in my emotional
state was my failure to talk to a girl that I had made up my mind to talk to. There
are additional layers to this event that require more discussion for the full
impact of this relatively trivial event to be appreciated. I sometimes feel an
affinity for certain girls that I see, which is an extremely elusive feeling
that comes from the ‘vibe’ or ‘aura’ that we can sometimes sense around people.
It is extremely rare for me to come across people that I experience an affinity
with based on that subtle sense. It is something displayed on their countenance
and the way in which they carry themselves that conveys a calm and tranquility
of mind as well as an attunement to the spiritual quest that so encircles all
the pursuits of my life. Around these people, I am always affected on a deep
level in a way that I do not normally experience. In fact, this effect is
precisely what leads me to believe in the validity of these subjective
judgments that I draw out of thin air. However, it may be that these bodily
effects, which include a heightened experience of the sensations around my
body, tingling like electrical currents running up and down my spine, are
triggered by my possibly arbitrary classification of these people as having a
vibe that is compatible with mine. Or the classification may not be arbitrary,
but purely physical and originating in the unconscious parts of the brain that
assess the evolutionary benefit of mating with a partner of a certain physical
trait or other. Whatever the case may be, it is undeniable that the effects are
real, and that they produce very strong reactions in me that at some times have
led me to burst into convulsive fits of tears and intense emotion.
Now the first few times that I have seen this girl, we
exchanged smiles and seemed to share a moment when we made eye contact but none
of us approached the other, despite a strong feeling on my part of a deep
connection flowing through the air between us. After this experience, I
resolved very strongly to approach her the next time I saw her and not to
repeat the mistake many times previously committed of avoiding such situations.
I even conditioned myself with the following phrase that I repeated like a
mantra to myself: “the next time I see her, that mask I wear will fall off”. This
was intended to get me ready for that moment when our paths will next cross, by
putting me in a state of mind that will allow me to transcend that fear of
rejection that is so strongly imprinted into my psyche. This deep seated fear
stems from the many past experiences I have had of rejection whenever I have
mustered up the courage to approach and talk to a girl that I had felt an
attraction for, in addition to the social ostracism that I have faced growing
up and the regular bullying and cruelty that I was subjected to as a sensitive
child, the result of which was to harden my heart and close me off from the
society that surrounded and haunted me.
Seeing this girl yesterday produced an immediate and
powerful effect over me. First, she appeared to me to be surrounded by an
actually visible glow. Second, the instant I saw her, I was instantly descended
into a dark and terrible place in my mind, a desperately depressed condition.
My best guess is that this was because of the immediate realization that I was
not actually going to talk to her, and that my previous assessment of myself
and decision to approach her were founded upon a completely delusional
understanding of myself. I had thought that I would be capable of acting out on
my resolve, but when the time came, my true self was revealed to me, and my
hopes and dreams were shattered to a million shards of sharp glass that pierced
and penetrated my whole being.
The problem is that sexual desire continues to rise to a
high pitch in me and taints my loftier sentiments of love and peace and
harmony. Especially damaging is its admixture into my moments of spiritual
attraction that I feel for girls such as the one that I have just spoken of. I
am excruciatingly aware of the strength of the sexual urge in me, and this has
traditionally been the source of my awkwardness around specimens of the fair
sex. It is a disgraceful blemish on those emotions of spiritual communion with
a girl with whom I feel myself to share a connection and a common aspiration
and outlook. I have felt such depths of loneliness and isolation in looking out
at the world and finding myself to be surrounded by an ocean of unconcerned,
self-absorbed and conceited animals, alone in this world of misery and
alienation.
Additionally, yesterday was an assault on my resolve to
remain sober in that I drank alcohol and smoked a joint, the latter being the
result of the mire of depression brought about by that fateful encounter with
the girl, and the former being due to peer pressure. Collectively, these
affronts to my ethical aspirations dealt me a hefty blow and left me bleeding
from my proverbial heart.
There has been another incident very similar to the one that
just occurred and which had a very similar effect on me. This happened a few
years ago when I saw a girl coincidentally on the same date as I had seen her
the previous year. Both times we shared a special connection, at least one that
I felt, and both times I failed to approach her. The rationale I came up with
for why I did not initiate any contact with her was that I was too strongly
motivated by sexual desire for the connection that I intended to make to be
pure. However, I am aware of the fact that there was a very strong component of
shyness and fear of rejection and/or awkwardness. Now that I think about it
though, any awkwardness must be resultant from my strong investment in the
prospect of successfully initiating the connection. So strong a desire must be
heavily based on the sexual desire, as I can find no other motivating force
within me that compares in strength to that one. Although it is possible that
the desire is derives at least some of its strength from the pain of isolation
and loneliness and the urge to share experiences of truth and beauty with
another soul, I cannot deny that the will-to-sex contributes significantly. In
the past, I feel I may have too eagerly betrayed my sexual intentions to the
girls that I approached, which showed itself to be a base motive and which
immediately brought about the dismissal of my courting attempts. It is my own
self-consciousness of this baseness that shows itself in a sort of half-heartedness
that accompanies whatever words come out of my mouth as a distinct but
subliminally transmitted subtle expression of the whole body, face and speech. It
is almost as if I am suggesting to the girl that I do not wish her to accept my
offer all the while I am making the offer, a form of self-sabotage perhaps,
emanating from the deep unconscious knowledge that I am better off denying
myself the pleasures of the sensual, because of the primitive unadulterated
mind’s understanding of the folly of pursuing these impermanent impersonal
phenomena. The surface layers of the mind have become tarnished by too many
years of deposited media extracts, society’s devices for its self-perpetuation,
like a machine that ceaselessly produces copies of itself, like a mindless
automaton that propagates through the transfer of information, like the virus
that takes over the host and usurps its machinery for its own replicative urge,
or the gene that takes hostage entire biochemical universes for the mere
purpose of making copies. What folly is the fundamental process of this world!
What vanity and intrinsic ignorance lies behind the chaos of this flood! The
sinister image of life, which motivates some mystics to call nature the church
of Satan, impresses itself violently upon the consciousness of whoever yearns
for the truth. It is a stupid process, aimlessly carrying out its biological
destiny, in a world on fire with the pain of passion, where genitals are daily
shown to be more significant than anything else, and where the will-to-life
manifests itself as the curse of existence itself. Oh that we could
self-destruct by the mere thought of it!
I guess the reason for my depression goes beyond that
particular girl and encompasses what she and my failure signify to me. It is
partly due to my feeling enslaved by the past and the habits laid down in the
synapses of my brain. It is a feeling of the karmic debt that cannot be evaded
and the years of fire that my bones must be burnt within before their charred
remains can attain to peace. It is simultaneously a purification all the while
it brings about pain and malaise. It is the darkest night of the soul that just
precedes the brightest soar of its release. This I must continue to endure. May
God give me the strength to carry on my embattled struggle, and may I learn to brave
these times of cleansing, and may I not grow too faint hearted to continue
fighting out my battle. May I learn to accept my fate and live at peace with
whatever realizations of weakness and flaw I find out about myself. The past is
settled and whatever debt I carry with me from ancient times cannot be absolved
save through the steadfastness of my journey, whether it brings my lacerated
feet to ever thornier roads or not, and whether my path climbs tortuously in
scorching earth and sun or otherwise. If the world has fashioned a shy and
socially inept creature out of me, then that is my fate and I would do well to
make my peace with it. The problem comes from a misperception of myself as
having transcended the conditioning of the past and so expecting myself to be
able to act in ways that are simply impossible given my peculiar character. An
extremely important aspect of my path is therefore to become better acquainted
with that character that conditions my actions, which is achieved by the calm
and disinterested observation of all actions that I perform. And such
observation can only happen during the action itself, and hence, in the present
moment. I cannot make a decision about how I will act tomorrow because tomorrow
brings with it its own peculiar mix of internal and external causes and
conditions which, given my character, condition my action at the moment of the
action. Likewise, it is foolish to think about the past and wish I had done
otherwise since the deed is done, and I could not have acted differently. I
should embrace this as a revelation about my character, all the more so for the
stark contrast between it and my expected course of action. This reveals a
delusion that I had had about myself. So, I should be thankful for the
opportunity to reveal hidden aspects of my character, and I should accept
whatever it is that the objective lens of scientific observation brings into
focus and not cower away or cringe at contact with a deeply disturbing or
unpalatable truth that is in this manner revealed.
May I grow at all costs, may I continue to reprogram those
neurons (damn them) and the conditioning of the past that they manifest, and
may I be strong enough to endure the years of torment that I must still sustain
along the way to truth, beauty, and peace.
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