Transcendentalism

Today I write something more personal. Less general. I hope you find something of value here, but I did this one for me.

I have lived my life tormented by my own mind. The mind, in its constant search for meaning, constant need to protect, constant need to tell stories, never wants to relent. In a world where no one else ever wanted to be wrong, my mind chose to make me wrong. The mind, telling its stories, always made me the one at fault. Somewhere along the way, I started believing it.

Whenever something went wrong between me and another person, the mind always found a way to make it my fault. The mind would then replay the event, over and over again, terrible words of self-flagellation accompanying each replay. Years go by, decades even, and the same conversation, the same encounter, the same faces and expressions, play out again and again.

I have learned that as a gifted autistic person, my memory of things I find meaningful or interesting is exceptional. Co-workers have described my mind as a steel trap, once something gets in, it almost never leaves. On the flip side, if I don’t care about something, or I don’t find it meaningful, no amount of rote memorization can solve the problem. The mundane just doesn’t stick. I struggle with birthdays, appointments, phone numbers, the grocery list, and all sorts of things that make everyday life just a little harder. At the same time, tests, technical knowledge, important memories, giant mental lists of interesting information, all stick amazingly well. My memory is another two-sided coin.

This combination, the mind and its replays, the self-beatings, and the inability to forget have made the interior of my mind, more often than not, a living hell. I can remember, faintly, just a few seconds, one of my childhood traumas from when I was 18 months old. The ones from when I am older, are even more vivid, last even longer. No amount of time seems to separate me from this ability, to be tormented by the things I would so much rather forget.

I find my mind going back to places where I was traumatized, even at 7 or 8 years old. I find the exact spot in real life. Relive the memory like it hasn’t been 25 years. I keep my peace, hold my presence, remain grounded in the present moment. I attach the feeling of peace to the memory. This is one of the few ways I have found to gain some measure of peace, to loosen the hold that the trauma once had over me.

Some things in life are not so simple. I cannot go back to a choice I made. I cannot revisit a place that no longer exists. I cannot reconcile with someone who doesn’t even remember what happened anymore. I cannot rewrite the past, any more than anyone else. The best I can do in these cases, is to change my perspective, to find some way to see how what happened ultimately served to get me to here. To find some way to attach meaning to things that isn’t another victim story. To see my past from an empowered perspective, rather than a woe is me perspective.

Sadly, for me, time does not heal all wounds. I have always had to heal them the hard way.

The spiritual practice of transcendentalism has been the single most freeing thing I have ever learned. When I cannot forget, and the mind clings to its tales of suffering and victimhood, realizing that I can stop the mind is the purest freedom. Being present, finding joy in whatever is happening right now, is a little taste of heaven. Stopping the mind is like stepping out of hell, and finding that heaven has been here all along.

Then, human as I am, I slip. Memory, always keen, never fading, sucks me in again. The better I get at transcending the mind, the cleverer the mind gets at sucking my attention back to it. Always finding something more painful or pleasurable, dredging up my greatest regrets, or projecting my greatest hopes and fears into the future. The mind, unchecked, is like someone who knows me all too well, knows exactly how to hurt me, and is relentless in its application of pain when it doesn’t get the attention it craves.

As my awareness grows, I start to see these things for what they are. I realize that I am not the content of my mind. I chose what I put out into the world. What I put out into the world is what is real. No matter how awful the hell of my mind is, I always get to choose what I do, and what I say. So long as I can keep that awareness. So long as I remember that I am not the mind, or the emotions.

Some days, the hell of my mind starts to become unbearable, and I cannot find an escape. In the past, this would result in a panic attack. I had the worst panic attack of my life back in January. The body’s protective mechanism kicked in, finally, and the mind stopped. I finally felt the feelings I had been using anxiety and racing thoughts to hide from. I bawled my eyes out, crying and shaking, pleading with God, until at last I stilled. I experienced a full shutdown. In that place, I found peace again. I found myself as awareness, stuck in a body that would not move, in a home where I was completely alone, phone dropped on the ground beside me. Totally powerless, yet totally at peace.

Transcendentalism has found me, as often as I have looked for it. It has come upon me as I met a person, or as I faced danger, or was awed by some form of beauty. Now that I am aware of it, and have the ability to stop my mind, life has become far more peaceful. I can honestly say that the peace of no-mind is one of the most wonderful things I have ever experienced. These days, I often hear bad news, the latest disappointment, the latest thing to be wildly upset about. Where I once would have broken down, often now I am able to just transcend the mind, become totally present. Sometimes I just sit down, feel my soul, my presence, and a wonderful warmth fills my heart. Pure Love, and the joy of being. This feeling once came only in rare selective situations, but now I can find it every day when I just remember my awareness.

While I cannot ever forget my past, the pain, the regrets, I can at least shut it off. I can reconnect to life itself, to God, to the joy that has always been there, within, had I only known where to look.

I could wish for a day when the landscape of my mind was not a living hell. Instead, I accept that the mind is just doing what it is designed to do, to enable my survival. It might be a living hell in there, but it did get me to this point. It turns out, blaming myself for everything, always seeing the best in others, but the worst in myself, was an effective survival strategy. Like anything else that no longer serves my highest good though, it is time to move on from that.

I am working to retrain my mind, to rewrite the old stories, to reframe old decisions. To accept that I did what I did, because it was the only thing I knew how to do at the time. There was not enough awareness to do anything else. I can mourn what I lost, what might have been, but also love and accept myself. I can see my past self as I would my son, see his mistakes as not a personal failing on his part, but just part of his learning and growth. I can see my sons misdeeds as a developmental issue, a place he needs to learn, rather than as something that defines him. That is the vision afforded to us by Love. Love lets us see the best in people, to separate the being within, from the person without. When I turn that vision inward, on to myself, on to my own past, I extend that Love to myself as well; that unconditional love that comes only from the divine.

From the transcendental perspective, my entire view on life, on the world, changes.  In the mind, the torment, the hell, everything is wrong, and what actually happened is always resisted. From presence, I can see how the story of life is perfectly imperfect. Who would read a story, and call it good and believable if nothing went wrong? If there was no journey of trials and tribulations? No conflict between good and evil? If the characters got what they wanted every time they wanted it, rather than having to work for it? How amazing is it when we see our favorite characters brought to their lowest depths, only to emerge into their best version yet a few pages or chapters later? From this perspective, I see how everything happened for a reason, and that everything continues to happen for a reason.

Life is no different really. It is not a perfect thing; it is instead perfectly imperfect. It is filled with believable characters forged in the fires of their life circumstances. Whether or not we like the character, be that character that of another, or our own, we can always love the being within. The little piece of God that inhabits each character, even our own. We can protect ourselves from characters that aught to be loved from a distance, while still loving the being within. We can disapprove of what we once did, while still loving who we really are.

Each moment, we have a choice. Do we choose to be the prisoner of our mind, to act out old patterns, to live in hell? Another choice is to transcend the mind, to be the observer, the presence, the consciousness within. To be who we really are.

I like the person I become when I embody my highest self, when I align with my soul, when I am who God intended me to be. (Take whatever language works for you, the words are only words, they cannot convey the deeper truth.) Many people seem to like that version of me better as well.

The two-sided coin of heaven and hell is not somewhere else. It is right here, right now. It is within us, it is us. There is nothing to do, nothing to find, out there. It has always been, and always will be, right here within.

I wrote this one for me. I hope that many readers will find something for them as well. How wonderful would it be, if something I did for me, happened to also be doing something for everyone else?