Journals

March 30, 2000

California

   We left San Diego this morning headed North to Washington. I sit in the passenger seat of an old 79' International Scout trying to gather the thoughts and emotions of the last month into some cohesive form of expression. The wind at freeway speed reminds me of the energy and feel of San Diego. A constant roar that buffets and braces you into a subconscious state of tension and unease, never giving a moments rest or solitude. You are surrounded by over a million and a half people engaged in a frenetic dance of illusion. Caught up in our world of self created importance replete with careers, kids, politics and money; we don't seem to realize the atmosphere we live and die in.... filled with the static of unconscious life.

   After living in that quiet house overlooking the ocean with only the energy of one other soul to accompany me, it was quite a shock to have so many people in such close proximity. In a moment of self-pity, I recite that sad old cliché’.... You don’t know what you have until it is gone. I realize now what I'd had. I also realize that it was my choice to leave it and what I had decided to undertake for the sake of my own development.

   I had arrived in San Diego in good shape. I was focused and aware of my goals. After a few days, however, my consciousness had started to slip. Let me explain.

   Living in Pacifica I had the opportunity of separating myself physically from all of the distractions of life. I had taken that time to develop my thoughts to ever-finer levels of understanding. I had, if only for a short while, transcended the base knee jerk reactions of everyday thought to a gossamer reality of intricate, centered consciousness. My thought patterns were very fine strands of silk all held motionless in an unwavering, almost stoic, stratum of peacefulness. I'd moved slower, and interacted more delicately in an effort to keep these thoughts in the intricate, understandable form they had taken.

   Staying in San Diego.... it was like trying to preserve a mandala of sand in a hurricane. There were so many stimuli, so many outside intrusions that it seemed an act of futility to even think. The freeways roared like some unseen predator in the back of my mind. Jets screamed and wailed overhead like the mythical banshee, sending my subconscious into frightened spasms realizing that it could not keep track of all the noises, action or people that surrounded it. In a matter of days those quiet, delicate thoughts had been reduced to the sound of the high-tension power lines crackling and buzzing overhead; they were invisibly overwhelming the fine magnetic fields, which interact in my brain with a cascade of electromagnetic radiation.  Basic limited function was all I could muster.

   "Well, This is what you signed up for!" rang through my mind as I tried to piece my ideas and ideals back together again. This was truly another perspective on life and one I would have been remiss to ignore. So I stopped shaking for a moment and took a look around me. What lessons were here to learn, what ideas could be gleaned from the chaotic jumble that surrounded me?

   I looked at the most obvious measure of any situation, how much happiness was it generating for the people who were involved. What I saw were people who were living in houses that closely resembled the storage units they rented to keep the 'stuff' that we imagine makes us valuable... and happy. This stuff inevitably ends up in storage because it could never live up to its billing, no thing can make us happy. We dress and act like our peers or the images we see on television in an effort to appear more attractive or confident. I wondered... if we are always trying to look or act like someone else, how are we ever going to be happy with or accept who we are? We crowd together in big cities in an effort to be a part of something bigger, something more than we are. If we aren't fulfilled with who we are, is being around more of whom we aren't going to make us feel better?

   It seems that I had always put the value in my life on things that were not in me. Possessions, relationships, religions, even other peoples ideas, anything I could accumulate to make me more than I was. I'd found that I had placed very little value in myself. I tried to look like someone else, talk like someone else and was constantly acting like someone else. Not only could any of these things be taken away or changed at anytime, there was never an end in sight. There was always one more thing to have or learn or someone who was a little bit better, stronger or faster.

   So that is some of what I saw in San Diego, myself in all my unconscious glory. A collection of possessions, consuming all that I could find; unconsciously running back and forth from my storage shed for people to my storage shed for things. Never realizing that the shed would never be full, I would never be satisfied.

   Until I accept.... Me.