June 5, 2024
I dreamt that I was attending a play. My friends had invited me. They’d also bought my ticket.
The mass of people began moving into the building. I immediately became separated from my group. I couldn’t meet them at my seat, as I didn’t know where I was sitting. My friends held my ticket.
I began walking in the opposite direction of the crowd. I came upon a tiny church. It was in the middle of the hallway. I had to crouch to get inside. I took a seat.
There was a priest at the front. He was giving some kind of prayer. He repeatedly put his palms to his face and seemed to weep.
I remember seeing a girls arm. It was so skinny. I could see all of her bones. I was extremely repulsed. I looked at my own arm. It looked just like hers.
I was so quick to judge the girl for her body. Meanwhile mine was the same. I felt somewhat guilty.
I’m reading Carl Jung’s autobiography. It’s really affecting me in a pretty strong way. I’m only 100 pages in. I can’t quit believe how much I can relate to what he talks about.
I often feel that there’s a part of me and of reality that I can’t talk about with people. It completely falls apart as soon as I put it into words. I feel like that thing is so obvious. It’s everything and everywhere and always was.
I hear and read people talk about reality and philosophy and those types of things. I often get so frustrated and annoyed. I get the sense that any mental idea of the that ineffable thing is always like a shadow of the real thing. It’s fine to talk and to write about it, so long as you don’t actually expect to arrive to the truth through thoughts and words.
It’s an experiential thing.
I get annoyed when I feel that people believe that it can arrived at through words or thoughts. They get all worked up about it.
I feel lucky to have come across meditation so early in life. Direct, firsthand experience is so fundamental to those Vipassana courses. I feel lucky that I didn’t spend years going through a mirage of philosophy. I think it’s fine to listen to those conversations, as long as it’s not being listened to with the expectation of arriving at the truth.
Yesterday I had in interesting meditation. I was visualizing myself in infinite whiteness. Everything was there. If I moved left and right it made no difference. Again, it’s hard to explain. But it felt so calming.
Then I was visualizing this interesting thing. There was an infinite chasm below me. It was amazing and calming. But I couldn’t stay in that calm state. I would get like ‘hardened’. It was like my awareness would get sticky and stuck.
I placed my attention on a ball that was suspended above the chasm. Suddenly I could sustain the flow. It was like this trifecta. My awareness had to experience the chasm indirectly. I was observing a ball which seemed to represent a point of collapsed matter, or collapsed awareness. Through this I could indirectly experience the chasm without becoming sticky.
It reminds me of how it’s easier to see the stars by looking right besides them.