I'm trying to rearrange my brain again.
I have been lost lately, completely untethered. More so than you could divine from my twisted words, if you can believe that.
Effort has been severed from result so that I have been drifting through a world that is hallucinogenic. Where I am is incomprehensible to me given the work I have put in to not be here.
I felt absolutely panicked the other day and desperate to grab onto something, so of course I turned to words. Trying to calm my mind down and settle me, to regain some perspective.
I have read 13,689 rearrange your brain self' help books over the years, just like you. 99% of them fade from memory after the last page is turned. Two have stuck with me and I always go back to them (but obviously never fully learn the lessons within).
The Tao Of Willie - A Guide to the Happiness in Your Heart by Willie Nelson. At first blush you might laugh at that source. If I catch you I will dispose of you like Tony Soprano disposed of Ralphie Cifaretto. The book is filled with wisdom.
I like it because it is written in a straight forward way. Believe me I have read my share of heavy duty books. One comes to mind called Denial of Death. It was written by a doctor of something whose theory was that we all act as if we will never die and this denial is at the root of all our problems. I practically needed a translator to get through that one.
Willie talks about living the golden rule, the simple power of stopping to take a deep breath, wiping out negative thoughts and not hanging around with negative people, meditation, letting go of anger and regret, recognizing the fact that we are not in complete control of our lives, taking an honest look in the mirror. He illustrates the ideas with anecdotes about his own life. If you know anything about Willie you know he has had his ups and downs and his share of challenges and difficulties. Just look at the man, listen to the man. He seems pretty well at peace to me. That's all the authenticity I need.
A New Earth: Awakening To Your Life's Purpose by Eckhart Tolle.
Don't let the title fool you. It is not one of those new age wimpy ass books. This one slaps me in the face and makes me get up and dance because it gets right to the heart of my personal, twisted psychoses.
There is a lot to it but there are two basic points that I gobble up. The first is that your emotions tell you what your mind is thinking. If you pay attention and don't like the way you feel, think differently. Sounds simple but it is powerful.
I am an emotional man and a very twisted one, so I am almost constantly in a state of fear or anxiety or worry or depression or sadness. Happiness is so foreign to me that when it does occasionally break through I am startled. As if the sun suddenly came out at midnight.
When I am awake and aware and recognize pain in my soul, I stop and focus on what the hell I am thinking. And I can temporarily erase the pain. Powerful stuff that somehow I forget about for long stretches of time.
The second and more powerful point to me is the idea of freeing yourself from your mind. We all have a point of view constructed from experiences and learning and tainted by misconceptions and failures. Kind of a voice in your brain. Mine is particularly nasty; if I could rip him out of there I would beat the crap out of him.
If you pay attention to what that voice is saying to you and recognize it as something separate from yourself, you can eliminate the negative influence it has over you. Sounds mystical but it is not. And the process is powerful.
I always try to add a third dimension to the road back, beyond Willie and Eckhart. Sometimes it's Hunter, sometimes Bukowski, The Beatles, anyone who inspires me and whose mind I respect.
This time it is Leonard Cohen.
I grabbed on to him tenaciously after watching that special. Reading his lyrics, listening to the songs, reading his writings. His words inspire me, they challenge me, they make me think and they make me want to change. They appeal to the small portion of my brain that is still functional that knows intuitively that I can be smarter.
2006-2012. A wild ride so far. But I'm still swinging.
And I have my books and my poetry to protect me.
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