excerpt from: Wiggles & Waves

Leaving the Palace

As the story of the Buddha goes, 2500 years ago, before Prince Siddhartha Gautama became the Buddha (Sanskrit for "awakened one"), he lived a very sheltered life within the walls of his father's palace. At age 29 he asked his father’s permission to be ridden around the city in a chariot. His father agreed, but had soldiers remove every sign of human aging, sickness, and death from the city.

A bent, aged man escaped the soldiers’ notice and Gautama saw him. Gautama didn’t know what he was seeing, and he was told by the charioteer that this was an old man. Gautama asked if this was the only old man in the world. The charioteer told Gotama that everyone, Gautama , his father, his wife, and friends, would someday become old and bent and would eventually die.

According to the texts, Gautama reacted “like a bull when lightning strikes in the meadow.” He then ordered the charioteer to take him back to the palace at once.

Gautama had to summon courage to venture out from the palace for three more trips. On one he saw a sick person, on the second a corpse being carried to the cremation ground, and on the third trip he saw a renunciate seated in meditation beneath a tree. Gautama was deeply troubled by his encounters with old age, sickness, and death, and inspired by the sight of the renunciate, he asked his father if he could retire to the forest.

His father refused. Gautama then asked his father to promise him that he would never die, grow old, ill, or lose his wealth. His father said he could not make such a promise.

“Prince Siddhartha’s dilemma still faces us today,” writes Stephen Batchelor. “We too immune ourselves in the ‘palaces’ of what is familiar and secure.”

Existential psychologist Irvin Yalom identifies four "ultimate concerns" (Paul Tillich's term) - mortality, groundlessness, existential isolation, and meaninglessness - which we normally are well defended against. To be plunged into confrontation with death, existential freedom, aloneness, and meaninglessness is to leave the palace where we are secure and "comfortably numb."

To Buddhism and existentialism, it is when we begin to face suffering or existential reality that we begin to wake up from a condition that has been likened to sleepwalking.

And what does it mean to face reality?

Yalom writes:
In his four noble truths the Buddha taught that life is suffering, that suffering originates from craving and attachment, and that suffering can be eliminated by detachment from craving through meditative practice. Schopenhauer took a similar position – that the will is insatiable and that as soon as one impulse is satisfied we enjoy only a moment of satiation which is instantly replaced by boredom until another desire seizes us.

To me, these views feel unnecessarily pessimistic. I appreciate the suffering in human existence but I never experience that suffering as so overwhelming that it demands the sacrifice of life. I much prefer a Nietzschian life-celebratory, life engagement, amor fati (love your fate) perspective. My work with individuals facing death has taught me that death anxiety is directly proportional to the amount of each person’s “unlived life.” Those individuals who feel they have lived their lives richly, have fulfilled their potential and their destiny, experience less panic in face of death.

Some modern Western Buddhists would agree with Yalom, as they do not use Buddhism to disengage from life but understand meditation and Buddhist practice as Yalom himself explains meditation in his 1980 classic Existential Psychotherapy:
The process of deepest inquiry - a process that Heidegger refers to as 'unconcealment' - leads us to recognize that we are finite, that we must die, that we are free, and that we cannot escape our freedom. We also learn that the individual is inexorably alone.

To relinquish a state of interpersonal fusion means to encounter existential isolation with all its dread and powerlessness. The dilemma of isolation-fusion - or, as it is commonly referred to, attachment-separation - is the major existential developmental task.

The practice of meditation offers another avenue to isolation awareness. Though meditation therapists and teachers do not often conceptualize the benefit of meditation precisely in this manner, I believe that one of the primary growth-inducing factors in meditation is that it permits individuals in an anxiety-reduced state (that is, anxiety-relieving muscular relaxation, posture, breathing, mind cleansing) to face and transcend the anxiety they associated with isolation.

Individuals learn to face what they fear the most. They are asked to plunge into isolation - and, even more important, to plunge nakedly, without customary shields of denial. They are asked to 'let go' (rather than to achieve and acquire), to empty their minds (rather than categorize and analyze experience), and to respond to and harmonize with the world (rather than to control and subdue it).

Meditation can be a form of escapism, certainly, a way of tuning out, shutting down, closing in, and disengaging and detaching from life. But meditation can also be a way of facing existential anxiety and existential concerns and opening out to life with a "life-celebratory, life engagement, amor fati (love your fate) perspective."

temptation and anxiety

dream sequence 1)

I am on a oil rig. I look at the news and see a tropical storm heading towards nola in early summer. it is not even hurricane season yet and a storm is coming. experts are baffled. i am scared for my home and myself. new orleans doesn't seem to be ready for the storm and flooding will surely ensue. i am in a bar room as i am watching this. the bar is filled with temptation that is represented as strippers or escorts but bonnie is also with me and this comforts me. bonnie does not seem uncomfortable here which is surprising to me. she leaves the room and goes off with a stripper to have sex. i am floored by this and yet not i feel comfortable. she seems to be opening her sensuality which is exciting to me. i feel at ease although i am not sure what to do. i debate, do i go watch this or go off with another girl? several girls attract my attention and as i start to select one, i am not with the one i would like. i am pulled off by this one i do not want but i go with her. i realize the woman who interest me is with bonnie. i go and watch and i see bonnie kissing her softly. the kissing is soft and passionate. i watch and i am excited by this but in a emotional sense. the girl begins to seduce bonnie and this is enthralling to me to see her so free and experiencing something new. i feel free (dream interrupts).

i am by a pool and it has turned green. i am going around it and temptation is eveywhere. i am in a familiar place, the place with the olympic sized pool. beautiful women are laying out everywhere but i don't give in but i see it all. i dive into the water and feel like i am a kid again. i see kids around me. i leave the pool. i hear the storm is coming and i fear this may be the last time i see this familiar place. i leave to go into the locker room to change and i have a girl call me from china. she wants to know what her dreams mean. i start to explain them but get distracted. i tell her something funny about american money. i see a big silver dollar and it is huge. how cumbersome this big money is! she laughs. i finish explaining what i think her dream means and ask her for her feelings surrounding it to guide my interpretation. i leave the locker room to find something. i decide to go back to the locker room and i almost walk in the ladies but i can see in. i see these beautiful women partially clad in towels and the sight is warming. i see warm tan smooth bodies that look healthy and natural. these people look relieved and content (think after a hot shower or a workout). i only caught a glimps but the thought carries with me. i thought it would be better if locker rooms were unisex. i go into the male locker room and it is unisex. the temptation goes away. the girls do not look sultry, just natural. everyone is worried about the storm coming.

(anxiety and tension are tied to sex for some reason. i think this is because sex is a very relaxing thing to me. studies have shown that the heroin effects the brain much the same way an orgasm does. many first time users of heroin will ejaculate as the rush hits the brain. this linkage bothers me though. i do not wish to be slave to my anxiety. i wish to better understand it and master it.)

now that a i think about it. the femailes in my dreams may have another meaning... maybe it is a sign of my age! maybe i am scared of losing my attractiveness and growing old. i hate it but at times i am very aware of my self image. when i cut my hair, i noticed i felt less attractive but more simplistic. i am caught in a bit of a quagmire there. also, maybe i am a little scared of marriage.

yalom dream

i dreamt i met yalom he came to help me. i was in an examining room which which had the feeling of being common to me. it was not new or elitist, just very common. the floor and walls were white tile and there was a small window. i felt nervous in my inspirations presence. i talked and told him of my current condition with complete candor. it felt so strange and enthralling to be so open and honest. he was reassurring. we went outside and we were both shirtless. this seems like it should have felt odd but we seemed to both be in this together and there was complete openess... a kind rarely experienced in life. he was helping me to be completely open, naked if you will, and own my feelings. he used a device to bring light on my chest which gave it a sort of stamp. it said vol 1. His message to me was clear. your past is fine, this is a new day before you, embrace it and live anew.

(i met with my counselor yesterday and i have been reading a book by yalom which i believe influenced this dream. i awoke feeling so inspired)

the start of a story

my head feels like it is in a baloon. my muscles and brain ache from straining to see answers that have not yet presented themselves. my breath feels colder than that which normally is expelled. sadness weighs heavy on my eyelids. why can no one see it?

i feel stupid. everything i know and seem to have ever felt has been turned on it's head. i keep wringing out my emotions trying to make some sense of the pool gathering at my feet. every day i wake up and read, looking for hope and answers to make things better. the answers that come back sear my skin. why do i keep looking at the news? what am i looking for?

everyone has been wronged by this storm. all of our lives have been forever changed. casual observers try to offer bright sides but nothing changes that the place i know as home is a disaster area physically and emotionally. as i drove around new orleans, my last trip home a few weeks ago, i saw so many things that were broken. i kept asking myself, was this broken before the storm? i felt a longing to try and fix the things that were broken as i drove, but where do you start?

maybe you start by telling the story. how your life went from normal to oz, seemingly in 48 hours.

growing up in new orleans, i remember preparing for storms and being scared as a child. my father would board up the windows making the house dark except for slivers of light through the boards, and we would wait. luckily, we never encountered any really bad storms from the mid 70's till 04. we always seemed to have divine intervention, or so it seemed. people developed a faith in this blind luck. my father told me a few years ago what the worst case scenario was for new orleans and it involved heavy flooding, chemical plants overflowing, many deaths, and the levee's eventually being blown to help drain the city. while this was a good warning to follow for evacuating, it never seemed like it could happen.

this summer a weak hurricane named cindy hit west of new orleans. i remember being excited before the storm hit because it meant a break from the regularly scheduled programming we call life. threatening storms have always seemed this way. an excuse to go prepare your property for something you could surely beat and possibly to enjoy some time off hanging out with friends. cindy was not a big storm, category 1, but the winds howled all night long. my fiance' worried how would we know if a tornado was coming. i assured her that a tornado siren would sound but then i realized i had never heard one in new orleans. also, it was dark out so how would anyone see one coming. our dogs, two little pomeranians, sensed the anxiety and, in their own little way, asked if they could join us. as i picked them up, the house went into complete silence and the fan slowed. the power went out. as the wind slapped shutters on neighbors houses, it gently rocked me to sleep in the complete darkness.

the storm left us without power for 18 hours and we decided to clean up the outside and then we biked to the fly to enjoy the beautiful day. cooler weather had been pulled in by the front. 70 degree weather is always welcome in new orleans during the summer. we dined with our friends ronnie and julie and somehow the day seemed so forgiving. maybe it was the weather, maybe it was the friends, maybe it was the break in the monotony of every day life. whatever it was being without power was a minor issue and the "snow day" of sorts was welcome.

------- talk more about the feeling surrounding a storm.--- talk about the prelude to katrina--- talk about past storms and walking the dog during the eye. the feeling of rain dripping through the tree.------------

in september, after the storm hit, i was on a mission. that mission entailed moving to austin, starting school again, finding work, and returning to new orleans to fix our house. this was easier than it sounds. wednesday, after the storm hit, i drove from birmingham to ...

i accomplished all of that and then i checked on my parents house. we did not know if their was damage or how bad the damage was. the storm had physically seperated my parents. my dad works for tulane in risk management and my mom is a teacher. my dad was dealing with the plan of how to get claims filed and the school back up and running asap.

my mind spins. things around me are a blur.
feet propped up as i reflect on the sadness so far away and yet so close
a cool breeze licks at my exposed ankle
somehow it found that one place, like my emotions that i try to hide, that are so exposed.

strange fruit

i was in a resort and then in a foreign town. i am on a roof top with vendors. i eat something a vendor has to offer. it is like a tomato but sweet. i know the plant but these are mutated in size and shape. they are longer than any i have seen. i realize it is time to go and this person, a female, wants me to pay 60. i ask what currency and she says dollars. this is ridiculous. i will not pay that much money. i try to bargain. they will not concede on the price. i am worried about having people come after me for not paying. i decide to protest and leave without paying since they will not concede. the person shifts to a male and they are following me. they seem to be looking for me to identify my car so they can mess it up. i go to a strangers car and pull out my key. they attack this car and i start fighting with them. i slam his head on a pipe for parking. i do it again and again... waiting for signs of consciousness to fade. i punch him a couple times in the face. i can't do it as hard as i would like. i slam his head a few more times. i get up and look for my car. i can't find it. i am worried about being here. i find a similar car but the interior is not like my car. i go back to my hotel. i see friends there. they are friends from a previous time and shadow figures. we get on something like bikes to leave and mess up things as we are leaving the villa.

smoke rising

i am in new orleans. smoke is rising on the sunset and it is getting thicker. buildings are on fire. i realize one of the buildings is in my old neighborhood. it is a building i know very well. pain floods my eyes. how can this be happening? why? i rush to my old school. it is safe but people there have lost their houses either to water or fire. i try to do what i can to help at the school but i feel incompetent. why can't i just get down to the kids level? why i am i holding back?

2/1

i had a dream. i was driving around and there were crowds everywhere. i was trying to get my haircut. my hair was growing too fast. i wanted a familiar face that i approved of to cut my hair. i could not find them. i kept making appointments and slipping out ofg them. my car was small but fuel efficient. i could check and see how much gas i had left by looking in this bird bath and see the level of gas. the gas seemed to have a napalm jelly in it. there were lines everywhere but i could weave in and out.

1/27

i had a key ring and i could not find the right key to the doors i needed to go through.

1/26

i had a dream i was in a pool. there were others there too. i remember someone got injured but it wasn't me. it was a younger pesky boy or something. i was swimming in an old olympic size pool and if i tried really hard i could jump out of the water and catch something way up in mid air. it was almost like i had a fish tail. i felt very confidant and jumping was good for me. i felt as if i could do things i had dreamed of but i was alone.