Bottoming out again...

How can this be? After such a spiritual rush the past few weeks, it seems odd that I am feeling so low now. Has my perception changed? Am I being an ungrateful brat again? Were the past few weeks an illusion of the ego, a rush of emotion high on intellectual stimuli?

I really don't know.

All I know is that I feel lower now than I have in a long time. I suppose it is a step better than being completely numb, a state I had been in a for a long time previously. Maybe this is a necessary step of the epurging of the ego, a stripping of desire, not just to be free of stuff but to be free of attachment that makes us slave to emotions whether or good or bad. After all, there is a payoff to being in a bad mood, a reason to isolate ourselves, to crave attention and comfort either from others from whom we seek sympathy or solace or channeling these feelings into various forms of distractions.

We could channel the energy into positive things such as washing the dishes or exercise but how often we thrive on the mood itself because it gives us feeling.

Given the choice between being numb or in a bad mood, which would we prefer? Which makes us feel more alive?

Every so often, a single line from a song contains a universe within it, open to many interpretations. One of my favorite song lyrics ever is from the Goo Goo Doll's Iris:

"When everything seems like the movies, you bleed just to know you're alive."

Not sure what it means within the context of the song and am not sure it is about literal bleeding, even going so far as to analyze it in the context of cutting, as such, but it certainly captures the surreality of modern life. It's about numbness, certainly, but it seems to me to be more about the fact that most of us live our lives not here, not now, but in some illusion we buy into that is a work of fiction created from within and without.

Personally I hate being in a bad mood but I suppose I should listen to the energy of the mood and dig more deeply into why it is so. It isn't the event that put me in the bad mood necessarily as there was something already there triggered by the event.

That is the level we must get to in order to really move beyond being slave to the emotions. What lies beneath the veneer? Why am I so agitated, my mood so altered, by something that in the course of things really doesn't matter?

Is worry just lack of faith?

"For this reason I say to you, do not be worried about your life, {as to} what you will eat or what you will drink; nor for your body, {as to} what you will put on. Is not life more than food, and the body more than clothing?" (Matthew 6:25, Luke 12:22, cf. Matthew 6:31-34)

The Greek word for 'worried' means anxious, troubled with cares, care or provide for. The term does not render judgment to being anxious or troubled with cares. But caring takes energy. The Greek term for no (me) is used in the sense of "don't even think about it" rather than a negation of the thing itself. In other words, don't dwell on the concern. Concern and care is the human condition. We aren't to deny these things or feel guilt over them but are not to dwell upon them for where we focus, there are our concerns.

This is why Jesus tell us to seek first the kingdom of heaven. In so doing, the cares of this world will not consume us. When focusing on the cares of this world, it is too easy to be consumed and dragged down.

That is the goal.

But how do we do it that when the bills are piling up, when the job security is disappearing, when the bill collectors are daily at your door, when food is scarce and everything seems to be slipping away?

We often feel guilt when worrying, as if in so doing we lack faith. Perhaps in an idealistic sense, we have not yet attained that perfect faith. But it doesn't mean we lack faith. It isn't so black and white; it's more of a continuum.

Perhaps what worried us in the past doesn't worry us today and so our faith is actually stronger than it used to be but it isn't quite strong enough to bypass the worries of today. Perhaps in days to come what worries us today will not worry us tomorrow, even though the circumstances themselves may be no different.

So the kingdom of heaven, whatever that is, should be our focus. That is the goal. Without a goal of some kind we drift and are blown about like the wind, consumed with the things of this world which are never ending and are never resolving, any comfort and solace found only temporary.

The human soul longs for something long lasting, something eternal, absolute. It is what drives us and the reason that "things" never satisfy. In focusing on the kingdom of heaven, we help alleviate the problem of attachment and desire.

It is the desire, the craving, that is the trouble and it is freedom from desire that is one of the true commonalities of all religious traditions.

First the high, then the low...

And so it goes that with a great revelation, a great experience in the presence of God that we come back "down" and find ourselves feeling alone. So great an experience comes with the withdrawal.

There is a great desire to share the experience but a sadness that comes in the inability to express it. Living it takes time and we seek the immediacy of talking about it and the disappointment that follows in our inability and lack of response from those to whom we talk about it.

And this is the ego talking. And this is the great trip up. We take pride in our experience and feel privileged, special. This isn't to say that we aren't those things but the trick of the ego is to isolate them and take them and hoard them out o need, desire, lack. We seek to make them "our" experience.

The difficulty comes in remaining humble. Just as we are not to react to negative circumstances or things that happen that make us uncomfortable, so too must we remain the same when we experience great things. This isn't to say we mustn't experience the joy as it is a Biblical injunction that we are to experience the "joy of the Lord" but to say that we must not dwell on it. Whatever we experience, whatever we feel, we must continue to move on.

Remember it, meditate on it, even share the lesson learned, but do not stay there as to stay there is to risk becoming static, allowing pride to puff up our ego, our intellect, the feeling of somehow being above others leads to us separating and isolating us from others.

I have been feeling low. Having had such a great experience over the past few weeks I let my guard down and allowed my ego to get the best of me, allowing myself to be frustrated which is just another way of saying being selfish and spoiled. I'm not getting what I want right now so I'm frustrated.

What is it I felt I wanted? Attention, profound writing, more attention, accomplishment, freedom from seemingly dead end work.

But what I really want is God. And this requires faith. Faith = trust. So my impatience is really a lack of trust.

And that, my friends, is humbling.