How does my mind move when it is pushed?

I pull away from that which pushes me. I do not stand firm or push back. Pushing back is far better than being pushed, and standing firm is the finality of them both. It is of the utmost importance that full attention go to the reaction of drawing further away, be it from obligation or ego. To repeat these words while imagining emptiness is superstition, it is prayer. But to investigate their meanings with attention and quiet repose is to discover their meaning for yourself. Meaning, which is what people so desperately seek when they are thinking, is simply the feeling of the emotional drive within us. To over-intellectualize the world is to transform all real experiences to thoughts. When you think too much about love, can you love? I am not talking about the actions of love which many of us copy and imitate, I am talking about the deep, emotional sentiment of love, the actual feeling within you which makes you joyful and giving without reason. That is to say, the mind does not reason its way to giving joyfully; instead it is spontaneous and uncorrupted by thoughts. The mind always assesses and calculates, that is its purpose and its nature. It is what has brought human beings technologically and socially forward and is the ultimate manifestation of the evolution of the will to live. But it is a painful mutation, and that pain brings about an investigation by the mind of itself. What is wrong with the mind has nothing to do with its usefulness in the past; it's best to dispense with absolutes like good and evil in history and see only evolution and change building one thing upon another. The only thing that matters is the present and the present mindset, which is a product of all the "good" and "evil" things done throughout time. So, what is wrong with the mind is that it cannot experience true meaning because it does not know the purity of being whole, the purity of a child or an animal, or the truly religious mind. Because of thinking, it is inherently abstracted from a direct experience of reality. A thought, which is an artificial electrical and chemical reconstruction within the mind of a real thing, is necessarily divorced from that thing by the duality of the observer and the observed. Is it more enjoyable to listen to a discussion of a movie or to see the movie yourself? To directly experience that thing is to find meaning in it and return to the unfettered organic purity. So to say that one is to investigate and find the meaning of a thing, it is not an intellectual banter of ideas but a soulful look into the reality of the thing. This can only be done when one learns to stand totally still in amidst the maelstrom of the mind. It is as if one can then open the door which has always been there but has never been seen. I am departing for a time because all of my relations with the human beings around me form a network of ties to my personality which I am at present unable to alter, try as I might. So, like a caterpillar, I must separate myself from the outside world, during which time I will incubate to emerge a totally new thing. I must be free of the life chosen for me, in which I would speak a certain way, follow a certain norm or custom and progress through life in a certain fashion. I do not wish any judgment upon anyone in my life, for there have been so few of them who have had ill intentions. Instead, it is the opposite, for I know that I might remedy much of the pain I see around me by opening the hearts of those who suffer by their own minds. Then, having realized the possibilities of life, one cannot return to what once was, no matter the consequences. The separation is inevitable.

The Lord's Prayer

I ask nothing of thee
but that I might be opened wide as a flower
and feel your gentle sunshine
like a mother's kiss to her newborn's soft skin
as one feels one's first breath
to be the origin of all things
so too do I imagine every moment
as the beginning of forever
I want nothing from thee
to help build my own prisons
give me not wood or stone to finish casket or grave
And when my walls have fallen for the last time
I will know that nothing in me can change
It is only the flowing of the river upon which I dwell
I am nourished by the blue bird's song

He sighs, leaning back in his chair, letting his shoulder blades momentarily support his back. They both busy themselves, only half participating in the conversation. He watches them for signs of discomfort, the tell-tale sign of victory. In him, vanity struggles with self-loathing; "Either they are afraid of this conversation, or I'm not worth their attention."
He spoke up with the bravado of someone unconvinced by his own point, "I just don't believe in it, that's all."
"Believe in what?" his father replied with the habit of those accustomed to hearing a question twice despite having understood it.
"Life is for the living!" he blurted out, immediately regretting the use of such a cliche phrase. "Why would you burden yourself with the expectations of someone who has died, no matter how important they were to you?" His voice got more and more shrill as his temper flared. His mind only half gave attention to the discussion at hand. Simultaneously, he pondered the essence of conflict and its effect on the body, on the pulse and the temper. He tried to picture what honesty could not be admitted, and his own aggression born of fear. Fear to lose, fear to hurt and be hurt, fear to win.
As it is so often between parents and children, or husbands and wives, or any one person who stands to lose an investment in another, a second conversation was taking place beneath the first. Just as a river's current will often flow beneath the surface only hinting at its presence with sporadic and seemingly erratic upwelling, so too did this deeper discussion only surface in the distractedness and "examples" given to prove a point.
His father wished to ask, "You will not preserve what I love when I am gone?" And his son wished to reply, "I will love you now as best I can and that is all that matters!"
In all human affairs not directly influenced by the body, the human mind manifests its presumptuousness in supposing it holds a certain "truth" which can be isolated from the rest of the fabric of reality. One might say a certain action predates another, or one object exerts force upon a similar object with relative certainty; but invariably the greater the action the greater the composition of forces which produce it. So it was with this particular conversation that an impasse of misunderstanding was reached. It is a problem of culture, or more appropriately acculturation. Each and every human being is an island of culture with his or her own habits and tendencies, and each meeting between two distinct personalities is accompanied by a life time on each side of accumulated experiences and their various interpretations, themselves depending again on experiences and their interpretations. In essence, each one of us journeys down a road alone, building his own reality in his head, here borrowing an idea, here creating his own. And in a conflict such as this, it is the failure of the ability to communicate all of the accumulated significance of their own lives which brings each side to a deadlock. Gazing at his father as he washed the dishes, he accepted and tried to feel his notion of reverence for the deceased, forgetting his own intellectual contemplation on the illogical nature of it. For a brief second, his focus was clear and he felt not reverence or appreciation of his point, but a genuine love which consumed him like a sudden immersion in liquid. He gazed with a wholeness of being beyond simple understanding, and yet its simplicity was startling.
"I think you are right, Dad," was all he could mutter. His father continued washing without turning his head. The thought "He hasn't heard me" occurred, and the defensiveness arose again, and the moment evaporated.

Disclaimer

I'm writing these things down not as a message, or a reminder, or as information to anyone in particular. I have left, and am continuing to leave where ever I am, for very specific reasons which I will illuminate at a later date. Instead, this should be considered a place to publish thoughts, a place for reflection and a place to practice speaking to an audience. My writing has always been strictly private, but the author who is also the reader is also the most intimate critic and writing produced under the coercive influence of self-awareness generally, if not exclusively, seems forced. To be one's own audience breeds a sense of the most grand futility, and since I have given up imagining the future (come what may!) I have been unable to write to anyone except myself in the present moment. This, then, begs the question "Why am I doing this?" Why write at all, really? My hope is only that I might one day afford a leisurely lifestyle of extremely limited resources but correspondingly limited expenditures. No matter one's philosophical inclinations, one must eat and drink with a roof over his head. So, to write to an audience, whether real or not, is a form of self-expression hitherto unnecessary in writing exclusively for one's self and a practical move toward a literary career. Now I just need something worth saying aloud.