We wish to change our feelings and our lives to avoid being upset. We think being upset is bad. Does changing and avoiding unpleasant feelings actually work? How much of our experience is more like a roller coaster going up and down, twisting and turning, where we are here merely to experience the ride rather than to control it's direction?
I see that I personally do make choices that affect and create the world around me, but this choosing seems equally outside of my control as it is in my control. Perhaps even less in my control. Who I am appears to be awareness and self-awareness computed from the data gathered through my senses and filtered through my mind. I do not feel that I am truly separate from my environment in any way. I only perceive that I am separate in my imagination. In fact I don't know exactly what I am at all. I don't think I know what anything is at all in an absolute way...Except that I think that I am love and I am the whole universe. But as much as this is a definite thing it also is equally open and uncertain and unknowable. I find that I find myself when I am totally open to not knowing myself. When I let go to the unknown I begin to be. I begin to be in a place where I know things. Here, I think the universe is still unknowable, but aspects of it are definitely knowable. I can know things for sure. How I feel and if what I think is true. I can accurately describe the world around me.
Whether or not we can change the world, we subjectively live in and experience a world where we do change the world, where we have volition. Denying this reality entirely without actually knowing isn't helpful. It seems like it's just suppressing unwanted and difficult feelings such as responsibility, guilt, embarrassment, and shame. Fear would also be a good one to mention, anger too.
I think for nearly all of us, it is more helpful to embrace how we feel, this subjective dimension of our lives, where we struggle with our power to control ourselves and our environments. I think through facing it and accepting it, we can come to understand it better: whether it is real or not, whether we have free will or not. An all out denial seems like immaturity and delusion to me. A mindful embracing of this subjective experience seems much more healthy. I think for most of us, this subjective dimension where we experience choice is a permanent aspect of our lives. Whether it is real or not, we are stuck with it. Denying it won't eliminate it from our lives, it will just put it in a little corner of our minds where it will constantly bite and burn us.
On the other hand holding on too tightly to control is equally problematic. Fearing what lies outside our control. Never letting go, never letting life flow on its own. This is another kind of hell. If we live in constant fear of the unknown: what is outside of ourselves, what is outside our control, we lack a healthy balance with our environments. We live in "forced" certainty where we desperately and tyrannically cling to what we know, and fearfully shove away everything else with all the strength we can muster. We are ruled by our fears and survival sense whether or not it is wise to do so: whether or not we are missing out on valuable opportunities and solutions passing right in front of us. We won't let ourselves know the unknown because we perceive it to be far too dangerous. We are cut off from the spontaneity of life, the unknowable uncertainty of life that provides solutions if it is given a chance. Our compulsive boa constrictor hold onto our life suppresses the energies, intelligences, and instincts that adapt to new circumstances: overcoming what once were seemingly insurpassable obstacles.
This matters if we have choice. If we have the ability to both realize this and then change our actions to avoid these two scenarios.
To me it seems like there are two dimensions which I operate in. Two dimensions, two sides of the same coin that is what I experience, that I cannot currently deny and that by participating in I gain peace and insight.
I feel that these two dimensions are truly one. The first is that all that I am, all that this is moves in a way totally transcendent of my personal will. Life, space and time, is a river flowing downstream. I am either a whirlpool in the river, or the river itself simply flowing as it may. What does this mean?
It means that everything is a culmination of everything else, everything is determined by everything else right now. We don't have personal control. We just are the way we are and now and this is all there is to it. We just are. Life just is. This seems to me to be the bigger gear in the clock. My personal will, the other dimension, seems to be a facet of this reality. My personal will and feeling exist within the undivided spectrum of boundless being, where life moves and we move in an interdependent and non-separately fashion. Where I can't change this, because this is all there is. Personal will seems secondary to being. Although the reality is that even if our personal will is secondary to being, it is also apart of being and for a time as this person evolves and is, we have choices to make: we feel like we have willpower and we feel that our choices matter. This is where denying this truly subjective experience isn't helpful, and embracing it is. This is where this matters to us. Truly, really.
It is clear to me that a healthy development of self always results in the embrace of one's inner feeling, or of the wisdom that we grow through this inner feeling rather than by suppressing it. In my own experience, broader truer perspective has been gained through the embrace of my own feelings. Objectivity and clarity gained through a development of the heart. These have actually been impeded my ignoring and suppressing my feelings. I discovered the broader dimension of the Flowing River of Life through an expansion and deepening of my feelings to something that went beyond myself. Seeing this bigger picture brings stillness to my heart. Seeing this solidifies the unity of myself with the world a little more every time. When I see it, my sorrows and my joys seem more one than two. Like intertwining currents in the same flow of divine light and bliss. I feel less opposed to my sorrows and more comfortable going with the flow. It's all going to the same place anyway. In his autobiography, Yogananda Paramhansa describes life similarly to this . He says that he saw a war in a vision and felt how the terrible current of this war was completely apart of a divine play that encompasses all the effort of humankind and all of life. Divine or not, negativity seems inseparable from positivity. In fact these are just words that separate the experience of the world in our minds, that in no way separate sorrow and joy in the world as it is. From this perspective it seems that the attempt to avoid any negativity is in fact delusional. Because we can't avoid negativity and there is nothing wrong with it. Attempting to avoid it will actually bring it to you. There is in fact no direction that is better than another. All roads lead to nirvana.
I have felt this recently in a Zen sort of way. Like no matter what I did, I would experience suffering because of my karma, but that that suffering would end because my karma, all karma, leads to the gold of liberation. It felt like it was useless to attempt to pick a better path, because all paths were the same. The perception of "better" was just that, a perception. A delusional attempt to get to fulfillment. In reality we are already on the path headed towards liberation. There is nothing we can do to deter ourselves from that eventuality. We just think we can avoid pitfalls on the way. I don't think we can. On this level, our task is not to choose a direction, but to keep on walking. To simply be ourselves and by simply being ourselves, purifying our consciousness and attaining nirvana.
So to answer my inquiries. Do we have control over our feelings? We may feel that we do, but this control exists within a bigger picture of total flow. Do we just experience them? Yes, but we also experience ourselves having control over them. How much control do we have over our lives? Some perhaps. Even if we do have control, it seems like no matter what choices we make we arrive at the same destination...One more thing. This destination we arrive at, the level of all levels, is the present moment. It is right here and right now. It is this. Always this. And no matter if we do or don't perceive it, it is the end and beginning of who we are, it is the answer we are searching for, and it is us doing the searching feeling we are lost.
Peace!
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