What I’ve learned about myself in 2024.

To say that 2024 was a transformative year for me is an understatement.

At 55 I learned two things that changed the way that I look at myself and others. They helped me to become more understanding and compassionate. They freed me from my own mental bonds and helped elevate my life. I’ve shared them in previous blog post and on my PeerTube, but now I’m going to wrap it all up in one post.

I give full credit to one of my best friends, Ray. When he came to me in the beginning of 2024 and told me about his failing liver, and how he was going to be put on the transplant list and that he was afraid for his life, it triggered in me a desire to ease his pain and his heart by introducing him to Buddhism. He spoke of his regrets and his desire to understand himself and the world around him. So I taught him the 4 noble truths.

However, I hadn’t been a practicing Buddhist. I believed in the 4 noble truth and the wisdom of the teachings of the Buddha, but I had never really practiced them in a way that made them a part of my life. So to teach Ray, I began to review all that I had learned, and put them in to practice.

The first thing that I knew that I needed to do, was practice meditation.

Transcendental Meditation.

I first learned a method of meditation called “Mindfulness meditation” 13 years ago in therapy. I was having severe panic attacks and I needed a way to overcome them. In therapy I learned to pay attention to my breath, and to train my mind to observe my panic attacks rather then to drown and lose myself in them. Eventually, after 6 months of daily practice and listening to guided meditations, I was able to overcome my panic attacks and deal with my issues head on.

While this was wonderful, the mistake I made was not continuing the practice of meditation. I found it to be very difficult to maintain and to keep my focus while doing it. So I stopped. I praised it’s effectiveness, but treated it like taking medicine to cure an ailment. Once you’re cured, why keep taking the medicine? That was my mistake.

So when my friend, years later, came to me with his concern over his liver and how it might mean that his time would be shorter on this planet, and we started talking about “suffering” and how it’s caused by desire, we also began to talk about the last noble truth. The Eightfold Path. Which are as follows…

1. Right View: Understanding the nature of reality, the Four Noble Truths, and the law of cause and effect.
2. Right Intention: Developing thoughts of renunciation, goodwill, and harmlessness.
3. Right Speech: Avoiding lies, harmful speech, and idle gossip.
4. Right Action: Engaging in ethical conduct by avoiding harm, stealing, and misconduct.
5. Right Livelihood: Earning a living in a way that does not cause harm.
6. Right Effort: Cultivating positive states of mind and letting go of unwholesome states.
7. Right Mindfulness: Developing awareness of the body, feelings, thoughts, and phenomena.
8. Right Concentration: Practicing meditation to achieve deep states of mental absorption and clarity.

It’s believed that by following this path, one can decrease and eliminate the causes of suffering. However it’s the last step, the “Right Concentration” that is the key to following all of the steps of the path.

As I’ve said in previous videos about the subject, meditation isn’t what most people think that it is. When you ask the average person about meditation, they will tell you that it’s about remaining calm and pushing all of the thoughts out of your head. They’ll talk about “peace” and “tranquility”. And while those are aspects of the result of meditation, it isn’t an accurate description of what “meditation” is.

Meditation is about FOCUS. The act of meditation is to focus on something so intensely, that all other thoughts fall by the wayside. When we do this we begin to recognize that the majority of our thoughts are like so much chatter, filling up the empty spaces of our existence with nonsense. It centers us in the present, and teaches us the truth. That thoughts about the past can teach us, but that they can also hurt us by not allowing us to move forward. And that thoughts about the future, are really only speculative, and rarely bear fruit. By meditating, we learn to recognize thoughts that are helpful, and thoughts that are unhelpful, and choose which to give our attention to.

I knew all of this from an intellectual and a somewhat practical perspective, having done “Mindfulness meditation” in the past. I also knew that there were deeper levels that I had never experienced, and that if I wanted to help my friend, that I first needed to understand fully what meditation was.

And then, by chance, I watched a video of David Lynch, the writer and director, talk about something called “Transcendental Meditation”. I had heard others talk about it before, but didn’t know what it was or how it was different from other types of meditation? So I started to do some research.

It was a lot harder to learn about it then I thought it would be.

You see, TM (for short) is kept very very secret. The reason is that when it was was introduced in 1955 by Maharishi Mahesh Yogi and he began to teach others, he wanted to be able to keep it’s teachings secluded to the meditation training centers that he wished to have all over the world. The only way to do that, he believed, was to charge people money to learn, so that he could take that money and fund more centers. At the time of writing this, one has to play around $1000 dollars to receive three lessons, and be given a secret “mantra” (a word or phrase that’s repeated) which was never to be discussed with other people.

However, I don’t have that kind of money. So, I scoured the internet to try to figure out how it’s done. Fortunately I not only found a few places that explained it, but I also found a video of Maharishi explaining it himself! Thus began my exploration into TM. (If you want an explanation of how to do it, read this.) I started with a ten minute goal and then worked my way up. Within a short time I started to see the benefits, which only encouraged me to keep up with my twice a day practice.

One of the benefits was unexpected.

For years, maybe decades, I had been living with a deep sense of fear and danger. I worried that something would happen to my family, or that I was constantly make poor choices. Intrusive thoughts poured from my mind like an endless jug of water. Why wasn’t my girlfriend home yet? Did she get in an accident? Is my adult daughter safe on her date? Did my dog eat something bad for it? Was the government going to throw me in jail because I filled out a form wrong 10 years ago?

Fear poured out of me everyday, but of course I never showed it. I couldn’t let the people around me know how deep it went, so I kept a brave face. Which only made it more difficult to deal with. It became so pervasive in my thoughts that I didn’t realize how deeply it affected me. Because I hid it for so long, it became a part of my daily life. Just like the story of the frog who when put into warm water doesn’t feel the temperature increasing until it’s been boiled alive, I too didn’t know how deep my suffering went.

Until I began practicing TM.

I think that the reason TM worked so well for me is because it forced me to focus inwards. Instead of listening to my breath, or focusing on an object or a sound, I had to go inward and try to “listen” to my own thoughts. (TM is done by repeating a mantra in your head) This made me keenly aware of my invasive and stray thoughts. By attempting to focus only on the mantra and recognizing yet not focusing on the stray thoughts I learned how to sort of “edit out” thoughts. It taught me to recognize thoughts that kept me down, and dismiss them as quickly as I recognized them. The more I did this, the more I began to feel less stressed about the future and less worried about my past. It taught me to become more centered in the present. It moved me from a “fight or flight” perspective that I had carried with me for decades, to a “rest and digest” perspective that freed me from the constant worry.

For the first time, in a very long time, I started to feel more at peace then I ever had before. Slowly I crawled out of my fears, and found peace in the moment. I was able to understand the deeper lessons of life because they weren’t being muddied by my fears. I became more interested in my own thoughts. I wanted to know why I had them and where they would lead me to. And this, lead me to my next quest of understanding.

Determinism.

One day as I was watching some TikToks, I happened upon someone who was talking about “free will” and “Determinism“. I had heard the word “determinism” before and knew a little about it, but had never really explored the idea. What caught my interest was in it’s relationship to “free will”. This person was saying that “free will” didn’t exist because of determinism. The argument goes like this… Determinism is the philosophical idea that all events, even human ones, have a prior cause. Even our decisions. This means everything in the universe unfolds in a predictable and inevitable way, given its initial conditions. Suggesting that choices are not truly free but are the result of preceding factors, such as genetics, environment, and the laws of physics.

This intrigued me because it seemed similar to the Buddhist teachings of “Dependent origination” which describes how all phenomena arise due to specific causes and conditions. It emphasizes that nothing exists independently and that everything is interdependent.

So I started to watch videos and read more about the subject. And as I learned more, I found myself becoming more compassionate and understanding of others. There was something about the idea that none of us are in control, that we are all the result of causality, that broadened the scope of my compassion. Not just of others, but myself as well. I slowly began to let go of poor decisions I had made in the past. I started to see the actions of others as the results of 300,000 years of causality. “Blame” became a useless word.

Instead of focusing on things like “control” I started to think more about “experience”. After all, if free will doesn’t exist, then the only thing we have, is our experiences of the illusion of free will.

Of course this created certain moral dilemmas for me. For one, if there is no free will, then how do we hold people responsible for their actions? Why “do” anything at all if I’m not in control? These questions and more ran through my mind as I studied more.

Then one day, as I was meditating for the second time that day, a realization struck me. If there is no free will, and all we have is the illusion of free will, then our desire to hold people responsible is part of that illusion. There’s never been a moment where it wasn’t part of the continued illusion of free will. And that it’s part of the story that we all play out. In other words, we have no choice but to act as if free will is real, and that we all are responsible for our actions.

It was from there that I started to see life like a movie being played out by actors who had no control over their words or their movements, and that the only thing they had, was their experience. Good, or bad. Some people would go on with their lives and experience a mixture of good and bad times. Others would experience horrible, painful lives. This, much like personal responsibility, saddened me. That for some, the only experience they would have, would be one of pain and suffering. But as much as that thought saddened me, my feelings could do nothing to change the truth of it. Existence is often cruel and unfair.

But for me, all that this did was expand my capacity for compassion (because it could do nothing else but that). I don’t know why I am predisposed towards compassion? I didn’t chose to be. Yet I am. And I can do nothing but be who I am. None of us can. And there is a mixture of beauty and horror in that understanding.

Conclusion.

This year has been transformative for me. I’ve let go of so much pain, resentment, anger, and disappointment. This year I had the best Xmas that I’ve had in decades. I was able to sit with my mother with no resentments. I was able to open my heart like never before. I became less judgmental. I became more patient and understanding. Because of these two things, meditation and determinism, I was able to become a better me. Just like I was always meant to do.

I’m not saying that everything is peaceful and perfect. I still make mistakes. I still get upset at poor decisions. I’m still learning to let go. But it’s all a work in progress. In the illusion of my free will, I am grateful to experience this process of change.

For 2025 I look forward to experiencing the process of physical change. My goal is to lose weight, and become healthier and stronger over the next two years and get ready for the move that my girlfriend and I are planning. I look forward to seeing how the changes that I have made in 2024 will have an affect on my experience of 2025.

#2024 #buddhism #change #determinism #growth #meditation #mentalHealth #mindfulness #philosophy #spirituality #transcendentalMeditation

Following the strings.

You can listen along by following this link… https://davbot.media/w/exeeoKea5xVUTDwwh6SpqG

Imagine one day, as you’re going about your life, doing the things that you do, that you look up, and see that there are strings attached to you as if you were a puppet.

You realize quickly that you’re being controlled by an unseen hand. So to test this, you stay still and don’t move. You look up, and the strings don’t move either. So to test it further, you raise your hand, and the string that controls your hand, moves as if it’s pulling your hand upward. You raise your other hand, and you see that the string attached to it moves accordingly.

Well this is odd isn’t it?

Every time you choose to move a part of your body, the string that’s attached to it moves as if it knows what you want to do.

“How does it know?” you wonder aloud? “If I am making the choice to move, then what or who is pulling the strings to make it happen? And how do they know?”

And then you notice another string that’s attached to your head. It’s not controlling the movement of your head though. Instead, it looks like it’s going right into your skull, and every time you have a thought, like right now, that string vibrates.

And you wonder to yourself, as that string vibrates, “Are my thoughts making the string vibrate, or is the vibrating string creating my thoughts?”

But then, you start to look around and notice that everyone else has strings attached to them. And you start to wonder, “Who or what is pulling all of these strings?”. So, the curious puppet that you are, you start to climb someones string. You climb up and past the clouds, and find yourself in space. You aren’t deterred though, so you keep climbing

And the more you climb, the further back you go in time. You see the formation of your galaxy and the rest of the universe until eventually you’re at the beginning of existence. And then you see that the string you were climbing is gone. Instead, you see that there are no strings. Just a singularity.

And then BOOM. The singularity expands and all of these energies come shooting out, and each with their own strings leading back to the singularity. And as the energies come together to form matter you see strings that leads from the matter back to the primordial energies that have strings that lead back to the singularity.

Matter forms and the elements take shape and then star’s and planets form until eventually you return to your own galaxy. Your own world. And you see that whatever exists has a string that leads back to what came before, which leads back what came before that, which eventually returns to the singularity.

Then you look at your strings again. But this time you see all of your strings. Not just the ones that control your movement, but millions maybe billions of strings. So many that you can’t count them. You see the strings that influence your hormones, your thoughts, your reasoning. You see strings that influence the way you walk and talk. How much you eat. How fast you run.

You see all of these strings and realize, that you’ve never had a thought or an action that wasn’t caused and influenced by strings that led to other things that led to other strings that led to other things and so on and so on all the way back to that singularity. And you realize that all that you are, all that you think, everything about you, was determined by something that came before, and that every time you thought you were making a choice, was simply the illusion of choice.

And this realization rocks your world. It changes the way you see yourself and others. You find yourself becoming more compassionate and more forgiving. You find it harder to hate people. And slowly, you begin to realize that the only thing that is truly yours, is your experience. You may not have control over that experience, but you have the experience nonetheless. It is your experience, and it is unique to you.

Or the opposite happens. You become more nihilistic. You realize that life has no intrinsic meaning, which to you, devalues the experiences that you have no control over. “I’m not in control.” you think to yourself. “So what’s the point?”. And you become bitter over this. You become angry and start treating people rudely and with less compassion. You give up on improving yourself and the world around you.

And then you look out into a world covered with strings and you realize, that even the choice between compassion and nihilism is an illusion. You realize that you can only do what you were always going to do. What existence has determined that you will do.

So you surrender to the strings and become an observer to your own experiences. You embrace the illusion of choice, and realize that all you can do, is play out your role.

Now, what do you do next?