Well, this has been an interesting few days.
Since arriving at the sub, I've spent a lot time periodically perusing ancient posts via the search bar - and in so doing have found many tasty morsels.
With that experience in mind, I've felt it was only fair not to delete any of my own r/zen content, in the theory that my conversations might one day be illustrative in the same way other people's conversations have been illustrative to me.
This theory really comes to a head, though, when you're the one having a meltdown. Rather than save your fuck up for posterity - the natural inclination it to delete your account and come back a few months later under an assumed name.
Having said that - I'm going to do the opposite and really lean into this as I think it's illustrative as it presents the entire TRIGGERING1 process from start to finish. I can even identify when I loaded the gun and with what.
Timetable
A. LOADING THE GUN
8 days ago I wrote this OP. In writing it, I read Sayings and Doings of Pai-chang (Baizhang) #21 - and, as an afterthought, ran into this line:
He who has disease but does not take medicine is a fool
This struck me as true and as a direct result of it I decided to stop putting off a long delayed medical appointment. Since making that appointment, I've been fairly regularly anxious - anxiety that comes with an equal effort to avoid feeling anxious vis-à-vis escapism. Lots of screentime predominantly - but also I'd found myself wondering whether my specific medical issue might make taking LSD again dangerous or ill-advisable...
The gun is loaded.
B. THE TRIGGER PULL
I wrote this poem last Friday. It was intended as a metaphor for how I've been experiencing anxiety recently. I was toying with the notion of guest/host - the overriding arrival of a fleeting but strong feeling which I credit for a time, only to have the feeling fade away.
/u/thatkir came along and pulled my trigger
This is a wackadoodle story, not a instructional verse. I read similar stuff from people who do lots of drugs and pretend it gives them zen wisdom to write stoner hallmark cards.
Do you observe the precepts in your daily life?
What does Fengxue, Huangbo, or Deshan say about your monologue?
The bullet I'd loaded went off. But, being persistent, Thatkir pulled several more times. Eventually, he blocked me and, fair to say given what's about to happen, fired off a hot round.
C. THE MELTDOWN
I immediately burst into furious action - flipping the script, I decided I would engage in some /r/MaliciousCompliance and feed Thatkir some of his own medicine. So off I went in frantic search for supportive content. After scouring for a few hours and writing feverishly, way past my bedtime, I came up with this:
Is LSD Incompatible With The 5th Precept
Self-satisfied, slightly unnerved and exhausted, I posted and went to "sleep" - except I barely slept a wink. My adrenal system was running amok. Real limbic shit. This ferocity of action, and the resultant myopia, was not lost on me - and already, in my fleeting dreams, I began to hedge.
After reading all the comments, I found I was still frantic all the next day and so, to the detriment of everything I was supposed to be doing, I pumped out a second diatribe, largely incompatible with the first.
LSD Is Incompatible With the 5th Precept*
Here, you can start to see me working through my own shit.
"I'm not proselytizing for LSD" - true "My LSD use was motivated by a search for something" - true
But not willing to cede defeat - I came up with this .9999 out of 1 gimmick. A number with no basis in any kind of fact - no relationship actually, to anything outside myself. It's the leaving open of a possibility. But, of what?
D. MUDDLING THROUGH
I want to thank several very patient friends publicly - especially since they could have just blocked me but instead engaged - and in engaging helped me acknowledge what was really going on:
/u/mortonlast and /u/tfnarcon9 - who both bore the brunt of my ancillary and fairly desperate reframing of tea as equivalent to a powerful hallucinogenic drug
Obviously /u/thatkir - who ironically, has been spared the bulk of friendly fire - for emptying my clip until one went off in the chamber.
And, not for the first time, /u/ewk - whose persistent willingness to substantively engage with my literal rantings is yet another testament to his fundamentally generous nature.
E. SOLVING THE CASE
Between sub members I trust telling me I was wrong - and working through my own positions vis-à-vis my back and forth with ewk, I eventually came to an inflection point - right...about...Here.
TL/DR - I realized:
- If I was saying thatkir and ewk were making a nest out of their anti-drug positions - then I was implying they were stuck.
- If I was implying they were stuck - and ostensibly writing all this for their sake - then I was necessarily implying that, but for their positions, they would have something to gain from dropping acid.
- The problem was, I was absolutely sure I did not think that, in actuality.
- This left the question wide open - why the hell was I writing all this? What was it all about? For whose sake and to what end?
- After about 10 minutes of staring at my computer screen - and then running the whole situation by someone IRL, in person - it became clear there was only one possibility - I was writing it all for me.
F. RECONCILIATION
Almost the moment I realized I had been talking to myself, a wave of relief washed over me. Slept quite well last night. There is a torment in tying ourselves into knots.
TFNarcon asked me why drug users feel the need to explain their drug use rather than just accepting their breaking the precepts. I answered, with willful obliviousness, that it was either confusion or fear.
In reality, it was a bit a both.
Thanks for all the slack.
A classic case of "he doth protest too much."
1 TL/DR - "Triggering" is an awesome word as it implies that someone else has come along and pulled the trigger of your gun. They didn't load the gun - it was already loaded - and being triggered is an opportunity to learn about yourself.
Submitted June 15, 2022 at 04:38PM by Gasdark https://ift.tt/LF3Il0Q
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