It is a challenge to get back into the flow of things when you have spent so long in cessation. I used to pride myself on my drive to post frequent articles on this website, when I took to overthinking what I was writing and got caught up in wishing to deliver a message to an audience that I couldn’t quite fathom or figure out through the mist and phantoms of my mind. Frustrations settled in so I took pause… that pause turned into a stop. Days, weeks, months, and then years went by without striving to break through that mental block, without the ability to get back on that proverbial horse.
Finally, Covid-19 hit, I found myself at home and with ample time to re-enter the stream, though a few obstacles were inflated as to provide a reason to remain in stasis. For example, the old template I had made required each article or post to have a large header image, which I had fun designing, but to save money during this pandemic I had cancelled my Adobe subscription thus losing the means to create visually appetizing works. I finally changed the site layout to one that wouldn’t require images, and told myself not to stress so much about the text material being placed on the website… I mean, I have been paying for it all these years, would I want to resume in watching days go by and have the site sitting idle, nothing but a costly waste? It was silliness. I was being silly. If someone wishes to read these posts, they will. If I am writing to myself, well, I can use this as a record book of thoughts and ideas and draw upon it for future projects. There is no harm in putting these words here.
When in that lazy apathetic mode, I find life can slip away and days feel like they wash over in an instant. You arise, eat, do something, do another thing, eat again and then it’s nightfall, you feel unaccomplished and push those feelings down, or shut them off in mind pacification or indulgent entertainment. Writing used to be my daily ritual, and I’d like to get back to it, or something close to it at least. With such structure in place the rest of my actions fall into a sorting system where they are enacted based on requirement, situation and want, though all are enacted with greater intent. Gone is the lackadaisical pissing about.
“What’s the harm in doing nothing? It’s good to get rest.” Sure, when tired, rest! Though when tired of being bored… do something with intent, and do it often. I recently read a Buddhist story on this matter of intention. It was about a monk up in the mountains who happened to be wandering about his property. Mindlessly, he picked up a rock and threw it over a fence, unaware that out of sight the rock would make an impact with the skull of a bird as it hopped through the grass. It was killed on the spot, unbeknownst to the monk. If unfamiliar with the story, you may now beginning to think that the monk later discovered the birdie corpse, predictably giving it then a burial and repenting for his actions, even reciting the name of Amitabha Buddha chanting ‘Namu Amida Butsu’ (nianfo) but no! The bird was reborn as a boar, and a long while later, the boar ascended that very mountain, and while mindlessly wandering about it had knocked a boulder loose. The boulder rolled off a cliff-edge, falling upon the monk’s hut, resulting in one crushed, dead monk.
While I’d hope that my being boring with the mindless couch dwelling, snacking, thumb twiddling and days in a daze wouldn’t karmically produce a Buddhist Final Destination moment, I’d rather play it safe than sorry and consider all my actions, remain mindful in their doing, and ensure there is intent in all of my manifestation. That is afterall, the key to magic!
“Magick is the Science and Art of causing Change to occur in conformity with Will.” – Aleister Crowley.