Paul Garrigan's Blog, page 10

Delight in the Pointless – The Cure for the Pointless Life

What Was the Point?

1994 was a big year for me, although I would have bitterly disagreed with such an assessment at the time. I spent most of that period obsessed with the pointlessness of my life. I would write these drunken song lyrics (even though I didn’t have a note in my head), stories, and even suicide notes where the core theme was the meaninglessness of things.  You could say, I was a child of my time (as this was the same year that Kurt Cobain committed suicide) but perhaps mercifully for mankind, the only audience for my dark observations was the bin.

‘Here we are now, entertain us’

Nirvana

By 1994, I had become dependent on the outside world to provide me with meaning and purpose . This philosophy was summed up beautifully by Kurt Cobain when he demanded ‘here we are now, entertain us’. This dependency on life to keep me engaged  was a doomed project from the start. Just as a drug addict develops a tolerance to a drug, so too does the mind need increasingly bigger hits to stay interested in life. Which meant that by my early twenties, I felt jaded, cynical, and betrayed.  As the robot Marvin, from the ‘Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy’ summed up so well, ‘life, don’t talk to me about life’.   

The Well-Travelled Flea

In a desperate attempt to keep life entertaining, I would move from place to place. I traveled the world over the next few years. The problem was that while new scenery and culture could only temporarily reignite my interest in life, I would soon get used to it. The magic would wear off, and I would be back to square one.

As a monk once remarked, I was like one of those flea-infested dogs you will often see if you visit a temple here in Thailand who alternate their time moving around and scratching themselves. I would try to relax into a new place, but it wouldn’t be long before the old fleas would start to bite, and I would have to move again. It took me a long to recognize that I was taking the fleas with me.

I moved from place to place, from one group of friends to
the next, and from job to job.  All of
the time looking for the right situation that would fix me.  All I needed was to find my place in life,
and then all would be well. Of course, no such place existed. The problem was
me, or to be more specific, my way of relating to life.

My Biggest Mistake

One may know the world without going out of doors.

One may see the Way of Heaven without looking through the
windows.

The further one goes, the less one knows.

Tao Te Ching

My biggest mistake was my failure to see how the value of
each moment is completely dependent on how I relate to that moment. It is
not about what is happening but about my ability to appreciate what is
happening.

Before the age of seven, I had no difficulty delighting in
life. It wasn’t that my situation was particularly wonderful back then, I
wasn’t living in a pleasure dome or anything like that, it was just that I
related to things differently.

As a child, silly things like the noise made by a playing card spinning against the spokes of a bicycle was enough to keep me entertained for hours. That was all that was needed. Later, my adult self would view such activity as pointless, but by then my relationship with reality had completely changed.

The Fear of a Pointless Existence is the Enemy

Some might say (and I used to think this way too) that we
have to grow up, and part of this is the recognition that things need to have a
point in order for them to be worthwhile. There needs to be a rational reason
for doing things, and the rules about what ought to make us happy are there for
us all to see. Making more money, self-improvement, being a productive human,
and becoming more knowledgeable are all productive ways of using our time –
there is a point to such activities whereas delighting in the sound of a
playing card hitting a bicycle spoke just doesn’t fit the criteria.

The problem for me was that it eventually became obvious that ‘making good use of my time’ worked more like a distraction than actually offering a point to my life. I’m not saying that such things are bad, but after a while, they felt about as meaningful as a dog chasing his tail (at least the dog looks like he is having fun). I would develop a tolerance to the latest self-improvement project, and I would then need to find something new. The reward of a meaningful satisfying existence was always over the next mountain.

I had become hooked, and my addiction to ‘productive ways of using my time’ meant I was further away from a point to life than ever. It go so bad that I couldn’t even enjoy my days-off work because I needed to be doing something productive.

Delight in the Pointless

I’m glad to say that I no longer have any fear of a pointless existence. For life to be satisfying, all I need to do is relate to it in the right way. It is not the job of life to entertain me ( I now see such thinking as incredibly arrogant), but my job to appreciate what is there. There doesn’t need to be a point to anything – just the simple delight a child would experience upon hearing the sound of a playing card hitting the spokes of a bicycle. Everything I need to delight in life is already here, and it is not something that needs to be earned or justified.

As the poet David Whyte says:

The kettle is singing

even as it pours you a drink, the

cooking pots

have left their arrogant aloofness

and seen the good in you at last. All

the birds and creatures of the world are

unutterably themselves. Everything is

waiting for you.

Recent Posts

Delight in the Pointless – The Cure for the Pointless Life
How to Enjoy All of the Benefits of Alcohol Without the Drawbacks
Walk and Talk Videos
How Imaginal Practices Made it Possible for me to Adore Life
Becoming Comfortable in My Own Skin Using Friendliness Practices

How to Enjoy All of the Benefits of Alcohol Without the Drawbacks

I kept on returning to alcohol for a reason. It seemed to be
offering something that I desperately yearned for, and it was only be
satisfying this need a better way that I was able to break free of addiction
for good. What I so desperately wanted was well-being, and it turns out that
the real thing is far superior than anything I could have hoped for with
alcohol.

In this walk on talk video, I describe how I was able to
enjoy all the benefits of alcohol without the drawbacks.

Latest Posts

How to Enjoy All of the Benefits of Alcohol Without the Drawbacks
Walk and Talk Videos
How Imaginal Practices Made it Possible for me to Adore Life
Becoming Comfortable in My Own Skin Using Friendliness Practices
Using Insight Practices to Escape Worry and Negative Thinking

Walk and Talk Videos

I have started putting up videos on YouTube where I walk and
talk about stuff that is on my mind, and I hope may be of interest to at least
some of you. In some videos I talk a lot, in some only a little bit, and there
will likely be some where I won’t talk at all. I will label the ones where I
talk a lot as ‘walk and talk’.

I think one of the nice things about this content is I get
to share a bit of Thailand with you guys. There are some lovely walks near to
where I live, and I travel around the country a fair bit. So, even if you get
fed up with me babbling on, you still get to see some nice scenery.

Growing up, I used to go for long walks with my dad, and he
would share his wisdom with me. This time with my father had a huge influence
on my life, and I’m just drawn to the idea of making videos this way. I love watching
walking videos by other people on YouTube, and I spend far more time looking at
these than I do stuff like Netflix or TV.  I see it almost as a type of meditation and opportunity
to practice appreciation for this wonderful world we live in.

Here is the latest video I’ve made which is all about the
importance of appreciation.

If you do like these videos, you could help a lot by given them a ‘like’, leaving a comment, and/or subscribing.

Thanks

Walk and Talk Videos
How Imaginal Practices Made it Possible for me to Adore Life
Becoming Comfortable in My Own Skin Using Friendliness Practices
Using Insight Practices to Escape Worry and Negative Thinking
New Video Series – How I Stopped Being an Alcoholic

How Imaginal Practices Made it Possible for me to Adore Life

One of the things that initially attracted me to alcohol was how it changed my perception in a way that reenchanted my life. This magical quality was something that I deeply yearned for, and it was only by finding a better way to enjoy this relationship with life that I could break free of alcohol for good. It was imaginal practices that made this possible.

This is part 4 in a series of videos on ‘How I Stopped Being an Alcoholic’. If you haven’t yet seen the previous episodes, you might want to start here.

How Imaginal Practices Made it Possible for me to Adore Life
Becoming Comfortable in My Own Skin Using Friendliness Practices
Using Insight Practices to Escape Worry and Negative Thinking
New Video Series – How I Stopped Being an Alcoholic
Guided Meditation for Developing Friendly Curiosity

Becoming Comfortable in My Own Skin Using Friendliness Practices

This is part three in my video series on ‘How I stopped Being an Alcoholic”.  If you haven’t seen the previous videos, you might want to first check these out (begin here).

Here I talk about how friendliness practices can change the way we perceive reality. It can be a sense of not feeling comfortable in our own skin that makes drugs so appealing, but I found this approach offered a far superior solution.

Some of the topics covered in this video include:

How does our perception determine our reality?What is ‘ill-will’?How can insight practices free us to perceive in new ways?What are friendliness practices? How do friendliness practices help us to escape ill-will?What is the difference between ‘being friendly’ and ‘acting friendly’?

If you think this video series is helpful, you can support me by sharing it with others.

Recent posts

Becoming Comfortable in My Own Skin Using Friendliness Practices
Using Insight Practices to Escape Worry and Negative Thinking
New Video Series – How I Stopped Being an Alcoholic
Guided Meditation for Developing Friendly Curiosity
A New Relationship with Reality

Using Insight Practices to Escape Worry and Negative Thinking

Developing a New Relationship with Thinking

Worry and obsessive thinking almost destroyed me. One of the
things that needed to happen for me to achieve a more permanent state of
well-being for me was to escape the clutches of my inner demons. In this video,
I share my experience of using insight practices to develop a new relationship
with thinking.

This episode continues on from my last video How I Stopped Being an Alcoholic – if you haven’t seen it, you may want to check that one out first.

Some of the topics covered in this video include:

How does habitual thinking create our reality? How do our assumptions about life lead to unnecessary suffering? Do we need to stop thinking? Is thinking useful and necessary? What are insight practices?How can mindfulness help us deal with worry and negative thinking?How does insight into impermanence, non-self, and the nature of suffering help us to change our relationship with thinking?

If you think this video series is helpful, you can support me by sharing it with others.

Using Insight Practices to Escape Worry and Negative Thinking
New Video Series – How I Stopped Being an Alcoholic
Guided Meditation for Developing Friendly Curiosity
A New Relationship with Reality
Seeing the Peace Within

New Video Series – How I Stopped Being an Alcoholic

Greeting all,

I am beginning a new project that involves creating short videos containing animation to share some of my ideas about escaping alcohol (as well as other types) addiction. I’ve spent the last five years sharing what I know with people in rehab here in Thailand, and this has helped me develop a clearer message. I also like the idea of creating short videos, as this forces me to be succinct and precise.

In this first video, I provide some background about where I’m coming from, and I explain what it was that allowed me to finally break free of addiction in 2006. I talk about the importance of achieving well-being because it was the lack of this that made me vulnerable to alcohol addiction in the first place. In future videos, I will go into much more detail about the steps I took to achieve this well-being.

I would be delighted to answer any questions you have about this series, and you would help me a lot if you were able to share these videos on social media or recommend them to friends in the real world.

New Video Series – How I Stopped Being an Alcoholic
Guided Meditation for Developing Friendly Curiosity
A New Relationship with Reality
Seeing the Peace Within
Judgement

Guided Meditation for Developing Friendly Curiosity

This meditation guides us to a state of friendly curiosity towards our experience. It begins with a body-scan, followed by a friendliness practice, which then leads us to a state where we can allow everything to be just as it as. This is the same meditation that I use when guiding clients at Hope Rehab Thailand.

Spending time in a state of friendly-curiosity nourishes us,
and it is also a useful space for developing insight. By encountering this
perspective of friendly-curiosity in meditation, we are then able to transfer
this way of looking to our daily life.

Guided Meditation for Developing Friendly Curiosity
A New Relationship with Reality
Seeing the Peace Within
Judgement
Silence

A New Relationship with Reality

A New Relationship with Reality

My aim when working with people is to help them develop a new relationship with reality. These are usually individuals with an addiction issues who have already worked out that their problem is their perception of life rather than life itself. After all, ingesting a drug doesn’t actually change our world, it just changes how we view our world. So, on some level, we’ve already decided the problem is our relationship with life.

My own enthusiasm for alcohol began in my early-teens because drinking helped me feel comfortable in my own skin. Drinking didn’t change my world, but it certainly changed how I felt about things.

Drugs do change our perception of reality in a way that some of us find highly desirable.  Over time though, these substances create an increased sense of disconnection, dissatisfaction, and mistrust of life. We end up in a worse position than before we found our ‘chemical answer’.

Changing Our Perception is the Answer

Our method may have been a failure, but our insight that the problem was our perception of life, rather than life itself, was a good one. The good news is we can change our way of perceiving so that we no longer mistrust life, no longer feel disconnected, and feel so satisfied with our life that drugs (or any other form of avoiding reality) no longer have the slightest appeal to us.

This is a way of perceiving reality that doesn’t involve ingesting dangerous chemicals, costs nothing, has no negative side-effects, and lasts forever.

The Three Aspects of a New Relationship with Reality

There are three aspects to this new relationship with reality:

Wonder
Intimacy
Trust

We can begin to get a taste for each of these through meditation and other practices. It is my goal when working with clients to direct them towards these qualities. I do so because it was allowing these three qualities to reveal themselves that brought an end to my own seeking for something better – and all the trouble that entailed.

So, let’s take a brief at each of these – I will go into much more detail in future posts.

Wonder

Much of our dissatisfaction with life occurs because we think we know that is going on. Our head is full of stories about how things ‘should be’ rather than noticing how things actually are. Instead of being fascinated by the mysterious and ever-changing world around us, we prefer to focus on what we know. This leads to a life that feels stale, limited, and where taking drugs to feel better makes perfect sense.

Wonder means meeting life from a place of curiosity. It involves letting go of our ideas about how things are, and actually looking to see what’s there. When we do this, something amazing happens. Everything we took for granted suddenly appears new, mysterious, and full of possibilities. Most of us are flabbergasted by how we could have missed such a wonder that was always right in front of us.

Intimacy

Our sense of disconnection from the world is arises due to the fact that we have become mesmerized by thinking. It is like becoming so engrossed while reading a horror story that we began to believe it is real. This relationship with thinking creates an imaginary barrier between us and everything else. As we pay more attention to our life, we begin to see how ridiculous this belief was – there is no part of us that doesn’t belong to life, so how could we be separate from it?

Once the sense of disconnection disappears, we discover a sense of intimacy with life that our heart yearns for. This sense of connection does not depend in anyway on life behaving a certain way or other people behaving a certain way. We discover that intimacy is not something that we have to earn, but is what exists when we lower our thought-generated barriers.

Trust

Trust is the recognition that right now is the only way it ever could be. It is what it is – always. It is the ridiculous belief that we are somehow getting ‘now’ wrong that triggers anxiety, self-loathing and an inability to relax. Practices like Vipassana can help us to see that we have no choice as to what is arising – all that matters for our peace of mind is how we are relating to what happens. The Christian mystic Anthony de Mello summed up trust best with the words ‘absolute cooperation with the inevitable’.

Seeing the Peace Within

I always judged my experiences based on the thoughts, sensations, and feelings these experiences produced. This made it difficult to discover the infinite peace already inside of me. I looked inside expecting to discover positive feelings, sensations, and deep ideas, so I missed the unconditioned peace that was always there. It was my thoughts about what this peace should look like that stopped me from seeing it. These same thoughts also prevented me from understanding that this peace was with me always – – it was the looking for it that prevented me from seeing it.