Paul Garrigan's Blog, page 6

Amor Fati

I didn’t expect to make it through my twenties. I lived like an out-of-control juggernaut that somehow managed to avoid a fatal collision, barely, but it was only a matter of time before I hit something that would bring me to a final stop. It wouldn’t be pretty, but it would be welcome. I’d had enough. Thoughts of moving the process along would come but like the words from a song by Neutral Milk Hotel, I would dream of all the different ways to die but each one was a little more than I would dare to try.

In the meantime, I hung onto relationships like life rafts experiencing bitter disappointment when they didn’t save me. I dreamed of uncovering some hidden talent that would force people to love me. I frequently imagined being head-hunted by a talent scout who would recognize my amazing potential. He or she would walk up to me in a bar and say, “hey, I’ve been watching you, and you know that you would make a great…” Then I’d be respected. It never happened, so I drifted without purpose or hope waiting for the shitshow to end. There were mornings when I woke up crying because I was still alive.

If my younger self realized that I’d still be alive in my fifties, I would have been distraught. I’d feel like Sisyphus who was condemned to push a giant rock up a mountain for eternity. I would have been appalled to know that life doesn’t get any easier. I’d be shattered by the news that there is nobody out there who can save me and no relationship capable of fixing me.

The philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche saw how we humans are in a similar predicament to Sisyphus. Life is one challenge after another. Sisyphus could get his revenge on the gods by learning to love pushing his boulder up the mountain. Nietzsche calls this amor fati (to love our fate). It is by learning to accept and love the life we have that things get better (the more we can do this, the more wonderful our life becomes). This can be so hard to see when we are struggling with the pointlessness of trying to continue push our own rock up that mountain. I want to shout to the younger me, “it’s not about the f’ing rock, stop complaining about it, and look at the amazing view from the mountain.”

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How Assumptions Create the Matrix (aka Samsara)

We are always making assumptions about reality that are not based on any kind of honest investigation of our experience. Take craving for example, we can just assume that this mechanism  is there for our benefit, but do we know this as fact? Do we really know that a life spent chasing desires and trying to avoid anything we deem unpleasant is the best way to live? We could claim “well that is just the way we evolved” as if that settles the issue, but does it? What are we assuming here?

My favorite idea from Buddhism is that we suffer due to ignorance. This ignorance is not due to a lack of knowledge but from assuming things that we don’t actually know to be true (things that don’t hold up when we carefully examine our experience). Samsara refers to the world that is created by our assumptions about reality – it is not real but the suffering we experience because of it is very real.

We are usually completely blind to all of the assumptions we are making about reality. Our whole world is built on these assumptions, and it is usually only when we stop making them that we realize they were there in the first place. We have all been brainwashed into a cult, and the most dangerous cult is the one you don’t realize you are in. We are usually too busy chasing our tails to realize this. As Morpheus in the Matrix says, “…the world that has been pulled over your eyes to blind you from the Truth.”

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Blessed Are The Skeptics

I like to be challenged. If I can’t defend what I’m saying, I shouldn’t be saying it at all. The clients I work with at Hope Rehab come from all walks of life and most of them have a low tolerance for bullshit. I like this a lot. I come alive when people question me. Admittedly, this is less satisfying with the few who are unable to recognize that their beliefs and assumptions are beliefs and assumptions.

My strong mystical tendencies have always been tempered with a ruthless skepticism. This used to bug me because it felt like that part of my thinking was a party-pooper. This is why I found it so hard to fit in with any group that was based around a belief system. I envied the sense of belonging that I imagined came with joining such a community, but I always managed to question my way out of these groups. I once wondered if this might be some kind of curse, but I now see it as a great blessing.

I used to feel anger towards people who saw the world differently than I did. It took me awhile to realize that my anger wasn’t really about them but about my own doubts. This discomfort was the realization that my current beliefs were on shaky ground. These debunkers were doing me a favor. My inner skeptic had been triggered, and it was just about to spoil the party – what an asshole? Not at all. My inner bullshit detector was a powerful ally that repeatedly saved me from a life that would have been so far less satisfying than what I have now.  

As I’ve already said, my inner skeptic was ruthless, and this meant that it was eventually able to undermine even its own assumptions. I lost all interest in what is True (for me this is all one unanswerable mystery that could never be captured in a set of beliefs) and moved my attention to finding peace. It turned out that it was my inner skeptic that led me to a life full of endless magic and wonder.

Blessed be the skeptic. As a child, my dad  sometimes referred to me jokingly as a bit of a space cadet. I could be a bit too mystical for his more practical tastes. The writer Joseph Campbell said “the psychotic drowns in the same waters in which the mystic swims with delight.” It was my inner skeptic that saved me from drowning. Now, instead be being ‘away with the faeries‘, the faeries come visit me on terra firma.

The real magic with skepticisms begins when we turn it towards our own beliefs and assumptions about reality.  There is a strong tendency to stop questioning where our personality begins. This means we are looking for evidence to support our intuitions about life and dismissing anything that threatens this as evil or woo-woo. I suggest we need to go much further than this if we are serious about finding peace.

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Why I Believe in Santa Claus

Sometimes I use a metaphor to explain to a client why relapse back to addiction doesn’t have to be a possibility. Imagine that we were both 11 years old, and I discover that Santa Claus isn’t real. I go and tell you about my discovery, and you agree with me that Father Christmas doesn’t exist. Now imagine that 10 years later you come back to me and say that you have started to believe in Santa again, and you warn me that I might one day believe in Santa again too. I would say to you “no way”, because I discovered that Santa isn’t real whereas you obviously just went along with what I was saying (maybe due to peer pressure). My point is that it is only people who don’t wake truly up to the reality of addiction (those who don’t gain insight into the lie of craving) that are at risk of falling back into it.

If a client knew me well at this point, they could object to this metaphor, “hold on, but you Do believe in Santa Claus”. I would have to admit that I do indeed believe, and I would then have to explain the danger of taking metaphor literally.

Yes, I believe in Santa Claus. On Christmas Eve, I will no doubt be noticing that special magic in the air. I’m already feeling excited about it. I usually reopen my curtains just before going to sleep to check if there is any sign of Santa in the night sky. In previous years, my son Timmy would be joining me in this anticipation of Santa’s arrival, but this year it will probably just be me. There are some things I would love to pass onto Timmy, and one of them is my belief in Santa, but teenagers need to be teenagers. He is probably not old enough yet to rediscover the magic of Christmas.

When I say that I believe in Santa Claus, I’m not saying that there is literally somebody who lives in the North Pole who delivers presents to every boy and girl. For me, Santa is an archetype for something that is undeniably real – not in a concrete way, but in a way that changes my perception. Santa is as real to me as romantic love or the love somebody else might have for a football team.

In 1985 something incredible happened in Ireland when statues of the Virgin Mary began to move. It all began in Ballinspittle, but it soon spread throughout the country. I lived Cork at the time, and one evening we went to see one of these statues. I had already pulled away from Christianity at this point, yet, as I stood there watching this statue, I couldn’t help but be carried away by the atmosphere. It all felt so magical and sacred. Then it happened, I saw the statue moving. I felt this incredible love coming from the Virgin Mary. It was as real as anything that I’d ever experienced. I thought if that is what I’m witnessing, what must it be like for the true believer? Just for a moment, I allowed myself to believe, and because of that something magical happened. I didn’t believe that the statue necessarily moved in a concrete way, but it did move in my perception, and this had a real effect on me.

To say that Santa Claus is unreal is to fall into the trap of literalism (insisting that only concrete things are real). To say that Santa is real in a concrete way is to fall into the trap of reification ( the error of treating a symbol or metaphor as a concrete thing). Santa is real in an imaginal way – this means that believing in Santa has a real impact on our perception. Santa is as real as patriotism, money, romantic love, fairness, nationalism, and pretty much everything else we believe in.

There are many people in the world today who are concerned about a loss of freedom. The truth is that the oppressor is not some dark force in society, but a type of mental slavery that we willingly participate in. It is our imagination that has become imprisoned – it is what William Blake was referring to when he talked about mind-forged manacles. In our prison, only certain types of imagination are allowed, and this has left us impoverished, soulless, despairing, and completely lost. It is the reason so many people turn to drugs and other self-destructive behaviors to escape the soulless world of our stagnated imagination. I believe in Santa Claus because it is a way of re-enchanting life.

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Appreciating Living My Big Dream

My big dream growing up was that I’d write a book that would make it onto the shelves of the Eason’s bookstore on O’Connell Street in Dublin. This happened. Not only that, but I even got to do a book signing there as part of promotional tour. I’d achieved my dream, and I knew at the time that I needed to appreciate it or I’d regret it later, yet, I didn’t seem quite able to. My attention was on what was coming next. This small bit of success had gone to my head, and I was busy planning my life as a best-selling writer.

There is nothing that I would change about my past. I accept the good and the bad as my journey (this wonderful adventure that I call my life). Yet, if there is a regret, it is that I didn’t appreciate things more. Even the darkest days of my life would have been so much better if I’d just taken a minute to appreciate.

I think most of us realize that there is something wrong with not appreciating our life. We know deep down that we will regret this later. It is not our lack of relationships, money, or success that we are likely to lament on our deathbed but that we didn’t appreciate what we had. This why after that book tour, I spent a lot of time thinking about appreciation (I had plenty of time because it soon became apparent that my writing career wasn’t going to take off like a rocket).

The thing that surprised me most when I started to think about appreciation was that I’d no real idea about what it was. This was such a common word, yet what did it mean? What would I need to do now for me to be appreciating this moment? What kind of life would I need to live that would mean on my deathbed there would be no regrets about lack of appreciation? It took me years to be able to answer this question. Initially, the more I looked at this word, the more confused I felt.

I now know that appreciation means giving my full attention to. It sounds obvious (Zen 101), yet for a long time I just didn’t seem able to pull it off. A big hint was the awakening experience that I had on a London bus back in the nineties when Paul temporarily disappeared and all that was left was life without a center. To appreciate means to offer the spotlight to what is being experienced rather than to the illusionary experiencer. It is like there are two dials – one dial is called Paul and the other is the experience – appreciation is when the Paul dial is turned right down to the minimum and the experience dial is turned up to max.

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Finding Home

I left Ireland in 1987 and other than for a few months here and there, I have remained away from the country of my birth. In fact, I have now lived for longer in Thailand than I did in Ireland.

I remember meeting an old Irish guy in a pub in London soon after I moved across the water. He advised me to return to Ireland as soon as possible because if I didn’t, I would always be an outsider. I wasn’t English, so I could never fully fit in there, and when I’d return to Ireland, I’d feel like an outsider there too because I would have spent too much time abroad. It turned out he was right.

Growing up, I desperately wanted to fit in, but I just didn’t seem able to. The truth is, I already felt like an outsider even before I left Dublin. Maybe it was easier for me to feel like an outsider in a foreign country than it was in my home. Now I live in Thailand where my foreignness sticks out way more than it ever did in the UK where only my accent would give me away.

I have lived in many places, and every time I made the move, there was always the hope that I’d finally find a place where I fit in. The place where I belonged. I never did find it because belonging has nothing to do with a place. Belonging is something we feel inside. Belonging is stillness – my true home. Now, no matter where I am, I’m always at home in stillness.

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Abnormal in Liverpool – The Magic of Perception Without Drugs

In 1992, I spent a few days in Liverpool visiting my then girlfriend’s family. This was during the heyday of my enthusiasm for alcohol when my drinking habits would bother other people but didn’t bother me in the slightest. I still believed that booze provided a magical solution to all of my issues, and I was just as bothered by the people who didn’t know how to enjoy a drink as they were by me.

Heavy drinking was my normal back then. I worked in bar, and my social network was packed with acquaintances who were just as enthusiastic about drinking as me. I didn’t feel judged by them, and my behavior didn’t feel in any way out of the ordinary.

The trip to Liverpool was outside my comfort zone. It meant leaving my usual habitat where getting drunk all the time was not only accepted but encouraged to entering a world where my drinking was obviously abnormal. I had been with this girlfriend for about a year, and up to that point, she had seemed to accept my love for booze. Sure, I had said and done things while drunk that I’d later have to apologize to her for, but she appeared to accept it all in good spirits. I saw it as part of my Irish charm.

Things started to go downhill almost from the moment we got on the train to Liverpool. I felt uncomfortable about meeting strangers, so it seemed perfectly reasonable to me to drink as much as possible on the way there. My girlfriend felt strongly that I needed to be sober to make a good first impression. I won that particular battle, but her darkening mood should have forewarned me that I certainly hadn’t won the war.

The girlfriend’s parents picked us up at Lime Street Station. I noticed an inviting looking pub on our way to her family house in Walton, so almost as soon as we were in the door, I made my excuses and returned to the bar alone. I was only on my second pint, when my girlfriend hunted me down and insisted we return to her home. I only agreed because she promised that we would be going out to her parent’s social club in a few hours where I would be able to drink until closing time. I don’t remember much of that night, but I doubted I made a good first impression.

The rest of the weekend was strained. Her family went out of their way to show me the sights of Liverpool, but I just wanted to be in a pub. I had hoped that her dad would be more of kindred spirit, but after showing some early promise the previous night (he had ended up drunk as well), he turned out to be a bit of a lightweight. On the last day, her dad took us to visit the nearby town of Chester – a beautiful place, but the lack of alcohol in my system meant I felt unable to appreciate it.

That girlfriend didn’t remain my girlfriend for long. Meeting her family was meant to be a sign that we were getting more serious, but it turned out to be the final nail in the coffin. She dumped me as soon as we got back to London. Apparently, her mother had pointed out that my abnormal drinking could only mean disaster ahead. Of course, she was right, but it all seemed so unfair to me at the time.

I don’t judge this younger me too harshly. I just wanted to be comfortable in my own skin, and I didn’t have a better solution back then than alcohol (even though drinking was just as likely to leave me feeling morose and argumentative as it was happy). I didn’t know about stillness. I didn’t realize that there is an unshakable peace always available through that stillness. I didn’t see that perception is a choice. I didn’t understand how perception is transformed by this stillness into trust, intimacy, and wonder (it was these that I had been desperately seeking). The younger me was right in thinking that ‘normal’ life sucked, and there was something far better available, but the mistake I made was believing that the answer would come from a drug.

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Dead Man’s Slippers

One of the tasks I would perform as a nurse was packing away the belongings of people who had passed. I remember doing this one afternoon for a patient who had died during surgery. I had been his named nurse which meant I had responsibility for his nursing care during his stay. I found him to be a nice man, but from our talks, it was obvious he had his struggles in life. He had only been with us a couple of days.

As I put the deceased’s few belongings into generic hospital plastic bag, I experienced an intense sadness. I felt this acutely as I picked up his slippers that would never be worn again, and the book he would never get to finish. The unfinished bottle of fizzy drink seemed particularly poignant. These were the remains of a life that was now over. He hadn’t had any visitors during his stay, and he had struggled to come up with a next of kin during his intake. I guessed that this bag of his stuff would eventually end up in a rubbish tip.

Once his belongings were bagged, and the bed linen changed, the space was ready for the next patient. Life goes on. I imagined his life so full of intensity and drama, and yet all that remained now was a plastic bag full of a few measly possessions. It seemed unjust as well as anticlimactic. Of course, it reminded me of my own vulnerability and that one day life would carry on without me also. It all appeared so pointless and depressing.

I felt the patient had somehow been cheated by life and this same fate was waiting all of us. I just couldn’t see back then that life is an incredible gift, and it might be considered a bit ungrateful to have expectations about the duration of this gift and to be bothered by whether or not there are going to be more gifts following this one. Why can’t we just appreciate this gift? This gift that is here right now. This one incredible life that we know beyond all doubt that we have.

Life is an astounding occurrence. We get to have this miraculous experience of being alive – why does it bother us so much that it might one day end? I suppose this is similar to the attitude many of us have when it comes to romantic relationships – we can want them to last forever or we feel cheated and betrayed. Why does it have to be all or nothing?

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Sat Chit Ananda

The window in my office looks out unto a small artificial waterfall that is covered in plants. I spend a lot of time staring out at it. I feel lucky to live in such beautiful surroundings, but the thing that impresses me most is not so much the garden itself but that there is anything there at all. It is this (the experience itself) that fills me with joy and wonder.

The fact that we experience anything at all is astounding to me. Existence is a miracle that my mind can’t even begin to grasp, and yet in the past, I was so deluded that I believed I knew what I was and what life was. Talk about hubris! It was only when I recognized how incredible all of this is that I could finally escape the drudgery and drama created by my interpretations of what was happening.

The lasting peace and joy I was looking for could never come from the content of my experience – it only came from recognizing and appreciating the miracle of experience. Sat chit ananda is the bliss that comes from this recognition.

Sat Chit AnandaWhat Happens When We Die?The Knower is The Source of All ConflictLife Beyond Knowing – The Freedom of Stillness9 Ways of Looking – Perception Training for Peace and BlissThe post Sat Chit Ananda first appeared on Paul Garrigan Mindfulness Training.

What Happens When We Die?

The question of what happens when we die has been an obsession of mine. I remember when at age six it hit me that not only was I going to one day disappear but also all the people I cared about. This led to a lot of sleepless nights and an increased interest in religion. In my teens, another round of insomnia and nightmares began after seeing a lifeless body (suicide) floating down the river Lee in Cork.

Death terrified me, and I desperately sought some reassurance. My own Christian religion didn’t provide me with the answers I sought – only more questions. I realized that faith and wishful thinking is not the same as absolute proof, and I was looking for certainty. This is probably what drove my teenage interest in meditation, Buddhism and Daoism. Then I found alcohol, and it was so effective at numbing my fear of death that I would have periods where I would be suicidal.

In my twenties, I trained to be a nurse, and this brought me into much more contact with dying and death. I even spent a bit of time in palliative care where on some shifts we could have up to four people passing in a matter of hours. I spent a lot of time thinking about my own death and how best to prepare for it (it seemed to me that most people were woefully unprepared for this one eventuality in life that appears to be inevitable).

For most of my adult life, I would have described myself as an atheist with Taoist/Buddhist sympathies. I suspected that death was just like turning off a light switch – no more Paul. But, I also realized that this was a belief that I could never prove to any degree of certainty. You see, even before I became aware of the implications of death as a young child, I was bothered by the fact that the adults seemed to just assume that this was all real. For some reason, life appeared dreamlike to me even though when I mentioned this, the adults quickly shut me down – I learned to stop asking that question but it never went away.

There is no shortage of people out there who claim to know what happens when we die. We get to choose from beliefs that promise annihilation to those that promise an eternity in paradise. I suspect that the one we choose will say more about our personality and cultural conditioning then it will about what is True. There is no person on this planet (living now or any time in history) that I would trust enough to accept their opinion as fact. I also realize that my personality is biased towards certain answers, so I wouldn’t trust them either. I also would not trust the sense of certainty as I have a long history of being certain about things that weren’t real.

Instead of finding an answer to what happens when we die, I found stillness. This dissolved the question completely, and I have no more concerns in that regard. I experience Paul like a character in a dream, so the question of what happens to him when he dies is the same for me as what happens to my dream characters when I wake up in the morning. I’ve even had dreams where it appeared like Paul was a character that I had dreamed about in that dream.

Instead of answers, I found peace. The kind of peace that is not dependent on the answering of impossible questions. The kind of absolute peace that is not dependent on beliefs, opinions of certainties. I don’t know what happens when I die. I don’t even know if the question makes any sense because it is based on too many assumptions about what life is and what we are.

What Happens When We Die?The Knower is The Source of All ConflictLife Beyond Knowing – The Freedom of Stillness9 Ways of Looking – Perception Training for Peace and BlissFull of WonderThe post What Happens When We Die? first appeared on Paul Garrigan Mindfulness Training.