July 31, 2004 10:21 AM

I've been doing some creative self-examination lately, inspired by a book I'm reading, "The Structure of Magic." I'll write more about the book later, because I find it fascinating.

I've started to give myself "homework," to help shift my reality a little, and I thought this would be a good place to write it down so that I remember.

This week, I'm working on dealing with physical pain and discomfort. Throughout my life, I've had lots of chronic discomfort. I don't know that I'm that different from anyone else, but when I put together the laundry list, it seems pretty long: headaches, indigestion, nausea, dizziness, shortness of breath, muscle tension, feelings of deep physical exhaustion, allergies. I've spent a good chunk of my adult life trying to find ways to manage and alleviate these frustrating conditions.

The problem is, the human body is a really complex system, and no matter how much I've read, how much I've learned, how many "cures" or "therapies" I've tried, how many pills I've taken or how many doctors I've visited, I haven't found a reliable way to keep these things from happening, or even really to reduce their frequency much. And along the way, I've kind of made things worse for myself by creating compulsive superstitions about things that MIGHT be causing me problems.

For example, I've been afraid of popcorn for several years now. (This, in itself, should be a sign that something is deeply wrong. No one should fear popcorn. It's mostly air for god's sake!) On one of my pre-teen birthdays (11th? 12th?) I remember sitting down in front of the TV with a huge bowl of popcorn and gobbling it down entirely by myself. And then suddenly, I was running to the bathroom, completely sick to my stomach.

Years later, when I started having drastic stomach problems which kept me from eating on most days, someone told me that corn was a food that many people were allergic to. I had been drinking two corn-syrup-filled Snapples almost every day, and when I stopped drinking them, the stomach problems seemed a little better. And then I remembered the popcorn-barfing incident on that long-ago birthday and I thought, "Ah, yes! I must have been allergic to corn all this time. If I just avoid corn and all corn-related products, I will be fine!"

It didn't turn out to be that easy. The sickness continued. Although not drinking the Snapples definitely seemed to help some, it could have been all the sugar that was causing the problem, or maybe just the fact that when I was full of Snapple, I had less room available for more nourishing foods. Or it could have been a complete coincidence that the symptoms were somewhat relieved at that particular time. There was no conclusive reason for blaming the corn.

But the easy solution of believing that my suffering was caused by a particular single thing was so seductive that corn became the first food on my "trouble" list. Then I started to try to determine which other foods were contributing to my symptoms. Onions . . . mushrooms . . . wheat . . . cheese . . . garlic . . . pasta . . . tomatoes. This quest developed into a kind of eating disorder. I began to believe, with very little reliable evidence, that certain foods were making me sick. (For a period of time, I even suspected that drinking water might be upsetting my delicate system.) But avoiding those foods did not necessarily make me well. So in trying to manage my diet this way, I was stressing myself out, limiting my ability to get proper nutrition, not enjoying meals . . . and I was still feeling sick.

So, the net result of my elaborate attempt to alleviate my suffering? More suffering.

That's just one example. During some periods of my life, trying to manage one physical discomfort or another has become obsessive for me. And this intense feeling of needing to figure out how to control my body was definitely a factor in my recent sojourn in panic attack land.

What I've realized now is that if there is some way to reliably manage the onset of these various discomforts - to keep myself from getting a headache, or feeling nauseous, or having painful muscle tension - I don't know what it is. That being the case, these conditions are completely beyond my control at the moment. It is theoretically possible that they could be within my control at some point in the future, but they aren't right now. So my homework this week is to not waste time and energy worrying or even thinking about any possible future onset of physical discomfort.

Instead, if I should experience discomfort, my job will be to do anything that I know of that will reliably alleviate the problem and make me feel more comfortable.

You see, I get so obsessed with causation, that when I have a headache (for example), I fixate on trying to figure out WHY or HOW I got the headache. In the meantime, I forget to do something simple like relax, rest my eyes, or take an Alleve. It's an almost monastic masochism . . . some part of me figures that if I persist in the suffering instead of taking advantage of a "quick fix," I will be more motivated to solve the problem "for good."

But the reality is, being in pain makes any problem harder to solve. And this problem may not be solveable. It may, in fact, not even be a problem. It may just be something that happens. In that case, if I decide to suffer until I find a solution . . . well, I guess I'll be suffering for the rest of my life.

And that doesn't sound very fun.

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July 30, 2004 08:06 PM

I've been trying to explore my fears lately. It's funny because I'm really brave in some ways. I don't think death is such a big deal. I've always been afraid of suffering and pain, but I'm starting to learn that suffering is a state of mind. In any scenario that involves pain, fear will only make things worse. Fear can never relieve suffering, only aggravate it. So in a remarkable paradox, if you really fear suffering, the best thing you can possibly do for yourself is to stop fearing, because the fear just causes more suffering which causes more fear which causes more suffering, etc., etc., etc.

I'm sure there's a terribly wounded inner child somewhere deep inside me, but for the most part, I don't have fears about relating to people. I don't fear rejection or abandonment. Although I always want people to like me, it's not that big a deal if they don't. Fortunately, I've experienced enough love in my life that I know there's enough love out there for me somewhere, regardless of any temporary lack of love I experience.

I have a few minor phobias . . . I'm afraid of heights, rodents, and big spiders. But these are more "fears of convenience" than anything else. I can afford to fear them because they are not things I need to deal with in my day-to-day life. If absolutely necessary, I know I could get over any one of them.

And yet despite these philosophical views, I have experienced many episodes of acute fear over the last several months, some lasting for days. What am I afraid of?

I realize that I devide the world into three cubby-holes. There are the things I have control over, which don't worry me because I know I can handle them. Then there are the things I have no control over (natural disasters, random acts of destruction, etc.) Many people are terrified of such things, but I'm pretty stoic about them. I figure, my worrying won't change those things one bit, so why waste the time?

Then there is the third category: Those things that I don't have direct control over, but which I may be able influence.

These things terrify me.

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July 20, 2004 10:24 PM

Thoughts create reality. This is not some wishful New Age mantra . . . it is an inescapable fact of reality for anyone who is paying attention.

I’ve known it all my life, personally. I first remember experiencing it through books. Even before I could read, my mother’s bedtime stories showed me how the thoughts of an author could transport me to Dr. Doolittle’s workshop, the Lorax’s forest, Winnie-the Pooh’s tree-house. Then, in subsequent years, I ran away and joined the circus with Toby Tyler, solved mysteries with Encyclopedia Brown, climbed up the side of Mount Doom with Frodo, flew to the stars with any number of Heinlein juvenile heroes, and visited Narnia repeatedly. I even went to Hawaii with Donnie and Marie.

(This last adventure sticks out in my mind because the novelization of the Osmond movie “Goin’ Coconuts” was the first “big person” book I ever read. I saw it in the Walgreens at our local mall, thought it looked cool, and asked my mom to buy it for me. She said something like, “You can’t read that. The print is too small.” I persisted, because, god help me, I guess I really wanted to visit that world.)

Each adventure was relatively brief . . . once the book was done, I was forced to return to my own world rather quickly. But each time I came back, I felt a little different. The thoughts of the author, and my thoughts about the author, had changed me, changed my reality.

Later, watching Shirley MacLaine on TV in the 80’s and purifying my quartz crystals with salt-water between Tarot readings and channeling sessions, it was easy for me to take the power of thought on faith. In the early 90’s, when I went to Mass every day and prayed the rosary compulsively, I became further convinced of the creative power of a strong mental intention.

Working through college, reading every major philosophical work of the Western Tradition, I learned that this phenomenon was not unique to my experience, nor even a twentieth-century innovation. Every major thinker of the last two-thousand years has ultimately come to the conclusion that it is not the thing “out there” which is real (if, in fact, such a thing even exists), but the thing “in here” . . . the thought. Thoughts are the hard, fixed tools that we use to create reality out of the malleable mass of fantasy stuff surrounding us.

Four years in psychic school fleshed out my theoretical understanding of this principle with many, many successful experiments in creating reality out of thoughts. And to cap it all off, my recent adventures in the world of cognative-behavioral psychotherapy have enlightened me to the fact that the medical/scientific world has now come around to the same conclusion that artists, mystics, philosophers and religious devotees have always known . . . THOUGHTS CREATE REALITY.

Even the physicists have been forced to admit, though they are still struggling to explain it, that “impartial scientific observers” affect the movements of quantum particles by the very power of their mental attention.

So if thoughts create reality, as all the smart people seem to agree, why do we still fear the world around us? Why do we still act as if some President, some terrorist, some multi-national corporation controls our fate?

What are we waiting for?

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July 16, 2004 03:17 PM

Jung had a “nervous breakdown” after he ended his discipleship to Freud. (As I think I’ve mentioned before, nervous breakdown is not currently recognized as a medical term. Nervous breakdown is how drama queens like myself describe garden variety depression and agoraphobia.)

I’ve seen Jung’s condition described as a “creative breakdown.” As soon as it he became functional again, he charged head-first into becoming the Next Big Thing in Western Clinical Psychology.

I’ve been feeling remarkably creative lately, and in my less jaded moments I wonder if I’ve had a “creative breakdown” like Jung’s, of which I am now reaping the benefits.

Of course, such celebrity comparisons are dangerous. For every Jung who made it through the madness, there’s a Nietzche who didn’t. And then there’s Mary Kay Bergman. In my lowest moments in March, I thought of her. One of the most talented voice-over artists of a generation, she performed all the female voices in the South Park series up until around the time of “Bigger, Longer and Uncut.” Her four bravissima vocal performances in the song “Blame Canada” were certainly what launched that song into an Oscar nomination. She was famous and beloved by South Park fans everywhere. She and Trey and Matt were heading for unimagined heights together. And then she shot herself. Because she couldn’t handle the psychological pain she was in.

I can’t say that I ever actually moved into the territory of “suicidal thought.” But I guess I peeked over the border a little bit in order to see what color the grass was on that side of the fence. Laying in my bed (after going to the emergency room and finding out that what was wrong with me couldn’t be helped by a physician) I thought, “I never understood how someone could do that. But now I guess I do. If I knew I was going to be in this much pain for the rest of my life . . . I guess the prospect of living would not seem terribly attractive.”

A fleeting thought . . . like the comparison of my breakdown to Jung’s . . . like my Catholic realization that the greatest suffering of my life has fallen at the time of my thirty-third birthday - thirty-three being the age that Jesus traditionally was when he was crucified.

(I read something on the internet about a priest who had suffered both major clinical depression, and painful third degree burns to his genitals. When asked which experience he would choose to repeat - if he were somehow forced to - he said he would opt to be burned again. He said that following the burning, while he was in torturous pain, he felt he had an inner strength that carried him through recovery. During the depression, though, he had nothing. He felt bereft of resources, as if he had completely “lost his faith.” And that internal pain was far more crushing.)

I’ve had a strong desire to write - one of the reasons I’ve returned here. But my fiction projects aren’t taking off. I’ll feel manically inspired for a few chapters, and then I’ll turn all dark German existentialist and say, “Fuck eet. Vhat does eet all matter? We’re all goink to die anyvay! Thees piece of crap fiction ees an insignificant fly-turd on the diseased carcass of humanity!”

So I’ve resorted to “noodling,” like a pianist randomly plunking out impromptu snatches of tune on a keyboard. Writing whatever I feel like writing, instead of what my plot outline dictates.

What I’m discovering is that right now in my life, I only have the patience to write critical, incendiary commentary. I seem to be all about the manifesto. Only something that charged can make me feel like the time spent at the keyboard is worthwhile.

Now, the more rational parts of me incessantly register their opinion that the idea of me writing any sort of significant “manifesto” is as ludicrous as the comparison of my nervous breakdown to Jung’s. And yet . . . those thoughts are there. I can’t discount them just because they sound stupid.

So, on with the manifesto. I’ve been immersing myself in research materials, and I feel a passion that I imagine Walt Whitman must have felt while writing his most dynamic poetry . . . as if what I’m writing is an infected tooth that must be extracted. No matter the pain of getting it out . . . the pain of keeping it in is far more dangerous.

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July 4, 2004 06:42 PM

Weird coming-of-age moment . . . watching a "My So Called Life" re-run right now on "the N" . . . and I COMPLETELY identify with the trials and tribulations of the parents.

When did I cross that line?

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