The Shadow of Moroni, Part II · 8 January 2008
…Continued from 6 January.
I went to a kegger in a barn down by the Yellowstone River, hosted by an eyelashy senior on the wrestling team. The first hour of the night comes back—the fluorescent light, the black Columbia I was wearing, the Miller in the keg, telling the host to ask my friend M to the prom. What I don’t remember but know is true is that it was freezing; I was driving an 8-cylinder Impala home on backcountry roads, needing to make a hard midnight curfew. Luckily my parents were asleep by 11ish on Saturdays, because they’d be up early to set up church service. Saturdays, I’d just have to wake them for an instant from their door and not undergo any breath-inspections.
If I can conjure one or two sensory inputs and the feeling-memory of the people with me in a certain past moment, I’m pretty able to bring back a full moving picture of the surrounding event in my mind. But I know I was blacked out that freezing night driving home, because there is NOTHING to recall. I was rushed, trashed, and driving Niebauer Road across a series of little bridges that would have been sheeted in black ice.
Just another rural teenage casualty, found in the ditch when the sun came up, after Dad spent the night crisscrossing the county in his pickup.
Recovering on my sofa that morning ten years later, realizing this had happened, I wanted to throw up all over again. God how selfish, and lucky, I'd been.
I stopped drinking after that. Not as a punishment—I don’t hold things against myself even if I should. But because I viscerally couldn’t swallow a drink anymore after all that. For a year, for another year, for still another after that. The revulsion set a new habit.
I don’t know why I changed so suddenly. It’s difficult to say exactly what was going on with that.
I can say, though, that I had an analytical—and not appetitive or visceral—reason for finally drinking again three weeks ago. It’s not that I was “listening to my body.” It’s that I was challenging my body. Anymore, my deepest tendency is toward asceticism—I dream of cave retreats, not wild parties—and that is just too weird in the context of my life. For the sake of being honest to the era and social worlds in which I live, I want to tinker with the prohibition a little.
Many friends use the ashtanga practice to work with want or desire—with examining attractions to stimuli, experiences, things. Because it actually leads you inside yourself, ashtanga is a beautiful method for becoming intimate with your own self-sufficiencies and subverting every tendency to grasp for things outside. I get that from practice too.
But if anything my basic impulse is to pull away from the world rather than to grasp: more repulsion than attraction. The world is heavy! It is complicated! It is full of lame ideas and deception and stupidity and creepy egomania and bad fashion. Left to my own devices—as my beautiful quiet year alone in 2005 proved—I will rejoice in monasticism, minimalism, and quiet. God yes! Give me solitude or the company of just one intimate, and some elegant, silent routine.
Ashtanga brings this monkishness out of me, but I hesitate to use the practice to deepen the urge to withdraw to the beautiful void. In truth: I have things to do in the world for now. My life is in the world. My loves are in the world as well.
And alcohol represents a part of the world I would parcel off and sell to the infidels.
How boring, that impulse.
So nix that and bring me a drink. Suddenly things become a little more complicated…
(Incidententally, does a part of you feel this is a stupid topic of conversation? Why is that? Because drinking is wrong? Because not drinking is stupid? Or because it's all just excessively reflective? In any case, more in a bit.)
Posted by (0v0)
Categories: evolution
, having a body
, integration
Previous entry: The Shadow of Moroni, Part I / Next entry: The Shadow of Moroni, Part III
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O my. It’s funny these last few posts have been so impenetrable to me, just because they are very close to home for me. I need to think about this, too. It is great topic.
Posted by: eor · Jan 8, 03:21 PM · #
It’s relevant to me, partly because I’m examining my own alcohol consumption. Which could probably use some abatement.
Posted by: jlafitte · Jan 8, 04:04 PM · #
Hmmm, how did the alcohol challenge you?
Are you saying that you identify more readily with your prior experiences than with your quieter, more subtle inner signals? That sounds sooo familiar. Where have I heard that before?
Posted by: Carl · Jan 8, 06:00 PM · #
This belongs really to the comment-conversation in the PRIOR post, but I’ll put it here: middle path, booze or something else, transformation. When in the 90s I was pursuing transformation by means of cracking the rational mind with intoxicants (really, how Surrealist of me), it was more about inviting a change from the cosmos, rather than acting. It was inviting the universe to throw me something that would undo my terror of real action. After the Big Events of 2002, I largely internalized the transformation I wanted to occur, and my booze consumption, with fewer than 12 exceptions since then, dropped into the midrange. I’ve tossed ye olde cookies ONCE in the past six years, not monthly like in 1993. So booze/intoxication is no longer ABOUT transformation, but about pleasure now and then. And so it’s not a middle road, because perhaps like you, I don’t see transformation as possible on a “middle road.” Neither did any of my heroes. But also, I have not any longer hung my transformation on booze, so my consumption of it can be as middling as it likes. Does this respond in any way to what you’ve said here? And yes, I think you’re allowed to say all of that (which refers to a comment on the Jan 6 thread).
Posted by: patrick · Jan 8, 06:00 PM · #
Guys! You are taking this to a place I would not have taken it. Thank you.
This whole bramble of excess and acseticism, moderation and transformation. God! There could be an entire blog about this.
As many of you know because you have offblog details about my personal life, I have a taste for crazy shit. Intensity makes me engage, and makes me move. So Patrick, what you say about the middle path resonates. It is where I walk because I live in the world, because I have to cope with capitalism, because I love my family so much. The middle path is an anchor for transformation and a place to leaven the weirdness of transformation and practice it out. But transformation itself in my experience always involves crazy shit. Or maybe I just prefer crazy shit and right now I’m trying to learn to find transformation in moderation as well. Could be either of those.
That being drunk is not really transformation is exactly what I’m realizing. That it was a cheap and easy way to fake it when I was a kid is exactly what led me to build up certain drinking methods. It’s the same hunger that turned me to spiritual practice, and it’s not a bad thing. The desire is potent, actually; and the world would sedate it with much of what it gives us to consume.
As for cracking the rational mind, as CP and I have been discussing quietly, there are some less time-intensive approaches which are at the same time good for a laugh. :) Just find something so irrational that it pisses you off and turn it into a practice somehow.
About your question, Carl. Yeah, even after five years of no drinking whatsoever, the habits I bring to it are the old ways of a teenager. It’s so stark. Makes me see the ways that samskaras are made up not only of remembered experience but of the chemicals and knee-jerk desires that trigger on as soon as something that looks like the remembered-stimulus arises anew. If this is true of a relationship to something as simple as alcohol, how much more true is it for other, more nuanced, relationships?
Posted by: (0v0) · Jan 8, 06:36 PM · #
so what of the drink? what did it reveal? or not.
Posted by: cranky housefrau · Jan 8, 06:42 PM · #
It revealed I am for now a greedy drinker.
Greedy for loss (of everyday consciousness).
Is that problematic or completely normal?
I will try to get that part of the tale into one final post in a little while.
Posted by: (0v0) · Jan 8, 06:55 PM · #
Follow-up question, based on some of my non-booze history you’re aware of: LOSS of everday consciousness? Why not MORE consciousness? Problematic or normal? Both, probably. Hunter Thompson, writing on the Nixon era, said that it was perfect for downers.
Posted by: patrick · Jan 9, 04:33 AM · #
Cracking (into) the mind is a noble pursuit, for sure. Once you’ve seen it from a Blakean perspective a few times, though, to keep at it is just to reinforce the the cracked mind as the new normal. So then what’s the new trick for consciousness? Jumping through flaming rings?
Posted by: karen · Jan 9, 05:11 AM · #
Funny. We had this conversation, in a much less constructive way, during the last BW. Dare I bring up sutra 4.1?
(from swamiji)
4.1 The subtler attainments come with birth or are attained through herbs, mantra, austerities or concentration.
(janma osadhi mantra tapah samadhi jah siddhyayah)
check out swami’s comments on herbs:
Herbs (ausadhi): There is said to be an ancient elixir that when ingested, breaks down the barrier. It is also said to be an inner elixir, in the subtle aspect of our own being. At a more surface level, we are all familiar with the way in which various drugs or chemicals break down the barrier between conscious and unconscious. Throughout spiritual and religious history of humanity, herbs have been used responsibly in this way by many cultures. While we are not suggesting drug use here as a means to spirituality, it would not be complete that it not be mentioned as one of the ways people can remove the barrier between conscious and unconscious. In light of herbs as a means of removing the barrier, it is imperative to remember that the foundation principles are of non-attachment and attaining a natural state of stable tranquility (1.12-1.16). The way in which the ancients used such herbs is vastly different from drug abuse and addiction.
two interesting threads here: 1) using external means (drugs/alcohol) to break the wall between conscious and unconscious; and 2) addiction, excess, the middle path and reinforcing vasanas.
This is a rich vein for us to mine!
Posted by: cody · Jan 9, 07:09 AM · #
In Satchidananda’s translation of the Sutras, doesn’t he (comically) mention the discovery of the siddhis by hippies who had, in some cases, NO IDEA what they’d stumbled across? Sort of a Nietzschean “I am not ripe for my fruit” thing, maybe.
Posted by: patrick · Jan 9, 08:10 AM · #
I had to laugh when I reached the last question- is this a stupid topic? I was lost again in 2005! Which for me was a year of pulling away, retreating from many spaces and pursuits. I really don’t see extremes as necessarily more transformative than the middle, because in many ways moderation is harder, especially once your body has learned a certain more extreme physical/chemical option.
A few things that seem to intrigue me:
The idea of using a small amount of a substance that you find potent in a transformative or ritual way, to acknowledge its power and shift your mind a little, yet avoid excess. I guess the ascetic in me has come to see this as the bigger challenge: being able to use a small amount of something in a ritual or social way when your body would find it easier to escape to an extreme.
And on the more social side, to use the above not just as an eccentric exercise/failure in self-control, but to use the process to really find more acceptance and compassion for myself and the world.
That sounds rather high-minded, but actually my feelings are practical. To what extent can I be normal-happy in the world and semi-well-adjusted, even if I retain above average levels of angst and cynicism? And how can I make enough peace with the world to get work done, to develop skills and the capacity to contribute? That’s what I really want, to be productive, but I know I can’t exactly have a voice or effective work in the world if I’m too caught up in being contrary.
Posted by: myst · Jan 9, 08:37 AM · #
Peyote baby! Patanjali says it’s cool!
Posted by: Carl · Jan 9, 10:20 AM · #
Myst, your experience seems to overlap with mine very much. Kind of reassuring.
Those closest to me would counter that the fourth paragraph is where we differ. I operate with above-average expectations for transformation, peace and love. In myself and in others; and this means there is frequent noise generated in the gap between what is actual and what is possible. So I suppose we are both contemplating “loving what is” but from different directions.
Posted by: (0v0) · Jan 9, 12:09 PM · #
Patrick, yes; I think that is in the Satchitananda translation.
In any case, a single word from Patanjali is not doing anything for me here. What does that have to do with modern life or with modern substances? About as much as his notes on the supernatural power of making yourself infinitesimally small. That’s the thing with ancient texts: people can exploit their aberrations to justify ANYTHING they want in their own (vastly removed) lives. Read them at a sufficiently shallow level and the moral high ground can always be yours (am I the only one who figures the president is taking refuge, in his own way, in the Gita these days?). Openness to interpretation keeps the scriptures alive.
It makes so much more sense to me to base practical decisions on tough-minded self inquiry.
To be honest, I don’t think that I use alcohol to explore my sub/unconscious. My drinking is not that curious or noble, though there is a best-case scenario articulated in Myst’s second paragraph.
Maybe certain other substances break down mental barriers in a useful way for certain people, but at the moment peyote isn’t calling out to me. I have another method I’m still figuring out.
Posted by: (0v0) · Jan 9, 12:31 PM · #
Heinrich Himmler supposedly found his justification in the Bhagavad Gita too.
Posted by: Carl · Jan 9, 12:39 PM · #
I like drinking just fine, but I find it counterproductive to practice, so I don’t drink during the week. when I drink I don’t meditate before bed and I’ll inevitably have a harder time waking up and having a solid asana practice. so I definitely think alcohol is counterproductive.
“ausadhi” and meditation? that’s a whole ‘nother kettle of fish.
Posted by: cody · Jan 9, 01:32 PM · #
I have complications to offer to an herb-enlightenment equation (not that you were making such a simple thing, CP): minds are inconsistent little things. For example, I knew a guy in college whose justification for being a stoner was that the Garden of Eden was full of the stuff. Well, Garden of Eden precedes, oh, say, Cartesian philosophy, right? So those minds, if they were stoned, were pre-Descartes (pre-many things, of course) and these differences would separate their contents (and perhaps even modes/methods of cognition) from those of the present-ish day. Who’s to say how this would affect, if it would at all, any one’s given enlightenment? Put less armchair-pseudo-scientifically, cultural differences alone also provide this question. Or the story about John Belushi overdosing not because he overTOOK, but because he took his USUAL in a new LOCATION, and THAT did him in. The locale affects the high. Should/can this kind of variability be put into the context of seeking the Light? Or even of doing one’s daily practice?
Posted by: patrick · Jan 9, 01:43 PM · #
All of these words are making me thirsty.
Posted by: Tim · Jan 9, 05:10 PM · #
Patrick, I appreciate this 101 on the subject of bodies in context. On how methods of cognition are (even if we cannot say exactly how) culturally and temporally constructed. Minds and cultures and bodies all mutually make each other; yes. Self and self-concept are a feedback loop that makes culture and makes body-minds and we are so encased within the layers that we don’t even know.
For this reason, the “but Patanjali did it” line doesn’t help me much. It’s great fun to contemplate (ausadhi? exciting!!!!), but I have no illusion that I am “living the Yoga Sutra” because that would mean denying most of my everyday experience. Deriving practical decisions from the Sutras alone… to me this reeks of fundamentalism and (relatedly) a willingness to operate on somebody else’s abstraction. Like Christians trying to derive family values from the life of Christ (who ironically, like the Buddha, championed the practice of forsaking your family to pursue enlightenment… but I’ll leave that topic for now).
Which is not to say ignore the Sutra. It is an interpretive tool that often offers up things we do not want to hear, and that alone is a really, really great reason to keep returning to it and other difficult old texts. But they might be sharper tools when they cut in with things we don’t want to hear than when they seem to confirm the justifications we are always, always seeking for our foregone conclusions.
Posted by: (0v0) · Jan 10, 11:39 AM · #