Small Steps Forward & Up

So, I’ve been struggling my butt off lately, in the quest for Better Thinking — a quest which has recently been fraught with depression and anxiety, small failures and big stresses, and a general sense of loss of direction and hope.

This morning I was trying to work out what I can do to escape this morass of doubt, inertia and ill-at-easeness, and with the help of a trusty Book of mine, I worked out some tentative answers.  Which I’m posting here, in case they help anyone else who’s ever felt plagued by doubt and frustration and uncertainty and fear, and had no frakking clue how to manufacture a way out.

It’s not answers, so much as steps…but it’s real steps, and those are the only way out of the ol’ Swamps of Sadness, aren’t they?  ;)

“Establish a clear goal?” But I have several:

• write more, and more consistently, with less distractions, preferably at the same time every day
• meditate twice a day consistently
• go to kungfu/taiji class more often (i.e. stop missing when I don’t have to)
• eat better

…Are those goals, or corrections that need making on the way to a goal? If so, what’s the goal? To be happy, or proud of myself, or to feel good? To avoid depression? To attain something?

I don’t think I can serve all those goals, though, without falling into the trap of “making changes” in the sloppy, egotistic way that both the Book and I are sure won’t be helpful now. I need gentle, consistent motion…and a direction for it to go in.

Maybe I have to invent a name for that direction. Think more. My goal isn’t to change, so much as it is to align, to be balanced, to be the way that lets the right change happen when it needs to, and keeps the wrong change at bay. Don’t dwell on a problem, the Book says; just make the necessary correction and move on. Don’t let your inner space get clouded with despair. That’s the Great One’s worktable you’re cluttering there. Keep it clear. So the change I need isn’t “eat this this and this” or “write every day at 6 am” — I should do those, but simply do them as the chance arises; don’t worry it. What I need to do is point the whole ship in the right direction, and then make the little corrections that keep it on its path. If I know what course I’ve plotted, which corrections to make should be obvious, and the task of making them much less intimidating. It’s not “stop eating junk food”, it’s “don’t eat that; it’s off-course.” Prime mover as principle, I guess, and vice versa.

Maybe I’m frustrated at having to name my own path — but if anything, that’s probably an honor, if not a difficult one. So my path can’t be “serve God” or “heal the sick” or something nice and obvious like that; so I have to figure out what to call it; tough poop. It’s still no more made-up than anyone else’s, I guess. What I seem to be missing is the ten-word version of the thing I can say to remind myself, to bounce specific things off of, to spot necessary corrections without digging too far and getting dirt all over my head.

Though it is a little intimidating that mostly balls-out geniuses and/or crazy people seem to have invented the words for their path…Bucky Fuller comes to mind, with his “dymaxion” and “trimtab”. Not that there’s anything wrong with walking their road, but it feels more than a little presumptuous to be doing so. A little voice says, “And what’s so wrong with ‘heal the sick’ or ‘serve God’, eh? What makes you too special for all the pre-written routes? And what on Earth makes you qualified to strike out on a path of your own invention — aren’t you here precisely because you’re fucked up and lost?”

But if I’m going to listen to anybody, right now, here at the mental bottom, it’s not going to be the voice of self-doubt, thanks. He’s been fucking up the chorus lately anyway, singing the soprano part in his choppy bass, and way too loud. I’d rather trust the Book. Even if the Book were total bullshit, a ten-cent tract on Buddhist Palm, it would still be words on paper, and words on paper have always made good avatars for me.

Doubt, on the other hand, is great when pointed outwards, but not so much when you’re sucking on the barrel.

Okay then. Well, maybe that’s a task that I can take a little time at…say, a day or so. “Name the path.” Come up with my version of “seek dymaxion everywhere”. I can do that. Right? It’s just words. It’s just the best and strongest and right-direction-pointin’est words I can muster. But I can do it.