So the next Awful Truth…. the bright lights of big, bad hyper arousal.
This one is to take away, about just how much we have changed, about what we have become, as I will follow up with one of the most important Secrets in the next few posts – Spiritual Character.
Awful Truth: See, these days we are constantly ‘aroused’, outside ourselves, directed toward external stimuli, both good and bad, so much so that without this arousal we quickly become bored. To be this way constantly is an unnatural state of mind, it did not exist 2 thousand years ago to the extent it does today, when most of the good stuff we still have today was written down. Today the western world feeds your senses hyper arousal like a drug, in order for your body to produce the actual drugs you need to drive this state, indeed modern consumerism is very much like a theme park, selling experiences, adventures…
So what is Hyper Arousal? Its a mild form of PTSD, a form of mid level anxiety all the damn time.. caused by your biology, by the animal in you. At some level or other, most people and particularly spiritual types suffer from it, peaks early in life but continues up to their 40 or 50s usually. Yep, ever wondered why most gifted folks only really make spiritual progress late in life… its cause of Hyper Arousal. Certain genuine traditions won’t even bother trying to teach anybody below 40. See, you are stressed to some level or other all the time, its chronic, you don’t sleep so well, and you are constantly thinking, THINKING, and then thinking some more.. usually about fantasy crap, about the external world. This is the state of mind of most gifted people who have no training in this day and age..
Therefore we are not starting from the same place anymore, we HAVE to change and adapt the path if its are going to work for ‘modern’ people. This is a big thing on the left hand path, perhaps even the central justification for it. See Hyper Arousal is Ignorance’s best mate, its an amplification of every mood, emotion and sensation, your Ego mainlines it like its chasing the dragon (in the drug abuse sense of the phrase..). Chronic Hyper Arousal fucks you beyond what it easy to define in written terms.. its literally destroys your spiritual nature, and you return to being an animal, living like an animal. And, please behave yourself… cause I don’t mean a sexy one, an interesting one, a spiritual one, I mean a RAT, a SPIDER, a parasite, something that lives off others, often through others, eats shit to survive, so don’t be jealous..
Once stuck in this state you can no longer take pleasure in simple things, no longer relax without drugs, no longer be interested in anything unless its glamourous, sexy or violent.. You are so far away from yourself that your entire life is aimed at cheap thrills, quick fixes and a tonne of faking it everyday, as that is the modern way.. (sorry..).
Now, there is nothing inherently bad about arousal as its a biological state, indeed perversely, hyper arousal is an INCREDIBLY useful thing in the 4th way, but ONLY on demand, only when you want it, NOT all the damn time, NOT WHEN ITS FORCED ON YOU. You must be able to feel the full extent of it, but from outside of it, control it, switch it off and on at will.., YOUR will. Otherwise you are little more than a boisterous dog darting from one child to the next, from one interesting smell to the next, constantly looking for the next thing to pee on.. You are almost never in your ‘own’ company. And using hyper arousal in your own company is one of the big keys to real spiritual progress..
Biggest problem of all though, for the left hand path.. this 24/7 hyper aroused state works like a ‘spot light’ in your mind, which becomes incredibly narrow and shallow in your minds eye. So, instead of a broad and deep Greek theatre like stage set, instead of having ‘perspective’, your experience of your mind is little more than an intensely lit Punch and Judy show, with that spot light operated by the monkey who is off his head and just in it for giggles… Without Hyper arousal you would see so much more, indeed with any kind of gift at all you would already being experiencing some aspects of the spirit world, but with it you need recreational drugs to get back to some semblance of yourself.
This whole process robs you of any sensitivity of your actual spirit, separates you from ‘yourself’. Over time you become habituated to this state, indeed it becomes so NORMAL that you don’t actually feel the arousal anymore, the arousal is just how you are, you only ‘notice’ the lack of it, which you call boredom. Therefore to change back to normal is so far away from your everyday state you don’t have a clue.. You become deranged, delusional and worse of all narcissistic, always looking to the outside world to validate the ridiculous opinion you have of yourself…
Worse, you need more and greater stimulus to feel that way again, so you chase more and more arousal, more and more of the sex, drugs and Rock ‘n Roll too, while thinking its perfectly normal. Its not…. you are literally over loading your self with arousal simply because you cannot feel the difference any other way. And that’s just sad… In Zen they work hard to remove this state, to drain it out of you, causing the classic Zen man stoicism – literally NOTHING bothers you anymore, a state highly prized by the warriors of medieval Japan.
What else you take away from this post, remember this.. if you can break the cycle of hyper-arousal you are currently living in, break the power it has over you, all the stuff with your Ego and Ignorance will be MUCH, M.U.C.H. easier to deal with. Cause it will not longer have that hold over you, your moods, your ego will become a lot more manageable, cause you will be able to get some distance.
The evil threesome of Ego, Ignorance and Hyper Arousal are what you have to break here, and once you understand Ego and Ignorance (read those posts again if your don’t) most find it easier to turn down the volume of hyper arousal first, as the first form of actual practise. The Ride has already begun this process for you, but there are several other things you can do to speed this up dramatically.
Now one of the reasons I decided to rewrite this as a separate post is that it’s a particular issue for the gifted, for the sensitive, for the high libidos. You, hopefully most of you by now, are going to feel arousal a lot more intensely than most, BECAUSE you are gifted. Its like the hyper-arousal curse has been designed to KEEP the gifted away from spirituality if you like. All spiritual types, all of them feel their moods and emotions, sensations MUCH more intently than normal people, so hyper arousal is going to be so much worse for you, and harder to break the habit off (outside of rehab, therapy sessions and enforced time off with work related stress..).
In truth, and its kinda ironic really, the one thing that stops you being spiritual, even though you really want to be, is the ill shit you love the most.. But don’t worry, was the same for most of us, same for me, I understand…, much as I don’t want to give you false hope.. you simply can’t keep on doing it. Period. Hyper arousal is not an excuse for behaving like an animal, it the biological imbalance that is making it hard, and VERY unappealing to try and change. Hyper arousal is what makes you ‘like’ being an animal, you gifted fool, makes you want to be it.. you are so weak and stupid that you actually want that state all the bloody time, accept of course when you crash, or check your look in the mirror, or see the re-action on people faces sometimes before they are quick enough to hide it..
Now, I have been accused in the past of specifically designing bits of my interpretation to appeal to folks like you, to using this predilection of yours to hook you, and make it ‘for’ you.. Its not, the path is the path. However I am trying to help drag you onto it, should you decide to actually commit, by saying I know this better than most, indeed I’d once be a poster boy for Hyper arousal, they send me flowers every b’day and with a card saying ‘keep up the good work bitch, you doing a fab job of it.. now get your ass back out there for the next cheapie..’.
But then I got lucky, one of my first Zen teachers was hard, sunburnt French bastard of a man, gave me the ‘Weak and Stupid’ speech I have written elsewhere on this blog. That nailed me so hard I literally never looked back, and my life today from what it was.. what I can do now, there is no comparison. I was an animal, now I’m not. Funny thing is, I get more from hyper arousal now than I ever did back then, when I was on the receiving end of it. Now its mine to command, whenever ‘I’ decide. And it can be yours too..
But only if you prepared to make the change, to learn what we call spiritual character, in a proactive way. To break the curse, the hold it has over you. To stop being a slave.. To stop being an animal. See, you may have noticed folks like me break the world down in a very, VERY clear way, as it always has been over the ages – between the animals and humans, between the gentlemen and the slaves, between the gifted and the swine. So never forget, these pearls are meant for humans..
Summary: You need to calm the fuck down, but you don’t want to because you think hyper arousal is normal. So the next secret will focus on the No1 way to do this, through developing spiritual ‘character’, your original character as has never been more important than now. And its a lot more fun that it sounds, you really don’t need to deny yourself anything in the sense you currently understand it, you just need to make a choice, based on what you actually want to do, moment to moment, rather than being forced to do it as you currently are, forced to take all you Egos crap, your moods and compulsions way more seriously than you need to, because of Hyper Arousal.
It really is that simple.. So why the big speech then, some of you may ask, I get I need to calm the fuck down a little from doing the Ride, I know I’m loosing it and becoming a bit of a monster, but HEY, its kinda cool… Yeah, really? Think on for a min before you read any further numb nuts, as you sound a little to far gone for me… parasites like you maybe better off in the gutter, with your own kind.. Get it? Please…
Lastly, don’t be put off, don’t think you have to wait to later in life anymore until you practise, those days are long gone. Once you are over 30s there is more than enough to work with..
Quote to end as always, this time from an odd, gifted woman, with a very high libido…
“And in his eyes he had the look of the cat who inspires a desire to caress but loves no one, who never feels he must respond to the impulses he arouses.” – Anaïs Nin
Laters..
TOB
