Zen as Aikido of the soul

This entry may be a bit different from most.

I’m currently working on a triptych of posts – dealing with the various forms and methods of control that I employ as a Dominant, and I hope that it will be worth waiting for, as it is taking me some time to write to my standards, but in the meantime I have something else to say.

This is the core of my own personal belief system and a telling window into my own soul, if such things exist.

I don’t experience emotions in the same way that people who are born with them do.  I don’t mean to imply that I was born without the ability to emote at all – of course not – I would have been institutionalized long before now if that were the case, but I was born neurologically different.  I had Asperger’s syndrome, or something very much like it.  Throughout my childhood, I was always the odd one out.  While my ‘friends’ would play around me, I was often content to sit by myself, still playing, but the only interactions that interested me were the ones in my own head, or the things in front of me which I could control.  I put together a lot of models and puzzles as a child…

I say I had Aspergers, because I no longer believe that I meet the diagnostic criteria for that particular syndrome, and the only reason I can imagine for that is that I rebuilt myself and made it less of a part of me.

Much later in life, when I felt that the Roman Catholic Church that I was raised to revere had failed me, I sought answers in other places.  I found some, and I missed others, but I learned in the process.

When it became apparent to me that my life would remain one as a social outcast if I did not conform, I made a choice.  I would not only conform, but I would exceed the norm.  This has often been the choice I would make when I had the time, energy, and resources to do so.  As a young man, I had those things in spades.

I watched people interact.  I emulated their behaviors.  I taught myself to be human.  And somewhere along the way, I broke myself, several times.  I was not prepared to deal with the weight of the emotions that crushed me when I took them upon myself.  I was not prepared to deal with the staggering uncertainty that comes in the wake of allowing that information to percolate up from within me.  I was not even aware that I possessed such things – I could see them in other people, and I could behave as they do, but it wasn’t until I rebuilt myself around that model that I became a real boy and could hurt so deeply – and I do hurt deeply – all the fucking time.  Not in the sense that I am in constant pain – for while that may be true, it is of a physical nature and I hold my soul separate from that infection.. I am happy and hurting at the same time.

I came to learn that emotions are beautiful things.  Each one has its place and time.  Each is important information that one ignores at great personal risk.  Happiness and love are certainly my favorites and I am blessed to have much of both lately, but pain and sorrow are also useful things.

I found the practice of Zen along the way, and I have employed it to deflect, avoid, and trap emotions from time to time.  Zen became my method of self-defense against the mental assailants that I could not overpower and so it became my Aikido of the soul…  But the greatest gift that Zen gave me was the realization that I don’t matter.

My readers will dispute that fact, and while I concede the point that my continued existence provides financial, emotional, and spiritual support to a lot of people – more than I ever realized – it is also true that none of you matter.

Please do not be offended by this.  The universe is a very large place and we are but motes floating in the stream of time.  None of us matter.

This is an empowering concept.  It allows me to carry the understanding that the universe is so much greater than I am, and that there is so much in life that is unfathomable to a mere man like me.  I do not need to understand it all and I am unable to do so.

It is my atheist way of understanding the Will of God.

Future generations of humans will be impacted by the things I do, but the net affect will be small.  I can control things to an extent.. I can try to be good, and I can try to make sure that the microscopic things that are a part of my world take the best turns that they can, but my missteps will not derail the universe.  Nothing is so horrible that it can never be forgotten.

A billion years from now, our descendants will appear nothing like us – they may not even be organic creatures, but they will carry forward in their own microscopic and easily forgotten way… until the universe itself cools and falls apart.

This is not fatalism – it is hope.

My past mistakes have already been forgotten by most.  The horrible things that haunt my dreams will be completely forgotten when I am gone, to trouble my descendants no more.  The horrible things that were done to me are already being erased by the love and compassion that surrounds me.  I have forgiven, and I will forget – or I will die and whatever dreams may come from that will not be plagued by the evils of my past, but will be enlightened by the hope of my present and future selves.

I am still physically broken, and I cannot focus the power of my mind to solving hard problems yet, but I am mending and my soul is mending as well.

This was pretty self serving today, but I will follow up soon with things both erotic and instructional.  Thank you for your patience as I heal.

 

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