It began and ended in silence. Initially life was quietly uncomfortable. With a cowardly naiveté and derelict response to that life, discomfort built up to torment. There was a silent inner turmoil which roiled without relief. Keeping it together on the outside required intense effort. The thought of losing control, and/or of somebody realizing the truth of where I was at created, and perpetuated, concentrated internal stress. Anxiety became a constant, in terms of maintaining the appearance of composure. All about, the framework of my threadbare normalcy was flying apart like a haystack in a hurricane. Inside was clamoring madness. Banging shriek emergency sirens of non stop alert. Remarkably, like some kind of sinister karmic backlash, as the outside world would quiet down, the inside world noise volume would ratchet up. Up. Up. Up!!! Mind splitting intensity rings would accompany the midnight silence. The blasting seemed inescapable. Thought to thought to racing thought crowded the day, and defined the night. Memories of sorely lost opportunities and squander would conspire with projections of failure, exposure, calamity, rejection, and shame to create the fevered internal atmosphere. A very real confused bewilderment, intensified by terror, would regularly drag me down into a desperation mind pit of exacerbated destitution, shredded hope, furious loneliness, needle point agony, and panic. This had to be hell. Where the ability, and strength, to go on came from, is anybody’s guess. This was supreme failure. Nature’s sheer constitutional resolve to survive had to be the only remaining resource that kept the struggling air of agony respirating in this pounding misery vessel; that and near ultimate gluttony. Something had to give, the screaming mind had become unrelentingly head splitting.
Occasionally, by chance, maniacal inside lives have moments of calm. Moments of accidental inactivity in which numb senses relax in a type of exhausted recoil. The overloaded mind stalls with a sort of synaptic short. Crowded thoughts log jam into a concentrated clog that imitates no thought. There is an echo of conscience; awareness. This unconscious, unsustainable mindfulness space, however, allows suspicious insight, and perhaps accidental contemplation. Is there something meaningful happening here? Is there something I’ve been missing? Is there only disastrous, calamitous, crashing, mind splitting struggle and failure in store? There’s subtly sure unsureness as the mental block eases. The thought race is on again. It begins rebuilding momentum, however, the thought plain has changed. With an overhead of doubt, I now began to consider making some kind of change, to better account for myself. The only issue was that the cacophonous hell blast had massive inertia. Turning it off, even turning it down, was beyond any conventional type of control or hope. It would be like silencing Times Square at a rush hour by holding up a quiet sign written on a matchbook. As hopeless as my case now seemed, a form of fate waited patiently to render salvation in an intense rebirthing destruction.
What follows can be likened closely to, a run at an indoor tractor pull. That’s just what it was like. There’s a souped up tractor, with wide open power, and no muffler. When it’s on, it’s fully on, and you hear every bit of it roar with ear ringing reverberation. Reverberating with thunderous, ear blasting, building shaking, decibal meter shattering noise explosion on a kill switch. So, the engine reaches it’s screaming peak of full horsepower, and the weight sled burdens the load to an eventual stop, the pull ends with the immediate and sudden cut of power and sound. All that remains is ringing echo suggesting silence. Quiet!? And so it was with the clamoring mind chaos racket. Sudden stop.
What’s this!? Circumstance dictates, there’s a violent scene; intensely violent. Time freezes; events proceed in a silent slow motion. Specific witness to the truth, effects surrender. I give up! In a split instant, the overcrowded cramped mind complex, of compact thought jams and hysterical noise, opened with a split like an obstinately resilient piñata finally dropping the contents in a shower. The released contents settled slowly, like snow foil confetti in a snow globe; gradually settling down while floating in the globe. Settled now, and now forever. The result defies conception, and ushers in a new belief system. As sure as sunlight. As sure as the moon. Rapture releases a sure reward; a magnificent comfort. There’s harmonious quiet, sublimely humming, in a concentrated silence and corresponding calm. The overriding characteristics of presence, bliss, sureness, okay, right now, okay, sure timeless bliss define the new state.
The journey now has come full circle; from panic to peace. There’s no guarantee of realizing liberation, freedom, and release. There is, however, by the Grace of God, the possibility. Wisdom is the fallout, manifest as knowing. Knowing that all the growling mind noise threats are the raw materials of sure calm. The real kind of internal calm that makes for effective cooperative purpose. Life comes into coherence. A very coherent awareness based on the realization that it’s not what is known, but how it’s known. Life is not something that needs to be mastered and endured. It can be sung into increased vibration and higher purpose expression. The byproduct the perspective change is transitional. From cacophony to harmony, torment to bliss, splintered distraction and division to union. It’s all one, and of one. If perceived a certain way, it’s overwhelming and tragic, conversely it’s also fulfilling, rewarding, elevating, and enlightening. Hazard, I may remain alert to lifestyles which result in distinct points of view. One way of living is trouble, the other not.