We undeniably have mental habits of seeing ourselves in the world. When I awake in the morning I awake into an attitude, a tone of self. I notice the light on my white walls, coax myself into my body, this is a habit too. I may awake feeling fresh, or cloudy, like the sky. These are states, they turn like the light, but there is something underneath turning too. Pervasive modes of being from which one confronts the world. I may always turn my leaves from the sun.
Or: the sense of oneself as a static thing, the thread of the tapestry rather than the weaver. Depression, I have come to understand, is this loss of agency, the asking of oneself over and over again, what kind of thread am I? And thus remaining, perpetually, a collection of loose, god-given, strings.
I see myself and others like this a lot. I often feel inadequate when someone around me excels at something. When someone cooks more delicious food, or makes keener observations. This is to know oneself and others as objects. I, with my faculties, weave a life of worry, of competition. I see nothing and hear nothing. This way of being hurts. I am always failing, always not good enough.
Last night I drank and smoked and we danced wildly to music. And something allowed me just too see. To calm my mind enough to feel a friend’s perspective when he spoke. He was being analytic, he was listening to the world. Normally I would judge myself, the track would run, why am I so introspective, why have I not listened. But something allowed me to say, it is beautiful that he sees that way. And in doing so I remembered that I too have a mind, to use to perceive instead of fret. We know our faculties through their use, the same red thread in you and me can look like a scientist in one and a writer in another. The world is the weaving.
This morning I arise restless. I sit to meditate, without conviction, I don’t remember deciding. But in sitting, my knowing from last night returns to me in full body. I see him being and he inspires me. I see her cooking and she inspires me.
And I understand. When we see others as weavers it reminds us of our capacity to weave. It is my mind that appreciates his, my sensuality that ignites when I feel hers in use. To appreciate another is to allow them to inspire you, to allow them to light your core, to have you know you and them and beyond because you feel what is in you is also in them. It is only known through use. Through feeling the weaver through the weave.
I am sitting at a picnic table in my backyard. It is dusk, the air is chilly, water trickles in the soundscape. My spine erect, I can feel my core. A sense of agency changes my body. Suddenly I am integral, a strong trunk, capable of meeting the world as it turns. To begin to see and hear the world without trying to grasp it is like receiving oxygen after holding one’s breath for a long time. It is a challenge to feel people as they are. This will hurt too sometimes.
A short morning meditation usually brings me answers like this, as does letting oneself go once in awhile, to drinking or whatever else I don’t normally do.
I must add a caveat: sometimes I know the best thing to do is to let the worries flow. We cannot always listen. Insights once woven become threads, to be strung and restrung into new weaves. They cannot prescribe for the mind. But the body remembers. The feeling of standing strong in one’s core is the knowledge of having loom in hand, thread in hand, a being in and creating of the world. It is physically believing in yourself.
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