I’m taking a human sabbatical. This means that I won’t be online, I won’t be contacting people, I’ll be all alone. With my own thoughts. For one month.
I realize that being around people, I act in unconscious ways. I become unaware of my own thoughts and needs, until I’m finally alone. Then they come out of hiding. I’d like to meet them.
February will be a good month for me to do that. There are no visitors. My birthday has just passed. I have the apartment to myself. Just me, my bed, and my mat.
Also I’ll be doing a Vipassana retreat, so ten of those days will be spent in silence anyway. So this should be a piece of cake.
I’m a little scared of what I’ll do to fill up the time. But I think I’ll come out knowing myself far better.
It seems to me that Facebook and Twitter and YouTube—and just so you don’t think this is a generational thing, TV and radio and magazines and even newspapers, too—are all ultimately just an elaborate excuse to run away from yourself. To avoid the difficult and troubling questions that being human throws in your way. Am I doing the right thing with my life? Do I believe the things I was taught as a child? What do the words I live by—words like duty, honor, and country—really mean? Am I happy? [...] So it’s perfectly natural to have doubts, or questions, or even just difficulties. The question is, what do you do with them? Do you suppress them, do you distract yourself from them, do you pretend they don’t exist? Or do you confront them directly, honestly, courageously? If you decide to do so, you will find that the answers to these dilemmas are not to be found on Twitter or Comedy Central or even in The New York Times. They can only be found within—without distractions, without peer pressure, in solitude.
This is so great. And it came at such an appropriate time in my life.
I don’t know what I’m doing with my life. I don’t know what’s going on with me. I don’t know what I’m doing with these videos. I don’t know what I’m doing with my site.
(Sorry about the cut-off video. I ran out of space on my iPhone.)
I find that when I’m online, I am “hyper expressive”. I want to interact with everything, I want to talk to everyone. I want to comment on everything. I have an opinion about everything.
When I’m out with people, I shut down these days. Instead I feel the disgust I have with people. Very rare exceptions.
In the past, it was the opposite. I would be conservative about posting stuff online. Actually I’d have writer’s block of some sort. I’d think my shit was boring and not want to post it. I’d be very socially interactive with everyone in real life.
I think the social introversion (in real life) is me being sick of the learned manners, the autoresponses that I’ve accumulated the past few months/years.
The online extroversion is an interesting thing. I find myself actually holding back what I say, since I’m aware that I’ve got so much to say. I find myself trying to not be such a fussy dick online.
I think I suddenly want to be risky and say lots of stuff online, but I don’t want to risk alienating my audience, however big it may be. (However small.)
Just like I have to fight the urge to be polite in real life, I think my next step is to fight the urge to hold back online.
I have the flu. I’m too lazy to go out so I stay home. There’s no food so I fast. I backwards-rationalize the fasting with Google, only to find some crazy dude who water-fasts for 34 days. That scares me into eating random crap I find in the room.
OMG two videos in one day. This is what happens when I lock myself into a room the whole day. Apparently I don’t look very deep into myself, I just surf YouTube and make videos.
People have been quite upset after getting blocked by Gwen Bell and Ev Bogue. I defend Gwen’s decision to block me and talk about different paths people take in life.
I’ve been trying to merge the two Rays: the antisocial Ray, with his mindfulness and his ability to feel his emotions, with the social Ray, with his bubbly personality and quick wit. Together with some flu/cold medicine, I became Hyper Expressive Ray. Watch me talk nonstop today!
I was at a vegetarian restaurant and I plopped a spoonful of ghee (clarified butter) onto my food. The people next to me got up and left. Then the manager brings by a National Geographic magazine. The topics ranged from stabbing hearts to bug eggs. Thanks, eating! Finally the table across from me has a couple. The guy was explaining to the girl the rules of poker, while she was painfully smiling and pretending to be interested. Luckily for me, I wasn’t officially part of the conversation. I got up and left.
Due to Chinese New Year, I was pressured into getting a haircut. Hear the thrilling near-disaster, and how my aunt saved the day! And I conclude with my plans to be a dick. Again.
I think this whole anti-social phase is a result of me just feeling. In the past, I’ve been suppressing my feelings, maintaining a steady stream of what I thought was bliss, but just a flatlined emotionless existence. Signs of the suppression include my inability to trust.
So, I’m feeling. And I’m suffering. I’m feeling a lot of pent up emotions from my past that I’ve ignored for too long. And I’m dealing with them by myself. It’s the only way. If anyone is around me, I can’t be myself. I’ll revert to my social self, my automatic response self. I’ll be polite and courteous. And I’ll risk being a harmful.
During my Vipassana meditation retreat, we were to maintain truthfulness. This was achieved by eliminating communication. Likewise, in order to maintain non-violence, I am eliminating contact with other people.
When I’m with people, I am disgusted. I don’t like it. I don’t like the way I have to behave. I don’t like having to play nice.
Alone, I can feel. I can really feel. I can feel my disgust at humanity. I can feel my disgust at myself. I can deal with it. I can keep it in. I can yell and kick and scream and nobody will get hurt. And I will be fine.
If I’m with others, I can just keep silent. I talk carefully. I fantasize about screaming at the top of my lungs, and that scares me. I’d rather fantasize about that alone.
There’s a dark side of me that I’ve been keeping hidden from everyone. This part of me doesn’t want to be friends with anyone. I just want to be alone. My social obligations are slowly dwindling, and I am looking forward to that. I am also afraid of what will happen when that happens. I don’t know how I’ll feel, I don’t know what I’ll do, when left to my own devices.
I feel lonely, being unable to share this part of me. I suspect that part of me is the loneliness. I suspect that I’m afraid of being alone and afraid of what I’ll do when I’m alone. That’s the emerging fear. It’s also tempting. I want to find out what happens when I’m alone. I want to know. I want to walk into the darkness, trembling and determined.
I talked about selfless service and my mindset while performing it. Then I talked about the wrong way to do service, mainly service that only makes the helper feel good. Then I lost my train of thought.
What’s your experiences on selfless service?
I’m grateful for:
My knee is improving! Today the doctor rubbed me the right way…like a genie in a bottle…I mean… Anyway my knee’s getting better.
My aunt’s cooking.
My opportunity to do the dishes and scrub out my ego.
My opportunities to get family together, to be that glue between members.
My cousin Emily, who was decided that she was going to take me to Taiwan with her. I’m glad she felt that way, but maybe next time little girl. I mean big girl.
“Distraction is the only thing that consoles us for our miseries,” the French philosopher Blaise Pascal wrote in the 17th century, “and yet it is itself the greatest of our miseries.”
The night before, I dreamt I was taking a five hour exam. Something really important. There was a break, and I went outside. As I was returning, there was terrible wind. I literally had to crawl on the sidewalk, which was covered in plastic that I gripped. Along the way my dad was beside me, trying to help but somehow ineffective. I was struggling and mad at my dad for being useless and a hindrance.
Somehow I get back to the exam room and everybody’s just chatting. Then I wake up with an urge to pee.
The anguish, the struggle stayed with me as I brushed my teeth. I didn’t even want to go back to sleep.
The anguish was so real. I had no idea I was dreaming, despite the obvious (in hindsight) nonsensicalness. Like in the matrix, or Inception, if we’re dreaming and can’t wake up, how do we know if we’re dreaming? What if life was just one long dream, ending when we die?
Even the past and future are illusory. History is in memories, in books. Everything is interpreted by our minds right now. We fantasize about the future but it is only in the now that we can verify our fantasies, and even then, we verify with our memories.
Do you ever have weird dreams?
I’m grateful for:
Not having exams anymore. Yoga Thailand was enough.
Finally getting trataka working.
No teaching tomorrow. I’m tired. My leg needs rest.
The Chinese medicine wrapped around my leg. It smells, but it seems to help.
Having a fun conversation with my cousin Emily (Big Bo). I don’t think she connects with many people in the family.
It’s weird being a full-time relative. I wake up at 5, practice pranayama and yoga postures, and the rest of the day is spent with family. It’s not even the same family members, either. This year, for some reason, a ton of relatives and friends have been flying into Hong Kong. I know that the $6,000 is one reason, but it’s probably not the main reason.
So I spend a lot of time with relatives, going out, having dim sum, chatting, getting to know each other.
I guess the weird part is that I spend so much time hanging out with relatives, I hardly have time for my own stuff. So I don’t do much outside of it, and then society’s standards of productivity creep up on me. I question where all my time is spent, what have I done today, etc.
I guess the main thing is that, right now, I feel my personal growth needs to happen both in my spiritual/yoga/meditative practice and in connecting with my family. When I moved to LA, I spent three years away from my family, running away. It was what I needed at the time: independence. I needed to know what kind of person I was, what kind of man I was. I needed to experience the world and know my place in it. I couldn’t do it constantly under my parents’ watch. I don’t know if they’ll ever understand this point.
But now I’ve traveled enough, met enough people, and I’m looking deeper within. I’m looking for deeper fulfillment that can be had from the hedonistic lifestyle I led the past few years. I’m seeking for fulfillment within. Contentment. And part of that is facing that fear I had when I first moved away: the fear of dealing with relatives. The fear of judgment, the fear of pressure to conform to familial standards.
I guess it’s that ironic twist: in trying to improve relations with my family, my family puts pressure on me to make money (the old-fashioned away, computers), get married, get fat (fat = good in Chinese culture; nevermind obesity issues). Sometimes some of that talk gets through to me. Every day I grow stronger, though. Every day I learn to withstand the pressure, to do what I feel is right, rather than what I was pressured into.
Right action. That’s what’s important. Of course, wisdom is important too. I can believe I’m doing the right thing and totally mess up if I am misinformed.
The good thing about me is that I’ve messed up so many times, I know all the wrong paths. And I’m not afraid of messing up. It’ll all be good in the end. Messing up is where I learn. Messing up is part of life. It’s how I know what will happen—what will really happen, rather than theorizing.
I’m grateful for:
Having the balls to plow through life, even if I don’t know what’ll happen.
Having the strength and wisdom to recover from anything.
Having the curiosity and humbleness to be open to new ideas and proven completely wrong.
Having relative financial freedom to explore.
All the gurus who came before me, who have helped me to this point in life.
My dad thinks excitement is necessary for peak performance. I reluctantly agree, though I didn’t tell him. Mostly because I want to believe that it’s possible to do that with equanimity. Perhaps it’s because I often maintain equanimity with numbness.
I’m grateful for:
Feeling the flow of energy (prana) in my practice today, yet having the mindfulness to take care of my knee.
Having a great relationship with my dad.
My awesome aunt visiting tomorrow! Woohoo! Going to sleep early to pick her up.
Having insightful conversations on Google+. Ando Perez, et al. give me hope for making deep connections online.
Getting my dad to agree to a meditation retreat again. Having my dad be willing to improve our relationship.
I think this is the first time in my life I’ve ever heard that. It’s meaningful to me for two reasons:
It soothes that part of me that felt insecure about being lazy. All my life that’s all I’ve been told from my parents, my teachers, my family, my friends. Having an opposite opinion is nice.
It reaffirms that what I’m doing is right. As I’ve been told before, I’m not lazy, I’m not motivated. I’m not motivated by many things, because they aren’t important to me. The fact that I’m motivated—so motivated, in fact, that I am working harder than I should be—lets me know I’m on the right track.
Tonight I had an interesting talk with Dad. Since he skimmed through The Art of Living: Vipassana Meditation as Taught by S. N. Goenka, the topic of Buddhism and meditation came up. I never thought I’d hear him say that it’s important to put the right amount of effort in—not too much. Throughout the conversation I got the feeling that he was actively trying to relate to me, rather than trying to impose his views upon me. I really appreciate the effort.
While we were on the topic, I got him to agree to take a Vipassana course when he comes back. I hope he follows through!
I’m grateful for:
Tiana, for telling me to take it easy.
Dad, for trying to improve our relationship.
My uncles, for letting me teach them yoga. (They did great!)
Dad, for being my yoga cheerleader.
Dad, for being super worried about my knee, even though I’m not.
Ahimsa is Sanskrit for non-violence. I try to practice ahimsa at all times, though it is tricky when dealing with people.
In my vlog I talked about the various ways I’ve come across ahimsa. I’d like to elaborate on the triggering aspect.
To trigger someone is to cause an emotional reaction. This is usually because of past memories, emotional turmoil, or something else. Ever since college, I’d always liked to pick on conservative friends and poke at them, saying outrageous things to provoke a reaction. I didn’t know it was called triggering back then, but I did it nonetheless.
I told myself it was a service to the world. I thought that I was pushing my friends’ comfort zones and expanding them, creating a more liberal, open world. There was also the ego trip: I believed I was better than my friends (since they were so limited by their conservatism), so having the power to provoke them fueled my ego.
Even as recently as this year, I believed that triggering people was the way toward enlightenment. I thought that, if I made them emotional reactive, they would think, then perhaps spiritually grow. This wasn’t pure fantasy: a lot of my personal growth happened because I myself was triggered, followed by deep introspection.
Gwen Bell and Ev Bogue have been writing about non-violent communication (NVC) recently. Ev’s email, in particular, made me realize the violent nature of consciously triggering people. I had known since my NVC course that it’s not about who’s right: it’s about finding a way to satisfy all parties’ needs. But in the past I just thought, “Okay, don’t insult, don’t berate.” I still liked to lead conversations toward controversial topics for the sake of enlightening the other person. So I thought.
I’d like to say that I’ve figured out how to lead people toward introspection and spiritual growth without ever hurting them, but it’s a work in progress.
One more thing. A few months ago I came up with what I thought was an ideal trigger. Now that you’ve read all this, maybe it can be less violent and more helpful.
Why do you live?
I’m grateful for:
The NVC/Compassionate Communication course I took last year.
Gwen Bell and Ev Bogue for their insightful emails.
pretender5678 on YouTube, for being my very first vlog subscriber! Welcome!
Apple, for providing such wonderful technology for me to share with the world.
Dad, for providing so many opportunities to practice non-violence. I am not being sarcastic. It is truly wonderful to have someone so loving, yet who triggers me all the time. It is in this dichotomy, this paradox, from which I grow.
I’m getting used to vlogging. A little. Today I actually ran out of time to blab, rather than trying to fill dead air with words. Also I was actually interested in what I was saying; instead of forcing myself to talk about a topic, I was enthusiastic about my story. Let’s see if this continues.
So, 2011. I changed from a party animal to a hardcore yogi. My relationship with my parents improved tremendously. I moved to Hong Kong. I took a Vipassana meditation course, which changed my life.
There’s a lot of details I want to go over, but I want to sleep. I don’t know if it’s a symptom of already covering it in my vlog. Will vlogging cut down on my writing efforts?
I actually feel that my writing has already gone downhill since I’ve been practicing daily, due to the early bedtime. Maybe I need to do my nightly reflections earlier.
I’m grateful for:
Being alive. I appreciate every breath I inhale, every opportunity to grow, change, or just slack off. “Being mortal is what makes us capable of doing the impossible.” —Goku, Dragon Ball Z: The Return of Cooler
Having awesome, inspiring friends: Dave, who is getting closer to his photography dreams; my fellow Ashtangis, with whom I have inspirational conversations.
Having a home. I know I can survive anywhere I land in the world. It might take some time to adjust, but I’ll do so, and quickly. But there’s something nice about having a stable place. Not being forced to stay in one place, but rather, choosing to do so.
My new drip-free candle. I use it for trataka, which is a cleansing technique for the optic nerves and for releasing suppressed memories. I still don’t get the vivid dreams and I have a hard time staring until my eyes sting or water (I wind up staring for what seems like 10 – 20 minutes), but finally I can practice at home.
My dad, for really taking time to impart some knowledge to me, to help me. It seems a very one-way dialog (a speech?) but at least he took the time to understand me. He actually read the Chinese translation of The Art of Living: Vipassana Meditation as Taught by S. N. Goenka!