Rural Recovery & Religious Rhymes
In the Sutta Nipāta 5.16, a fellow named "King of Emptiness" (Mogharāja) asks the Buddha how he should "look upon the world" such that the "King of Death cannot see [him]", and the Buddha (eventually, after being questioned thrice) answers "Look upon the world as empty, Mogharāja; ever mindful…"
It is not quite where I'm at right now. World seems chock full of bullshit. I'm in rural Missouri, a place I only ended up because my life was generally in shambles by 31 and I was either going to move back in with my father or be homeless again. The last time I tried to start over from his guest room I made it about 18 months before I was so incredibly depressed that I decided to drive back to my home city in Texas and try starting over living out of my car instead.
Unsurprisingly, really, this did not produce better results. I was introduced to meth while I was still living out of my car and hanging around lots of other homeless people (not for the stimulating conversation, just as a consequence of staying close to shelters and soup kitchens and whatnot). I managed to get a job working once again as a CNA, and taking tiny little bits of meth almost every day definitely made it easier to get through the first few weeks, during which I was still sleeping (poorly) in a car and eating very little food. Meth continued to fuel me through a year of very long, intense shifts worked at all hours of the day and night, but despite my relatively well-moderated use (seriously) and carefully-maintained harm-reduction measures (always try to sleep every night, always eat something every day, etc.) I couldn't keep myself together forever. I finally lost that job after arriving very late twice. I had started to periodically sleep straight through my alarms, profoundly exhausted after weeks-long stretches of sleeping very little while working tons of hours overnight.
After I lost that job, I spent an embarrassingly long time just bumming around and getting increasingly insane from the meth use, until finally (to make a very long story somewhat shorter), someone I barely knew stabbed me very nearly to death, eviscerating me over a misunderstanding.
I was becoming (to my deep, deep regret and horror) someone that strangers and new acquaintances began to find incredibly scary. Not because I was violent or aggressive, but just because I seemed incredibly intense and kind of insane, no matter how hard I tried to appear normal and non-threatening. I worked very hard to hide my meth addiction (and, indeed, I succeeded at that--no one had any idea, they just thought I was really intense and eccentric), and especially not to frighten people--I truly found the idea that I was making people uncomfortable beyond mortifying, truly disturbing--but there is only so much one can do to pretend normalcy when you are gradually losing touch with reality, growing increasingly paranoid, hearing voices, and keeping your nervous system ablaze with more stimulation than a hunted animal 24/7.
So, after a few months recovering from the evisceration, I returned to this little guest room once more, only this time with a renewed conviction that I could not simply "wing it" anymore. I needed recovery, and every other form of healing and help of which I could possibly avail myself, or shit was just gonna get worse. This time, I felt the "King of Death" watching me very closely.
Now, I am doing much better than I was. There is just a great, great deal of room for improvement. As I mentioned in my first post, I am still struggling to say goodbye to the much-less-psychoactive but-still-highly-addictive security blanket which helped me quit meth: kratom. I am also beginning to really confront everything which the heavy drug use had helped me avoid and repress: my own deeply wounded psyche, fucked life, and, like everyone else with a conscience, the problem of how to live meaningfully and helpfully without freaking out and hating people in this horror-show world.
The way my life was going, I was never going to be of any use to anyone, no matter how well-informed about the ongoing blood-soaked imperialism of my home country I remained. Keeping close tabs on the rise of outright fascism, the regression of civil rights (domestically, that is--American foreign policy hasn't ever given a shit about anyone else's rights), the progress of environmental destruction, etc. and despising more and more the countrymen (or bots posing as them) who actively supported it all was, ultimately, accomplishing nothing beyond driving me more fucking insane.
I realized I simply wasn't going to be able to begin actually contributing in any meaningful way until I got my shit quite a bit more together. I definitely wasn't going to be able to live in this world with universal compassion, loving-kindness, empathetic-joy, AND equanimity.
It takes a much more stable mind to see the emptiness in the world.
Well, there's no nice literary conclusion I have to these thoughts. I'm really just introducing myself still and laying the groundwork, getting these thoughts out, telling you where I'm at. If anyone reads this, do please comment, because that's insane.
