One of the key themes the exercises on uncovering hidden benefits and beliefs kept coming back to was that I continually quest for/seek to build a ‘bubble world*‘ — the kind of place where everyone lives in harmony, according to the rules and standards I think are ideal. In my bubble world, people are respectful and considerate, they are laid-back and peaceful, they are community-oriented and friendly. After living in Cali, fairly happy, for so long, my bubble world had come to look a lot like chill-Cali and decisively not New York.
The problem, which my new NY home proved by its mere existence, is that my bubble world is a fantasy that the real world simply doesn’t abide by. Which brings me to a pretty shocking self discovery that arose directly from the hidden benefits and beliefs exercises– I continue to strive for, to be reborn for, something that is impossible to achieve. Below I am going to share a raw, unedited, page from my notebook in which I grappled with this newfound, and pretty shocking, realization.
I get reborn for something impossible. How fucked-up is that? WHY CAN’T I STOP? Because I don’t really believe it is impossible; or because what little I have, what few moments I can spend in my bubble world are worth it; or because I have already invested so much, I just can’t quit. I used to think I had earned the comfort that I had back in San Fran, so I should just get to enjoy it, I could worry about practice and enlightenment later (hidden wrong view that enlightenment will be uncomfortable). But now that I am in NY and I don’t have comfort, all I can think about is how to get it back. I am engrossed in worldly schemes, still not worried about practice or enlightenment.
Because I had comfort and happiness for a while, I know it is possible. Now I need to preserve what comfort I have and get back what I lost. This is why Mae Yo has taught to pretend to be others, to feel and experience all the options of this world — to know discomfort is possible just as I know comfort is possible from my time in SF. All the possible good stuff motivates my hope, my worldly schemes, my bubble world quests. But what about the possible bad stuff– shouldn’t it be motivating my practice, my plan to escape (rebirths)? Instead I just look away from the bad stuff, I try to avoid it.
I look away from disease, from homelessness, from broken families and ugliness of all sorts. In my head, I make those things ‘not me’, ‘not mine’. I come-up with reasons in my head that those will never be me or mine, why I am special. In my bubble world I am always healthy, fit, rich and loved. But I already have evidence from my move to NY that I can slip out of my own bubble world so easily. ONE MOVE and I feel like SF Alana is slipping away, yielding to cold and bitchy, unlovable, NY Alana. I fight back, I flail, I seek to retain myself and my identity. But I have already lost control, I have already exited the bubble. So why do I create/strive for something that is so impossible to attain that even I can’t do it perpetually? Even I can’t live up to my own bubble world standards and rules.
It is time to practice the truth, to internalize what makes me so uncomfortable — I am not special, I am subject to impermanence, there is no special bubble world where I can live exempt from the rules of the world. There is only so long I can keep moving my bench into shady spots. In the end, I am subject to loss, death, to discomfort and to existence in a world that doesn’t meet my ‘just so’ standards.