Thing of the Week: Purging Negativity & The Ultimate Reality

JEN'S THING OF THE WEEK: Purging Negativity 

You know that scene in Jennifer's Body when Jennifer comes into Needy's house and she looks totally fucked up and is covered in blood and vomits this disgusting thick black mess all over the floor? I think that is the perfect illustration of purging negativity. Getting all of the horrible things you've been holding in you and barfing them on a kitchen floor. I'm really into the idea of releasing negativity to enter the new year. I had a shitty 2012, kind of in general but especially right at the end. I don't really want to bring it with me into 2013. I'm barfing it on the floor. On January 2nd I dyed my hair from platinum blonde to basically black brunette. I needed a visual restart. It all happened. It's on the kitchen floor and now I'm moving forward with a new hair color.

LJ'S THING OF THE WEEK: The Primordial Unity of the Individual Soul with the Plentitude of Being That Is the Absolute

When people ask me what I write about, I tell them "I write about Eastern spirituality themes, but in a really dumb way. From, like, a stonery rich white girl perspective." I am obsessed with George Harrison and the Beatles in Rishikesh and Ravi Shankar and JD Salinger short stories and Siddhartha. I have a shrine in my bedroom and when people say dumb shit I condescendingly sigh "It's all just samsara." I've understood that it's all just samsara for a while now, but have refused to let myself to see the other side of the "It's all just samsara" coin. It's easy to embrace "the meaninglessness of everything," using the word "everything" to mean cars and bars and people and jobs and all that, but that's so not what "everything" is! What I was saying is everything is actually "nothing." The meaninglessness of nothing. 

Eastern spirituality is a big part of who I am, but up until now, it's something that I have only allowed myself to engage with on a very surfacey level. I have been begging myself to embrace these concepts since I was a little kid and told my classmates I was a Zen Buddhist because I'd read The Tao of Pooh. I really thought I was one! It's been easy and cool for me to walk around scowling and writing stories about people realizing water is more important than phones and listening to "Within You Without You" but living it, really living it, is a whole nother ball game. 

I guess I was always afraid of really going for it because I was afraid of things being as beautiful as they really are. I was afraid of believing in God or at least a God-style concept. I was afraid of not being afraid of dying. 

For a moment during the very early morning of January 1st something clicked in my brain and I saw and fully understood that God is everything and within me. I am everything and so is everything. It was the most beautiful and exciting moment I have ever lived. When I woke up on the afternoon of January 1st I remembered what that moment felt like and started crying because I was so happy. I want to devote so much of my life to getting myself back to that feeling. At first I felt really overwhelmed by how best to do it and needed a direction so I Googled "what religion was Ravi Shankar" (Hindu) and then researched Hinduism all day. When I read the sentence that is the title of this thing and learned about Atman and Brahman I started crying again because it was describing what I'd felt, which meant that it's a thing for sure! Other people have known it. Some people live their entire lives without seeing it. I want to see it and live it and breathe it and be it. 

I have started meditating on the Hare Krishna mantra. I've tried meditating before and it's always been impossible but this time it's coming really easy. For a short amount of time yesterday I went into a trance and my lips were saying the words but I wasn't thinking them. I am so amazed that that happened to me. 

Last night at work it was snowing fat cute flakes out and I was watching them through the window and I understood it again. 

I don't know where I am going to go with this or how it is going to answer itself but I know that it will. I feel a little silly writing about it when it's still in such a baby phase but I try to be very honest about Thing of the Weeks. And I just can't pretend the best thing that happened to me was drinking a tequila sour or finding a Gitano purse at Value Village the week I gained comprehension of the ultimate reality.