Day 8: Listen George Clooney Just Tell Me Whatever You Think is Relevant
During the morning sit, I experience something which I congratulate myself by calling “complete dissolution of the ego” for half an hour. My consciousness is far away, into other galaxies, out to the edge of the universe. I feel even more there than here! (I told myself). I tried to not like it too much, to remain equanimous, but it’s just so pleasant I can’t help enjoying it, a lot. Which leads to a harsh comedown.

A realization: one “trick” to get through life is to try to react as if what’s happening to me is happening to someone else instead. Suppose I’m worried about money. Pretend the tall Jewish guy with the back-support cushion in the 2nd row came to me and said “I’m having money problems,” how would I react? Wouldn’t care! Great trick!

At lunch, I discover super-concentrated miso paste as a condiment. JESUS CHRIST THIS IS DELICIOUS HOW DID IT TAKE ME 8 DAYS TO DISCOVER THIS! There has to be a catch...trying to remain equanimous.

Post lunch: tired, depressed. Wish I understood hunger and tiredness better. Dying to go home.

In the afternoon, I get sick of scanning my body for sensations and give myself a break. I start kicking some flows in my head, un-self-consciously and uninterrupted, for close to the whole hour. A lot of it ends up being about propecia (Mahbod is my imagined audience). Example: “My success with propes makes your bald ass jealous, still can’t shit right although all I eat is lettuce, let us, continue to praise propeesh, sit on a cushion, drape on a fleece, raise my piece, cut my propes into 4 pieces, wish I could eat more reeses, so many more reasons, to take propes: hair grows, your ho knows you get reduced libidos...”

I leave the hall after the freestyle meditation feeling like I’m tripping balls. It’s warm and sunny after a couple days of rain, and it seems like others are kind of tripping too. Javier Lorenzo is doing the meme music festival swimmy freestyle dance, and another guy’s studying at a blade of grass up close. I wonder if we’re all on the same menstrual cycle, so to speak.

I stand by a window for a little while watching leaves fall from a tree and “invent” a new hypnotic induction.

In the evening, we’re instructed to work to “get rid of complexes,” hinting that deeper sources of misery should be arising in consciousness now. Taking the hint, my mind wanders to a 7th grade dance where I first felt too self-conscious to dance, the time I saw my dad’s penis for the first time

I’m feeling pleasant body sensations all over as I watch these memories with equanimity and detachment, and it all feels very soothing and curative. I’m half-convinced that I’m methodically overcoming everything that’s wrong with me, easy as vacuuming the living room.

Then my mind turns to the night my mom, feigning playfulness but obviously upset, revealed to me that she’d read my blog, in which I had JOKINGLY, pseudonymously, threatened to kill her numerous times. Incredible pressure builds in my left temple, like a crocodile had a hold of my head. I sit with this pain for half an hour at least, watching, observing, wishing the pain away, noting that I’m wishing it away. Sometimes the pain moves around a bit and partially dissolves and I get hopeful, but it keeps coming back. In extreme pain, I conclude that I must completely kill the mother of the little boy inside my head (or the little boy in my mom’s head, or some such thing) in order to alleviate the pressure.

Dreams:
1) I’m applying for medical research I’m not qualified for, turning in a poorly researched term paper on Bolivia

2) George Clooney is one of 3 guys wearing masks in the crowd at a high school football game. I sit next to him and have a chat. He’s stressed about his next career move. He’s considering doing a Robert Rodriguez horror movie because it “open-gated” 30 million. He asks if I even know what an open-gate is, and I’m just like “Listen George Clooney, just tell me whatever you think is relevant.”

3) At an avant garde bar in Berlin with my girlfriend and some of her friends. Three futuristic hipster German guys in masks enter, one is wearing gloves. I smell avant garde terrorism and run for the exits, failing to warn my girlfriend who isn’t with me at the moment. All the doors are locked from the outside except one. I sprint out and down the street, and the place explodes.

(100 pushups)