at 3 am in the morning, i typically wake up feeling haunted.

there's a lot to worry about. there are the immediate practicalities, like money and my studies and my responsibilities. and then there are increasing circles of concern over ever vaguer issues: my children (particularly aiden), my sister, my parents, my nieces and nephews, the cohesion of my family in general, my energy and environmental footprint, global warming, terrorism, overpopulation, non-sustainable lifestyles and practices, the end of the world.

actually, when i articulate it as a list, it all doesn't seem so bad, even the end of the world stuff. i mean, not to say that it really isn't happening, and people aren't stopping their mad rush to deplete any and everything, but let's face it- people have faced the end of the world before, and somehow, it keeps going: let's think about the middle ages (which was probably pretty mad max beyond thunderdome if you ask me), or the warring states period, or other chaotic times in various places around the world and throughout time... i have to believe that there is a capacity in the human spirit to look at all of that and somehow have faith in "everything," and maintain awareness and the practice of kindness...

if nothing else, bodhisattvas will work onwards, even when there is no (objective) hope.

***

but there's always a danger in "thinking" about problems. sometimes i think there's a disturbance of energy that wakes me up. something is trying to tell me something. and to "comfort" myself in waking thoughts, in the cold and clear analysis of things, somehow escapes the problem.

it is the same thing with death, i suppose. death is literally all around us. and yet, when we "think" about death (or "don't think" about it), it becomes a non-issue, even a comforting thing. but as soon as we deal only with the "thought" of death, we avoid the issue itself. there are many ways we can dress up our thoughts. we can think of "good endings" only, like the nice, warm ending of a full day when all business has been taken care of, endings that have closure and control, for instance- and think that death is always like that (which it is not)...

that's not necessarily "our own inescapably personal death" which we can NEVER know. i suppose that that never knowing is the real hard part of swallowing death. we and our need to cognitively master everything. death is the supreme not knowing, the supreme powerlessness...

and to even conceive of this 3am feeling as only being about "death"... well, it isn't.

many authors have wrestled with what is conveniently called an "anxiety," a fear of something which isn't particular, an unnamed and unnameable fear. it spawns all sorts of scaffolding to conceal it, to manage it, but at its heart, it calls into question all of our structures, all of our "management."

it is trying to tell us something (<-- itself a cognitive management).

***

some people wonder why it is necessary to go into the dark jungle naked of guns and company. it is because we need to confront the thing which most haunts us. we need to confront it, face to face, and see it, and be seen by it. what happens after that, i can't say...