tales of husbandry

[dancing_crow]

So Al come downstairs this morning looking looking, as usual, like a chaos muppet, and says "I have to tell you something, but I don't think you're going to like it" and I'm racking my bains trying to decide if we've talked about breaking up or I'm suddenly spending too much time or money on the house reno that is limping along, but no.

"You know I've been meditating, and I'm up to level 8, and when I reach level 10, that is enlightenment, and I think things will change a lot when that happens, and I thought you should know" 

To my enormous credit, I did not laugh at him. Just the idea of levels of meditation cracks me RIGHT the fuck up, because I've never known it to be that linear and directed, like, ever. All the people I've read who talk about meditation in the long term talk about how it is a practice, and you have to return to it regularly, and it is not linear, and breakthroughs don't happen you just get calmer, and I wonder what the fuck kind of meditation koolaid he's been handed, and I so very much do not want to ask about it, or look at it, for the same general reason I didn't want to go with my mother to an EST session - I have so many better ways to waste my time, even if all I am doing is playing word games on my phone.

So he says his brain is very busy doing ....something? He thinks when he becomes enlightened, he will be a better person. I can only talk to him about this for limited amounts of time because I don't really want to just laugh at him? But honestly what I think I see happening is him getting even less flexible in his thinking, and then saying he doesn't have to worry about it because he's enlightened now... I think it is just going to add emotional arrogance to the intellectual arrogance he already carries.

heh. "level 8 meditating" remains fucking hilarious.

Comments

[islenskr]

I'm worried?

[dancing_crow]

You know, I have no idea how hard to worry? His stated theory is that he'll be kinder and etc. as a part of being a better person. I think if I offer him the idea that it is possible to be enlightened and still and asshole mostly by doubling down on "correctness" he might be able to avoid that?

[islenskr]

Maybe?
I'm mostly worried because the "10 levels of" whatever he's found sounds an awful lot like some crystal waving woo on the internetz. And it seems like he's applied his own logic to meditation (which, like so many things, requires no logic applications, and probably require no logic applications...)

You are a better person than I am. I would have burst out laughing.

[lydy]

I...why is he not working right now to be a kinder person, instead of waiting until enlightenment? I just... if that's the goal, work on it, dude. I might comment that you aren't willing to wait for him to level up to be good to you. He needs to be doing that now, regardless of the state of his soul.

But man, you get so many points for not laughing. Like, all the points.

[dancing_crow]

I don't know why he can't just work on being kinder, and more present.

I think he took up meditating to fix his sleeping issues, and he was having a hard time falling asleep, and then freaking out over it, but yea, it feels more and more like a cult, and also more like the changes he is seeing are between his ears and not making it into the actual world.

thank you for the not laughing points!