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

[clevermanka]

I might be inclined to feel bad for him? but...it sounds like maybe he doesn't need the sympathy as much as you do.

[sciatrix]

Yeah, this. I confess, if I pulled something this dumb tomorrow, the many people who watch my intellectual back would laugh at me and so would I, and then we would all go off and be more thoughtful next time. This kind of daft is what happens when you become such an ass whenever you're wrong that you make it a pain and a half to actually coax your loved ones to tell you when you're about to amble off a cliff.

And T would be first of all to tell me I was being arrogant, too.

[clevermanka]

As someone who has practiced daily meditation (emphasis on the practicing) for, um, IDK something like two decades now, I'm kinda tempted to make myself a "Level 8 Meditator" shirt except of course nobody would get the joke.

Alas, my "Namaste, Bitches" tee wore out years ago.