#tricky fish

I'm noticing how difficult it's been to access my emotions over the last couple days.  It's made writing difficult.  I wanted to rely on my thoughts to construct a digital facsimile of the world inside my head.  Such a thing would be a bridge, a way to connect; and yet, as I wrote I felt more and more isolated.  The task is monstrously large and spirals into digression and disagreement every couple of sentences.  There was no simplifying it.  The mind - my mind - has so many different layers of comprehension and creativity, often working at cross-purposes that feel paradoxical and painful when viewed from either polarity, but dynamic and whole when viewed from a greater perspective.  I think a lot of therapy leads to these moments of insight, where previously conflictual parts of the mind are suddenly given greater context and viewed from a space the can hold both simultaneously.

Insights like that are recognized throughout the entire mind and body and for a time, the individual can relax... but then - and this is the tricky part - the insight can die.  It becomes a memory that is absorbed into the pre-insight narrative, spoken about in terms unbefitting its original brilliance.  It's dry in our mouths.

Integration of insight is a slow and arduous process.  I've noticed this in myself and others.  An ayahuasca trip that explains an ancient personality trait; a romantic relationship that explains the ones before it; a meditation retreat where the ego disappears for thirty seconds and the self is seen impartially for the first time.  How long does that peace last?  How long before the insight no longer lives, except in a faintly-recalled conception?  

I'm not really cynical about it.  I've had such experiences and they have changed me permanently, but often on a level more subtle than the discursive mind or conditioned behavior patterns.  There's a relaxation... I'm a little more aligned with my mind and body... I know something that is true about myself on some level...

Which can be even more painful now, because I glimpsed a truth and my thoughts, speech, and actions didn't get the message.  Then I am urged on... urged on to make the actual changes, the slow, painful realignment of self that brings the anxiety of dying.