Mandala

This is the now from which I move on.

I started counseling today. Actually it was just an intake interview conducted by a counselor.

My intake counselor was a woman with crazy wizzy waggy gray black white hair, warm eyes and a very genuine smile. We talked about my childhood, my family, and my experiences in high school. She was very good - professional, insightful, non-judgemental and caring. She noted that I was "verbal" and I agreed with a nod of my head. She told me that the Institute was secular even though it was attached to a Church. I explained that though I grew up without religion, I had studied Buddhism and philosophy. Though I didn't say it, I think she understood that I am amenable to spiritual guidance.

Though I am not religious, and cannot willingly place every facet of my life in the hands of another, whether it be God or someone else, I am open to gentle guidance by the cosmos. I could even willingly suspend disbelief purely for practical benefit, so long as the belief and benefit concern only myself. If I am dealing exclusively with my own happiness, my own salvation, my own life, I feel I have the moral right and the free will to believe in what I want even if I know it is a lie. Whereas, when dealing with others' happiness, salvation, or life, the moral imperative and free will ought to be sharply mitigated in my opinion. Furthermore, one can knowingly believe in a lie only in retrospect and only by temporarily suspending disbelief. Whereas, to indefinitely believe in a lie is a travesty as it is to be deceived.

I digressed for a reason. This blog is not going to be a journal of my counseling. It is going to be a complelent to my counseling, or perhaps a continuation or component of my counseling. It will consist of some of the things that I had thought but did not say. It does help to say it, or write it, even if I have already thought it and even after the fact. Having said that, I will still use the counseling sessions as a scaffold for my blog.

So, getting back to the counseling. For the first time in a long time, I spoke about my experience in high school. Not that there was anything particularly dramatic or traumatic that occurred in high school, but it was just a period that I hadn't really bothered to look back upon with any great frequency. By the time I reached high school I had just become "officially" depressed. I have spent most of my self-analytic time examining the period immediately before my depression, but I hadn't really thought much about the period immediately after the depression set in. So those series of questions were particularly insightful. Also, a truly remarkable coincidence occurred as I walked back to work after the intake which I will bring up later.

The counselor asked about my friends in high school and I sort of deflected the question by saying I really didn't have any friends, but she persisted and I said that there was a group of aquaintances who I ~sort~ of associated with. These were people I hadn't thought about in years. She asked me why I felt I did not fit in with them. I said it was because they were nerdy, in a purely scientific way, whereas I felt that I had more than pure science nerdiness. I also had a literary kind of nerdiness. It was the kind of semi-honest, poorly worded answer that I splutter out when I am caught off-guard by a question. In effect, what I was saying, but was maybe embarrassed to say or did not want to recognize, is that I felt that somehow I was better than my acquaintances in high school, so I never really considered them real friends. Because I never felt I had real friends, I became more lonely and depressed throughout high school and college, and compounded with my social anxiety, I was eventually desperate to have any friends who could tolerate my social ineptitude and utter boringness. The questions about high school brought back a lot of those early self-esteem issues I had (as opposed to the more evolved ones I now have).

When the session was over and I was walking back to work, an amazing thing happened. I actually ran into one of those high school aquaintances whom I wrongly would not accept as a "real" friend. I thought he was a stranger who was going to ask for directions, but he instead he said, "I know you! We went to high school together!" He introduced himself, and I pretended that I remembered him until I actually did a few seconds later. Holy Shit! How the hell did he recognize me after all those years? Those old raw feelings of superiority, embarrassment, shame, desperation, all mixed in with my usual social anxiety bullshit, rushed through my brain at the same time. We talked awkwardly for about 1 minute and he gave me his card. And we parted, probably never to meet again. I had that buzzy feeling for the next 10 minutes, wondering whether that was some sort of sign, message or opportunity. If it was an opportunity, then what was it? Should I have taken that opportunity to apologize? to start a friendship? It was maybe a cross-roads, between moving on or moving back. But which was which, I couldn't tell.

There is a mandala (actually not a true mandala, but a representation of one) in the logo for the Institute. Their website actually explains why it is in their logo and what a mandala is. I have studied mandalas before. A part of my senior thesis concerned the relationship between mandalas and circular pilgrimages. One can view a mandala as a tool, a template, or even a map for meditation. It is a highly complex, highly structured, repetitive pattern, maze-like, with intricate details of spiritual objects, deities and forms, in which, on which, and through which, one is meant to meditate. I have sometimes thought of Manhattan as a Mandala.


POST ANALYTIC ANALYSIS:
Now you might be thinking, oh come on. You run into an old acquaintance from high school in the same city where you went to school and suddenly the planets are aligned to send you a cosmic message? Give me a break. That is probably true for most average joes, but for me, believe me, it has only happened once or twice in my lifetime and never from someone in high school, when I literally had no (ie, zippo, nada, 0) friends. All I had were acquaintances, and since I wasn't exactly a stand out kind of kid, I doubted anyone would ever stop me on the street to say hi. I was wrong. I wonder what else I was wrong about. Let's hope the epiphanies keep on coming.