The Art of the Self - The Challenge

Today, I decided to take a trip across town. I am in Hollywood on Highland Blvd.at a Starbucks. Consumer-Tourist heaven filled with the Hollywood cultural spiel of characters from Prostitutes to hustlers to tourist to street punks to nerds, etc. You name it and it's here, literately. The mania and the energy here is revolts around this phenomenal environment with the tourist stores, the sidewalks with the names of famous actors, athletes, musicians, and personalities; also included are fashion clothing stores, bowling alley, high class hotels, etc.. It saturates the whole city in its micro-bacterial infestation. It's hard not to notice it, but I am beginning to have a sort of distaste for this sort of environment lately. Nothing personal, it's just maybe I have outlived the experience and the reality of this city. It has lost it sparkle and transformed into a gaunt-spectacle of virality. The vitality is a virus to consume the self into an erosive deterioration.

Henceforth, I have just begun summer vacation from the university. I have been able to catch up on some much needed rest and reading during this first week of vacation. I was able to clean up my small studio apartment. I still have some more things to clean up, but the one thing I need to clean is "my mind." I think one of the toughest things we have to consider about life is how do we confront ourselves? It's always a challenge to acknowledge a problem within ourselves, but the biggest obstacle is whether we wish to change or to cultivate this problem into a fruition of the Self. This challenge offers us the ability to be far more capable than what we are told we aren't capable of.

I think the word "challenge" defines the first thing to come to mind when anyone wants to confront the face that they see in the mirror every morning they wake-up. The "Self" is an interesting psychological infrastructure that is a combination of experiences, observations, and illusions we have confined as an education. We could declaratively recall many events in an episodic or a semantic position, but they could easily be forgotten or trivialized by a new sources of information. Either way, this is a perfect example of education in the process of the Self.

A great reference to this challenge I speak of could be better exemplified by the Buddha's "Noble Eightfold Path." This path was constructed by Siddhartha as the means to end suffering in the Self.  The Eightfold Path contains the following:

1. Right View	Wisdom
2. Right Intention
3. Right Speech	Ethical Conduct
4. Right Action
5. Right Livelihood
6. Right Effort	Mental Development
7. Right Mindfulness
8. Right Concentration

Each principle in the Eightfold Path has a purpose to end suffering that leads any individual, who follow it, to the understandings of their suffering and the obtainment of their enlightenment. The Self should be seen as a vehicle toward the path and the road we choose to travel in search of answers and of quest toward more unknowable accolades the Self desires to obtain.

The Eightfold Path is just an example of the Self's capabilities when given the opportunity to seek knowledge and to seek enlightenment or to seek refuge from the many strifes developed by the persistence in life's trivial endeavors. I am not saying life is perfect, but I know we all can't evade suffering. The Self should never be neglected for it's like a slow-burning suicide. Denying the Self what it needs to fuel it's fire will not kill the problem or save you time; no. This will prolong the process of the inevitable that life, as you known it to be, will not remain in this state of stagnant mediocrity.

The awakened mind is a mind one must taste; furthermore, I wake up everyday wondering or thinking what i can do to make it better for myself! I cannot live my life not knowing the position I have with myself and with the environment I inhabit. I have to divorce every emotion and every person close to me when a question of my faith in my will to exist. I know I have desires and I have pleasures I want to obtain, but I cannot proceed forward to experience and enjoy these delightful pleasures in leisure without some sort of understanding of my position in the Self. I can't be nobody's fool, but my own. I think the best part about this awakened state is the acknowledgment of how powerful and how prudent the "Self" is as an identity and as a personality for us who questions it. This analysis is just one of the gaps we must fill about the "Self."

It's weird; I didn't expect to write this much or anything at all. Yet, I woke up this morning filled with elation and with ease. It was a peaceful state I have longed for in quite sometime until I walked out of the door of my apartment, took the metro train from Long Beach to Downtown L.A. all the way to Hollywood. Oh boy! When you are fresh like I am at the moment, there are the wolves, the cats, the cheetahs, and the dogs smelling your scent and ready to get a piece of the feast. I am the one in the sheep's clothing; but, I am not a wolf....I am a different creature.