to say that if you conceive of your own god using your mind that it’s an inherently shitty god. I think that we should all have our own gods, and whatever we believe exists does, in some way, exist. But, like, when I imagine god as a douchebro or as an asshole (which I’ve been conditioned to do as a result of being raised in the Jewish religion, where god is kind of a punishing dick), it’s harder for me to find comfort in that god. I don’t really want to go to it for help. Why would I?
God, for me, is more of a feeling, a feeling of peace. I think my god lives in a silence that exists inside me. It’s such a delicious fucking silence, so profound. But this can also get tricky, because if I’m feeling crazy then I’m like, Where the hell is god? Has god abandoned me? Like, no peace, no god. But it’s still better than some bro deity telling me I’m a piece of shit.
Also, the silence is always there. The silence doesn’t go away. It’s just that sometimes I don’t hear or feel it, because the committee is so loud. The committee is a lot louder than the god-silence, and also it can seem more exciting. When the committee tells me about stuff I need to have, or am going to get, it’s sexier than the silence of god. Also, the silence is just there, chillin’, but the committee is working really hard to get my attention. When I’m sleeping, the committee stays up all night and then greets me at dawn with really bad ideas. It’s like, Good morning! Everything is shit! Time to act impulsively. But first let’s start by getting into fights with imaginary people from the past. Next let’s catalog everything that’s wrong with you and your life. Also, I want to remind you of everything you don’t have—and everything you should be scared of losing. Let’s begin.
Sometimes I try to placate the committee by doing what it tells me. I shop or eat or send emails I shouldn’t be sending. I chase attention. I watch too much porn. But ultimately, I can’t escape the committee by feeding it anything external or trying to run away from myself. There will never be enough stuff to sate the committee. It only gets hungrier and runs faster.
The only chance I have to find respite from the committee, even just for a few minutes, is to get totally still. If I get really still and quiet, sometimes the committee will talk and talk until it has nothing left to say and then it finally shuts the fuck up. It seems counterintuitive to hang out with the assholes in my head who are trying to kill me, so as to defeat them. But this is what I have found to be effective. This is why I have to meditate every morning.
My morning meditation practice is nothing intense. It’s ten minutes, first thing, before I go on the Internet (the committee loves the Internet!). Sometimes I do a mantra or wish loving-kindness upon four people: myself, a loved one, a stranger, and a person I dislike at the moment. Mostly, though, it’s just me staying still long enough to get to the silence under the committee. If I am really still, I get to ask the silence questions and it gives me good answers.
The silence is always there, under the committee. But I usually have to spend the first eight minutes of my meditation getting yelled at by the committee before I get to the silence. Like, mostly I am meditating on how fucked I am.
A typical meditation is: Hare Krishna (you’re an oversharing loser) Hare Krishna (you totally come off as needy) Krishna Krishna (stop texting people back so quickly) Hare Hare (don’t initiate texts either) Hare Rama (your tits are sagging) Hare Rama (your nipples were never that good) Rama Rama (it’s basically over) Hare Hare (you’re basically dead).
Right before the end of the meditation, the committee stops. It’s not gone for good, but it shuts up for a second. That’s when I get the moment of peace I’ve been searching for my entire life. It’s what alcohol and drugs did so beautifully for me at first, before I came down. If I could have stayed drunk all the time, I wouldn’t have had to get sober. But I couldn’t, so I did.
I don’t think my meditation practice inherently makes