What is the Sound of One Hand Clapping?

On constant self-improvement. Could just be the interpretation of the approach we're dealing with here. To me constant self-improvement is something I’ve tried in the past and always seemed to simply compound things, maybe have little steps “forward”. I kept trekking even when I just felt worse. If I keep doing the same thing over and over again, or many different things, I’m bound to get the results that "they" or my need for improvement keeps talking about. Maybe its just my misinterpretation of  approach, but I see a lot of people, some of them authors, who’s approach is to try to create self (improvement) which I think is inherently flawed, trying to throw the baby out with the bathwater. And a subtle aggression to the Self thats standing right here.

Maybe this is just semantics, but the only key that’s worked for my actual happiness is constant self-pealing. Layers coming undone, Unexisting: Unburdening themselves of existence and releasing the knowledge and abundance they veiled. I’ll explain.

Constant self-pealing and people in my life who help me do it is what’s responsible for that happy relaxed look on my face in my default pic (Chemical peal?). Meeting the experience that I give myself by refraining to use habituated coping mechanisms is the most powerful thing I can do for myself. The present experience that I don’t interact with in a natural way always seems like a problem and stems from my current subconsciously driven thoughts tied to my past that’s trying to interpret the present and predict the future. There’s running to and away, attempts to fight, trade, reconstruct, fix or throw away, but neurosis is a knot that is not. So how do I untie that? What am I actually doing if I try? Or done if I think I’ve done it? When I do stop and meet my experience I usually find the answer in the "problem". I keep relearning that lesson… a bit more fully each time. A layer pealed reveals what’s been there the whole time. Reveals the fear and the knowledge hidden in it, the self that I have had tied up and inhibited. I begin to suspect that everything I need may already be in me. No improvements, nothing added needed. Faith begins to dawn in me. Open faith. If I try to change a layer I'm not respecting whats inside it.  I’m not meeting it and am not going to see the wisdom or myself hidden in it or meet the other layers to work with. I'll never know fully what’s here… the present.

I usually find I have identified myself with the layers. It can feel like myself is pealing away. It can feel like a threat to my own existence. But that is an illusion of mine. Its only my ego that is pealing away. Ego in the since of that creation of ours that tries to create stability and comfort for a solid unmoving self in a world that is naturally unstable, always changing, in flux, moving. I find that when am struggling less with a layer, it becomes more transparent.  I start to identify less with it, but I know it more. Then I find more generosity that is just inherent and spontaneous, not conscious and created because its the right thing, because I should improve things. Not that I've been disingenuous before, but somehow it was not as real or direct. I find more peace that’s fundamental and not dependant on outside circumstances. Not because practicing being peaceful would be an improvement. I get a little braver because I'm starting to learn that I can feel fear and vulnerability & continue with the process even when I feel like parts of me are being challenged, dying off . Not because the old layers are bad and they are to be improved, or thrown away, traded for something better… which is really just adding on another seemingly more appealing layer to hide the one under it. I don't think the layers are rubbish. I think they have everything we need. I'm starting to learn that I don’t have to feel aggression towards my faults or “add” good things to myself or add to the good things that I can see I already have. I don’t even think they are really grown into something better. Good things in me just need uncovering, discovered, discovered more fully. That’s what I usually mean whenever I mention growth. The opposite of original sin aye? Neurosis is a knot that is not. But I am stubborn. I can find myself relying on old ways of coping or trying to fix even when I can see the folly in that. I can see enough to see, but I just want it to work damn it! Fuck Fixing it, I just want to escape damn it! Some of that is so habituated that it is truly on autopilot. Autopilot. For a while I just have to watch the movie till I can feel the reasons for its creation start to surface. Then I get to practice not running this way or that way or trying to fix the problem... finally experiencing my experience, knowledge starts to seep through. Or else I get caught up in struggle again, giving in or fighting to create change till I start to forget what I was starting to see. That’s when I think blind faith can be beneficial… (the zealots co-opted it: ) if its based on the memory that lingers of what was knowledge: Blind faith to keep following the path I’ve been following till the Open faith comes back. So I don’t always look as relaxed and happy as I do in my default pic, but it’s a hell of a lot more common. Actually it’s such a completely different & refreshing look about my face. I can look so new to me... and others. Not all get to it see it as much. Some won't let go of their old version of me and I wind up playing in to that out of habit. But maybe that can be a good thing... that old teacher, that old face keeps coming back for me to see… not to change. That happens as a by-product of meeting it.