Simple Ignorance

Waking up in the morning brings with it the realization of being awake. An awareness that can only exist after experiencing sleep. Imagine a reality where you are unable to differentiate the two. Awareness is critical.

Over the past year I have become increasingly aware of my own existence. The process has been excruciating to say the least. In every facet of my life I have decided to look deeper I have found an abundance of painful and embarrassing realizations. Each time I recognize something that I’ve done my whole life as being unmindful at best, disgusting at worst, I become overwhelmed with an onslaught of guilt and shame.

The guilt I can accept. It’s unpleasant but serves an essential purpose. It turns my lower abdomen in knots that all scream out, “Stop doing what you’re doing and fix it!” I can only change the things that I know need to be changed and guilt makes it very clear when I have violated my own moral code.

Shame is far more difficult in that it relies entirely upon outside influence. I can, and many times have, experienced shame without knowing what I have done wrong exactly and even when it doesn’t actually exist. Occasionally it’s very easy to identify, such as in times of abject relapse or when there is an immediate response conveyed by those around me. More often than not though this is not the case. It comes across as dull waves that have no finite point of origin.

I’m not sure if this is because I simply missed the prompting cue, or because people don’t voice their disapproval due to fear of embarrassment, or out of the misguiding perception that they are some how protecting me from negative emotions. The first comes back to awareness but changing that becomes dependent on the latter two. I will never change if I don’t know what to change or if I don’t know it needs to change.

I’m reminded of an experience I had recently while camping on the Kitsap peninsula. I was invited to join my sister for a couple days away from the city, an opportunity I relished. While we were there, we enjoyed a visit from a woman that I have come to refer to affectionately as the Queen of Swords. We had a wonderful conversation throughout the afternoon about love, life, and awareness. In our discussion the topic of eating came up. She relayed a story about going out to eat with her newfound love. Much like myself, the man ate his food quickly with the purpose of ingesting and moving on to the next thing. As she was preparing to begin her entrée, he was already putting his napkin on the plate and ready to get up from the table. At this point she poised the question, “Slow down, you haven’t even let your food digest yet.” This realization hit me like a Sequoia falling in the forest. I had never considered that the act of eating was a process beyond consumption.

When I returned home from camping, I decided to put her words into practice. I was also reading a new book about chakra healing that suggested I implement further gratitude in my life when it comes to food. I went to the grocery store and shopped for a single meal, consciously considering each ingredient I was buying and how it would serve my function. I then returned home and prepared the meal one-mindfully. I set a place at the table, turned off my phone and for the next hours savored every individual flavor from each bite. Upon completing the meal, I just sat for twenty minutes and noticed the different sensations of my body as it broke down the nutrients and spread them throughout the system.

Now this may seem like common knowledge to most people today, but it wasn’t to me. I never had someone tell me in a way I could recognize that my body actually wanted me to treat it differently. I can only imagine the degree to which people have judged me throughout my life. The deluge of shame that followed was such that I now actively am trying to change my default way of eating. It is not something that is easy for me. It’s hard to change patterns that have been cemented over 37 years, but when I notice myself scarfing down a sandwich barely taking time to chew, that same sense of shame emerges and tells me to slow down.

I can’t help but wonder how many other basic functions I am doing ineffectively simply out of ignorance. My brain has a predisposition to rumination, especially when driven by fear. Am I missing some major element of my hygiene practice? Do I keep talking even when people are clearly disinterested? Am I blowing my nose the wrong way? Is there a more effective way to wipe my ass? A more mindful way to make love? Every action I take throughout the day now is met with a long series of questions that always ends with, “Am I just that ignorant that I don’t see it?”

I don’t mean to propose ignorance as an excuse or justification for failing to meet societal standards. I don’t want to excuse or justify it. I want to change it, but I don’t know how to do that alone. 

This is hard.