Overwhelming Violence

[Chessie]

Tonight I was watching My Dinner With Andre. Now, this is a very dry movie about two men sitting at a dinner table eating a fantastic rich meal and conversing on every topic under the sun.

One of them is a fairly stark and depressed humanist and the other is an oppressively expressive surrealist both rooting around in what they perceive as the darkness of living for a real sense of purpose. A part of their discussion revolved around the Buddhist monk's propensity to eat a meal very slowly so that a person experiences each bite.

I was drinking a glass of water at the time this was playing and set it on my desk. As Andre mentioned this I became vividly aware of the liquid in my mouth. I held it on my tongue. It tasted amazing. A mixture of chemicals, my own mouth, the flavors of air in my nose.

I swallowed it as quickly as I could lest I be overwhelmed. It was far too emotional an experience. My cheeks felt suddenly hot. Too hot to touch. The fan blowing on my flesh felt like a tornado whipping me away. For a moment I was poor Dorothy Gail, that sad child of Kansas, being stolen home and all to be whisked away to a foreign land where everything was in colour.

It was too much. I found myself forcing myself back to the greyness of non-experience. If I hadn't I fear my rational being might have escaped and I'd have slashed open my thighs with a hunting knife to experience the lava flow pumping through my veins.

Now I find myself afraid to dip my toe back into that state of being. A bit of chocolate could become an orgasm. A kiss might be the breath of God.

Knowing madness lays that way...I crave it, like a junkie craves her junk. What am I to do?

 

[Lerxst]

Read this book then, you won't regret it - Savor

 

[Feelings]

Dunno but I remember achieving this level of awareness before. I believe I was thinking about how much of our perceptions we filter out or gloss over. Thx for reminder, imma go back to that.

 

[Chessie]

I suppose I am looking for some way of finding peace with this idea of myself as shutting out the world when it is so close. Never before did it feel like this awareness could be turned on and off like flicking a light switch. It always felt like something that would 'come upon me' and not a thing that I could simply turn to if I so chose.

Self awareness is frightening.

 

[Detective Conan]

I was expecting better based on the topic title. I must say, as a violent essence, I'm disappointed...

But anyway, I wonder if you were to enter this state a lot, if you would become apathetic when you weren't in it, or build up a resistance to it... like a drug, I guess. Then again, there are plenty of sensations that you really can't build up much of a resistance to, so maybe this is one of them.

I've been in a state like what you describe, except it always happens when I'm in the middle of a dream (only lucid dreams) and I wake up abruptly... there's about a ten to fifteen minute period where everything is vivid. The things I see, touch, smell, and taste are amplified to such a high amount of detail that I can't help but wonder if I'm still asleep or not. Of course, I realize I'm not dreaming when my dream powers don't work

 

[randomsomeone]

Perhaps this overwhelming sense was simply a grace....not many people live in that state permanently, nor can they sustain it (nor should they). However, it could be a door, an invitation to move towards "something." From what I have seen, awareness is nothing to be frightened of...it tends to treat us fairly. On a more normal level, healthy awareness connects us to meaning, yes, but still allows us to pay the bills and care for our duties in life. For all it's rich meaning, it is at the same time as natural as breathing. We become, not something foreign, but even more deeply who we truly are.