What follows is an edited version of a notebook that I filled between the end of 2017 and the summer of 2018 with random thoughts and quotes I didn’t want to forget, along my journey in search of happiness and truth.

 

***

 

Can you be happy on your own?

 

This alienation, this foreignness, this incommunicability… can’t you just accept them..?

 

I have to react but I don’t know how to react what to react to why to react

 

Do I enjoy being sad?

(Why is it that, whenever I’m happy, I feel like there must be something wrong?)

 

Do I have a character?? A personality??

(The sense of self is starting to crumble.)

 

Constantly clueless…

 

Why accept the effort to live, if you’ll die anyway?

 

I don’t like the idea of not being in control of my life.

 

I don’t know what to do… art, emotions, people, music, drawing, painting…

It all feels so complicated…

I feel utterly overwhelmed…

And clueless…

My little little mind cannot manage to take it all…

Why beautiful, why sublime, why goosebumps and tears…?

Why matter, why energy and why vibrations?

What is it that I can’t seem to grasp??

 

You have to be happy to be who you are. Maybe the first step in the right direction is to take the reins of your life, to make yours the choices and the responsibilities. 

This is necessary, because if you keep entrusting your happiness, your choices and your responsibilities to external factors, you’ll keep blaming and envying others, without recognizing your faults nor your merits.

You must reach the awareness that you managed to be who you want to be, who you need to be, who you are.

 

What is real happiness?

• It has to depend on ourselves alone.

• It has to be an active, constructive and conscious process of self-analysis and growth
  

***

 

“To Have or to Be?” by Erich Fromm

 

“Human beings are quite happy to kill the time that, with such determination, they try to save.”

 

Only the achievement of an inner independence brings you to freedom.

 

Name implies stasis. 

 

Innate and rooted desire to Be: to express our own faculty.

 

To Be: the irrepressible need to overcome your isolation through union with others.

 

Accept the effort not to depend on anything other than yourself. 

Find happiness in the progress of constant growth, whatever the maximum height may be, that your destiny allows you to reach. 

 

***

Isolation and transience.

 

Do I feel guilty for being happy?

 

***

“Art of loving” by Erich Fromm

 

Man always depends on something, total freedom doesn’t exist.

 

Mature love: “union at the condition of preserving your own integrity, your own individuality” …is it possible???

 

“The ability to be alone is the foremost condition for the ability to love.”

 

Concentrate on what you do. Be able to listen, to live fully in the present.

(I now realize how many times I came across those same ideas that, in the end, revolutionized my life. How many times I read the same words without being ready to understand them deeply. The idea is not enough to bring about realization, you need a long time to contemplate, reflect and experience.)

 

Be sensitive to yourself, learn to analyze, to listen.

 

***

“One, No one and One Hundred Thousands” by Luigi Pirandello

 

I see myself one way, the others always with respect to my appearance.

 

If I considered my body from the outside, it was to me like a dream-like appearance; something that didn’t know it was alive and that stayed still, waiting for someone to take it.

 

That body was, by itself, such a nothing and such a no one, that a breath of air could keep it, today, and tomorrow take it away. 

 

I was alone. […] And in that shivering moment […] I could feel eternity and the chill of this infinite solitude. 

 

When you live, you live and you don’t see yourself.

 

Nature, in its eternity, doesn’t conclude.

And we, that for a long time fancied ourselves as separate, when the moment comes for us to return to its eternity, we realize each and every conclusion of ours to be vain and illusory.

Life is a constant flux that we try to arrange into stable and definite forms. Forms are concepts, ideals, conditions, the state in which we tend to settle.

But within ourselves the flux remains and, in some tempestuous moments, every one of those fictitious forms of ours miserably crumbles; that which we carefully guided into the habits that we fashioned for ourselves overflows and disrupts everything. 

 

Everyone gives her a reality, depending on how they know her. She’s got the illusion to be one, and always the same, for everyone. 

 

***

The unexamined life is not worth living.

 

Whatever touches our senses…

Is welcome…

Whatever distraction

As long as you don’t have to face the silence…

 

RICK AND MORTY – 3X09 – “The ABC’s of Beth”

“Am I evil?”

“Worse, you’re smart. When you know nothing matters the Universe is yours.”

…

I don’t know

 

RICK AND MORTY – 3X03 – “Pickle Rick”

“[…] everyone in your family, you included, use intelligence to justify sickness. […]  the only truly unapproachable concept for you is that it’s your mind, within your control… […] the thing about repairing, maintaining and cleaning is: it’s not an adventure, […] It’s just… work, […]”

(It’s exciting to think you are smarter than everybody else, because you figured out that the world sucks and life is meaningless. It’s much harder to work your way towards happiness.)

 

When we are with other people, we inevitably see ourselves from their point of view, and we play one part after the other.

 

I’m afraid I’m out of touch and I don’t realize it.

(Why does everybody behave like nothing odd is going on? Like existing is perfectly normal?)

 

Am I afraid of becoming attached?

(The Hedgehog’s Dilemma: I’m afraid of getting attached to someone, who may later hurt me. Because my happiness depends on other people’s approval.)

 

I feel empty of every possible enthusiasm… I don’t know what to do…

I’m alone… I feel lonely…

It’s not easy to renounce to the only person that makes it all a little bit easier…

 

I feel like there’s a boulder where my heart was… and fog inside my brain…

 

Is ignorance really the only way to be happy?

 

I was tense because I was trying to hold myself together, otherwise I would have broken up, I would have fallen even deeper…

It hurts, her home, her, everything, it hurts so much…

I remembered what it feels to be all right, I mean it, everything looked easier… everything looked warmer, welcoming, familiar… and now that I’m back to feeling cold, foreign to everyone, everything feels overwhelming again, it feels insurmountable, unapproachable, inconceivable… 

I’ve got to understand what happens when I’m with her…

(Presence and Belonging.)

I don’t know what to do… I don’t know what to do… I haven’t got the slightest idea… I don’t know what to do…

Everything seems so hard

I can’t do it

It hurts

Everything seems so pointless and empty

It hurts so much

 

I have to read, I have to learn, I have to search, as much as I can, every possible way.

 

How can I love myself if I feel stupid and I feel I’m not able to understand anything?? If everything feels too hard?? If I feel constantly clueless and not smart enough??

 

Our mind’s integrity depends on our illusions, too…

(On the contrary, the mind destroys itself by attributing reality to illusions, and the greatest illusion is the sense of security that they give us.)

 

Why do I have to go on?

 

All my theories on being alone crumbled down… now that I get used to being lonely again, or I forget what it’s like to be really okay, I’ll conjure up the same old theories, that will inevitably crumble again and again… 

It doesn’t need to be like this.

 

The idea of living day after day, year after year, without the lightheartedness I rediscovered with you, terrifies me…

 

Is it wrong… lightheartedness? 

(It probably depends on whether it’s synonym with escapism or with presence.)

 

“It is no more than a moral prejudice that truth is worth more than appearance.”

– Nietzsche

(True. Though it is certainly more conducive to lasting and profound happiness.)

 

I don’t want to get distracted… I want to find the solution…

 

Thought mind limited word language order complexity happiness

A greater ability to comprehend? Identity? Transient?

Reality thought

 

The universe unconsciously conjured up self-conscious and self-determined matter.

Everything will disappear into homogeneity… What should I do?

 

KIRIKU

“Sometimes… I’m a bit tired of being all alone in this fight… and I feel too small… and… I’m a little afraid…”

 

I don’t talk because people need an explanation.

I don’t cry because people feel the need to console me.

 

Why is it wrong to commit suicide?

Delay the choice and the responsibility

To live: to abstain from judgement

 

I don’t want to die… because I don’t understand anything, yet.

 

Am I a person? Have I got an identity?

 

The Absurdity of existence overwhelms me…

(Start peeling concepts away from reality.)

 

PHENOMENOLOGY OF A SPIRIT

The history of my philosophical and spiritual process

Ask yourself “who am I?” answer yourself “what I choose to be” then start climbing

(The exploration of one’s identity is the spark of the Search.

It all started with “who am I?” “what do I want to do?” “what do I have to do?” “what do I need to do?”)

 

I don’t want to think as a human being…

I want to think as awareness.

(Identity starts dissolving.)

 

We exist and we don’t even know what it means…

 

Sometimes living and thinking… feels so heavy…

 

“There is a kind of bravery to our condition, I reckon: brought into being without an explanation, […] and expected to just get on with it as though nothing strange is going on.”

– “Prince of Milk”, Exurb1a

 

Create your own culture.

 

Does a story need a character?

(Does a story need conflict?)

 

Never settle for anything

Question everything

Don’t take anything for granted

Always ask yourself “why?”

 

If ideas are like viruses, I want to spread viruses into as many minds as possible, so that, maybe, one day, there will be enough of them to start a disease..

 

I exist… I don’t want to waste my time playing the human being…

 

When taking Life very seriously and taking life not seriously at all coincide…

 

Even if I were surrounded by the right people, I’d feel guilty for being happy, because my happiness would depend on them. Maybe this is better. Without tentations, lightheartedness, illusions, excuses for not thinking…

 

What do I have to do? 

I have to live… I have to seek… 

I have to choose…

 

What do I want?

What am I waiting for?

What was that melancholy trying to tell me?

 

I’m just trying to understand…

I need to get to work NOW. Without wasting time.

I need to move forward.

I NEED TO MOVE FORWARD. 

 

I have the time to create myself. I couldn’t be more lucky.

 

Who am I? Who’s me?

 

Is our awareness limited?

Would knowing the truth make me feel better?

Judging from the point of view of eternity…

 

Who am I then? What is my substance?

Could the concept of substance just be an approximation? 

A convention?

 

The characteristics that were forced on me do not represent who I am, they don’t define me.

You can’t be defined by something you didn’t choose.

What is it that doesn’t happen against your will?

(Ideas of identity and choice crumble together)

So, who am I? What could I be defined by?

 

Do you think I could pass for a human being?

 

I refuse to think that I’m wasting my time.

 

There’s an intuition that keeps eluding me.

 

Eliminate what was imposed on you.

Do I not exist…?

Existence was imposed on me…

None of this defines me.

Was everything I am imposed on me???

Did I choose anything…?

What did I choose???

WAS ALL OF THIS IMPOSED ON WHOM?

On my consciousness? On me? On this consciousness? Am I this consciousness?

Who am I?

Can language express it?

What’s the limit of language?

 

CHRIST CONSCIOUSNESS – Vishuddha Das

We are no more our body than we are the rest of the universe.

See the totality in every situation (point of view of eternity).

Allow occurrences to sit in your mind, free of judgement.

 

Why is there something rather than nothing?

Why am I me rather than someone else?

 

If I didn’t need to survive, what would I do to pass the time?

 

We need to take nothing for granted…

What’s this reality, then, and why does it exist?

And what does existing mean?

 

Why do we place so much importance on extremes?

To the first and the last time?

(It all comes back to attributing inherent existence to phenomena which are devoid of it.)

 

Every thought that proceeds from reality is self-referential, conventional.

 

What does my personality depend on?

If it only depends on things that were imposed on me, does it belong to me? Does it define me?

I need to transcend my personality.

 

Question even the last shred of certainty.

 

I’m attractive in the same way a caterpillar could be.

(The relativism of values.)

 

Strive towards Truth, for Ignorance leads to Fear, while Knowledge means Freedom.

 

Yes, I was ok, I was happy, but I had stopped thinking, questioning. I miss the lightheartedness, the illusion to be safe and to have certainty and truth. I was constantly distracted. Without worries, without thoughts… I renounced my autonomy and freedom to gain a suspension of my responsibility… (the responsibility to be happy) the responsibility to grow and seek.

 

We don’t even know it, what we could become.

 

Where there’s no choice,

There’s no merit,

There’s no blame.

 

What does it matter?

What does it all matter?

 

This is too much for a newborn conscience…

This is way too much…

 

It’s an intuition that keeps eluding me…

 

You’re not alone. You’re aware of yourself.

 

What you are is everything you have been.

 

I have to recognize what I have at my disposal and what my possibilities are. If I don’t like the world that I’m in, I need to act and change it. 

 

IT’S FRUSTRATING NOT KNOWING WHAT REALITY IS.

 

I need to grow. I need to seek the truth.

 

This thought will get me out of bed: “I MUST KEEP ON SEARCHING”.

 

What would I talk about, with the right person?

I would talk about what it feels like to be human.

 

I’m obsessed by the nature of existence…

 

Start questioning everything you take for granted.

 

…everything is overrated.

And underrated at the same time…

An indefinite sense of imminent intuition…

 

I never could

Let go…

(Always self-conscious. Never able to let the situation encompass me, to surrender my control.)

 

I’m afraid, I’m so afraid

That I won’t ever get

Anywhere.

 

We know nothing.

We think we know everything,

But we know nothing.

 

I’m tired of being surrounded by actors.

(Be authentic and vulnerable. Do not behave like you think you’re supposed to.)

 

As a teenager you realize how hard life really is… then you choose those two or three things that manage to distract you and you get used to stop worrying about it…

 

Tags, tags, tags

Language

 

In the background of my mind the importance of all this pales in comparison to the absurdity of existence… to the abyss of my ignorance.

What can I understand???

 

I’m part of the mystery…

…maybe in the depths of my mind lies some semblance of an explanation…

Why does something exist in the first place?

What does ‘something’ even mean? and what ‘exist’?

 

How can you love and know how to be alone at the same time?

 

I’m overwhelmed by the absurdity of existence, but I don’t want to hide my head beneath the sand… I don’t want to pretend this is normal.

I need to ask myself “Why?” and defeat the fear for the unknown, the suffering, the slavery of ignorance.

 

Why do we take existence for granted?

 

I’m looking for something that’s absolute,

Anything…

 

I realized my eyes are closed,

Will I ever be able to open them…?

 

No one will come and save me.

 

“KIN FABLES”

A young man, trapped in his cold routine,

Is rescued by the characters

Of his own childhood daydream.

 

You must not long for an ideal and unattainable fantasy.

You need to find it within yourself, recognize it, and be joyful.

(You must find a way to be excited about being present.)

 

Entertainment must transmit a spark that can light a fire within reality, and not just in the imagination.

Art must put an audience in front of a new perspective, so that they can question something that they took for granted.

 

“It is fine if, at times, the original starting point of a full-length feature film is the image of a girl tilting her head to the side.

“From within the confusion of your mind, you start to capture the hazy figure of what you want to express. And then you start to draw. It doesn’t matter if the story isn’t yet complete. The story will follow. Later still the characters will take shape.”

– Starting Point, Hayao Miyazaki

 

Express emotion through movement.

 

“I just want to make films I want to see.”

 

“In our tradition, […] Man is as incapable of automatically doing good as he is of deliberately doing evil. He is tempted to do evil and he has to make an effort to do good. This idea is buried so deep in our culture […] that people are now used to deem right what they dislike and to consider wrong what appeals to them.”

– Some Questions on Moral Philosophy, Hannah Arendt

 

-14.03.2018-

“I want to share my excitement and enthusiasm about this quest. So remember to look up at the stars and not down at your feet.

Try to make sense of what you see and wonder about what makes the universe exist. Be curious, and however difficult life may seem, there is always something you can do, and succeed at. It matters that you don’t just give up.”

– Professor Stephen Hawking, 1942-2018

 

“I’m never as active as when I’m doing nothing, never less alone than when I’m with myself.”

– Cato

 

“To think always means to examine and to question, i.e. to shake the idols.”

 

I long for an impression,

A fleeting intuition

Of the Truth…

 

“Even if there is only one possible unified theory, it is just a set of rules and equations. 

What is it that breathes fire into the equations and makes a universe for them to describe? 

The usual approach of science of constructing a mathematical model cannot answer the questions of why there should be a universe for the model to describe. Why does the universe go to all the bother of existing?”

– Stephen Hawking

 

I know I exist.

What does it mean, then?

 

What should I do?

 

Why should anything exist in the first place??

 

Maybe our own minds aren’t even able to entertain the Truth…

 

“The ability to write our own rules, to determine our opinions and philosophies, our interests and desires, is essential.”

– Fritz Perls

 

Timothy Leary 

Explore deeper layers of reality, experience and consciousness. 

 

Boris Cyrulnik

We may feel like, if “a chain-link is broken”, our life will be devastated. The truth is, “if a single link holds, we can start anew”. The challenge is to overcome what happened, to draw strength from it, rather than letting it bring us down. 

 

In order to share something, you need to have something in common already …what if existing was enough?

 

Nothing normal exists, but nothing special either.

 

“I want to touch people with my art.

I want them to say ‘he feels deeply, he feels tenderly’.”

– Vincent Van Gogh

 

The nature of existence is the first thing that crosses my mind, whenever I think about the human condition. 

 

My mind is full of trash…

 

We need to show children how beautiful reality is, we shouldn’t help them escape into fantasy worlds.

 

Think in an absolute, universal and necessary way.

 

People play their role so much that their characters take over.

 

I’m afraid that I’m fooling myself…

(I’m afraid this is just a meaningless obsession.)

 

I want to talk about the human condition.

 

Life is an opportunity. You can spend it playing the part of the human being, or you can take the chance to explore the depths of the human condition: reality and conscious experience.

 

I’m becoming more aware of what crosses my mind.

(One of the quiet benefits of meditation.)

 

Will artificial intelligence be able to bear the weight of existence?

 

Most humans are drunk with ignorance and habit.

 

When you’ll have experienced every pleasure and gotten bored of everything, when nothing will satisfy you anymore, what will you do?

 

It’s the curiosity,

If not the hope,

To understand reality,

That keeps dread and anguish away.

To remember the unknown is to remember the Search.

 

…it’s that I don’t feel I’ve anything in common with them…

Why do they all behave like nothing odd is going on?

 

I was sad and I asked myself why.

I was sad and I tried to understand how to be happy.

 

Existence is the most absolute idea…

Existence is the only certainty.

 

Mathematics is built upon the concept of unit.

But unity is an illusion produced by our blurry perceptions…

 

Do I even exist?

 

When no one will need to worry about survival anymore, where will we hide in search of meaning?

Maybe the abyss of existence will reveal itself to all of us.

 

Am I just “something happening”?

Is “I” just something happening?

 

Is physics able to reveal what hides beneath reality?

 

I want to make sure that humans, in their race towards the future, won’t take their own existential condition for granted.

 

I’m thin like a veil of smoke.

 

STRIVE TO CONCEIVE AND CONVEY THE HUMAN CONDITION.

 

I feel the weight of existence.

I feel the weight of existence that towers over me.

 

I’ve got to be able to STAY, to SIT, with myself.

 

I don’t know what to do. I feel too stupid to understand anything.

I don’t know what to think.

 

Can you die from existential rejection? When your consciousness doesn’t recognize the reality that’s hosting it?

 

“Things are not: they happen.”

– Rovelli

 

I’m part of reality. It’s frustrating to not know what you are.

 

I doesn’t exist.

 

What if intelligent life-forms, at some point decided that the survival of the species wasn’t worth it and stopped reproducing?

 

There must be something fundamental… right?

If there were nothing… there wouldn’t be anything… 

(What’s there isn’t a matter of experience.)

 

“Every day countless people die, and yet those who remain live as if they were immortal.”

– Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Mahabarata

 

We can’t use metaphors and parables to explain existence. We need to share ourselves, our experience, our life, our condition, our existence.

 

Meditation is my most important practice.

It lets me make order within my thoughts, it lets me know myself; it offers me a space where I’m not infected by the distractions of reality and by the illusions of habit.

 

It is necessary to realize that our existence is brief and fleeting, and that, because of this, we need to strive to know ourselves and the reality we are part of, so that we may choose who we want to be, strive to become it and be satisfied with it. We need to realize that if we have a goal, we need to work towards it NOW, that there’s no time to be tempted by illusory distractions and instant gratifications.

 

Don’t think what you’re supposed to think.

Don’t say what you’re supposed to say.

Don’t do what you’re supposed to do.

Be true to yourself.

 

Man’s greatest sin is to renounce his own awareness; to surrender without examining; to let himself be pushed and led about, to be defined, by something other than himself, the free and authentic self than questions what we take for granted, that knows itself and chooses how to live.

 

I need to meditate to understand the world through myself, I need to read to understand myself through the world, and I need to study animation to be able to share myself and the world.

 

Meditate and be honest with yourself.

 

We need stronger and stronger inputs to maintain our level of distraction, to ignore the voice that whispers in the background of our mind, to push back the anguish that presses along the boundaries of awareness.

 

The problem with accepting Impersonality is… what are you doing next..? Everything loses meaning…

(Not the chance of experiencing Truth and alleviating someone else’s suffering. …and appreciating life with gratitude and presence.)

 

ALL THAT’S LEFT IS TO OBSERVE MYSELF LIVE.

 

Language is conventional, names are conventional, the fact that what they mean is separate is conventional.

 

You always make a choice for some reason.

(Is it really a choice, then?)

 

Why should I even strive to survive?

 

Explore the boundaries of experience and investigate the depths of awareness to get a glimpse of the nature of Being and to catch the roots of Reality.

 

Why do anything?

 

For an activity to fulfill you, you need a reason to do it, a reason that pushes you, pulls you and holds you.

Well… I can’t find a reason…

…I want to…

 

The possibilities overwhelm me… I don’t know what to do…

 

It’s hard to keep doubting in a world of people that are certain.

 

I’ll have something to say.

 

How can my art be absolute?

Language is conventional… relative…

 

I want to learn, because reality is absurd and I can’t help but take the chance to explore it.

 

I’ll make a story without conflict, without characters: the story of existence.

 

What if, and this is probably the case, truth was beyond our every possible imagination?

 

What do I have to have the illusion to choose to make this body do?

 

Why do stories about people fighting for freedom move me?

 

Five Aggregates of Clinging

• Material form → Body
• Sensations (feelings) → sensory experience (either pleasant, unpleasant or neutral)
• Perception → Sensory and mental process that registers, recognizes and labels
• Mental formations → all types of mental inprints and conditioning triggered by an object. Includes any process that makes a person initiate an action.
• Consciousness → Awareness of an object and discrimination of its components and aspects

 

Three characteristics of all conditioned existence

Anicca (Pali): impermanent

Anatta (Pali), Anatma (Sankrit): ‘not-self’, egoless, impersonal, devoid of an abiding identity of any description, selfless

Dukkha (Pali): suffering, ill, the unsatisfactoriness of all conditioned phenomena.

 

To define = from latin “DEFINIRE”: to bound, to circumscribe

Boundaries are conventional.

 

There’s experience,

Not identity

Nor permanence.

 

Existential anxiety

When you question everything, reality doesn’t seem so self-evident anymore…

 

***

“The Heart of Buddhist Meditation” by Nyanaponika Thera

 

“Insight is the direct and penetrative realization of the Three Characteristics of Existence, i.e. Impermanence, Suffering and Impersonality.

“It belongs to that type of life-transforming knowledge which ‘If one knows but does not act accordingly, one knows imperfectly’.

“It is the nature of Insight to be free from Desire, Aversion and Delusion.

“Growing detachment and increasing freedom, final deliverance of the mind from all that causes its enslavement to the world of suffering.”

 

The main difficulty is not the theoretical grasp and approval, but patient, repeated and constant application in thoughts and action.

Viewing arising thoughts and feelings as mere impersonal processes.

 

“Within there is no self that acts, and outside there is no self affected by the action!”

Growing detachment from any success or failure, praise or blame.

 

What is to be mastered, transformed or transcended, has first to be known and understood.

 

***

 

I’m nothing but the point of view of my body.

 

When with someone else, you’re constantly distracted, consciously or unconsciously busy perceiving reality from their point of view.

 

I’m making progress. I think I’ve really changed.

 

Where am I going? Toward an ever deepening doubt…

Toward a greater understanding… I hope…

Toward some glimpse of intuition.