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

 

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“AUTOBIOGRAPHY of a YOGI” – by Paramahansa Yogananda

 

“I have left a few paltry rupees, a few petty pleasures, for a cosmic empire of endless bliss. Is that a sacrifice? The shortsighted worldly folk are verily the real renunciants! They relinquish an unparalleled devine possession for a poor handful of earthly toys!”

 

How do I integrate Non-dualism, and Shunyata, to my daily life and experience?

 

People are so fragile…

 

“What original commentary can you supply, from the uniqueness of your particular life? What holy text have you absorbed and made your own? In what ways have these timeless truths renovated your nature?”

 

“They consider philosophy to be a gentle intellectual setting-up exercise. Their elevated thoughts are carefully unrelated either to the crudity of outward action or to any scourging inner discipline.”

 

“What one does not trouble to find within will not be discovered by transporting the body hither and yon.” 

“Are you able to have a little room where you can close the door and be alone?”

“That is your cave. That is your sacred mountain.”

 

“You must not get overdrunk with ecstasy. Much work yet remains for you in the world. 

Come, let us sweep the balcony floor; then we shall walk by the Ganges.”

 

“Spiritual advancement is not to be measured by one’s display of outward powers, but solely by the depth of his bliss in meditation.”

 

I must know how to clearly frame the problem that burdens me. So that I can express and share it effectively.

 

I feel utterly clueless.

I feel completely at loss.

 

Self-conscious spontaneity

 

There are no inherent differences within Reality.

 

Every label is mind-made.

 

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.

 

ALL IS ONE

 

“Identifying himself with a shallow ego, man takes for granted that it is he who thinks, wills, feels, digests meals, and keeps himself alive, never admitting through reflection (only a little would suffice) that in his ordinary life he is naught but a puppet of past actions (karma) and of Nature and environment.”

 

Form is emptiness, emptiness is form.

 

“Gone, gone, gone beyond, gone altogether beyond.

Awakening, welcome!”

– The Heart Sutra

 

We spend our entire lives locked up in our own minds.

 

The meaning of life is to fully and intuitively realize and experience the non-dual nature of Reality. 

(and to tell this to others)

(and to help them realize it)

 

Every concept stands for a phenomenon not intrinsically different from any other phenomenon.

 

“Could you or anyone else achieve God-communion through yoga if a line of generous-hearted masters had not been willing to convey their knowledge to others?”

 

Always strive to recognize

That which arises from the mind.

Always discern signs from experience, from Reality.

 

What if faith was just a way to channel your will? Your intention?

And language was a way to channel your attention?

 

Everything is in the mind.

What remains

Is the Truth.

 

Animation:

Image and movement (impression)

 

I’ve got to frame the problem.

 

“Meditate unceasingly, that you quickly behold yourself as the Infinite Essence, free from every form of misery.”

 

“Seek Truth in meditation, not in mouldy books.”

 

“He only is wise who devotes himself to realizing, not reading only, the ancient revelations. Solve all your problems through meditation. Exchange unprofitable speculations for actual God-communion.”

 

***

 

No one tries to prevent sadness.

 

Pure consciousness? How to be sure?

Knowing is dualistic. Consciousness is dualistic.

How can Reality be Consciousness?

 

Bring people into another world and make them experience

Communicate through the world you create

Explain your vision.

 

“People watch superheroes as an escape, instead of facing the hard work that we really do need to do in order to make our lives and our world better.”

– Incredibles 2 & our times: do we still need superheroes?

“Does watching superhero blockbusters actually inspire us to be braver or more moral in our lives, or are these movies just distractions that make us satisfied, even pacified, when in reality… there are still many injustices that need to be addressed?”

– The philosophy of Incredibles 2

 

I’m in great need of like-minded people.

 

I feel a weight on my chest… a knot in my throat… my limbs are heavy… my mind is foggy…

 

Sometimes I feel so naive.

 

Torn between beauty and emptiness.

Torn between Reality and experience.

 

Philosophy to coherently frame my thoughts.

Animation to universally express them.

 

I feel no drive to fill the page,

I find no reason to lay my pencil on the paper… 

 

How much did works of art and stories influence me?

Had I found within them some insight, some drop of the Absolute, along their human element and existential weight, I’d have been moved.

Had they dealt with existential and absolute questions, and not contingent and relative issues, self referential ones…

I want to be the artist that I needed.

 

Can art generate an existential experience?

 

Hey, how is your existential condition of total ontologic disorientation going?

 

“He who wonders and is perplexed feels that he is ignorant (thus the myth-lover is in a sense a philosopher, since myths are composed of wonders).”

– Aristotle, Metaphysics, Book I

This is why I love fantasy and sci-fi, because this everyday affair was never enough, I always felt like there must be more to it. Now I know. 

 

What experience is more common than that of existing and wondering about it?

 

Don’t you ever marvel at the existence of reality?

Don’t you ever ask yourself what it means?

Always.

All of this is absurd.

 

Feeling inadequate, foreing, alien.

 

Existence is the only game where you need to question the rules.

 

Start from existence. Tell of the human condition.

 

Open people’s eyes to the human condition.

 

Cinema is a way to make people experience something.

 

Bring people into your world.

Bring people into your head.

 

Express yourself through the world you create.

There’s no movie that talks about reality, that questions the rules.

 

Appearing consciousness – reaction to reality

 

Most people live taking everything for granted… and I’m not talking about their social status or the historic moment they were born into, I’m talking about the very nature of reality, about what it means to exist.

 

I want to use the “specific” (specific technical potential) of animation.

Visual art, lines, colours, volumes, movement.

(sounds, words)

Every creative piece should take full advantage of the medium it is expressed through, it should fully realize the possibilities and peculiarities of the chosen technique.

 

Can I convey, can I share an aesthetic experience of existence, of reality, of the absolute?

 

The aesthetic experience shouldn’t be a halt to the everyday experience.

The everyday should be drenched in aesthetic experience.

 

The everyday should be an aesthetic experience.

 

Existence should be an aesthetic experience.

 

Existential weight and longing for the Absolute.

 

Look around and ask:

What is happening?

What is this?

 

Don’t you ever marvel at existing?

 

Intimate science-fiction?

 

Do you ever look around astonished by existence?

 

The only constant in the human condition is existence, conscious experience. True happiness is being happy to exist.

How to find a reason to be happy in existence? Is it possible?

 

How would people behave in a world without conflict?

Every problem is solved.

What would people do, once Utopia is reached?

You can’t find meaning in purposes anymore.

 

It’s all different now…

Thought turns to Reality

Before anything else…

 

I need to lead the audience from the relative and contingent to the Absolute.

 

The Contingent always struck me as fundamentally unreal.

 

What’s information?

 

I’m looking for an authentic way of life…

Coherent with the nature of Reality…

 

Human contact is meta-perception.

…perception, awareness of yours and others’ perception, and of yours and others’ awareness of yours and others’ perception…

 

What is the priority?

 

Platonic ideas are the worst thing to ever happen to humanity.

 

To describe a world that is not yet here.

 

Why isn’t survival enough?

 

In the “mind” of the first cell, plurality was born: the “inside” and the “outside”.

The first folding of pure experience onto itself? The first dual experience, the first experience with content? 

 

When I say you shouldn’t take Reality for granted, I don’t mean “taking for granted” as opposed to “being grateful”, but as opposed to “questioning”.

 

I want to drain myself.

 

The only condition for knowing the Truth should be that you exist.

 

“Being happy is the biggest service you can do to the world.”

 

Am I able to formulate a thought-out, impartial and constructive critique of society?

 

“They have felt themselves wrenched out of Time and have experienced the world “from the perspective of eternity.””

– Sophie’s World

 

Devotion should be similar to gratitude, not to worship or veneration.

 

I want my passion to be Existence.

 

We need to be aware of the human condition from the point of view of eternity.

 

You can choose to live every experience in a shallow way, as a distraction, or you can explore it deeply, and find within it a chance for growth and learning.

 

What drove me to question Reality?

The quest for happiness and control. The paradox of identity and choice. The absurdity of existence.

 

I feel ever more distant from ever more people.

 

I want Existence to be my Passion.

 

Is unity a concept?

 

“No man can step into the same river twice, for it is not the same river, and he is not the same man.”

“In the same rivers we step and we do not step; we are and we are not.”

“Thou shouldst unite things whole and things not whole, that which tends to unite and that which tends to seperate, the harmonious and the discordant; from all things arises the one, and from the one all things.”

“It is wise to listen, not to me, but to Reason, and to confess that all things are one.”

“The way up and the way down is one and the same.”

“The sea is the purest and the impurest water. Fish can drink it, and it is good for them; to men it is undrinkable and destructive.”

“God is day and night, winter and summer, war and peace, satiety and hunger; but he assumes different forms, just as when incense is mingled with incense; every one gives him the name he pleases.”

“And it is the same thing in us that is quick and dead, awake and asleep, young and old; the former are shifted and become the latter, and the latter in turn are shifted and become the former.”

“For god all things are fair and good and just, but men suppose that some are unjust and others just.”

– Eraclitus, Fragments

 

Every time I wake up, I drown in my worries.

 

This little reality was never enough…

 

Would you make art if there were no audience?

 

Why isn’t Reality apparent?

Why isn’t Truth manifest?

Appearance is apparent.

What manifests itself is manifest.

Appearing and manifesting presuppose experience. Reality, Truth, precedes experience and is thus unperceivable and unconceptualizable, and only glimpsed through the constant practice of this perspective.

 

I fear I might break…

 

Everything is like a rainbow.

 

– What do you think about existing? –

 

Does this experience exist? In what way?

 

Only two things limit animation.

One is the ability to imagine

And the other is to draw what you imagine.

– Eric Larson

 

I am this consciousness, this experience.

You “are” not, “I” isn’t: this experience is.

 

So this is how you do it in this city.

So this is how you are in this reality.

So this is what it feels like to be these cognitive apparata.

So this is what experience is like.

 

This experience.

This… this-ness.

I WON’T take it for granted.

 

I have Been, while Nothing could have Been.

Are they ever going to believe it?

 

The problem is that I exist and I don’t know what it means…

 

I need to portray the human condition.

 

I need to tell stories about existential conflicts, not self-referential ones.

 

“The great works of art, they all seem to tell us the same thing: you need to change your life.”

 

Don’t make me worry.

– mom

 

I want to hide.

 

I can’t think of anything that I like,

And as soon as I lay my pencil on the paper I feel like I’m screwing up…

 

To let someone or something help me would be like admitting that I can’t make it on my own, that no one, on their own, can make it, that happiness can’t be reached on your own, that true happiness, available to all, no matter the situation, doesn’t exist…

But you already know the bitter-sweet answer, don’t you? There’s no such thing as “making it on your own”, how could there be? “You” is just a useful thought, and everything happens because of something else, whether you call it “help” or not, it doesn’t really matter. 

 

It’s exhausting to live and to feel the weight of existence into every breath…

 

I can’t think

I can’t communicate

I can’t live

It all feels too much…

I’m tired…

 

I chase after epiphanies…

And I stop myself in fear of losing my autonomy

And this is all I can do…

 

DO YOU EVER LOOK AROUND ASTONISHED BY EXISTENCE?

ALWAYS.

 

CONSTANT AWARENESS OF REALITY

IT’S UNBEARABLE

I FEEL LIKE I’M SLOWLY CRUSHING

 

Why do I feel like I should be rewarded?

I’m so stupid…

I feel hopeless helpless

 

If others are like me,

Why aren’t they like me?

 

I’m tired of thinking, 

while thinking I’m not thinking enough…

 

How do you bear existence??

 

I’m a bit discouraged… I’m very discouraged…

 

Am I naive? Do I like to play the victim?

 

I don’t go to bed because I don’t want to wake up…

I don’t know what to do anymore…

I don’t understand anything anymore…

I don’t understand anything anymore…

It’s all too complicated…

Reality and its implications…

What should I do here?

 

Am I too much of a stranger?

I feel ever more distant

And ever more clueless.

 

I just… realized

That I exist…

 

What am I revolting against?

WHAT AM I TRYING TO REVOLT AGAINST????

I can feel it when I do something stupid.

It’s self-sabotage, it’s feeling like you have to punish yourself, when the only thing that you need is compassion. Don’t blame yourself for negative thoughts, listen to them and try to understand them like you would someone you love. Sometimes we can just be present and remind ourselves that this, too, shall pass. 

 

I don’t even know what the problem is…

Why does everything look so vague and indistinct? So messy? All the time…

Practice? Talent? Determination? Motivation? Existential crisis? Philosophy? Her? Imagination? 

Even I don’t know it, never mind being able to express it… to make someone else understand…

“Existential crisis”, too… such a few words to say so much… too much… I can’t even express this…

Even I don’t know what my struggles are…

Nor if they really exist, or if, maybe, this confusion demonstrates their baselessness.

Am I imagining everything? Am I exaggerating the problem? I’m scared of the answer. I’m so scared…

 

No one is coming to help me, isn’t it?

No guru, no teacher…

 

In the evening I don’t want to go to bed

And in the morning I don’t want to get up…

What’s wrong?

 

IT’S TOO MUCH.

 

I don’t go to bed because I’m not satisfied.

I feel like there’s something missing, something I hope to reach.

 

Why is everything weird?

Like there’s something I’m not seeing…?

Something’s off… 

 

I’ve GOT to recognize the spark in order to express it.

 

You shouldn’t wonder at the relative, sometimes, but at the Absolute, constantly.

 

What makes us human is the awareness that we exist and, at the same time, the awareness of the inadequacy of our faculties in understanding existence.

 

The ultimate goal is that of consciously forgetting yourself.

 

When I’ll be able to transcend this experience, I, myself, will cease existing in this form.

“You” already doesn’t exist, that’s why it’s called “form”. This experience has nothing to do with it.

 

Is it drawing the contingent that stops me?

What about drawing Experience?

 

WE NEED TO REALIZE THE EXISTENTIAL MEANING AND WEIGHT OF THE HUMAN CONDITION.

 

“If it can be written, or thought, it can be filmed.”

– Kubrik

 

“We don’t think of clouds, water or flowers as lacking or imperfect, because we understand they simply are as they are, and you are just like that.”

– Alan Watts

You couldn’t be better or worse than you are right now. Don’t be sad about what you are, be excited about what you can become.

 

I FEEL LIKE I’VE FINALLY. REACHED. SOMETHING.

 

HOW YOU SPEND YOUR DAYS

IS HOW YOU SPEND YOUR LIFE.

 

“Don’t animate what the character is doing, animate what the character is thinking.”

– Ollie Johnson

 

When is it that a work of art has got a soul?

 

I can make it.

No matter how hard this all feels.

No matter how unworthy I feel.

I need to make it.

 

EVEN THOUGH I’M NOT EXPERIENCING BRAHMAN, 

MY EXPERIENCE IS BRAHMAN.

 

“Words do not make a man understand,

It takes the man to understand the words.”