What follows is an edited version of a notebook that I filled in 2021 with random thoughts and quotes I didn’t want to forget, along my journey in search of happiness and truth.

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Going through notebook #6 I realised the biggest thing that I learned last year is the importance of being present. 

When your head fills up with too many thoughts.

When you’re creatively worn out.

When you’re mentally and physically overloaded.

When you’re worried about the future.

 

You can only change the lives of those who are ready to change. But, still, every idea is a seed, it’s a condition among many that will gradually add up and eventually flourish.

Going through old notebooks I realise how many times I encountered those same ideas that, in the end, revolutionised my life. How many times have I read those same words without being ready to understand them deeply?

The idea is not enough to reach the realisation, it takes a long process of contemplation, reflection and experience.

And the realisation itself is not sudden, either. It grows slowly and organically within your experience, until it encompasses every aspect of your life.

 

Escapism. Distractions. Fantasy. Paranormal.

A symptom of dissatisfaction and restlessness.

An attempt at questioning reality.

 

“We live in the constant company of the ideas we have of ourselves. Many ideas of who we were in the past, even more ideas of who we could be in the future and, of course, the idea of who we are in the present (and some ideas of who we could have been).

To be present is to be alone, free of these ideas.

‘When we live and know that we are living, this is freedom.'”

-Thich Nhat Hanh, “Awakening of the heart”

 

This is the greatest irony: that we need words to understand that words are an illusion.

 

Experience is self-influencing Presence.

Relational experience is self-influencing pure experience.

 

How would you explain the truth to a child?

 

The priority is Presence.

 

Towards the end of highschool you weren’t feeling well… I stopped looking for you because I didn’t feel comfortable with you anymore. You had become cynical… aggressive… and I didn’t know how to help you.

I asked myself what the problem was.

But I couldn’t manage to ask you…

 

I know this experience is different from most.

 

Now more than ever I feel like doing what I know is my priority. I couldn’t feel guilty even if I tried. I need to experiment. I need to find my own voice.

 

What do you want to do before you die?

 

The impermanence of conventional reality isn’t something that you perceive, it’s the very thing that lets you perceive.

It’s not what you experience that’s important, it’s that experience exists.

 

This form is just a conduit for the unravelling of reality.

 

Why did I have the stubbornness to go looking for a rational and absolute reason for being happy?

It would have been something stable I could have always resorted to.

 

Don’t thank me. I’m the one to be grateful for being in the position to behave in the right way or to even help. I’m grateful for the opportunity and privilege to manage feeling well. 

I know what it feels like to be crushed by the weight of your thoughts, to be overwhelmed by the world and to struggle to find a reason to get out of bed. Know that there’s nothing “weird” in the way you feel or behave, that what you’re experiencing is valid and not something to be judged or ashamed of.

 

Stories should inspire us to live our life, not keep us living someone else’s.

 

Instead of getting angry… I saw the anger come from a mile away, and I watched it as it passed…

 

Loosen the grip on what the mind holds to be real. 

 

Life is a loophole that makes apparent persistence out of constant change.

 

Digital literacy/discipline: to understand the workings of digital information and how it affects your well-being, in order to use it responsibly.

 

Being grateful is just the smart thing to do.

Nothing is ultimately positive or negative anyway. Focusing on suffering (nihilism) is just as conventional as focusing on appreciation, but it makes you miserable. Focus on what’s pleasurable without losing sight of the truth.

I don’t get why nihilism is equated with pessimism.

Why should the absence of value have, itself, a negative value? 

 

“Often in life we get so caught up in the analysis, the dissection of every possible outcome, that we miss an opportunity altogether. Of course, some things require careful consideration, but the more we live mindfully, in the moment, the more we start to get a sense of what feels right. Whether you think of it as a gut feeling, intuition, being guided, or just knowing for yourself that’s the right thing to do, this can be an incredibly liberating discovery.”

-Andy Puddicombe, “Meditation & mindfulness”

 

What precedes experience can’t, by definition, be experienced, never mind conceptualised.

 

Existence is the exciting thing. The fact of there being anything at all. 

Existing is an experience.

 

“What you do to please yourself is what most probably will interest someone else”

 

My brain is often looking for a reason to be sad.

 

Similarities and distinctions.

Permanence and separation.

Unbearable tensions.

Relative relations.

Identification.

 

Will the last intelligent being die happy?

 

This experience is not human, it just is.

 

Where does experience exist?

 

Experience exists.

 

We take for granted that we are subjects who experience objects of the world, but actually only experience exists. And beyond that, nothing is knowable.

 

Stop and observe. I need to start from this. I need to start from experience.

 

“We must lead all these beings to the ultimate nirvana so that they can be liberated. And when this innumerable, immeasurable, infinite number of beings has become liberated, we do not, in truth, think that a single being has been liberated.”

-The diamond sutra

 

This is not normal.

This is not enough.

 

Be authentic. Be vulnerable.

 

I can’t create because my mind is scattered.

I can’t scatter myself. I have to prioritize. I have to miss out.

 

I’ve got reality on the tip of my tongue.

 

“Another round”

A sober praise for alcohol.

An intoxicating praise for life.

 

Creativity is on the other side of boredom.

 

What’s your idea of a perfect society?

 

I want to find existence in every breath, and be moved. 

 

We are those few systems that sustain themselves over time. That’s why favourable and unfavourable experiences exist, and with them arise ideas of pleasurable and unpleasurable, distinctions and similarities, values and meanings, quantities and qualities.

The fundamental thing to remember, to not be overwhelmed and crushed by these same ideas, is that neither they nor we have a permanent identity, independent from the rest of the world. They and the system that generates them to sustain itself are only defined in the relation with one another. In reality we are all part of the peaceful flow of existence.

 

Love the intimacy of experience.

 

Tides of enthusiasm and misery take turns washing over this experience.

 

My identity is the combination of an image, a sound and a bunch of arbitrary concepts.

 

Reality is interiority. Subjectiveness.

 

We live in a world of approximate definitions of limited perceptions.

 

Entertain experience.

 

How do you talk about reality without looking naive? How do you talk about experience and the human condition? How do you tell people they need to question their identity?

I need to start from experience.

 

Experience exists.

 

Observe without mercy.

 

Question the reality of experience and the experience of reality.

Experience is real and reality is experiential.

 

How can you expect to talk and make any sense?

 

There is nothing but experience.

 

Experience being by being experience.

 

We shouldn’t take experience to be the world from the outside.

We grow up with the certainty that what we see and interact with is the world as the mere object of our experience.

We are not experiencing the world from the outside, experience is something that’s happening inside of it. 

 

I let my mind wander and I follow the trail of my thoughts.

 

Sit with yourself and be honest.

 

I need to write more.

 

I feel apathetic…

It’s hard to function… if nothing… it’s hard to think, if every thought… if you need to observe every thought.

I often feel like doing nothing.

Nothing is missing… what am I waiting for..?

I doubt a movie, a YouTube video or a Reddit post will change anything.

There were moments in the past, sometimes even now, when I felt part of a bigger reality, when I felt a strong compassion, enthusiasm, the resolve to change the world. Could it be possible that what’s stopping me is the effort of animating? I don’t believe it. I feel the enthusiasm leaving my experience. I’m aware of these two alternating mental states. I know I remember moments of joy within long days of apathy. I refuse thinking I’m making all of this up.

I was once energetic and hardworking. (I guess a strong illusion can generate a strong will to reach seemingly solid goals.) Where have I gone? Where is my enthusiasm?? Why do I need to go looking for it? Why isn’t it spontaneous? I reached the limit of language and day-to-day experience, where’s the joy of truth? Where’s the blossoming of compassion and certainty? Where’s the reality I know to exist?

Why am I in the throes of these empty mood swings? That would drag me into darkness, were I to lower my guard, that would leave me enslaved to crushing thoughts?

 

Art is mindfulness. The ideal thing is to observe your own experience with the same kind of presence, with fearless distance and heartfelt involvement at the same time.

Detachment and abandonment.

Brave surrendering.

Unshakeable rupture.

Cinema is meditation.

Cinema is observed experience.

 

Give in to experience.

Don’t oppose it. 

Don’t punish yourself for what you feel.

 

The game of experience is a constant reinvention and retelling of identities, obstacles and goals.

 

I feel I’ve got a lot within me and I fear I’ve got nothing to say…

 

Authenticity.

Share what you feel.

Share what you’re trying to do.

Share your troubles.

 

Think that if you create something, write what you feel or even just observe your experience, you’re going to feel better. While if you fill your head with stimuli and external distractions, your mind will feel even muddier and you’ll feel even worse.

 

I need to show my suffering, the absurdity of conventional experience. The contradiction of identity and separation. The nausea. The horror of living under the oppression of the solidity of thoughts.

 

Each time I think I got it, and I lower my guard, identities come condensing back.

Getting it is not enough, you need to keep meditating and observing.

 

You don’t need an idea of who you are or what you do. Create what you feel.

 

Follow your perceptions. 

Inspire moving connection.

Find fantasy in this everyday affair.

 

Animate your thoughts. 

Visualize observed experience. 

Show reality.

 

Glimpses of reality.

I want to show the absence of distinction, the absence of identity.

 

“What is your most intimate feeling?”

 

Anything you could possibly think about, and everything you will ever know, belongs to this realm of experience.

 

I want to inspire people to see their experience in a different way, in a more engaged way, in a deeper way.

 

Is a waterfall always the same or always different?

 

Show fantasy in the mundane.

 

Where is experience? When is experience? What is experience…? What isn’t…?

Was ‘wonder for what experience is’ ever experienced?

 

The world is stranger than you think. It takes a while to get used to it, but once you glimpse the truth you won’t be able to look away. Once you get a taste of it, you won’t help coming back for more. 

 

Who is you?

 

Chase the edges. 

Chase the edges. Chase the edges. Chase the nuances. Chase the strange. Chase the murky depths of experience. Chase what people run from. Why do they run? Their experience. They’re experience. Chase the opposites. Chase them away. Go looking for them. This appearance is only half of my experience. 

 

You can help people look at their experience in a more intimate and delicate way. Consider this experience with warm affection.

Reconcile with your experience.

 

In the “real” world of rigid identities, everything is predictable and repetitive. 

In the experiential reality without distinctions, everything is intimately close.

 

Art is that weird thing where it’s difficult as hell to create, but it’s the only thing that’s really worth doing…

 

Sit with your experience.