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Personal logs... The Behind Me Sector
(Opinion)
This term had a much different meaning to the old me than it does to me now.
Just as I went through a transformation, this term also transformed from a curiosity I liked to ponder while eating shrooms, into an essential tool in my quest to change myself.
Even though it is a well-documented fact that one's mind does not think right on Hallucinogens like psilocybin, Mescaline or LSD, but with some research I learned how to dose properly to enhance my meditation instead of running away with it.
Native people from all over the world have been using them for centuries in medicinal means and vision quests.
Besides, the ever-efficient mind I have put it in perspective quite well. "I am doing them anyway; I might as well get something productive out of it."
Any way I would go into a meditative state and "turn around" inside of myself to see what was following me around and believe me, when you live a life like I have, you got a lot shit following you around.
That place is what I called the "behind me sector".
It came to be rather amusingly during a non-meditative indulgence when my mind became fixated on the fact that unless you have a mirror there is always a place behind you that you can never see.
It is like we are all pasted to the outside of this huge bubble and that bubble exists within a place we never even know is there.
I wanted to know what was there and in the process of pondering this rather ridiculous pursuit, I created a "behind me sector" myself and it instantly filled with every dark secret, every guilt, every cruel intention or act, basically all of the darkness that was me took up residence in this new "compartment" in my mind.
It scared the shit out of me and that was as close to a "bad trip" I ever came. If I had been using higher doses or another substance than psilocybin, who knows.
At this moment it was my first experience with compartmentalization, and it did not take me long to both see its value and start applying it to other aspects of my mind, especially my thought processes.
Accomplishing it? Well, I am still working on it and likely will be to my grave because there is no actual "finish line" or anything.
We grow, we change, we learn new things and that process never ends until we do.
So, long story short since the "Behind me Sector" I created filled itself up with all of my negative emotions, memories and thoughts, I turned it into my landfill.
Now, I caught a lot of ribbing for this from the guys I worked with and some very strange looks from people, but I had to train myself to send negative things into this "landfill" instead of letting them hang around disrupting my efforts towards change.
The only way at first that I could get it to work was to physically go through the motions of wadding something up and tossing it behind me.
Someone pisses me off. Wad it up toss it over my shoulder.
Feelng down, shake it off, wad it up and toss it behind me.
And I did this a LOT! (Along with another tool I will mention later)
As I said, a source of good-natured ribbing for people who knew me, other people thought I was crazy, so they left me alone.
Just kidding, it wasn't that bad... usually.
Making changes is not an easy thing to do, even when you want to make those changes very badly.
Positive change means becoming something more than we were and the old us is not going to just roll over and let us do it. We are comfortable in the old ways and the past us will continuously try to drag us back into that apathetic state we are trying to escape from.
Giving up is easy, change is hard, it really is as simple as that and once we decide to change the hardest and most brutal enemy, we will face is going to be ourselves.
I had to do the physical action of wadding things up and tossing them behind me because that physical action put a much-needed explanation point on things for me.
When I reach that point of wadding things up and tossing them in my land fill it means I am done with it, I will not be worrying, stressing, or thinking about it anymore.
Now. At first everything I tossed over my shoulder bounced right back and smacked me in the back of the head laughing at my struggles.
But I kept at it, I used my easily angered problem to my advantage as well because you have no idea what you are capable of until you get really, really pissed off at yourself.
It is a well-known fact that in most cases one must do some serious flirting with madness in order to find their place of sanity.
Now, it is important to add in there that this process has taken me half of my lifetime to get where I am today. I make it sound easy, and fast but it is not. Which is why so many give up.
Creating my first compartment and turning it into a place to dump everything I am done with is what worked for me. All I can do is talk about my own experiences. I am sure other people have used many different methods that worked best for them.
This is a great thing about it all though, there are no rules except that you must continuously progress, there are no deadlines, and if it all becomes a little much you can simply set it aside for a while.
Come back to it when you feel stronger, it all begins and ends with you.
This was the first tool I put in my toolbox, and it was discovered by accident. I had no idea at the time that I had the ability to compartmentalize my mind like that until it happened.
I won't lie man, once I started to understand myself on the level of my unchangeable human nature, I found out a lot of things I had no idea that I knew or knew how to do and not all of them were good things so be prepared.
The other great thing about it is that as I said, no one has to know about it unless you tell them.
They will see the changes in your behavior and personality though. Some will like it and support you while others will try to hold you back.
It all depends on what that person is getting out of their relationship with you does it not?
Now I am going to spend a minute talking about the second tool I put in my box that made the first one much, much easier for me.
I wish I could take credit for it for it, but I can't. I got the idea from a guy named Danny Trejo. He talked about it in a documentary as a way to deal with his time in prison, I tried it, and it worked amazingly well.
I mentioned that easily angered problem and dealing with all of the stress and emotions became a problem more than once.
I would start singing this song, not to myself, out loud. I found that at least for myself, it was impossible to be in a bad mood when I was singing or whistling this tune to myself.
So, if I saw some guy acting like he is wadding something up and tossing it over his shoulder while singing "Zip-a-Dee-Doo-Dah" through clenched teeth, I might think he was a little off as well.
But it worked.
Give it try, or choose your own, the important thing is finding a valid way for you to vent that does not involve other people. (If you do have someone to use as a sounding board, use them.)
If we start venting our internal struggles to the outside world it means, we are going farther than we should be, too fast. We are not ready to be there yet so that behavior change is our red flag, telling us to either put it on the back burner, or back up and re-evaluate things.
This is the main point of everything that I say. We all already know what to do, how to do it and when to do it. That is all tucked away somewhere inside of all of our minds.
Only we know where we put it and our minds will remember and they will guide us to it if we listen to ourselves.
We have been programmed to forget these things, but we can't, because they are written into our DNA and no matter how far we have suppressed them, they still exist.
It is all about taking back all of the power we have so carelessly given away to other people, philosophies, and ideologies.
We must trust ourselves again, have confidence in our own intelligence again.
And most of all we must humble ourselves so that we can think for ourselves because our own narcissism is the main roadblock, we face but once we conquer that it becomes nearly impossible for anyone to take advantage of us, we see through the BS and lies being used to manipulate the misled masses.
"The scales have fallen from our eyes, and we can see again" (Reference to Acts 9:18)
Do you not want that power back, especially if you have never had it?
Q&A
In answer to your question no, you do not have to practice Zen in order to accomplish changing the way you think, just determination and a few tools you may have forgotten that you already have.
I went on a DEEEEEEEEEP vision quest into myself because well, I am half Irish, Half Scottish and 100% hardheaded and I used to have a very unhealthy affinity for learning things the hardest way possible.
In other words, I got tired of being a dumbass.
(Note: I do not practice traditional meditation, I developed my own with Zen as a foundation.)