peace

It is impossible to describe the level of peace I feel in my daily life right now.

Previously I would have woken up with a jolt and jumped out of bed to do the next thing on my list, or I would have woken in panic wondering what I had forgotten, or I would have woken in a stupor because copious amounts of drugs or alcohol were all that could slow me down.

All of those are gone. Now my eyes open softly, slowly, and I wonder whether to get out of bed. I decide to have another hour, then stretch, smile, and come downstairs. I casually get my decaf and sit on the balcony to write.

Previously the entire day would be planned away already by this point; everything optimised for efficiency. Emails then eat then training then cold plunge and refuel and nap and more training, more emails, cram in a bit of time with the kids, then art art art and just anything to avoid having to sit there in my own skin with the vacuum of empty grasping hands clawing up my chest cavity trying to scrape out through my collarbones.

And now… peace.

I sit here. The greens are greener. The cicadas are warming up. The neighours are out for their morning strolls and I am saying hi, still in my pyjamas and unshaven and perfectly happy.

I have never known peace like this. Never.

Some are born with it; I was not. I was born with a bit of a weird brain, though I think it defies definition in the current system. It is fast, and it is sharp, but fast and sharp is painful, and I was never at ease. I certainly had adhd, but that seems to be gone, and I am autistic, but I am proud of it. 8 months ago I didn’t even know what these two things were, and had mistakenly assumed that everyone else was spending their lives in the same amount of discomfort, but somehow hiding it better.

I tend to fall into analysis. I have always viewed emotions as evolutionary drivers and enjoy figuring out the biological ‘why’ of them. Motivation is an easy one.

But on some intuitive level I seem to have grasped the buddha’s 4 noble truths. I don’t think I will ever un-intuit them. I still have preferences, but I do not crave the way I did.

I might ride my bike, I might not. I might play games, I might not. I will almost certainly spend some time making knives, but I’m not overly attached to the idea. Even this writing; I didn’t have a clear topic for today but enjoy the process of seeing how this new mind works so here we are.

It feels like my dopamine system, and as such my entire being, has ben reset to a time from before all the violence at school. A time when I was young and happy and carefree and just able to marvel at the fractal nature of the world and the fact that certain wavelengths of the electromagnetic spectrum manifest as colour and how we all have a slightly different zone of perception so our greens are invariably not the same.

It feels like I have a wider spectrum of perception now. I probably do. A wider spectrum of consciousness would be a better description: the wavelengths and sensing apparatus are unchanged, but the brain is no longer ripped around by phasic dopamine so I am better able to experience the data coming through.

I tried to look before. I thought I was succeeding. I did all the things. All the travelling, all the meditation, all the trying to hammer my brain back into a shape before hammers. But that doesn’t work.

What I’ve seen now is that craving is indeed the cause of all suffering. Dukkha will exist for us all, forever. Dukkha is not suffering in itself; the roots of the word mean ‘wobbly wheel’. Life is unpredictable and the wheel continues to wobble, but I’m happy enough to sit on the cart and observe the sun and the birds and the flowers as we go along.

It feels like everything in my life was training for that moment. 

Aripiprazole was craving *in and of itself*. It bypassed all chemical and behavioural and situational desire and as such presented a pure, unfiltered snapshot of what ‘desire’ really is. I got to see the phenomenon of motivation in a vacuum, and it was so incredibly painful. Physical pain. It made me realise that all the motivation over the years was exactly the same - physically painful. The barbs shooting up your spinal column and revolving around your brain until something is fixed or another is planned for.

And to cap it all off I have a self-concocted faith system which does not contradict my understanding of science, removes my fear of death, and provides hope that the species can last beyond our mortal world.

It’s impossible to describe.

I am still fragile because of chemical imbalances within the brain. I still have lowered executive function because my dopamine receptors are readjusting.

But this is the ideal time to be sitting and being. Just being. It’s the first time in my life I’ve been able to do this, and somehow I know that it is not just a passing thing. I am only on the mildest of meds now and I’m trying to get rid of all of them apart from guanfacine; a little lower adrenaline during the reconfiguration will do me good.

So this is real and coming from within me. I have plenty of speculations about why, but for now I will just enjoy, and keep bedding in the new patterns of thought.

Ship works in mysterious ways.

/jb202508100741