meditation

The Place Of Death

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In The Tao Te Ching, Chapter 50, there’s a line about people who’ve attained the Tao that translates as “they have no place of death to enter,” “they have no place of death in them” or “for them there is no place in the land of death.” I’d not thought much about this chapter or this line until recently until a mix of meditation and stressful events gave me a new understanding.

In analyzing my own fears and concerns, I saw how they would obsess me. I’d worry about things, and thus my fears, from death to petty things, were actually part of me. I’d carry my concerns with me constantly, and as you doubtlessly know that was a heavy burden.

But being isolated, worrying, etc. just cuts me off from myself. It keeps me from engaging with life – with the Tao. It keeps me from being truly alive, freezing me in place. Honestly we all know too well how fears and worries can lock us down and even lead to bad outcomes – sometimes the very ones we feared.

There in my head, is the Place of Death.

Life, I realized, is a dialogue. You’re constantly reacting and interacting with places, people, ideas, food, etc. You make judgements and evaluations, changing or maintaining your course. Being alive, really alive, really there in the Tao, is a conversation.

And you can’t really have a dialogue when you’re hiding away. Life has to be lived, engaged. You can’t freeze yourself in your head or loop with scenarios to “protect” yourself.

Before I had talked about what I call “The Escape Capsule” in psychology and psychoanatomy. We build a walled off part of ourselves, shoving our supposed “self” into a box inside of us to protect it. This produces tension, warps our concept of ourselves, creates physical discomfort, and is quite miserable.

The “Escape Capsule” and “The Place of Death” are close to or are the exact same thing. Trying to get away from a changing world means you carry the changes you fear with you.

Life is a dialogue, really embracing yourself and the universe means you’re engaging. You can’t hide away in that case, you have to be open and vulnerable – because that’s how you have the dialogue with the world. The attempts to escape just lead you to build a mausoleum in your head.

It might be hard, but we can’t run away or stew in our fears. Why have a place for Death in us? Death has its own place in the world. We might as well find our place as well.

-Xenofact

And The Sadness Feels So Good

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In these hard and indeed stupid times, I’ve been asking more about myself, how to deal with it, who I am, how I grow. It’s required me to confront the fact that so much of our modern world is just so stupid and meaningless. In turn it has made me feel sad.

And know what? It’s a pretty good sadness.

As I contemplate and meditate in the chaos of mid-2025, I stared into the abyss as it were, and the abyss didn’t stare back because it was just sitting there drooling. I watched social media influencers being nothing and saying nothing for money. Politics was a cruel joke told by insecure men with neither humor nor humanity. Brilliant insights and technology were ignored or repurposed by businessmen with no grounding in being a person. Even things I enjoyed I questioned what use were they, what good was this game or this TV series?

It was all so dumb and it didn’t have to be this stupid. We knew better, which was worse, because we did this anyway.

After that the sadness settled upon me. It was a midnight-black shroud, not constricting, but impossible to ignore, a darkness of the soul. I felt sad for the state of the world and sad for the people, for all the stupidity, even our self-inflicted wounds. Maybe we deserved this but in so many ways we didn’t.

However this sadness was real. It was vital. It came out of the soul and my guts. It wasn’t offensive, it wasn’t an affront to my being, it came from me. It was, for all its misery, real in a raw way that felt vital and alive.

I may have felt unhappy, but it was so real that there was a joy in it, an honesty. It was no different than those meditations where you sit and breathe and every moment is so true that you and your awareness are one. You’re not feeling, you are the feeling.

Even if the feeling is bad, it’s real and true and you know it’s real and true. Sitting in my breath and sitting there sad were the same.

In spiritual practices, I’ve seen it mentioned that you’re not there to avoid unpleasantness – that’s part of the journey. Your meditations and contemplations aren’t climbing a mountain to some airy separate realm, but a climb downward into reality, even the painful parts. Trying to escape it all cuts off the world and cuts you away piece by piece, but you find realness when you deal with everything, including the sad parts.

So I felt joy in this sadness. I knew where I was, what I felt, who I was. By acknowledging it I could be real with myself, contemplate the feeling, understand it. It was all so beautifully, painfully true.

The funny thing is, is if so many of us weren’t busy trying to escape reality with so many distractions (some of which involve insecure men manipulating whole nations) we wouldn’t have so much sadness.

-Xenofact

There I Sit In Mistrust

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When I meditate, I realize sometimes how much of our identity is not trusting ourselves.

As noted (and repeated for newcomers) I do a watch-a-slow-even-breath meditation, refining it over time to be as slow and even as possible. It’s derived from Taoist practices (especially my over-mentioned Secret of the Golden Flower), both the breathing and larger practices and concepts such as Yin and Yang or mindful “warm attention.” It’s simple, and as anyone who practices meditation knows, that simplicity is always deceptive because when you start meditating things happen and come to the surface.

Including realizations about identity.

Meditation is a practice that has you sitting there with yourself, doing your thing, and often screwing up, having unexpected insights, and often both. You may realize how distractable you are, or have sudden memories surge to the surface – and good texts will give you advice on such things. I think that these “problems” aren’t problems, but educational opportunities, and often contemplate them.

One thing that I noticed is how much of our identity is being against ourselves. Enough I want to share.

When you meditate, it’s easy to get upset with your distractions or that you can’t do things right. You try to push down what’s in your mind or isolate feelings you don’t want to deal with. There you are, trying to meditate and focus and you’re also breaking yourself up, maybe to the point that you’re angry with yourself. Ever had a meditation session where you feel like you’re in a wrestling match?

But is that any different from how we normally are? How many of us berate ourselves for a choice? How many times a day do you worry that you did something wrong or aren’t a good person? How often do you try to cut off pieces of your own mind? I’m sure you have plenty of experiences like that – almost certain you had a few the very day you read this

It’s bizarre, when you look at it. So much of our identity is not being turned against ourselves. We identify with battling against an obsession. We constantly berate ourselves internally for a behavior we just keep doing. How much of us is not liking us? And is this self-flagellation doing us any good?

(Answer: no).

Realizing how much of our identity can be self-hatred was a useful insight for me in my meditations. Once you see it, you can be aware of it and maybe address it. Or you could berate yourself for it and further the problem, but let’s not do that.

I find that the lessons of meditation come to the fore here too. Meditation is about sitting and doing, being there, doing changing or breathing or whatever and moving on. Just because you have a thought you don’t like doesn’t mean you have to get angry. Just because you had a bad idea doesn’t mean you act on it. What arises is part of the experience and you choose what you do, but it’s all you.

There’s no reason to hate yourself. You’re whoever you are now – and whoever makes the choice on what to do next. You can also take the time to analyze how you got where you are – that’s fine, you’re who you are, and whoever got you here to realize you may have some self-loathing.

It’s amazing what meditation can do when you’re sitting there not doing much. Kudos to all those over the aeons who taught us and keep teaching us.

-Xenofact