Notes for the Aspiring Homeowner

 

The question often comes up of payment; and how I pay for anything inside myself.

We pay with suffering. But the suffering can’t simply be suffering that comes from outside. Remorse of conscience only comes from my inner digestion of the nature of my life and my action, my being.

You think that you are going through life shopping for sweets. Get a little of this, get a little of that. It’s very nice. Some decent food. An attractive man or woman. That car you wanted. Or, in the sense of the inner life, a compliment, something that pats the ego on its head. We all stagger from one event to the next hoping for these little treats.

Perversely, my irritations and the things I suffer with outwardly become treats as well. I indulge myself with my negativity. That’s also a little bonbon for me to eat. I catch myself nurturing my negativity, sucking on it like a hard candy and encouraging it so that I can nurse resentments and carry them around with me, go back to them to savor how wrong the other person was. And so on.

In this way, I have some suffering; that’s for sure. But I'm spending it on one petty little thing after another, without thought, automatically. So even in the matter of my negativity, I’m shopping for sweets.

But we're actually trying to buy a whole house. This is a serious business. If we want to change from within, we can’t go shopping for sweets anymore. We have to save. We're going to need a down payment and mortgage. If I squander all of my suffering on petty negativities from within, I never concentrate enough of it to make a down payment on anything. This is why I need to catch myself in the middle of my negativity.

When we discuss non-expression of negativity, it means almost nothing from an outer point of view. Sure, I can't yell at that person. Easy enough to understand. But so what? Inside, everything that created the yelling is still there. 

I need to confront that — I need to understand how not to express my negativity inwardly, how to save it up, to more consciously understand that it's there and resist it from within. Not to ignore it or suppress it, but to fully engage with it inwardly and concentrate its energy so that I can really suffer what I am. See what I am inside. There's a lot of filth here that I have been treating like it’s bonbons. I need to stop sucking on that and look it straight in the face. 

I need to be ruthless with my assumptions. Save up to put the down payment on the mortgage. 

And it’s deeper still; it turns out I can’t afford to buy a house. I need help. I’m never going to be able to borrow what I need if my credit isn’t good; my own efforts have to demonstrate that.

Then maybe help will come.

May you be well within today.

Lee

Lee van Laer is a Senior Editor at Parabola Magazine.