There is no single overriding meaning of socks and how I view them: they lead to infinite self/other permutations and fantasies. If I am clear that these are all creations, I can be aware of when thinking about socks becomes a self/other fantasy, and I can shift from a paradigm of desire to one of appreciation and contemplating their beauty.
Beauty itself is not something to be possessed. The drive to possess only leads to suffering and vexation; it’s truly disgusting. In fact, the disgust that a person feels is a function of their sense that beauty and form are being defiled for the sake of lust and fantasy. If the form remains unaffected by these desires, one can learn to get over the compulsion to grasp and possess.
When I am having any kind of uneasiness, I can ask myself, what am I really doing in those cases. There is an interesting dynamic indeed. Let’s analyse it in steps:
a) Seeing a pair of socks or being in socks
b) thinking that socks are related to a seducing consciousness (a being who is inviting me, the subject, to a sexual encounter)
c) feeling rejected or potentially rebuffed (indulging in fantasies of “drawing close” and “pushing away” which only intensifies the idea of a desiring self)
d) and so on!
How is this reversed? This dynamic is reversed in the following ways:
a) repudiating the idea that socks are related to a seducing consciousness (only I am pretending or fantasizing that their is a seducing other, when in fact this is only an illusion created by the mind)
b) Not imagining that the repudiation is a rebuff at all (since there is no seducing consciousness to begin with, so why would there be a rejecting or rebuffing one? Replacing this dynamic with equanimity, no-self)
c) changing the dynamic of seduction to one of simple enjoyment that is not eroticized: comfort and beauty replace sensuousness and seduction.
For the coming weeks, I am going to practice changing my narratives about socks away from “sensuousness” and “seduction” toward “comfort” and “beauty”. And in the process, I hope to be able to say women are more than socks (much more, in fact are worthy of the highest respect) and boys can learn to simply wear socks without getting aroused as a gesture of unconditional respect and solidarity with women. It’s also important to empathize with women’s disgust with men’s lusts, to be able to overcome such gross lusts.
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