broken

spell-check on blogger is broken. so I may not be spelling well in the next few posts. My webcam is broken. my cousin just smashed into something and some part of his body is now broken. the screen door out to the balcony I'm typing on is broken. The sound system piped throughout the house sounds like a record at the end of it's track. It is broken too.

My heart is not broken. My heart does not break. My heart is made of rubber, not porcelan. My heart is made of meat, of muscle. It tears and brusies and rips. but it heals. It bends. Hearts are not weak things. They, like people, are indestructible. They bend. they may even snap, but they keep functioning, to whatever capacity they can maintain.

My heart has hurt a lot, for long periods of time, and deeply. and it's all forgotten. It mine as well be a story about a friend of a friend someone's neighbor told me. It's a good story. It makes a good book. It makes a good life.

I've done some things I'm proud of. I've never stopped loving anyone I have ever loved. I still love my first puppy-dog crush. I see no reason to stop anymore. I used to think I shouldn't love. That really hurt.

I used to think other people should love me like I loved them. That hurt a lot too. I used to think other people hurting or feeling uncomfortable wasn't ok. That also hurt.

I

I'm harsh to my mom. It's a sad thing. I'm not harsh to anyone else almost. It's even hard to appologize when I say something hurtful, and realize what I've done. for some reason, with her I feel embaressed to admit it.

There is almost nothing that embareses me enought to do something out of integrity, but that does.

----

I want a page break here.

the sea at night is deep blue and soft. the sound of waves on the rocks below is soothing. I want to fuck a hot girl. I want it like I want comfort food or a nice laptop. I feel a lack or a hole and I want to not feel that. I think that maybe sex will do it, despite the fact that I know it won't. The only difference is I don't have a memory of having sex and what it was like afterwards, to remind me that it really didn't fill that hole. But I don't need it. I know the answer to this question, and if I can trust that, I can save myself time and energy.

however, I do think I should try to have a relationship. because I'm scared of it, because I don't know if I want it or not, because I don't know what it is, first hand, at all. I have mastrubation to extrapolate straight up sex. But I don't have any experience that can give me an idea of what a real romantic relationship is like. I want to. It's scary and exciting. I like adventure.

I can live an adventure, easily. I only need to keep reminding myself of one thing: the adventure is lived starting NOW. Not later.

Ok, I guess there's a second thing I need to remember, which is adventure doesn't have to look like anything in perticular. Adventure is an eye, not a thing seen. It is a hand, a way of walking, and not what you are doing or the place you are going. That takes care of itself.

hmm. I think that was a bunch of bullshit. I don't know what I'm talking about... no, I know a little of what I'm talking about. I know about the eye of adventure, and the walk of the traveler. but I am still timid to go that way, blazing my own trail, alone.

alone, alone alone. the name of the blog. the name of my heart. the deeper I accept that, the more I love. strangly.

I am what I am, and the more comfortable I am with that, the less afraid I am to look at it, and the more I look at it, the more I love it. In this case "what I am" constitutes everything I experience, know, and do.

what do I do? I seem to have choice and power to create my universe, my life. I seem to have to power to direct things. I seem to be only watching a pre-scripted play, either enjoying it or boo-ing it.

what's going on with me right now? what else is importaint?

It's newyears. ten minutes till the calenders flip to 2010 here in mountain time. It's a full moon, right overhead. Shimmering pool at night. Full of love. I do not know anything. I am much wiser than I ever was. I am much happier being me. I am quiet. anti-social sometimes. I am kind and loving, easygoing and silent. hilarious and timid. I lean back in my throne, the pool chair, and make dreams with the cloud scapes and the stars and the moon. it's newyears. drink a sip of really bad shampagne. sing badly.

fireworks from the hot tub (small dinky ones. beautiful.) good music. distant cheers. reflections in the dark window of the burning colored explosions.

bigger fireworks now, louder. Now some flashing lights approaching the place in the beach where the fireworks were coming from, I guess illegaly. Hope the cops let the firework benifactors off easy. they were a nice touch to the night.

there are so many amazing stories I am not living. but that must not be my concern. How should I live? I feel like I get close to the answer when I sit and stare in silence until the world starts to melt.

In that vulnerability of doing notihing my heart is tender, ungaurded. it quivvers in fear and excitment as it slowly, apprehensivly reaches out a hand to touch the most intimate place of universe.

there's only one way this could be more tender, ungaurded and loving, and that is to be doing this in the midst of every day activity.

I love you, whoever is reading this, and I love what you think of as your faults as much as the rest of you. because i don't see them as faults. They are what make you you. I love that. I know this is true for you because it is true for me, and loving myself is the most difficult person to love. He's the only person I treat worse than my mom.

why am I kind to people? I think it really is because I am happy inside. and when i get angry at them, I'm getting angry at myself. they just remind me of parts of me I don't like, and it makes me sad, that I'm not better.

people treat others how they treat themselfs. especialy when they're treating others badly, you get a view of what they do to themselfs, inside.

the moon says it better than me, look;

it's new years motherfucker

I like being able to swear. Thought I don't generaly like swearing. I realized something that bugs me, as being with family is apt to do: I hate being told or cajoled into doing things. It's one of the few things that still irritates me, is people trying to get me to do something. I don't know why it irritates me so much.

I think part of it is because I actualy feel like I have to do it. That is, I'm somewhat gullible, and guilty, and indifferent. If the right buttons are pushed, people can make me feel like I should do something, even when i know intellectualy it's a bad idea. I won't do it, but I will feel bad about not doing it like I'm somehow ungrateful or a bad person for not doing what other people tell me to do or expect of me. I'm sure this is a fairly ubiquitous aspect of the human condition, and I'm actualy less affected than many, probubly than most.

Still the feeling that I am being manipulated, or manipulation is being attempted, makes me livid, furious. Both with myself and other people too. Which is why brainwashing, of religious, spiritual, educational, political, or buisness orgin pisses me off so much. I get wrathful at subversive advertising, educating, indoctrinating, prosthelitizing.

It feels like a violation of our free will, of the very core of our humanity: our ability to think.

ha! an exaple from the line break above, when I got up to turn back off the porch light at the opulent palece I'm staying at: someone turned it on, without asking me, and left. they were not using this themselfs. It may have been the caterers, or it may have been a relitive. The thought that it was a relitive pisses me off. I can just hear the mothers voice in my head: "oh, don't you want more light here?" and then my response: NO, danmmit, I'm enjoying the stars, enjoying the darkness, the gentle glow from the pool lights, the soft glow of the horizon. NO I don't want the fucking lights on. (all that last bit just in my head) and then the cajoling, "oh, come on. are you sure? it's bad for your eyes you know...etc."

why is that so ungodly frusterating? why does it bug me so much to have someone else try to run my life? perhaps that sounds like a strange question, because of course it would piss you off to have someone try to run your life. but not so. there are people, there are cultures (india comes to mind) where that is expected. where it's unquestioned, accepted, perhaps even wanted. any thought you can think and belive, I'm sure you can find someone else who belived the opposite, or something opposite-like. It's all a thought, and that means it's all up for interpretation, belife or disbelife. everything everything everything. any thought you can think, even sensory perception. I'm reminded of some quotes from the matrix like, "you think that's air your breathing?" Anything you percieve in any way, vision, thought, feeling, belife. where is the inherent reality behind it?

you could go this way for a while, searching, and your world might fall apart, if the realizations sunk in. Or you could ask the ugly question: what's the point? I didn't ask the ugly question. I just went whole hog in search of something I could absolutly know is real. and frankly, eventualy, found it, to my satisfaction. But then there's nothing left to ask, but the ugly question.

However, the search changed me, and the finding eventualy mellowed me out, so it doesn't have such a discordant ring anymore. In fact, it even has an immediat answer for me.

"What's the point?"

"Whadday want it to be, sailor?"

you could even turn the question around on it's head, and ask what's the point of asking 'what's the point?'?

but in any case, the answer is very simple, as long as you've learned a little bit about not getting tangled up in the web of discursive thought. It's been said many ways, and I'll repeate some in a moment, but the iimportaint thing to note, as with most of the stuff I talk about here, is that hereing it doesn't do shit if it's not understood from experience. let me caps-lock this shit: YOU CAN'T SHORT CUT GROWTH BY HEARING/READING SOMETHING THAT SOUNDS NICE AND PRETENDING TO BELIVE IT. even if you convice yourself you belive it. You need to take the journey yourself. No shortcuts. No following someone elses path, because garunteed yours will be different, and if your trying to walk someone elses your not walking yours and thus your not going anywere. Those journeys only lead to one destination and that destination is the realizatioin that you've been walking in circuls, and then get out of that cul de sac.

Anyways. the answer. enjoy. be happy. follow your heart. those are some common phrases that denote this uncommon wisdom. If you don't have any false overlays on life and it's meaning, then the inherant meaning within you becomes obvious. there are things that you gravitate towards, that bring you joy and satisfaction, and things you move away from. What else does life boil down to? Live the life that makes your heart sing. Dance whatever dance you want to the music that's playing. If you don't like the music, try and change it. The point of the dance is the dance, the point of the game is the game. The point of beauty is beauty.

happy new year, according some random persons fancy. If this get's read on some other day than it was written, then I declair that day to be newyears as well, for you. so happy new years, still.

gtg, family dinner calling. will spell check later.

Cabo and Ho's

I'm in San Lucas, Cabo. Which is in Mexico. it's the southern dongle hanging off of california. I'm in a villa with family and extended family. It is really, really pretty. I should be lazy and just take some pictures rather than trying to describe it. Though honesty, that's more work right now, so I will briefly describe it: beautiful weather. 70's even at night, dipping down to maybe high fifty's last night when it rained (very unusual this time of year, or at all, I think.) The villa I'm in is built on the side of a cliff, with huge windows everywhere and open air spaces to take in the awesome view of sea and sky. The cave area which I occupy, at the bottom of the structure is built into the rock face, and they've left the beautiful rock that the cliff is made of, and worked around it, so it is the back wall. the front wall being glass and sea behond that. the architecture is nicely plastered concrete, arches, pillars, porches, a pool on the main balcony (small one) and vases and pots with plants in them. Rock or imitation rock floor.

The air is pure, fresh, teh sky is crystal clear or artistically cloudy. The whole thing feels so opulent it gives the sensation of lazy sex. Just lying around all day, being pleasured. I normally don't like expensive things, because they are so obviously ridiculous, and not worth a fraction of what they cost. In this case though, I am very happy to be able to inhabit what feels like a structure from my own personal fantasy. unfortunately I'm here with family instead of alone with a lover.

I just walked around the town below us, and it was predictably sad. not India sad, but the whole place was built around tourism. People wandering the streets, asking everyone if they wanted to buy random crappy souvenirs. And we, the tourists, are the enablers. Oh, and the "massage" parlors. I was suspicious of them, until I saw one with a sign that said something like, "NO SEXUAL massage parlor. Only actual massage" Then I was no longer suspicious, but confirmed. And while it was a little bit tempting, mexican women often being quite beautiful, mainly it was a downer; this was what tourism was doing, metaphorically, to the entire population. somehow modern civilization has convinced these people to sell their natural beauty, their lands natural beauty and bounty, for money. and now all they do is spend there time serving forginers. being maids, being waiters, being taxi drivers, being prostitutes. For what? For bare minimum sustenance in a toxic environment.

But, thinking about it, how is most of society different? we have that shittyness here in america too. we just have a bit less of it. And a lot of those rich tourists are spending their one week of the year here, only to go back to soul crushing, relationship killing work rutiens.

this is not the only possibility. but parts of it are almost omnipresent. And how happy are the rich people? generally, they live lives of quiet desperation just like the poor. They just have to try and distract themselves from it by other means, like buying new toys, etc, to keep from being alone and undistracted long enough to gaze into the empty meaningless hole that is there life. which would actually be a good thing, because maybe they would try and change that, and maybe, if they succeeded, they'd stop being so horrified of death.

I don't care how you do it, but if you are reading this, please strive to live a life that is full of real happiness, deep love, purpose and fulfillment. This is a selfish request, because it makes me very sad seeing people who have never lived. People who will have nothing to show, come their last day. People who have not even seen the incredible majesty and been humbled by the love and beauty surrounding them every second of every day. It makes me want to cry. It's like watching jesus, insane and amnesiatic, crawling around in the mud, the servant of violent animals.

How could you not cry, seeing this? God danmmit jesus, snap out of it!

I'm going to go stare off at the intoxicating horizon of night now. deep blue sea meeting a slightly lighter deep blue sky, with wisps of clouds lit by the almost full, dazzelingly bright moon, and the shimmering stars that tear my heart out with beauty like the best women do.

The beauty used to hurt, because I thought I was supposed to do something about it, and I was so inadequate to the task of reciprocating or even appreciating such overabundance.

bye for now. if any women in the area read this and want to have some opulent sex, drop me a line.
:D

-I Out

seeking the darkness with a flashlight

just to keep people from worring about me, and because it's true, I thought I'd mention: I don't get upset that much, or that long. nothing like the old days. If it sounds like I'm pretty dark, it is only because that is what interests me: where am I still small. what are the things I still believe in that are creating suffering in my life?

It's the darkness that needs the light, so that's where the flashlight of my awareness goes. and that's then what I talk about. believe me, I save the really crazy stuff for my personal journal. but this web log of my life and proccess wouldn't be complete if it didn't have the downs along with the ups. too many people gloss over that aspect. It makes the proccess of Realization seem unreal and out of reach. Fantastical. but it's not some fantizy world idea with rainbows coming out of flying saints asses. it is very very real, simple. Maybe not easy, but doable. Just make sure you're going in the right direction, and you'll get where your going. And of course why belive me? Listen yourself. Listen to the great books, the ones that fill you with light and desire for truth and purification and love and hope. I'm just makeing the notes of a fellow traviler availible, to make the point that a) this stuff is real and b) to despell myths about it perpetrated by ass-talkers. There's plenty of ok stuff on spirituality, there's a very little really good stuff, there's a whole lot of bad information, and then there's the stuff that's case specific for you, and could be a book on gardening or anything else.

And so, if this serves any purpose at all besides being useful for me, because writing helps me proccess, it is keeping people from heading in the opposite direction.

the validity of time

I'm in fairfield tomorrow.

.

YAY!!!!!!!!!!!11!!1!

live your favorite story

I watch a lot of movies these days. It reminds me though, because of the other things I've done, Tom Brown courses especialy, that it is possible for my life to be an adventure, and whatever that ends up looking like, it is so much more satisfying than the best movie. It is the best movie. But it requires more work, much more time, and infinitly more risk.

(what's the risk of sitting in front of your computer, watching someone else do something epic? not much.)

It half misses the point though, or more than half, to say that life would be good if it was just epic. that is more a symptom. trying to change it at the surface level leads to unsatisfying and temporary results.

I also have to decide on something I want. "excercising regularly" isn't an objective, it is a means. and if the objective is just, "so I don't keep chastising myself for not excercising" then it's not sufficent motivation for me.

It is interesting, the disconnect I have between my thoughts and my actions. I think it is a little bit tragic. I have great ideals for myself, but when I start to achieve them I realize they are empty of what I wanted from them.

Still, I think it is better to live your favorite story, that to read about it or watch it lived by someone else. The question for me is what needs to change internally for that to come about, and even more important, is that what I really want?

I think what I really want is something much simpler and more universal. A basic surrender, to something I might call flow, or purity, or Self, or God. It's a way the mind functions that doesn't second guess and shoot itself in the foot. From there, you don't need to ask 'what do I want' because your already doing it, and you don't need to worry about whether your doing the 'right' thing, because you always are.

this is about little me, perhaps I will call him... mini-me, abdicating the central command chair, and waiting for full sized Dr. Evil to take up his rightful place.

I'd say a few days ago, I just recently came back around the third loop of elaboration of surrender. It is beginning to get more concrete.

This is how it always works: first it is recognized and accepted on the almost imperceptible level of abstract knowing, being, and then it begins to bleed into feelings and mind and body, bleed into space-time, over time. And thats when you get to enjoy it.

when the tao is lost

"... when Tao is lost, there is goodness.

When goodness is lost, there is kindness.

When kindness is lost, there is justice.

When justice is lost, there is ritual.

Now ritual is the husk of faith and loyalty, the beginning of confusion."

-from the tao te ching, translated by Gia-Fu Feng and Jane English, chapter thirty-eight

porn

I haven't done any post about porn recently. I need some lower elements to balence out all this spiritual philosophising.

I have a lot of porn.
I recently had a conversation with a femail friend about her class on women in culture, and how bad porn is for women. It's degrading and objectifies them and supposedly encourages violence towards them.

I felt a little guilty, and made a note to make sure she never found my stash.

I think the whole feminism thing is a bit weird. just another thing for angry people to be angry about. and then they bandy around there terms like genocide and rape and try to blame it on whatever it is they don't like.

bullshit.

the violence that happens in the world is a very sad thing.
It does not happen because of one thing or another. There are many reasons.
But all of it involves this: not being kind.
the angry activists seem to forget this point, and think it's ok to be mean to certain people, though those certain people can't be mean to other people.
If you want to stop violence, or pollution, or anything, the person you have to start with is yourself.
why aren't you stopping (fill in the blank)?
well, that's why we aren't either. It's your idea, your advice, so you do it.
sigh. you know, this is violent too.

What is Wrong?!

generally, when I have the feeling that something is wrong
what is wrong is that I think something is wrong.
and the solution is not to find the wrong thing and right it
but to remember that the present is unavoidable
and stop resisting it.
ceasing putting all my effort into trying to resist what is unresistable
my energy and attention is freed to experience the moment.
experiencing the moment, without trying to change it
without ideas about it's rightness and wrongness
it turns out nothing was wrong
and everything is beautiful
and kind.

fuck

my definition for ten years has been the seeker. I have been after something ultimate, something lasting, something some Indian dude called enlightenment and a million other names. I tried hard for it, because it promised a release from the suffering and insufficiency that was my life. I was lonely most of the time, depressed, full of self loathing, and incapable of carrying on a conversation with a girl I was attracted too. And some dude with a good beard said to meditate and realize God and I'd be blissed out and successful in action.

frankly, he wasn't lying. But my interpretation was a little too simplistic to be real, and if anything the things to quibble over are degree, not quality. Perhaps some of that just came with growing up. That's what my grampa implied, when I was trying to explain to him why I was so into meditation.

It's not true though. I just look at people, try to have a conversation with them and there is a huge gap in communication, with most people. They have no fucking idea what I am talking about. I've spent ten years going in, facing demons, willing to do whatever unsavory thing was necessary to find what is true, and deliver myself from the collective insanity we are infected with and indoctrinated with, seemingly from birth.

I'm being a bit hard on ignorance. It's not all that bad. But if you want to get out of it, disdain is a useful motivation. i don't feel like I'm out of it, but I've been moving out of it for a long time, with everything I've got. It felt like one of those bad dreams where you couldn't move quickly, where you were running through molasses, but every few years I'd look back and be stunned and how much confusion and constriction I had wriggled out of. and how much yet lies in front of me.

It is difficult work. School is easy in comparison. In school you are given a specific task. You are given criteria for success, you are given frequent evaluations, you are given information sources to use. You are told exactly what to expect. If the motivation is there to succeed, you can.

This journey into spirit, into reality, is not like that at all. There are maps, sure, but there are a million different maps, all giving different directions. And they all have different sounding objectives. And the criteria for success is variable and vague, if present at all. Imagine a classroom where a bunch of kids milled around in a room for a few days, with no purpose at all, and then a whole group of teachers came in, started talking at the same time, each giving different course assignments, contradicting other teachers, denouncing other assignments aside from theirs, gave only cryptic remarks about the grading criteria, and totally misleading information sources.

Does that instill confidence in the students? ah fuck it. this analogy sucks.

I'll just say this: if you don't have a strong motivation for school, you can still scrape by. If you don't have a strong motivation for spiritual growth, you are fucked.


The process seems to have subtly reversed. whereas I was once wriggling out of ignorance, now, I've reached the edge, found there is nothing beyond, and started wriggling back in towards the center, devouring it as I go so I have room to breath. There is no getting out of illusion. Illusion is the world. It is the point. It is a dream, a game. If it ends, there's nothing, or there's another dream, or game. which would you prefer? The trick is learning to be in the world but not of it. Like an actor who has forgotten he is just an actor, and is having a miserable time in the tragedy he's doing. When he remembers he's just an actor, doing what he loves most, then the play is enjoyed. It's still a play. He's still in it. But at least try to have fun with it. But how to do that, honestly (i.e. not just pretending)?

want it.
ask for it.
take the step that's in front of you.
then, take the next step that's in front of you.

as a fellow traveler, and this is not necessary information, but it is comforting information: it is possible. The freedom and joy you are looking for. It is possible. If you keep moving towards it, you will live it, eventually, and step by step. It won't look like you think it is. But it will be what you want.

Nutshells

I love the simplistic.

How I am these days:

I am overwhelmed by the gifts of the universe. I am given more abundance than I could ever earn. And yet as far as my vision goes, my development is at the state of a baby. maybe a year old, still crapping myself. And I want more. Much much more.


What I want:

Very simply, I want to be successful in action. Not in an egoic, anger or fear motivated way, but in a non egoic, perhaps love motivated way. Success in action in this case means being able to start something, and stick with it to it's conclusion and success, or mastery, and fully enjoy the process of doing it.


Other notes:

there seems to be something wrong with my basic definition of successful action, that is too subtle for me to grasp at this moment, though I feel like I have understood it briefly and forgotten it, many times. However, the paradigm I have now is at odds with the wisdom, and so I cannot live the wisdom currently, nor can I even remember it, on command.

This seems to always be the case with wisdom that slips from my mind like fine sand in one's hands. I am not living the wisdom, and so realizations of the wisdom are momentary, not established. Eventually they are lived, and they don't have to be thought about or remembered.

The "wrong" thing is something fundamental, like my whole world-view is upside down.


I just recently realized that my main motivating belief for the last ten years is not true. It is, to try to put it into words: I need to work on my issues for them to go away.
This is an egoic way of trying to get enlightened. It served me well for ten years, but it is now a hindrance. Embedded in this belief is the world view that I am responsible for "making" myself enlightened. I do not know what comes next. But it will be free-er, closer to Truth.

the first loop of elaboration on surrender.

it is thanksgiving
it has been almost exactly a month since I had a big realization about control. From that surrender, all of a sudden, I started acting the way I wanted to be acting, for all my life. But not because I wanted to be acting that way any more. Just the opposite, it was because I was surrendered into what was, including entirely my normal behavior of being very quiet, inactive, and as I self debasingly refer to myself, "lazy." But soon after I realized I was starting to do all the things I'd always wanted to do, the ego took over and claimed ownership. Oh, look at me everyone: I'm finally shaping up like I always wanted to.

and then it went away, of course. And it took me nearly a month to come full circle, to realize what had happened, and what the original thing that was successful, was. This is what I'm talking about, with the cycles of forgetting and remembering. They seem to be an integral part of the spiritual journey. Which is, as far as I can tell, just the life journey, going through a specific phase.

A model that seems fairly accurate is: start in ignorance: everything is fine. Then, begin the downward slope that is leading to a spiritual break: something is not quite right. Finally snapping and beginning a very focused attempt to get out: everything is wrong. And eventually, an upward climb again: everything is good. Or at least some things are good, and the good increases.

what time is it?

I often find myself asking that question, as of late.

Not at all related to the time that a clock would say if I looked at it.
Not related to anything, consciously.
It's like a nervous tick, like saying "now where was I?" as someone wanders about the house, aimlessly.

Though I do sometimes expect an answer, something revelatory and unexpected, like: "It's Now," "A hair past a freckle," or "Naikkie Time!"
but mainly, the answer that I always give, if I give myself an answer is something along the lines of
"Time to die."

though not always in words, sometimes just a subtle feeling of that meaning.

This has been going on for a while. at least a month and a half. I've been carrying my will around in my pocket. I've been trying to understand, viscerally, my death. It was very useful, contemplating what I would write, in my will. It made me think of death, think of what was truly important in my life.

: your going to die. so, what really matters? what will you regret not having done? what parts of your life will you look back and consider wasted, trivial? what parts will make you able to die without regrets?

People who have serious near death experiences often have, for a short time, a new found appreciation for life. "I love the fact of my death; it has made my life possible" is a quote I find apt.

I'll tell you what I discovered, looking at my death: I love the world. I love life, and I would be sad to leave it, because I want to love it more. If there is one regret in my life it is the love I have not given.

that's it.

it's a very short will. Just a about a half a page. getting pretty beaten up, now.

here's the thing: I don't even know how to give the love, express the gratitude, that I want to.

HAH!

Ok, here's why: because I'm trying.
and, as Stalking Wolf would say, the act of trying negates itself.
It's sad to say for my ego, my little needy mind with its long, thin grasping fingers and beady little eyes has been a complete failure at accomplishing anything I ever wanted it too. It just doesn't do the job.
However, there is a different configuration of mind, one that is bigger, harder to pin down, not worried, relaxed, that does things very, very well. I can't control it, but what it does, it does well.

So, when my epic fail mind tries to express gratitude, it fails. This is the way most people function.
But when my Bigger mind is allowed to be, it flows love and gratitude just fine.

Frankly, it looks like all that was wrong was a thought that kept saying, "no, you can't express gratitude, you can't love things enough!" And the associated emotional knot, the root-stock of the thought.

Some variation of this is the answer to all problems I've ever had. And, along with the often intensive and time consuming work of releasing the emotional knot, it actually, amazingly, results in life-long change. That is, to whatever extent I honestly deal with that issue, it's got that much less emotional charge, forever.

And that's why this journey is my life, my obsession: because I like being free. distracting yourself, any of the million subtle or obvious ways we do, from this process, or from the pain which is the locater beacon of where to start this process, will result in temporary alleviation from the pain, but it will keep coming back, as strong as before or stronger, until the day you die.

The extent this journey is taken is the extent to which we are free, alive, and fulfilled. Each person's journey is highly personal. And the stage of the journey I am at right now is that of becoming aware of forward movement on the path, and how it happens. Some things seem to bring progress, some things seem to bring stagnation. Getting clear on which is which seems like a good idea. As this process become clearer, it becomes quicker, which means less time necessary for dealing with the locater beacons: suffering. which means, a happier life.

is this true? find out for yourself. there is no other way. nor need there be. everything on my path has eventually proved self-validating. Though I have been supported and helped tremendously, all along the path. You can always expect help from nature on this path. that is something I've come to rely on, because it has never let me down, nor anyone I know. Sometimes it puts you through hell first, though.

the begining of the new journey

I think the best way I could describe what some people called my 'awakening experience' three years ago is:
The beginning of the New Journey.

I do not know what it was in relation to all the various descriptors of progressing spiritual evolution. From various traditions. It only half-fits any of them. But from that point on, I have been walking half of a new path, searching for the other half.

Or you could say, walking the same path, in a new way.

many things changed with that, changed profoundly and for good. Some immediately, some gradually, as the initial shock wave reverberated throughout my psyche and my life.

And many things did not change. As I said, it feels like I walk half a path. If I was living in hell before, this is purgatory, journeying towards heaven.

It's lonely here, thus the title of the blog. The loneliness being unnecessary, but the distinct aloneness inescapable. No road, no map, no teacher, but my heart, my heart, my heart.

If I were to try to cram this into the description of "higher states of consciousness" that I am most familiar with, Maharishi's model, I would have to say that his description of Cosmic Consciousness to God Consciousness to Unity Consciousness, is not sequential but more simultaneous. Like the limbs of a baby growing. And even those limbs are external to something primary and indescribable by me, being in the midst of it and without perspective at the moment.

The one consolation I have from all this frightening uncertainty is that I know I am not making this up: this is not like anything I had imagined. This is not in anybody's maps. Though certainly many of the descriptions that other people gave and give of there journeys, are familiar. At least for now, more and more, where I'm going is becoming less and less known. No words I've heard prepare me for my next step.

I go into mystery. naked and alone, clutching my arms and shivering.

Nobody would do this unless they realized there was no other option, then nobody wouldn't.



and I would call my recent understanding of surrender, the beginning of finding the missing half. It's interesting, the only important ends I find are always beginnings. And mostly it's just cycles: up and down, clarity and confusion, happiness and depression. It seems useless to try and stop that wheel, demanding only the upstroke of the cycle. I don't spin that wheel, I can't stop it. My control is always indirect. I seek truth, I follow my heart, I surrender, and things improve. I try to control, and things deteriorate.

why wouldn't you surrender if you saw clearly that non-surrender accomplished nothing, and surrender accomplished everything?

Answer: because 'you' aren't in control of surrendering or not.

Don't act as if you have no control though. Your effort is extremely important on this path, though why and how, I do not comprehend. Grind your teeth and put in every ounce of yourself that you can into this, and pray passionately for the desire for realization that will drive you to put forth the effort necessary.

This sounds ballsy and manly, but it's not, in practice. Often what is required is not pushing yourself to extremes, but maintaining balance, and being honest.

bah. why listen to me? just a fellow traveler.

Nov. 20th, backlog

I sit at the keyboard like a statue. I kind of want to just stop. stop everything. Words come out like a psychotropic drug trip, so slow you can see them rolling down my sleeves to the computer, like marble sized ball bearings through molasses.

When I ask, "am I doing it right?"
When I see, my counterproductive habits
It's saddening. Demotivating. So I have to wonder what the point is.

The point.

Some days, like today, I literally feel like doing nothing. Like sitting on the couch as the gray day turns to twilight and night, staring off at nothing, spacing out as thoughts come and go, and emotions grip me strong enough to make me cry, then leave as quickly. As sensations move and morph through my body and mind.

Am I doing it right?
All this time, and the question still remains. I think the question will always remain, as long as I am willing to ask it. It's not about having an answer. It's about my fear, and about my trust, or lack of trust, in the universe.

Ultimately it's about neither, as I recognize the futility of waiting for understanding, to let myself relax. The world is as It is, now. I can fight it. I can accept it. Understanding it is just an excuse, either to accept it or keep from accepting it.

All I have ever found in my life is relativity. Relative truth, relative rules. Things get created in interaction, in relationship, and when that relationship changes, because one or the other thing changes, or both do, then the relationship changes, and so, it seems, do the rules.

The unchanging is unquantifiable. No rules can be derived from it, absolute for all time and occasion.

Here I am, afloat in the mysterious sea of existence. I observe interactions, I develop theory's, and hear other peoples theory's. But, like science, these theories are ultimately unprovable. Always being destroyed and disproven as deeper layers are uncovered.

Given all that complexity, the only questions I can ask are pragmatic ones. Questions which I must accept have no definite answer. Just temporarily useful answers. And the questions become very simple:

What is important?
what do I want?
how do I get it?

There are lots' of people willing to tell me there answers to these questions, but how many of them do I trust? Why are they telling me there answers? Perhaps for there own self-serving interests, perhaps because they genuinely want to help. If they genuinely want to help, can they? Are they themselves living something that I want to be living? Or are they just putting on a show.

(Let me say something right now, while we're on the subject: though I often talk about awakening and enlightenment, these are just convenient words, circumventing the true problem of defining what exactly they are, which as far as I can tell is un-communicable. I have no idea what enlightenment is. Much less idea than I used to. And you don't want what I have, whatever that is. You want something much more. Something, perhaps, that I want too. The difference being, maybe, that you think you know what that is: enlightenment, a romantic partner, financial stability; and I have no idea what it is that I want, though I am trying hard to find something.)

In any case, it seems like my search for answers may be doomed, because I am asking the wrong questions, or going about the project the wrong way. I'm assuming that there is something I can "do" that will finally eliminate this quiet emptiness and craving within me.

That's been working real well for thousands of years, right? No. So perhaps a different approach. Perhaps with the assumption that what I'm looking for is already inside me, and I simply keep running away from it, trying to find it in every place but the one it resides in.

For some reason, this is not an immediate fix. There seems to be a huge amount of blockage to discovering these things inside me. Or rather, a great pressure, pushing me out of the inside. I find that peace that passeth all understanding, that love and intimacy that is unrelyant on outside circumstances, though rejoicing in all, and then, it becomes obscured again, and forget my way back. It is highly odd. Why is that? why leave paradise?

Philosophically, it's a useless question, but practically, it's significant. If I can understand... ah, there I go again, trying to understand. But if they dynamics are clear to me, then there's a greater possibility of being able to change those dynamics.

well, it doesn't seem to be something I can consciously control, or I would have. It's a matter of what I experience. In which case, the question has already been partially answered for me: change my experience. There are plenty of techniques out there to do that. The question is, what works the best for me. And the question before that is: how do I figure that out?

Immediate options:
-just do what I've been taught when I was a little kid: TM
-try all the various modalities I've run into since then, and note which seems to work the best.
-pray for guidance
-try listening to my heart

(ok, done editing this, a week and a half later. funny, I completely disagree with the fundimental assumptions of this post. this is a good indicator that you are growing, and not stagnating: things you believed yesterday seem ludicrous, insane, the next day. If your worldview is staying the same, so are you, and in life, stagnation is death. doesn't mean it just changes, but expands to encompase previous worldviews from a larger perspective. Otherwise it's likely just window-shopping for beliefs/religions/spiritualitys.)

I guess today is post day

orginizational details

just installed google paralytics, so I can know if anyone is actually looking at this, or if I can revert to linguistically brbl-ing my lips with my finger like a cartoon character. I set it so there is no sharing of this information with anyone else. Only I will ever see it, unless google turns evil, in which case we're all screwed anyways. However, if a lot of you have script-blocker like I do, or don't like google analytics for some reason, I can switch to... I think it's called stat meter, or something. let me know, if you care.

brblbrmrmbuburbuhbrbuhbr

Crazy-Old-Man-Zen-Master-Time

some zen koans I accidentally made up:

"Who's hand is up your ass?"
(think puppets)

"Reality is bigger than you think."
(think alternate meanings.)

Nov 12th, update

well, here I am. Just got back from a cross country flight, from sea-tac in Seattle to the New Jersey pine barrens, to learn herbal compounding and mixing from Tom Brown jr. It was an awesome class, we learned some powerful techniques and info, and it was really really nice, to be with family again, which this group of people has become. That's because this was a series class, meaning we had met three times before already, throughout the year, doing homework in between.

I got myself a job working at the TM-Center, doing mindless pencil-pushing tasks for a day or two a week. Which is great. Something I can focus on to ground me, doesn't take up too much time, doesn't require any commute, and I even get paid a little.

Tomorrow I'm heading out to a Survival Techniques class with the Sherwoods (they run primitive skills school I'm doing) for the weekend, and from that going directly to a nearby beach for monday and tuesday to learn clamming, archery practice, and maybe making a bow and arrow hand-guard.

I'm a bit behind: I still need to go out and buy a few odd and ends for the trip, pack, finish my pencil pushing, and do laundry (which I really, really need to do. There's no laundry machine in the house though, so I have to go out to a coin laundromat down the street.)

So feeling a bit worried, as is my habit before almost all trips. This last trip though, I didn't feel that worried. Perhaps I am finally, finally seeing the other side of this deep seated fear. Fear of forgetting, something, I think. Linked with my general fear of doing something wrong. Of wrongness in general.

I remember, back in the first two years of collage, when I was really going at the spiritual enlightenment thing as hard and fast as I could, I would get these intense feelings of wrongness. Like my heart was just screaming at me that something was wrong, that I was doing something wrong. And it would really bother me, because I could never figure out what is was, that was wrong. I think it may have been a slightly bad interpretation on my part. I don't think it was so much that my heart was telling me I was doing something wrong, but it was trying to tell me something, period, and I wasn't able to listen, didn't know how.

I'm still not really sure what to do with those "chest bursters" as I call them, but now when I feel them, I just give myself some time to pay attention to them, and try to listen, understand what they want to communicate. What I want to communicate, to myself. right (or whole) brain to left brain.

Last night I had one, and eventual got that it was answering a question I had, about my sadness at not being as strongly disciplined and persevering as I would like. The reason I am that way is that I get discouraged, because my efforts don't seem well linked to my results, in the short run. I practice something, and I see myself getting better, quickly, and then it slows and maybe even stops, and I get upset and worry that I'm just wasting my time doing something that's not actually going to get me anywhere, make me any better at whatever it is I'm doing. Music, creating, writing, exercise.

Now I've got to ask the question of how to heal that.

Ok, done (for now)

November 3rd

I'm not sure what else to call it. I'm feeling quite homesick, and I want to connect with friends. So I'm going to chat now with whoever is listening.

I leave for New Jersey this thursday for my final herbal mixtures and compounding class. It's a fuck-load of travel for two days of instruction. Yes. But I'm doing it on principle: that is, the principle of free. This last class wasn't scheduled, it was a make up of sorts, because during our first class, Tom almost died. Literally. So he was in the hospital and we were being taught by his other instructors. It was fine, but Tom felt like giving us another class.

I'm quite fed up with traveling. Especially being in a city. I just want to drive seven fucking minutes and meet a friend for dinner and/or a walk, like I used to back in Fairfield. But I can't. I've go a friend thirty minutes away, and another an hour and a half. Everything is driving. The only thing I can do quickly is surf the internet, watch movies, read, and play music. walks are nice. Walks are very nice. I should go on a walk. Except it's dark now, so I can't go to the park. not that it's dangerous, it's just unlit, and it's a horse park, so the chances of me stepping in horse shit are almost 100%.

But I'll probably go for a walk anyways. It's necessary, right now. I think the bottom line is I am a people person. Despite my sometimes reclusive tendencies, it's not that I don't like people, it's just that I like personal time, to introspect and stuff.

I suppose if I want to hang out with friends, I can do that. Just like with everything in my life, it's not that complicated: do it, or don't do it. It's always that simple. Well, there is the additional factor of doing it and failing, but so what. If you do it enough, eventually you won't fail, and what else are you going to do?

The earthwalk school is good. Very good. It is teaching me the things I wanted to know.

Still I often hear the echo in my mind, "why are you doing this?" by which it means, why are you living out in Seattle, away from your friends, your home, your heart. Life is short, so why spend it unhappy and lonely?

I do have my reasons. No, I don't actually want to live as a recluse, but the knowledge I've got is so important, so many people are missing it and it fills their lives with a wounded emptiness, like someone cut out their heat long ago, and there is a horrible pain and fear and deadness that people have just accepted as normal, but it's not.

What I know needs to be mixed with experience so it can become wisdom and I can teach it well. Not that I see it as a job, but I people want it, and I have it, at least a little.

If, or when, I fight past the majority of my inner demons keeping me from living a full life, my joy in doing these nature skills will mean I do them on my own. Until then, this is nessisary.

It's insane, totally insane, that I am not doing the things that bring me the most joy in my life.
My reason is simple: doing what I love is more difficult. Much more difficult than distracting myself and wasting time.

Question to the universe: where do I find the streangth to live my love, despite the difficulty?

answer: what your doing right now.

sigh. it's the best answer you could get, but it does mean it's going to take time.

we all start from where we are, not from where our role models are, not from where we wish we were not from where we want to be.

we start from where we are, here, now, and the only perfection I can imagine finding in this ever-growing world is the clarity to see that this now is enough forever. If you can rest here, if I can rest here, in appreciation of what is, then that is the end of the search, the quest, the purpose of life. And when that happens, there will still be eternity, growing.

Both, not one or the other.

will I make it in time?

home internet crapped out. sitting in my car in front of a "free wireless" coffee shop, and my battery may or may not be at... 20%

It's impossible to shake the feeling of gratitude I've been feeling lately. Literally impossible. and that must be because, like all things that are unshakable, it is because it has always been there, and I am simply becoming aware of it.

for many years I was seeking enlightenment, and I kept having nice experiences, and going, "holy shit! I just want that to stay, and that's fucking enlightenment! Permanent super-happy consciousness. But listen people, that's not how it works. You don't get to keep the super happy experiences forever. They are experiences, and the all come and go. That which is abiding, that which will not go away, is that which is already here.


This gratitude thing is bigger than me. Literally, it feels like isaac is a teeny little speck, floating on this immense whitewater river of grati-

(and that's when the computer went into standby. This never got sent, for... about a month. wrote it back in October. well, here it is. there are a few more like this. Perhaps I'll space them out, until or unless I write something new.)

october 25th

switched from 49% to 51%: surrender (vs. control)
watched flight of the concords, disk one
reinin shook's birthday
mom found tat tvam asi
made my living will
got two job offers, unasked

life marker number 3.

(#1: I must find ultimate truth.
#2: ...is that it? yes. that's it.
(#3: letting go of the mind.))

not too shabby for a sunday.

disclaimer: all dividing lines are conceptual and merely serve educational and organizational purposes. When you're telling a story you need a beginning middle and end, but life keeps going and never started. Evolution happens in space-time, and sudden shifts are generally like walking for several hours and suddenly looking back and realizing you've gone a long ways. The journey is always done one step at a time. But it's the turning around and realizing it's breathtaking view now, that brings the fulfillment and the the satisfaction of knowing that yes, you are moving.

bed.

carrots and destinations: where am I going?

sometimes I wonder if I've got it all wrong:

I think that life is good, but it needs to be great. I still want something better than I have. Younger, I would have exalted spiritual experiences and desire to repeat those beautiful blissful encounters would drive me mercilessly to all kinds of weird behaviours, attemting to get back to that lost grace.

But perhaps those glimpses, those accidental enlightenments, were not forerunners of what was to come, but shrewdly places incentives, designed to get me exactly where I something wanted me to go. The carrot of the carrot and stick dichotomy. It's just as cruel as the stick, frankly, if you never give the person the satisfaction of having the carrot. And even if I do get the carrot, that's not the point. the point is that, by moving towards the carrot, I have been moving somewhere, step by step, searching for carrot and getting only fatigue. Then, the driven stops, I munch on a carrot while they rest and get there bearings, and then when I'm hungry again we keep on going.

what I'm trying to say, is that maybe I am being manipulated, by me, by god, by reptile aliens, I don't know, and what I think is the goal is not actually the goal. In which case, unless it is me directing this, or someone with my best interests at heart, I should figure out where this carrot is leading me.

how to: live

here is a functional question that's been bothering the hell out of me: I want to live free from suffering, which means unattached or unbelieving of the drama that plays out before me. At the same time, I want to be dynamic and successful in my life.

The paradox is that if I am unattached, then everything is OK. From the point of view of the witness, there is no problem, nothing that needs doing.

But the mind needs to believe in its power to change things for the better, for it to have the motivation to do so. I think.

I guess what I'm struggling with is the dichotomy of free will verses predetermination. People keep telling me that all is as it should be, and everything is already decided. Everything that happens was inevitable, and was in fact for the greatest good. A nice point of view to sooth the pangs of feeling like a failure, feeling that you are doing something wrong, that something is fundamentally wrong.

But at the same time, it feels like that belief cuts my legs out from under me. If everything is fine, then nothing needs changing. If everything happens perfectly, than nothing can be changed...

hmm, could that be it? everything is perfect means everything is perfect. Any possible rout you could take. Not quite it I think.... It's one of those paradoxes that needs resolving my going to a higher level, a bigger point of view, that includes both without contradiction. Paradox is only the experience that one thing cannot exist at the same time as another, so the solving of the paradox is simply to experience the opposite: both existing at the same time. Then it is no longer a paradox.

And that is the answer to this question: just look at your experience: I feel like there is no control on my part, that life just flows, and any attempt to control that just results in my swimming against the enormous power of natures movement, and suffering, and inefficiency. At the same time, I do have that choice, to swim against that flow, ineffective though it may be. I don't have control of the outcomes of my actions. That is certain. Sometimes I get the desired result, sometimes I don't. But at the same time I am always choosing. Surrender or Control. This or that. And in that apparatus of choice, reduced to it's simplest component, is the answer to this question, for me.

When I try and locate "my self" I fall into an abyss of mystery, that shatters words and is beyond understanding, beyond my ability to see what it is. I think someone once called it "the cloud of unknowing." So that is all I can find, when I look for myself. At the same time, when I look for the connection between me, and action, I end up at the same place. I get an image, as I sink there, of falling from white light into blackness, fingers of the blackness shining into the light as the space surrounding me gets more dark, until I can't see anything, not even the nose in front of my face. There's nothing I can say about this place. People have suggested that this is the self, the absolute, the ground state of existence. That makes sense, from inference and logic, looking back at it with a functioning mind. As does the reasoning, "well, that must be what I fundamentally am." But when I'm deeply in it, no such thoughts or certainties are possible. And even that's not true. Anything that can be said about this seems to immediately negate itself.

In any case, that is where I end up when I look for what does the deciding, as well. There is nothing specific then, that I can find, which is either me, the actor, or the decider.

The questions, then, are answerless, at least for now. Perhaps even meaningless. What is it that I really want, in my search for whether I have free will or not? I think I'm just looking for the security to say, "I am in control" or "I am not in control" and know who to blame, when things go wrong, and know who to trust, and know what to do. And all these different lusts for understanding stem from one basic desire, to feel comfortable and safe, to be happy and purposeful.

But I never get these questions answered in an absolute way, a way I can trust completely, because they are not absolute questions. There is nothing I can say, that is absolutely true, as far as I've found, as far as I can conceive of. There is something I can be, that is real. So what I really end up looking for is just whatever it is that will grant me peace from my constant fear and pain.

Who cares if I have free will or not? What does that even mean? Show me the way to love, to fulfilment, to peace. And you know what? My mind can't do that. My mind is just the burger boy, in this case, being asked sagely questions. The one that has the answers is God, is my Heart. And my heart doesn't have to explain it's self. it just knows.

It says: surrender, because you don't have control anyways, and trying to control what you can't leads to suffering and inefficiency.

And it says: act as though you have free will, because acting as though you don't leads you to complacency, confusion, and depression. Act as though there is right and wrong because acting as though you don't makes your heart sad. And when you do something or something happens that you think is bad, something you don't want, look closer at it, because if you look close enough to see what is actually there, you will find nothing but beauty and perfection and gifts, and the only thing that can hurt you is thoughts, believed in.

Control is irrelevant, free will is irrelevant. What is relevant, utterly relevant, is what makes your heart sing, and what is your experience of reality. My experience of reality is a wondrous mystery, and learning to listen to and trust my heart is the journey I'm currently on, along with unwinding all the knots that keep me closed down and suffering.

testing

I trying to explain something that I don't know, so it's difficult. why the hell even try then. I'll figure it out, then try and explain it. It has to do with being vulnerable. Taking down the defenses. Basically: what happens when you stop hiding your true self. What happens when you can look at all those things you thought were wrong with you without seeing them as wrong. You know that phrase, "a face only a mother could love." ?

What happens when you mother yourself like that and treat yourself with love, rather than the horrendous abuse we give ourselves.

Well, it's a good experiment.

e. e. cummings

I like this:

I carry your heart with me

i carry your heart with me(i carry it in
my heart)i am never without it(anywhere
i go you go, my dear;and whatever is done
by only me is your doing,my darling)

i fear
no fate(for you are my fate,my sweet)i want
no world(for beautiful you are my world,my true)
and it's you are whatever a moon has always meant
and whatever a sun will always sing is you

here is the deepest secret nobody knows
(here is the root of the root and the bud of the bud
and the sky of the sky of a tree called life;which grows
higher than soul can hope or mind can hide)
and this is the wonder that's keeping the stars apartv
i carry your heart with me(i carry it in my heart)

Conversation snippent

"my mind is a burger boy, who I keep going to and asking about the meaning of life and my purpose and all these big questions. The burger-boy scratches his head and says, 'uh, I'll see what I can do for ya.' and tries to answer you, but he's always wrong. He's a fucking burger boy! His job is to flip burgers, not answer the meaning of life. At some point I'm going to realize I am the answers to the questions I'm seeking, and start asking the Teacher within these questions, and then I'll just be asking the burger boy to make me some food and get to enjoy his tasty burgers.

I think that's what I would call no-mind, or spiritual mind."

school starts tommorow

I'm going to meet my teachers, and fellow students, for the first time. I'm going to drive there for the first time. I'm going to make myself a peanut (or... cashew)-butter and J sandwich for my bag lunch, for the first time. All tomorrow. I am nervous and excited. This is why I drove two and a half thousand miles and gave up the comforts of home. I hope it's worth it (or do I hope it's not, so I can just call this a weird vacation and go back to my comfort zone?)

Lately has been a huge juxtaposition of the perfection of the world, and my trust in it, and my fear of the future, and being deserted by God.

I feel like I am going past words now. The path I'm walking, it's tearing down all the words that I would have used to describe it, to describe the goal. Each word, so precious to me: God, Enlightenment, TRUTH, Compassion, is taken down from the wall of my mind, where it hangs like a picture, and examined closely. And each one proves to be a fake. I pile it up in a corner somewhere, and the walls get blanker and blanker. Except really, the paintings are the walls, and there is something beyond them, but it's not something of words, it's just something that is.

This is not an easy process, this is not a fast process. There are parts of it that are easy and fast, but there are words that are stitched into my body and to take them off and examine them is to rip off part of myself. I am inexpert at this. No one showed me how to do this. It is a shoddy job, messy and often unnecessarily circuitous, like taking ten minutes to slog through a brier-laden swamp because you didn't know there was a thirty second trail that went through it. But that's how it goes when you walk a path by yourself. No one else to give you directions. I suppose you could call it the path of you.

hmm. poem?

the path of you
alone
you walk
to find yourself
you walk
alone
to find yourself
alone

The answer to the most common question

of "what are you doing?":

is: read my post, "I suppose I should"
or at least the beginning. That explains everything. The rest is a brief travelogue.

no title.

met a man tonight, in the bookstore, looking at comics. Middle aged, starting to have trouble moving around. Worked down in Renton. Some company that started with a U. He had only been in Seattle two months. Finally got himself a job, but he had to take the buses to get there, and he had to be there by 6 in the morning. At night, he went to the homeless shelter, but it was already closed tonight. "it really gives you a new perspective. opens your world. living in a homeless shelter. You understand what it's like. Without that, there's just no understanding that life." And now it was raining, and the season was changing. He had to find a place to stay for the night. He didn't know where. He liked to write. "I'm just gonna come out and say this, I could really use some money to get a bus to where I'm going to sleep." He was from Texas, where people were more open, and the summers were terrible. I conspiratorially slipped him a twenty, making sure no one noticed. From the expression on his face it was more than he expected. We talked more, and I saw a little of what it meant to live his life. His family back home worried about him. He asked, hesitantly if I would go with him to the station and buy him a bus pass. I hesitated, then said, "good luck, brother." his eyes got moist and he quickly walked away.

Tom, was his name. I gave him my email, at his request, so he could tell me how it all works out. I hope he finds what he's looking for.



[November 2013, never did get an email from him, and wish I'd bought him that bus pass.]

solved like sherlock

[Update: I don't seem to be doing this, and the blog doesn't seem to be going in a risque direction, so I guess I'll just leave it up to the impressionable adults to regulate themselves, if they don't like what they're reading. Also, I realized one of the things I like about blogs is feeling like I'm part of someone else's life. The feeling of staying in contact with someone. Especially now, when I'm so far away from most of my friends.]

aha! I figured it out! I'll write a once-monthly newsletter to all those who wish to subscribe, like my well written friend ron khare, and I'll put all the boring "how are you doing?" stuff in there. That way
a) I don't have to repeat it a gazillion times
c) only people who are interested in everyday affairs need sign up
b) I can tell my parents and such older, overly impressionable folk to stay out of my blog and talk about porn all I want here.

have I mentioned that fresh dates are a wonderful post-monitis snack? (like coitus, but the prefix is for one, not two.)

Problems:

1) I always feel like I should be doing more than I am doing

2) No matter what I do, I can't shake the feeling that I've never done anything in my life and never will

3) I am afraid that if I don't keep trying to do something, fail as I might, something bad will happen

Solutions:

1) have fun

2) realize this isn't a problem

3) let go and trust

Dream Quotation

"We had a name for it, back before scientists had invented the Unified Field. We called it,
The big and beautiful wise everything."

--my Grandfather, in a dream.

I suppose I should

give some information that is actually relevant to this place/time, for those of you interested in and expectant of such things from a now public blog...

That's tricky though, because I think this blog will be most interesting and fun if I just pretend no one else is going to read it. No longer possible, I suppose. Just be warned: if you are someone who gets offended, ever, you might not want to read my uncensored thoughts.

I'm going to Seattle, except I already went. I don't keep this blog very regularly, you see.

I'm going, or wenting, to be a part of a wilderness skills school called Earthwalk Northwest. I'm doing the Apprenticeship program for a year. But not the whole year. The program is only two days out of the week, until somewhere around April-May, when it will go up to three days a week, and then, in June, down to one day a week, until October, when it all ends.

I'm getting ahead of myself. I don't want to make this long, because it's not particularly interesting for me, because I've already done it, but people are curious about the road trip.

Three days of driving, one day in the middle of r&r at my uncles awesome mountain hideaway in Montana. 2300 miles.

Nature and friends supplied me with a driving buddy. Austin Trout, who was going back to school in Olympia and needed a ride out.

Austin is tall, blond, bearded, with a laid-back demeanor and soft deep voice that is misleadingly relaxing. Like surfer dudes, that seem chill until they're out on the sea, paddling like mad to catch a wave that has a 30% chance of killing them.

The first day was short and uneventful. We talked, ate from our comfortingly excessive food supply of fruit, almond butter, granola, nuts, and healthfood candy bars. We slept at a campground right outside the Badlands, and the next morning, drove through them, watching the sunrise.



Shit, blogger is being an asshole with formatting. DAMN you computers, stealing my time, my very life.

Anyways, then we stopped by devils tower

very briefly, and drove on until about 11:00pm, to arrive at my uncles permiculture homestead/ranch/spiritual retreat. I would have stayed longer probably, but Austin was keen to get back, and I didn't care that much either way. I'm definitly coming back for a longer stay though. It seems like a perfect place to write a lot or be creative in some way. No people around to distract, and plenty of nature to inspire and energize.

Wish I had some interior shots.

I love mountain homes. I love being comfortable while storms rage just outside of large scenic windows. I love the feeling of being hidden above the world, secluded and safe. I like high places, with views that give you vertigo, make you aware of how small you are and how big the universe gets, and what the earth would look like while flying. And I love being surrounded by rocks to play with and admire. A piece of broken, purple slate with mica in it, sparkling in the sun, is just as precious and beautiful to me as rubies or diamonds. I like talking to rocks. Feeling them and getting to know there personalities. And if they're really shiny, fantasizing about chewing and eating them like candy. I think Jung said that means you want to assimilate something into yourself. I guess I need more Rock in my life, as well as Funk.

That day traveling to my uncles house was a great sunset.








Also, I think we briefly drove through Wall Town after the Badlands, looking halfheartedly for the dinosaurs and feeling like dirty tourists, which, of course, we were. Austin had mentioned that he had trouble being patient, and wanted to get back to Olympia, so we did precious little stopping.

My preference is to do a few things, but do them well. Otherwise it's just tourism, driving all over the place and snapping pictures like it's some kind of treasure hunt or status symbol, "look, here's a picture of a bunch of places you've already seen, but with my ugly mug stamped in front of it. VALIDATE MEEEEEEeeee!" Ahem. To each his own.

Really I just don't like driving, so if I'm going to go somewhere, it had better have a big payoff. Since I'm so easy to please in terms of scenic scenes (I was mesmerized for a half hour by a daddy long legs extracting it's self from it's old exoskeleton (and by the way they are NOT poisonous! Check Snopes before you believe weird things people tell you.)) scenic scenery is almost never a good reason to go traveling for me.

However, apparently traveling is an excellent way for the universe to show me where my uncomfortable spots are, so it's always finding excuses to get me on the road.

The next day we took a long route by Mount Rainer. That was gorgeous. I crashed at Austins place for the night, and arrived at the TM center the next morning. Been here ever since. More as time allows (pictures make everything take longer)

Self-Plagerism

Two quotes that other people reminded me I have written/said, that I had forgotten.

"Paradox in a box, the keys are the locks"
-(gmail status)

"There's something missing in my life, and it's definitely more funk!"
(said in a slurred, way, so it sounds like 'fuck')
-quote

The title makes me wonder,
how does one plagiarize one's self?
Would that mean you are or aren't taking credit for what you did?
I suppose if you pretended to be someone else, and took credit for things you did while not pretending to be someone else. That's what God is doing whenever we think we're in control of our lives.

-IO

I've found religeon

i thank You God for most this amazing
day:for the leaping greenly spirits of trees
and a blue true dream of sky; and for everything
which is natural which is infinite which is yes

(i who have died am alive again today,
and this is the sun's birthday; this is the birth
day of life and of love and wings: and of the gay
great happening illimitably earth)

how should tasting touching hearing seeing
breathing any--lifted from the no
of all nothing--human merely being
doubt unimaginable You?

(now the ears of my ears awake and
now the eyes of my eyes are opened)


-- e. e. cummings


















photo photo-shopped by David Murphy


I always thought of religion mainly as the cause of those hideously boring Sunday-school sessions. When I thought of religion I thought of people murmuring nonsense sounds while trying to feel really bad about themselves so Big Daddy wouldn't get pissed off and thunderbolt their ass. Or if they actually knew what they were saying, it was basically an attempt to suck up to God to get what they wanted. But that was only on the rare occasions they were really screwed and had no other options. Most of the time it was just a strange social obligation. Go to church/synagogue because I say so, go because other people with think badly of me if you don't go.

There was some value in the holiday rituals I participated in, but it was slight. And so religion for me growing up was just an additional social responsibility, like showering and not saying things that made people uncomfortable.

Just recently, I discovered what religion is actually supposed to be about. I was having a deep conversation with a friend, and suddenly in a surprised voice they said, "oh wow, look at the sun." and I did, and it was gorgeous. I felt such satisfaction, taking in the beauty, that I just felt a spontaneous urge to thank the creator of that sunset. Like a pretty girl unexpectedly kissing me on the cheek, I felt excited and happy and affectionate back. I wanted to give God a hug or a smile or something.

That's what real prayer is. Not brown-nosing God like he's a boss you're trying to get a raise from. Finally all those prayers praising God made sense.

I'm still staying away from institutionalized religion, but I'm beginning to get a sense of the impulse that originally created these religions, these traditions. It started with someone who had a personal relationship with God, like you might with a best friend or a dog. Then weirdos saw that person, and tried to emulate his actions, rather than trying to understand his feelings.

Analogy: Someone is covered is fire ants and is flailing around, rolling on the ground, trying to get them off. Person A sees him, says, "oh, that man is a great man, I want to be like him." and starts failing around, imitating the ant-covered man. Person Z comes by, sees the flailing man, says to himself, "my that's strange, why is he flailing like that?" and investigates, discovering that it is because the man is covered in ants. This second observer then notices the ant mound and avoids it. If we want to explain the analogy, let's say, for example, Jesus is the man covered in ants, the people who codified him into a religion are the ant dancers, and the people who discovered the ants are the mystics and the truly religious.

A simpler analogy: let's say knowing God is like having an orgasm. People see someone have an orgasm, say, "I want to get me some of that," and start copying the persons "O" face and grunting sounds. Meanwhile, the serious seekers start learning about sex. Often times the "O" face copiers get pissed off, frightened, disgusted, or jealous (usually a bit of all of 'em) and try to kill the perverts (read: mystics) or drive them out of town. Too bad, because if they would just stick around, they might get laid.

:D

-I out

One for the Price of Two

I've just passed away.

The morning mists of the last remaining Connecticut forest clear, leaving their wet parting kiss of dew before disappearing, like all human life, into the light and heat of day. What can remain long when looked at by the unblinking eye of the Sun?

My Grandfather is dead. My Grandfather is alive. I've never seen anything die, but as society counts it, He is dead. I have trouble understanding the difference, though I know there is one. Maybe because I cannot hold his hand? But I can, I do. I feel his familiar squeeze back. Because I cannot see his face? But I see it reflected back in all those that deeply loved him. In pictures of him, in my own heart and mind.

Where has he gone?

A man goes to the store, leaves his dog at home. Thinks fondly of his living dog as he buys groceries. But the dog died as soon as the man left. Where is the death then? Where but in the head, in the thought, in the belief. In the man and not the dog.

Change I see, but death I've never met, save as the necessary first half of change. The second half being birth.