Category: Uncategorized

Here it is again.

Strong anger

hatred of everything, everyone, including myself

Experiencing and knowing the unsatisfying nature of the world and its bondage, pleasure, pain and the body mind (the false sense of self).

Resentment, disappointment, wanting to die if it would make the hatred stop. Searching desperately for a cause, blaming myself and others

I am not really as independent nor free of petty bullshit, opinions, preferences and expectations as I thought, and thus, my mind stirs itself up to the point of insanity.

Why don’t we just leave each other alone?

Why don’t I just leave the world alone?

why do I repeatedly fail at keeping vows of self discipline like non violence, contentment, courage, brahmacharya, and especially control of the mind and the senses?

I don’t want to do it again, and yet I know that is not possible.

I don’t see a way out of it.  There’s nothing that I can do which will really help, I’ve made and maintain a trap of desire and fear called “me”. It has progressed beyond where effort or experiences of pleasure or pain really help. The world, my body, mind, personality is a knot that blocks me, disturbs me, traps me and binds me to results, and I am out of ways to try to untie it. The effort doesn’t yield the liberation that I am searching for, and non effort is not an easy or viable option, as it goes against my (egoic) up bringing, the systems in which I participate, and the nature of my mind. I accept that I have let it get to this point.  It’s a pattern that can no longer be changed in my habitual ways of straining effort or clever ideas.  I violate and let boundaries and my self discipline get violated over and over and over.  I no longer have the desire to take care of a household and actually I don’t even want to do it with him or with anyone else and yet I am seemingly driven to do so.  The experience of taking care of things is different as I fully understand that neither maintenance, nor creation, nor destruction yield what I am really looking for. The body mind personality is of the world and so it shall remain; who I truly am remains unaffected, regardless of emotions and experiences of the mind body and inward or outward appearances to myself or others. I don’t have the answer, as the remedy for the personal is not found through person.

I exploit and let myself get exploited, and my ego fools me into believing that I am strong enough to handle it or somehow special and exempt from it.

The sacrifice of my peace and practice time — I let it happen over and over and over.  On one hand I want to just be or explore the more subtle realms, but on the other, there’s the desire for manifesting or maintaining various things material and so-called spiritual and of course there’s the shame surrounding what I consider to be practice and the guilt at spending time in it. Oh, and let’s not forget the danger of falling into the darkness of the subtle realms. The truth is that what I call practice involves a lot of body centered habits and actions. It does not seem to progress to “real” meditation like I read about in the yoga sutras, and I experience the negative consequences of not being fully successful in achieving perfection in the rules of conduct and self discipline called yamas and niyamas. I have let my personal circumstance of time and place affect how I live them. I have used my limited knowledge of the scriptures and the concept of a middle path for my own convenience. I don’t know if this is really the case or whether this is just another trick of my ego and the mind. Again and again I obsess – who am I?

Round and round I go (caught in the trap of desire and fear)

Obviously, it is challenging to remember that every action is actually selfless service (karma yoga) when my mind,and the systems and world to which I have devoted so much time and energy say otherwise. I admit the likelihood that the rage indicates my ignorance, delusion, and how I fail at this aspect of life.

I see how easily I could express that anger with violence, erroneously thinking that killing or causing pain to myself or others will solve my issue in any lasting way.

and what really gets me is that I can’t even banish the anger by realizing that the things I despise in others are the things that I can’t accept about myself. I see my laziness, procrastination, how much of a burden I cause, how much of a mess I make repeatedly, repeating the same mistakes, how there isn’t real progress toward perfect paradise in manifestation, how I live in a bubble of delusion, how I’m not really free of fear, ignorance, egoism, how I am not free of pain, conditional happiness, and being stuck in habits, how my mind is really not as peaceful, content, non judgemental, happy, confident, or non violent as the mask that I wear. I still fight the laziness, procrastination, and over-indulgence in myself because I see the necessity of fighting them in order to maintain the current way of life which I thought was an attempt at expressing love. At the same time I see that I often experience that same life as a prison of comfort, familiarity and false security and that I am very often a slave to my mind and the systems in which it participates. I admit the possibility that the anger may simply be necessary energy or willpower that gets entangled in or perverted by delusional selfish motives.

the desire to manifest my mission statement perfectly is a difficult one for me to let go of, as is the desire to perform duties, and explore the true, the false, consciousness, and the question who am I. As hard as I have tried to avoid it, I can’t help but create bondage and burden, nor am I exempt from the burden and bondage that we all collectively create and bear.

obviously, I have difficulty with bhakti, love, and joy, faith and trust. I repeatedly get overwhelmed by sadness and anger (and delusion), and resort to endurance and awareness that encompass them.

I may be fooled by my mind and illusion for eternity; the nature of the ego-mind (as I experience it) is neither peaceful nor true.

Who am I

that there’s always something that requires maintenance (and effort). For me, this means that my mind is always aware of the to do list and never gives (or gets) full permission to just be.

that even heavenly pleasure requires maintenance and effort

Enduring the false way that other people and I move through life

pretending to value and believe the false

needing to make small talk

that there’s no way in the realm of the manifest to be completely free of the effects of other people’s actions and decisions

Absolute truth is not found in stories, words, ego, person.

all of this flies in the face of what we’re led to believe by our minds (and our systems)

the conflict between being and doing never gets fully resolved in me. Some deeply ingrained tendencies of mine are to clean, organize, maintain, attempt renunciation, pay off debts, avoid new debts and obligations, and self discipline.

For me, closure and ends are illusions.

Helping someone implies that they are weak and incurs a debt

fixing someone implies that they are not whole

serving someone happens when you are equals

My mind explodes again, and stays angry for a considerable amount of time

Anger, disappointment, and sadness are familiar, old friends who always seem to be close by, even in the midst of happiness pleasure and joy

One of the things that they tell me is that I am not as renounced nor free of ignorance illusion and ego as I would like to think I am.

while I may not enjoy them, they do serve a purpose, helping me to stay aware and discern between the true and the false, the real and unreal, and thus I accept that I (as ego) will never be totally free of them.

I know intellectually not to be attached to anything (gross or subtle) but what actually happens is that the mind still clings to things (habits, roles, people, experiences, emotions, thoughts, pleasure, pain, planning in order to experience pleasure and avoid pain.)

How many more times? Perhaps an infinite number. And actually when I look really closely, I see that my mind is almost always exploding in some way. It is always burning to some degree, sometimes in pleasure sometimes in pain, constantly replenishing karma and reinforcing illusion and ego with new desires and fears.

I sometimes seem to be free of it, but it doesn’t last

all of my actions, even my attempts at giving and helping are tainted with selfish motives and delusion.

It seems there’s no way to avoid unpleasant things completely, especially my own ignorance. It is unrealistic to expect that pleasure and pain won’t happen and that one of them happens without the other. Pleasure and pain are two sides of the same coin. Inseparable from consciousness, neither can be fought at the level of consciousness.

after decades of practice, and study, and trying to achieve liberation or freedom from ignorance or ego or whatever you want to call it, the sadness and anger still surface, and I still lose sanity and/or self discipline.

In this respect, I am a recovering addict that has a relapse over and over and over.

I experience periods of intense dislike. I attribute the dislike to various things including myself, body, mind, the to-do list, God, systems, my job, relationships, pain, my obligations, effort leading to more effort, the illusion of achievement, the luxury-comfort trap, the home that I take care of, and past decisions I have made, but in a sense, the dislike just is. It is a symptom of personal delusion, ignorance, and a false sense of self. When I am experiencing that state, I hesitate to make changes and decisions because I don’t feel sane. During that experience, I want to get rid of everything and every relationship, and I feel like destroying things.

At times, I feel like a failure just as much as anyone else in the world. I feel angry that there’s actually no permanent escape, no achievement or experience which will finally satisfy me or take away or prevent the pain once and for all . There is not even a guarantee of a final and lasting death. I fail at intimacy and relationships of varying types. I fail at achieving happiness and liberation. I struggle to earn permission and forgiveness from an elusive, mysterious and unpredictable entity that ultimately I can’t control or manipulate (even though as far as I can tell, I will probably try until the day I die). I struggle to surrender to a neverending reality without the illusion of security. I struggle to see and live Truth, and realize that my personal perspective is always incomplete and merely one of an infinite number.

The words only get me so far…..

as does the action …..

as does the inaction……

as does the practice…..

as do wisdom, love, compassion, logic, intuition, keeping or breaking vows, scripture, reason, war, peace, study, virtue, vice, austerity, indulgence, knowledge, the five senses, information, work, play, relationships, solitude, abiding by, participating in, or abstaining from systems and organizations of religion, science, economics

etc etc etc

I thought I was so smart with my organized life and system, attempting to keep my person simple and small.

Even so, there are always duties that need to be done and seeds of action and inaction to be sown and fruits to be experienced.

And honestly, when I assess myself without bias, I absolutely cannot declare myself a success in the aspects of life which I convinced myself that I had prioritized. (Things like practice, simplicity, duty, honor, commitment, compassion, self discipline, order and exploration of the gross and the subtle)

I see the illusion of characteristics of being better or worse, good or evil, support or burden and know that there’s really no where to go. There is no progress towards a perfect state of paradise, and that idea is so contrary to a certain fairly strong aspect of my personality and way of life that it freaks me out in often dramatic ways. It may cause me to go insane, lose control, and destroy my life one day.

I see the illusion of finding pleasure in indulgence. I see the illusion of finding satisfaction in abstinence.

I aim for compassion and unconditional love and confess that much or maybe most of what I do is work for conditional love (doing things to please people for acceptance, survival, and love) and to sustain a system (for acceptance, survival, and love). How much systems and I aim for unconditional love and succeed or fail is part of the mystery of life. Often, my so called helping isn’t really helping after all. It may give myself or someone a temporary good feeling or relief but my anger and frustration show the delusion associated with it. At this point, I seem to need to accept the anger and frustration as part of the mystery, experience them, receive their message, and act and not act accordingly.

Am I done being deluded by ends, body and mind, likes and dislikes? It seems that this is also part of the mystery and is not for me to decide. Regardless, life must still be lived, decisions must still be made, causes and effects must happen.

((my personal experience is merely one of an infinite number))

I notice that I spend a lot of time focused on future or past, it is all but impossible to just be content in the present moment without guilt. The habits that I regularly indulge called my personality do not permit it easily, and the systems and relationships in which I participate (religious, spiritual, scientific, secular and non secular) often don’t help, as long as I am deluded by the personal and get caught up in thoughts and emotions pertaining to pleasure and pain. Identifying with these things leaves me with a false sense of who I am.

I pray to see beyond the delusion of stories, my personal perspective and for freedom from attachment to experiences, whether they be pleasant or unpleasant. (Freedom from slavery to mind ego).

divine oneness, eternal now

I am that I am

…………………………….

Most of all, I feel like I have been and am being fooled and trapped, not only by other people and systems, but especially by my own mind. Tricked into thinking that the false is satisfying and real. Tricked into acquiring things, experiences, and duties, and trapped by the resulting bondage. Tricked into believing that any of it leads to lasting happiness, when really all of the effort leads to more effort. Trapped in the conflict between desire and fear which leaves me with inescapable bouts of anger. Realizing that there’s a very real possibility that I will die broke and alone, as I rage and scream to myself for people to leave me alone and stay the fuck away (afraid at the same time that people will pick up on this vibe and leave me homeless and starving). My interactions with many of them in mundane life are not pleasant from a certain extremely subtle inner perspective. Underneath the polite conversation and niceties, there is always fear, anger, insecurity, distrust, resentment and/or delusion waiting to be expressed or experienced, right alongside of their polar opposites. As I am aware of how I am not completely genuine and free of hatred, judgment, violence, and avoiding things I don’t like, I expect that they are too. They ask me to agree with the way they see themselves and the world and their version of happiness and ask me to do things so they can get what they want, and I do the same thing, even though I try to avoid it, hoping to be independent and free. I get tired of the game of pretense, and above all, I get angry at myself for not being true and not completely free of anger, violence, delusion, insanity, and hatred as well as attachment to comfort, personal desire and fear, and habit patterns of action, thoughts and feelings (all of the things associated with mind-ego). I get tired of hiding my depression and anger and the weariness of the way that I experience and perceive life, putting forth effort to achieve and maintain a paradise that either never comes, or doesn’t last, or just keeps requiring more effort. This realization contributes to recurring sadness and anger for me which is an inescapable part of the prison that I have created (or inherited). For a while now, and it looks like from now on, I maintain the awareness that sensory and emotional pleasure is fleeting and unreliable. I keep coming back to the delusion of stability and so called love. The conflict between my inner self and outer self never gets resolved. I seem to keep forgetting that it is an eternal cycle of birth, life, death and rebirth, expansion and contraction, always in motion. (Even things that appear to be still and unchanging are in motion and changing.) Every single thing, no matter what my experience of it may be, has its appropriate place, and no particular role that I take or circumstance lasts forever. I can crave stability all I want, but it is never found at the levels of the physical, emotional, or mental bodies, ego , or mind and the birth life death story. All manifests and unmanifests for “who am I”. In love I am everything, in wisdom I am nothing, and life flows on and on, regardless of existence and my inner and outer personal experience of attachment or non attachment to the gross or subtle bodies that I have called my own.

Most of the time, I’m not free of the game of pretense. I act like I am calm and cool to others when I am really feeling angry, sad or even terrified. Sometimes I act like I am interested in their stories and conversation, when really I am not. With others, I tend to be inclined to go for the middle, and quiet rather than over expressing and sharing high energy emotions. That’s what comes easier to me most of the time. I admit that what most people consider to be joy is a challenge for me. The joy that I do experience is so subtle that I wouldn’t even really call it that. I accept that I don’t really understand it and admit that I don’t maintain a continuous awareness of it. I feel like I am not good at sharing it, because I go along with the status quo, permitting more time caught up in the heavy states of being and doing, trying to avoid pain and experience pleasure, accumulating all sorts of things and obligations, placing more and more conditions on the experience called life, more layers of the false which make Truth harder to find. The joy I am talking about is so subtle that it is difficult to perceive, and contrary to what we would like to believe, it includes both pleasure and pain, growth and decay, stability and instability, increase and decrease . The ego-mind has no use for it as it has nothing to do with progress, solving (or creating) problems, achieving goals or even maintaining its existence. The ego-mind cannot have knowledge of it.

<<I admit that it is also a challenge for me to experience pleasure in the presence of others.>>

I am challenged by finding the right balance of keeping things and giving things away or just getting rid of them. I try to minimize the things I call my own. I try not to desire complicated or luxurious things for myself (even though I see how various decisions I have made will definitely cause me to fall short of this aspiration). I do not find joy or peace or love in them and to be honest, part of me dislikes them, sometimes rather strongly. My experience is that they come with a cost well beyond their price tag, contributing to a never ending list of tasks and obligations that grows beyond being manageable, and yet keeping things small is not perfect either. Everyone must experience, experiment, and come to their own working conclusion about ego and the proper place and amount of material wealth, ownership, fame, reputation, obligations, food, sex, group and one on one relationships, austerity, indulgence, desire, fear, sensory and emotional pleasure and pain.

while I accept that in my case the interplay of inner and outer involves bouts of acute and inescapable mental and emotional pain, it doesn’t make it easier to take when it is happening, and when it’s in full force, I feel inclined to violence and irritability and I just want to get rid of everything and all of my relationships and go off somewhere and die. The urge to renounce is strong, and attempting care for others and myself and keeping my word are what keep me from acting on it. What is wrong with me that I just want to live in a simple room with just a few things, free of tending to my and other people’s accumulations? I see that pretty much everyone around me doesn’t see things the same way, and because of this, I may end up very much alone. (Perhaps that desire is just as delusional as any other, or maybe that desire is not fulfilled in a way that I find pleasant.)

the eternally recurring challenges of person (and mind) as I experience and accept them:

maintaining the appropriate balance of manifest and unmanifest, which is a never ending endeavor that always changes

remembering that the actions that I think I do personally, I don’t really do.

there is no way to predict the cumulative result of all of the actions, intentions, and habits of daily life with 100% accuracy, nor is it possible to avoid being affected by actions of other people and beings. Therefore, faith and surrender are essential

(the person is false)

remembering that the way I think I am and the person that I think I am are not really accurate.

(the person is false)

I struggle to break free of giving first place to the false (the world, ego, the illusion of the achievement of an end state), and thus I am bound by the false, and experience the trap of results.

Ultimately, personal progress is an illusion of the mind, and the mind ego (as I know it) eventually experiences anger sadness disappointment. I walk the path and experience the endless cycle.

Even drug free, I am under the influence of a drug called illusion (ego) karma destiny

Forms and names (person, groups, systems, experiences, etc) appear and disappear. The Real causes the unreal to appear and disappear.

the Truth is that everything is one, boundaries, person, forms, names, labels and rules always change in past present and future.

I get tricked over and over into believing that body mind (and separation) and how I define myself is real. Certain aspects of life are unavoidable and circular.

Absolute and pure qualities cannot be completely achieved in the manifested realm which is by its very nature limited and relative/ impure but that doesn’t mean we don’t keep striving.

I never know what someone else is going through nor the totality of what someone else’s experience of something or someone or me is. And truthfully, I don’t even know the totality of my own experience.

I may never feel certain that I am completely operating from a place of goodwill towards others. The work is never done. The road is the goal, and there is no resolution.

the most important thing is to make it possible for others to walk their path

….……………,…………………………………..

How many of us are kind and polite as long as we get what we want?

……………………………………………………

past present and future are one

(separation is the illusion and so is “me”doing anything for anyone which entitles me to a special life)

I am thankful for access to the ability to endure my delusion and selfish rajas and tamas,,,

the body mind ego is made for movement and experience

What is the message that the recurring anger sadness pleasure pain cycle is telling me?

I keep getting the message that I need to get rid of more. It is not what Martin wants, but there is a part of me that wants it. A growing part of me is ready to live in one room and give it all away, at least give it a try.

who am I

I am that am

faith is all there really is.

Who am I to know the will of om?

Here’s my understanding, but it doesn’t mean that I have mastered it.

ego is the illusion .

Every being moves (or doesn’t move) in its own bubble, experiencing its own truth. (Knowing, being, doing)

I experience our relationship differently than you.

That’s fine.

I attempt to know your experience and struggle with that, I attempt to share my experience with you and struggle with that.

I struggle with life and attempting love. I will always feel like a failure in this respect.

perhaps you come into my awareness more than I come into yours or maybe the reverse is true

perhaps you hold more power over me than I hold over you or maybe the reverse is true

perhaps I am your burden, perhaps you are mine

perhaps I give something or take something.

Circulation and participation are essential, not profit nor loss nor accumulation nor being right or wrong nor a burden nor support

who is to say what is your experience and what is mine

no one can truly and completely know

Interesting to notice the delusion that I find pleasure in simple things. When I look very closely, those supposedly simple things aren’t even possible without a considerable amount of complexity. I couldn’t even take a breath, drink water, eat food, clothe myself or experience some measure of nonviolent safety were it not for the sacrifices that others have made and continue to make. We all attempt our duties.

I realize that there is no end and no final state of comfort and stability in the mode of existence called “me in the world”.

I’m looking for something from the world, money, body, mind, intelligence, words, stories, memories, life, practice, virtue, vice, relationships, emotions, experience, knowledge, the familiar and unfamiliar that just isn’t there. Eternal and uninterrupted satisfaction, dissatisfaction, pleasure, pain, stability, permission, paradise, a true and complete definition of myself are not found there.

I am love, I am everything

I am wisdom, I am nothing

Life flows on and on

and “the work” is never done. When will I stop my bull shit, tantrums, and avoidance and truly accept that? Will I ever make peace with the to do list?

there is no body nor a world to contain it, only a mental condition, a dream-like state which is dispelled by questioning its reality. Lately, I obsessively and continually question its reality.

neither perfect sattvic action nor inaction bring lasting pleasure or liberation

I’m coming out.

as anonymous

naked

slave to the cycle of attempting and failing renunciation

road to nowhere

Here are some questions I spend a considerable amount of time exploring in the physical and mental emotional realms in the past present and future as part of the question who am I. The only conclusion I have made is that there are no conclusive, definitive, or absolute answers to them.

Ha

what is intimacy, and how is it related (or not) to love?

is it being naked with someone?

is it genital interaction?

is it seeing someone’s ignorance (or shame) and/or allowing them to see your ignorance (or shame)?

is it allowing someone to hurt your heart?

is it sharing vulnerability?

is it knowing someone’s habits, likes and dislikes?

is it being used to someone?

is it the experience of having someone come into your thoughts on a regular basis?

is it confessing or acting out your sins of anger and violence and admitting your hypocrisy, failures, addictions, obsessions, selfishness, and evil thoughts in the presence of someone else?

is it sharing the pleasant or the unpleasant or both?

Is it emotional attachment?

Does it always require love and does love always require it?

And how are intimacy, love, spiritual practice, and social duties balanced and managed?

Intimacy changes like everything else. I notice that my experience of it and needs associated with it seem to have changed. I don’t see it as personal, nor as private, nor as important as I once thought it was, as I maintain a more consistent awareness of the falseness of the personal. Thomas Collier does not last forever, and in a way, has already died. The only eternal is Om, which is even beyond the enduring human attribute one could call “who am I”. The truth is that who we really are was never born and never dies regardless of what happens with gross and subtle bodies, no matter how dramatically pleasant or unpleasant.

It serves me well to know when to be with others and when to be alone, and when to attempt a break from the illusions of ego and addiction and when to maintain and indulge. Distance and closeness, vulnerability and protection, large and small, manifest and unmanifest, creation, destruction, preservation, rajas (passion), tamas (inertia), and sattva (balance) each serve their purpose and are needed in appropriate measure. I remind myself now that I don’t always get to choose, and the choices I do get to make will not always please other people, or myself, or turn out the way I expect. The experience of my mind ego exploding occurs again and again, accompanied by emotional turmoil which I usually find unpleasant to varying degrees.

Every desire is rooted in the desire for “true Self”. That desire is the only one that truly exists for me even though my mind deceives me. I forget and become distracted by petty desires and fears. Here and now I remember, all of it is the path; all of it is practice; all of it is me, despite what the mind, ego, and senses tell me. The path is the goal.

I realize that my mind may never be truly free of seeing people, things, states of being, experiences, and myself as objects of fear or desire. The judgmental thoughts of like and dislike keep coming, as do the associated disturbances of emotion that keep me in bondage and obscure my experience of Truth. I observe that it’s challenging (if not impossible) to be happy for other people’s happiness when I don’t feel happy myself. I am amazed that people seem to succeed in finding happiness and security in acquiring possessions, material success, power, fame, relationships and social interaction (personal, impersonal, intimate and non intimate.) It is not for me to determine; they may have succeeded in finding true happiness, but that type of happiness does not feel appropriate for me. I am very aware of how my attachment to and pursuit of those things causes my own misery as those things are small and never satisfy in a lasting way. My emotional disturbances tell me that contrary to what my ego tells me, I have the same delusion as other people and look for security and stability where it will never be. I accept that people around me may not understand how and why I could possibly find or attempt to find pleasure or some type of happiness without those things. I sometimes (often) feel emotionally and socially inept as a result of this difference, and that will probably always be. When I am not aware of my own delusion (and when I believe that I am different or separate from others), I experience pain and alienation. What did I do or what happened to me to make me so flawed?

The anger and sadness that I associate with the trap of modern life remind me that I have unrealistic expectations of the world and life experience as Thomas Collier. This keeps happening and I don’t see an end to it. My experience of life is often seeing every single thing (person, event, duty, emotion) as an obstacle. I even experience anger and disappointment with respect to the so-called spiritual practices that I enjoy and value so highly. It is extremely challenging for me to let go of the habit of over-efforting, hiding unpleasant emotions, seeking results, progress, and perfection as well as the habit of keeping accounts. I have taken these things on as duties, and my experience is that people rely on me to be this way. Because let’s face it, contrary to what we may say, most of us don’t really unconditionally accept people and circumstances as they truly are. It is no surprise (and nothing new) that the world seems to demand considerable and continual sacrifice. The sacrifices that happen through me are not enough or of the right type to satisfy or sustain the world, people around me, or myself once and for all.

I am increasingly aware of the unstable and impersonal nature of everything, including relationships, emotions, and personality. I continue to walk a path of sadhana (practice), which is my only Truth (and my only real intimacy).

Overall, the balance of rajas, tamas, and sattva will always happen, and I still attempt personal balance.

I have no choice but to surrender to my solitary nature and my tendency to repeat the process of attempting silence, compassion, renunciation, and self discipline, sometimes succeeding, sometimes failing. I am still fascinated with the experience of body-mind-ego, and for varying amounts of time I am hypnotized and fooled by attributes, characteristics, pleasure , pain, desire, fear, inner, outer, results, emotions, and stories. I know on some level that the personal is false and yet I get fooled over and over. Forcefully stopping the process or destroying it doesn’t benefit, and neither does overindulging it.

I feel the selfishness. Part of me just doesn’t care about the things that other people find so important. Sometimes I don’t even care about the things that I usually feel are important. I no longer believe the personal birth-life-death story that we have been told and tell ourselves over and over, so widely accepted and deeply ingrained in our psyche that many of us don’t even question it. Regardless, the body mind still does what it does and spirit endures. Currently, I usually go along and pretend in order to get or give food and shelter, acceptance and perhaps an experience of some physical, emotional, or mental pleasure or relief from pain. I know it is all temporary, and basically I just hope that others are able to walk the path before, during, and after me in their own way. I feel like other people’s paradise is not for me, and that I cannot really be with other people in their version of paradise. I hope that perhaps I help in some way or at least that I don’t interfere. Both of these desires are basically impossible to fulfill as a person with needs and requirements.

I know that my intentions with respect to my vocation, life, and interactions with other people are often less than honorable. I am aware that hidden from my awareness, was (and is) my intention to try to get through life without pain, shame, failures, and really being there for other people and beings, without getting dirty and without attachment. I’m not an exception, even though I desire to be. That desire to be special will bring me to birth-life-death again and again. I know that I can only strive for unselfish motive, going deeper and deeper. My experience is that in the manifested realm, it is never complete or fully achieved.

The false says that I am responsible for only one body, mind, and its possessions and duties.

The challenge is always the same, regardless of circumstance, always maintain the awareness of unity, regardless of pleasure or pain, clarity, confusion, war, peace, order, disorder, realizing that my intentions may not be as selfless as I would like.

It drives me crazy that I can’t achieve absolute perfection, and it drives me crazy that I can’t live up to my ideals in absolute terms. An ability or attribute that I have access to one day, I don’t necessarily have the next, even with considerable or extreme effort to maintain. All of these observations that I put into words are only partially accurate, and when I look really closely, I see how wrong I am about so many things. How many layers of illusion must I (and we) create and maintain? How many chains of bondage? (What proves love what proves courage what proves endurance what proves faith and devotion what proves existence?)

Separation of pleasure and pain is part of the illusion. I confess to my addiction to that illusion and the bondage that I create as a result. I know this in thought, but the challenge is to know it in being and act and abstain in accordance with compassionate oneness. I feel and know that I often fail at that.

The instability drives me crazy, and how I’ve been fooled and perpetuated the lie my for what seems like my whole life contributes to my anger. I can only acknowledge that it is what it is and go on.

Who am I to think that I know the will of the universe (siva-shakti-dahdahdah)?