If This Is Our Best, We’ve Missed It

Well, shit, the love thing is definitely back around here. Am I in love with life again? If I am, I never saw that coming so that’s kind of strange. Life is maybe just music I always think. I’m not sure but maybe music just seeps out of the life source somehow. I know it seems like people create it but I think they just channel it. The music finds an open circuit and flows out into our world that way. What a beautiful thing that is, unless it’s my son’s music, the guy he listens to is really just talking, it’s not rap but yeah, it’s basically just a lot of talking. I don’t understand it but as long as my son likes it, that’s pretty cool too. Probably each generation gets their own channels, stuff they relate to. I don’t listen to new music, a few songs have come out recently which are kind of catchy but I can’t say they really move me like the songs I usually listen to, which are much older and the same ones basically over and over again. How strange that some songs never get old? It’s impossible to get tired of them. Here’s the thing about a song , if there’s no one to hear it, then where is the song? Can it even exist? Maybe we can never actually know where they come from, whether we are just connected to some song source or it’s some other way, but for me, when I hear a song I just enter it. I want to be the song or I feel I am the song, it’s not coming to me from over there anymore. A song is really the nicest thing to be in some strange way.

This is interesting to me only because when I’m out in “the world”, I see very clearly that people have lost their inner magic. My son had some eye surgery done. He drove us there on the freeway but before that we had to pick up two eye drop prescriptions that they said he had to have. It was vital for the recovery just one issue, the pharmacy we always go to insisted they only received one prescription, and they didn’t have this one in stock so what we thought was just going to be a little side trip to pick up both medicines before the surgery turned into an ordeal. I appreciate the woman who almost always waits on me when I go there because it’s a small local drive thru and instead of waiting for us to make it back around to the window because they asked us go around again while they made other arrangements and now there were other cars, she came out the back door and told us she had transferred it to the next closest pharmacy so we could at least get the one they received. Now she did that because she heard me. I told her when the surgery was and so she knew that since shit had apparently gone south, we were now in a hurry. Well, I was heard right? We, as humans, usually don’t even know what this means anymore because as a species we don’t listen to each other at all. Instead what normally happens is a person projects their own reality onto whatever situation they are in. Also, we have this completely insane idea now that everything should just work the same for everyone all the time. We rarely actually merge our awareness, but when we do, that’s when situations generally are transformed not just for one side but for both. We may not know what the other side is getting but it’s something, it may come later in the day, within a totally different situation, but the benefit will emerge. How do I know this? Because I’ve been on the receiving end of it many times, I’ll give my attention and then get something in return. I don’t know what that will be but it’s always a pleasant surprise, you give, you get, that’s how it works.

So on with the story, my son then calls the office of the place that’s going to do the surgery and talks to what is basically the receptionist who has no fucking clue which medicines he was supposed to be picking up. Meanwhile we’re at the other pharmacy, and I’m inside picking up the prescription that was transferred. This takes a minute because we’ve never been there and they have to input my insurance info but it’s a small place and it was pretty quick. When I get back to the car my son is literally very pissed off. He recounts to me how the receptionist was asking him about the medicine, she’s like does it have a yellow cap, and he’s like, “Listen lady, how would I know? The prescription didn’t get called in and if it did, they didn’t get it. How am I supposed to know what it looks like?”, and after tapping the mute button, “Fuck is she crazy or just stupid?”, then she transferred him to someone’s voicemail and he leaves a detailed message for who knows who. So I get on my phone and call the place. First off when she answers I say straight up, “Put someone who knows what’s going on with my son’s surgery and prescriptions. I’m not talking to you.” So yeah, I can be very direct when I need to be but I get the right lady and after explaining the situation with the missing prescription she’s says, “Okay would you like me to just send it to the (and I thought she said Walgreens not fucking Walmart) place right next store?” Look I have no clue what the fucks around that area, but anyway, I say okay, because I think it’s Walgreens, a drug store. So we get there and my son’s filling out paperwork and I think I’ll just quick pop over and get it, and that’s when I find out it’s fucking Walmart and it’s not right next door, not across a single street the way my mind imagined. It’s nearby for sure but it’s down a little street and across the entire Walmart parking lot which is kind of long, even so, I’m not perturbed yet. I just suck it up and do the walk. I could have taken the car but that seemed like too much trouble. It’s hot but so what, I’m not dead so I can do it. So I walk up to the pharmacy which is itself a hike within the store, there’s no line, I give the girl my insurance card and she says since I never had anything filled there before my order got put back but it will only be five minutes. (Let it be known that it was called in over an hour ago at this point so it could have been easily filled by now but it wasn’t.) There’s some chairs and she offers to come and get me when it’s done. I’m like okay, that’s kind of nice because I told her I was in a hurry, my son was about to have surgery and I needed or wanted to be there for him. She seemed like she got that, but then ten minutes go by, then twenty, my son’s still waiting to go back because I’m texting him. Then I run across the fucking store which again is a hike in search of a vegan protein drink for me and a regular one for my son, because after all the commotion he didn’t have time to eat anything. I think shit if it’s not done by now, and guess what, it’s not. There’s been no effort made at all to get me this prescription, none, so yeah, I just tell them flat up, “What the hell? You said five minutes? You know what, to hell with this, forget it, I don’t mess with your kind.” The pharmacist then tells the girl to never tell anyone it will be five minutes, don’t give them a time frame, and he looks at me and says, “We’re doing the best we can, please be patient.” At this point, I just leave since I recognize he’s just repeated a platitude he learned and has obviously had to use many times before now in this exact situation with many others which is how he knows it so well. It’s really the famous excuse of our times, ego’s easy fix, it’s justification for why nothing can change, and why you can’t care about individual circumstances or actually care. It has to resort to bullshit it can believe in just enough to never have to look at itself or what’s really going on. I think if I had a look while I was leaving it was if this is your best, you’ve missed it. I’m in a hurry because there’s a surgery, it’s not that I’m impatient because I want to go home or get my nails done but you see that’s not how things are done in Walmart, there wasn’t a long line, there was hardly any line, but they go in some type of order, just not of importance. It’s just a this is how it works here type of shit. And that’s what’s wrong with this world, we are too stupid to personalize anything anymore and this I foretell will be our downfall as a species if it’s not already. In fact, it’s because we can’t or don’t know how to personalize that we have resorted to all our protocols to begin with. Collectively and personally we know this capacity is failing or disintegrating, but we can’t face it. So basically, this personalization has been fading out of us for many years now, and one day, there will be none. It will be gone.

Anyway so when I get back to the office, my son’s been taken back. I can’t go see him because he’s in a room with other people. They will call me back when they do the surgery and I can watch that. So while I’m waiting I tell the girl to call the prescription in to my local pharmacy, and exclaim if I’m ever tasked with getting another prescription filled at Walmart, I’ll opt out and leave the planet first. Yeah, I’m not in a good mood. I’ve had little sleep and my vapes in the car, not a good combination but I figure I’ll pick it up after I drop him home. Then because, do I know if they will get it right at this point? Fuck no, so I call the pharmacy to make sure they got it, and they did, but then the girl says, let me make sure we’ve got it in stock. I think yeah that’s actually a pretty good idea, one I can appreciate, good thinking girl on the phone. So I’m waiting on the phone for this and the receptionist tells me my son’s about to have surgery and in order to go back I need to turn off my phone but the way she says it, it’s like turn your phone off now. Well, I think I must be going back now so I tell the girl to text me whether they have it or not so I’ll know but no one comes out so I’m like what the fuck I could have finished my conversation. I then turn my phone back on to see if I got a text and I did, they had it, but insurance won’t pay that quick probably because the insurance thinks it paid for the one at Walmart and it will be $42 so I texted back, okay, fill it. Trust me the last thing I’m worrying about is a little bit of money, just get me the fucking medicine is my attitude at this point, and oh yeah, I think, “Has this girl ever turned her fucking phone off? Maybe not, maybe never because if she’d done it she’d know it takes all of a half a fucking second to do so. On my phone it’s hold two buttons down, swipe, and it goes off instantly. So now I’m pissed that I didn’t just finish my conversation, (Why did I even listen to her? Don’t I already know how crazy everyone else is? How did I forget? That’s what irritated me, my own forgetting.) I’ve now turned my phone off, turned it back on which takes much longer than turning it off, received and answered a text, and turned it off again all the while thinking I finally understand what the fuck went wrong on planet earth, we’re all just a bunch of morons. Finally I go back and watch my son’s eye on this big TV monitor, what the hell, did I need to watch that? I just bowed my head to pray at that point because that’s all I had left.

And everything turned out fine. Again. It’s actually important to sleep well, otherwise you wind up in a nightmarish skit with a bunch of characters who couldn’t make sense if the word was written out in bold black capitalized letters on their forehead. But you know, we got home, and just back to the loving ways. As it turns out if I’d just let them put the script into Walmart, and went there after the surgery my son would have been waiting in the car a long time, and the light at that time of day is very bright, they put sunglasses on him, not only this but when I got to my regular pharmacy there was also another script, pain killers so I got those too and had them throw in a bottle of ibuprofen for good measure since we didn’t have any. It’s crazy but when they were prepping my son for the surgery they tried to give him an Ativan, and he refused it. He was like no thanks I”m good and you know he was, he’s incredibly tough and well balanced this way, but I guess he’s like the first to refuse it. He said that’s what the lady said anyway. So for sure I was stressed over nothing, just a mother’s heart gets activated because literally that’s what we are. We are the heart of all matters. That’s good to know so really think about this sometime because it’s never what you think it is. I can’t really say that one enough but anyway, when I was really home for a whole minute, finally, I immediately laid down and took a nap. My son’s girlfriend had driven up from where she lives two hours away to be there for him. When I left for work a couple hours later, they were both cuddled up and asleep in his bed. The dream of life had returned to its natural equilibrium. Without delusion, without our total lack of personalizing anything, it would actually stay this way, but we’re going the wrong way and this trajectory won’t have a happy ending for humanity if you ask me.

I think about life a lot these days, not what it is anymore but how it might actually work, when it’s working. You see I don’t think the creation of characters is bad, since what would you do and what would you be without this? You need time and space and people to play with, without that there’s nothing to do, zero experiences. So it’s not that we show up as something called human beings, it’s that we’ve lost our sense of connection not only to each other but to everything. We are fearful so we make more rules, more protocols to guide us so we don’t have to make a single decision, we don’t want to be pulled or swayed, no we want to be told and guided so that we don’t have to think, to contemplate, to weigh our options, all these functions are seen as derogatory or worse, unnecessary, but they are not. This process is vital to our functioning and without it we just become automatons, and that’s probably how AI is here. Our fear has pushed us into wanting to be machines that are organized and productive but on the flip side, we lose what we are this way. We stop having to feel, to sense, even to know the way to go. We are loath to step out of the protocols that keep us confined, to show favoritisms or take an alternate route feels dangerous. If everyone gets all the same things, the same treatments we lose all sense of the personal. We can then see each other not as each other but as only another inconvenience to be dealt with. Those who step out of line, who want more, will be demonized as fear cries “stay within the boundaries, follow the rules, I’m not allowed to change this up”. It doesn’t actually matter if the character is real or not, the only thing that matters is if it’s human. What do I mean by the word human? A feeling organism, a person who feels others, and everything that surrounds them, for we are only separate when we lose this innate capacity. When people fail to recognize that a mother needs to be with her son while he’s having surgery, when a person’s urgency is relegated to a wait your turn protocol, we are basically fucked. And you know we are fucked, as a species that is. You can argue all you want that life has no meaning, you can try to prove that none of it actually matters, that life doesn’t care how it goes or what it does, but then you have these intrinsic movements that show up totally unannounced, and it shows that it does. A mother’s concern for her child isn’t something I learned, it’s something a mother is. That’s not an accident and it’s not insignificant, it’s not something we can even change, if you don’t give it expression you will suffer a loss of expression but when we live in a time where it’s expression is dismissed it will only get worse around here, and by the time we’re done with this whole mess, a human will probably end up wishing they were never fucking born. That’s the kind of life and lives we are already creating. Is it a warning? Not really, at this point it’s just an observation. If life had a message for us, it’s probably this: Wake up or die. Those are the only options. You pick one or the other but you don’t get to have it both ways. Your call, maybe choose wisely is also in there somewhere.

I would say it’s nice to think that you’re just in your own little world and there are no influences that can come your way but obviously that’s not true. We do live in a collective and anyone who’s ever seen anything has always exclaimed something to the effect of let’s stop this shit. It would be better for everyone involved if we changed our ways, and didn’t let the ways we’ve gone now keep going the way they are or have been. This would equate to that tinge of sadness that has to linger when you go out of your house and you’re confronted with the collective manifestations that don’t serve or benefit anyone which at this point in time is everything around you. You know it’s a weird way to go, it wasn’t some natural progression but more like a sickness, the evidence for that is basically everywhere but you still have to rely on certain parts of it. You can’t get soap if no one makes it and you’re gonna stink without it. Maybe it wasn’t a necessity five hundred years ago, but it is now. We have to face it, we rely on each other’s imaginations, that’s how a world shows up, but when it turns dark, it really goes dark, history itself has shown us time and time again that it does, the rhythms within the dark human mind always rise again. Perhaps it might be said everything comes with a price, but when the prices start to break even the most basic infrastructures of the collective whole, you know in your heart of hearts there’s going to be trouble. Humanity has a history of having to look back on itself and exclaim, “My God, how did that happen?” but we know how now, that’s the difference, before there was no understanding, now there is. Or maybe there was understanding, actually a lot of ancient texts suggest that there was but no one heeded it or just a few. The ignorant perhaps have always outnumbered the wise, and so the hideous cycles just go and on.

I’ve heard it said that the only sane response to outrageous suffering which make no mistake is the current predicament of humanity, is outrageous love. Yeah, but that’s not a passive sort of thing, it’s not a sit in your room and meditate as if there was no world to be involved in, no at some point, awareness doesn’t even allow you to do that. It makes you do your part, since you are a part, every living entity doesn’t just contain the whole, but they play an intrinsic role in its unfolding. Nothing is left to chance or some willy nilly shit like yeah, we’re just here to be entertainment so awareness can be amused. That idea only seems plausible given all the shit that has gone down so far, since humans are prone to fuck even the most simple shit up with such ease, like literally fucking shit up is as easy as going to sleep at night when you’re dead tired. We have no working framework at all, and neither do enlightenment models of reality give us one either. If we are the entertainment, let’s say we are, let’s say we are here to amuse and delight the creator, are we fulfilling our role? Are we doing a good job at that? Is suffering amusing? Is it delightful in any way at all? No, right? So if that’s our purpose for being here, then we’re not fulfilling it. We’ve shirked our duties and responsibilities thereof.

Probably one of the most painful, one of the most mind boggling realizations in awakening is that other people don’t want it. They aren’t interested in knowing what they are or how they are here. I know for myself, I just couldn’t understand this. I couldn’t understand how or why they’d ever be satisfied with whatever common understanding they had. How was that enough? Not just this, but more so how could they tolerate living this way in total denial and ignorance of almost everything that truly is real? This is really where if you ask me even non duality missed the mark by claiming that everything in life was unreal, including you, you are just an illusion as well. There’s some truth to this but it also stops short. It’s not enough to say only awareness is real, and everything else including every direction your awareness takes is totally unreal. The real mistake it makes isn’t by invalidating your character but by invalidating everything including life itself, as if the very fact of your existence was just an accident of biology and not the miracle that it is. If you observe or attend most non duality circles or groups, you’ll find that they completely bypass any mention of value whatsoever. Everything is just nothing equals life is nothing special and neither are you, that’s just your ego if you think so. If anyone challenges them they just return to the whole nothing premise, maybe they say prove it, and for sure no one can prove anything to anyone, but even if you can’t that doesn’t prove the existence of something which you clearly are is all for nothing either. Just because you can’t prove you’re here for some purpose, that we all have some function or role in this that pertains to a larger purpose doesn’t prove there isn’t one.

I suppose it’s possible to say that maybe the whole human creation just got highjacked by forces it couldn’t withstand, so it maybe went with in an errant direction, then you’d have to say there was no director whatsoever and natural forces just took over, but would they be natural then? How humanity’s egos have developed over time does not seem natural to me, it smacks more of an insanity virus which would validate Carlos Castaneda’s theory of the predator, life sucking forces which can feed off one’s energy whenever the person succumbs to fear or suffering, all of which are somehow induced by allowing any of the seven deadly sins to take a hold of your mind. Or you might come to the conclusion that it’s all insane no matter how a life is lived and that’s because life is a dream and dreams can’t make sense but that doesn’t ring true for me. If it was there’d be no impulse to discover, or to learn in a person which is clearly not the case. I know I failed to see human fallibility as an intrinsic piece of the puzzle which made things go from bad to worse. You can blame the other actors but you’re still just blaming yourself if you do. That we don’t accept human error as delightful is another error. I resisted this I know probably because I was tired or I needed to see this more clearly which I am now. Perhaps as humanity strives to eliminate human error and folly it just creates systems that are just as ineffective. If we take the personal element out of life itself, we will be left with a machine, but that’s not life either. Failure and disappointment are therefore not human errors but something that is also woven into our makeup as navigational indicators. Here I see a pattern in my own life that has transformed my whole family in ways that seem quite unusual to how families normally work, so there’s that. That would lead me to believe the natural order of things was somehow reinstated when I woke up, and my own actions which were spurred on by what I saw had some positive or very loving effects on all of us. The mother is maybe the conduit. Of course, maybe the father is something as well and I just can’t speak to that since we didn’t have nor ever seemed to need one.

Oh, well, I don’t want to end this on a sad note. I think anytime you want to focus your attention on what you really are, you can up and be done with all the nonsense. It’s really just a matter of intensity and commitment that does the job. You can basically decide any time of day or night that you’re done looking over there, since over there is obviously some bullshit. I would say the hardest part to get over is that in the beginning you don’t know any other direction of focus. You have no fucking clue what you’re even looking for but if you persist with any tenacity at all, you won’t have to find it. It will find you. Here's a song about that.