The Bear Ate It

This last week was pretty good. Let’s just say it went better than expected, so I thought to my self, what exactly are expectations and why aren’t mine higher? If that was good, what might the best fucking look like? You see you learn what’s possible for you. You learn that certain thresholds are acceptable, unacceptable, good, bad, or average. You weigh your experience against your expectations of this, and if you get close to the high side of things, which might actually be quite low, you’re satisfied. You learn only too well that miracles aren’t really possible, all aspects of life and living have to follow a certain timeline so that in order to do this, that, or the other, whatever that is for you, certain other things have to transpire first. Here comes the idea that there’s a type of succession, your mind basically agrees to a type of workload where activities and tasks one after the other have to build up in time. You’re always here, but you want to be there. There’s never a time when here is where you’re happy or happiest. Life is movement so if it’s not moving fast enough, you might think you’re just trudging along for no reason, and getting to the other place is sorely out of reach and maybe always has been. Usually you don’t even allow yourself to dream that you might actually be somewhere else someday, that your dreams are as easily possible as anything else happening. Most people having done this so many times already in childhood or early adulthood with bad results, skip the idea that possible scenarios might unfold any time at all, we’re always on the edge of something wonderful, but no, that’s not our experience, life is just routine, don’t feel to happy about some elusive future, It’s better to not hope for much, that way you can spare yourself not only the disappointment but the embarrassment of maybe talking about something and nothing ever happening. Of course, I don’t actually think talking to other people about your plans if you have some is really worth expending energy on unless they are maybe doing it with you, whatever it is. Other people don’t actually give a shit about anyone else’s plans, most of them are basically naysayers anyway, and they’ll just remind you of all the barriers you supposedly have to cross first to get whatever it is you want, but what if that’s just some more bullshit? What if life isn’t actually all that hard, but thinking it’s hard is hard? Life is hard? Isn’t that a belief? Shit, that one is almost always making the rounds, is it not? And why not, life is easy, as a widespread belief that pervades human life? Wouldn’t that have made more sense? Fucking hell, you just can’t make it make sense sometimes.

Since my son is bored at his current job, he’s been applying for other stuff and had a few interviews. Some non profit agency that matches applicants with government positions in tech gave him an interview and today I guess he got an email that told him he was a finalist. Now what happens is they give his resume to the hiring people of all these agencies and if they are interested they reach out and he gets an interview with them. If any one of them hires him, he’s in. There’s a substantial amount of money that comes with it to cover your expenses of moving and going to some seminars that are required. He was excited when he told me. I could see some confidence in his own ability to maneuver this thing called life bubbling up in him. That was very cool. I hope he knows it’s not hard, but I think he thinks it really is. He put in all this work and now it’s just paying off. He may actually like things to be hard, since he gets paid to do nothing at his job and that’s too fucking easy. He just tells me, “Why the fuck am I even there?” And I just say, “I don’t know, to collect the money?” Shit, I always think, someone should pay me to sit around and do nothing. Then I’d just sit and write all day and still make a living but you know, maybe that’s not a real goal, maybe there are other ways, maybe that’s not even how it really works around here. If life is but a dream, we’d do well to wonder how it actually does. If our expectations dictate what appears, we’d do well to update them and just think if the sky’s the limit, I can go anywhere and do anything I want.

Apparently, if life is a series of time laced emanations you’re experiencing living on or with or maybe you’re actually merged with it all somehow, you’re not a separate particle based being living on anything, maybe you are this world and it’s just the barriers your mind learned that makes you experience being in a world instead of actually being this world. That’s sounds about right, it’s always just a matter of mind and of removing the obstacles that live in yours. Of course, maybe as you remove shit, you also have to add some new ideas otherwise you just stay in the whole “life is emptiness and void” phase of realizing shit is just not what they said it was. Yeah, I’d say it makes some sense to remove first so you have the space to add in the new stuff. You can’t have opposing beliefs either or they cancel each other out but then what is this “space” that it all lives in? Would that just be your body? I’ve learned by now that life is more like a sensation. Our sensations are mainly what determines how we experience anything which is how if you have the sensation that whatever life you’ve got is satisfactory, it’s fine, it’s enough, then there’s no other sensation to propel you towards anything else. That kind of flies in the face of the whole acceptance thing, not sure how, but they do seem to contradict themselves.

I’m watching a lot of the younger generations in Europe pretty much rejecting the whole “just accept life as it is” thing. Those little feisty girls and boys aren’t accepting shit. No, they’re challenging the whole system that they were born into about now. Well, I don’t know about all the violence but if there’s truly no doer, then this is just what life wants to do. It’s a vast inner movement within life itself as a bigger whole, and yeah, acceptance is off the fucking table about now. And what is that really but life itself exclaiming, “No, this is not going to be enough. I refuse to get inside the box that someone else thought up for me to live within.” Of course, they’ll face a lot of opposition from the structures that wish it was enough, but I wonder seriously how many of the riot police wouldn’t rather be on the other end of things. There they are in their tight little uniforms, following protocols and some rules based order while these nasty little shit disturbers are playing music, drinking beer, enjoying the company of their fellow shit disturbers, lighting fires, and basically running around screaming, “Fuck you and the horse you rode in on mother fuckers.” I do hope they leave the horses out of it, those horses don’t want anything to do with trotting around on city streets with some baton armed body saddled to it. It’s weird how you can even get a horse to do that. I guess that’s why they call it breaking them in. Human’s basically have to break a horse’s spirit to get it to comply with all the forthcoming commands and movements. Are human’s any different? Perhaps our one advantage as a species is that we can think about how we’ve been broken in and brainwashed to fit inside a system that wants nothing more than to use up our energy and then toss us to the side in some nursing home. I think I can safely say if I was a young person living right now in Europe, if I was now as I was in my youth, I’d be out there among the protestors, and it would probably be a welcome change to what my lonely existence was like before. It would be as if I finally fit with something that wasn’t just an idea in my own head but then again, knowing myself, I probably wouldn’t have fit in even there. I’d have been an outsider even among the outsiders. That was always my life long problem, there was no box I could feel good in. I would have to destroy the box, and that box was just me, who and what I thought I was. Weird, how that worked.

My daughter is still visiting her grandmother. She attended a free GED testing place today, probably at the influence of her grandmother who thinks without a formal college education you can’t do shit in this world. Of course, that’s not true, and many people worldwide display and basically prove this. I think my daughter wondered whether she was smart or not because we didn’t embrace the whole school scam. Schooled peoples project themselves as being smart but we can see how that’s working out right now on the world stage, no one without an education is involved in any of those developments, that’s for sure. All the educated peoples of the world probably think, “If only those dumb uneducated people would fucking behave, this world would be perfect”, while the simpler folks wonder how the educated create all this shit. I guess there’s that whole ying and yang dynamic again, you can’t have simple if the opposite of complex isn’t on the other side of it, otherwise neither of those concepts exist at all. It’s interesting, my daughter scored lowest in Math and highest in reading, language was high too just under the reading. I guess the lady doing the testing there told her she’d never seen anyone score as high as she did on the reading, so that was kind of wild. Maybe all my writing, even though she doesn’t read it, maybe just the way I talk about things, had some effect there. Everything is really an effect of one sort or another, that’s what almost no one realizes.

Our minds are language based now since the internal dialog center took it over. What we’ve really lost is the sensation part, only we haven’t actually lost it, it’s still there. Most people’s overall sensations though aren’t all that pleasurable, that’s pretty easy to discover. One walk around any city basically shows you that the tensions inside the body are now wound up so tightly, they’re strangling everyone from the inside out. Since our language based minds learned to memorize and hold onto to all the stories stored in it, no one lets go of anything anymore. Yesterday and even last year or twenty years ago is as vivid or instantly accessible through some random stimulations as this very moment is for some people. It’s laced with fears of every kind now, and fear is the least favorable sensation when it comes to moving forward or really outwards in terms of your life and its experiences. If you really think about it, it’s always language that determines what you think is here or what you think you’re doing, and sensation is secondary to it. Sensations in this day and age just tell you how much you appreciate the story playing in your own head, or whether you don’t. They are not a guidance system anymore, and yet, without sensation, you wouldn’t even sense any part of your life, so that’s weird. If emotion, which is really also sensation, doesn’t provide the necessary fuel for one’s imagination, then what happens? Nothing right? You stick to whatever life script you learned, and nothing ever pushes you out of it. But what are words without fuel? Are they even stories anymore? Or just some flatness, the flat line of death comes to mind about now, no more changes, just decay, you’re disintegrating. The whole language based energetic structure of you dissipates into the wider unknown recesses of the void.

On the other hand, when we fuel our stories or better yet, align our own stories with our own sensations, is that creation? Is that how we make something appear out of nothing? All the sages say to get rid of your mind, there’s nothing you can do with it, rest in the peace of the creator, but what for? Isn’t that what you were doing before you got here? No, I don’t buy it. Life is obviously a creation model with trillions of little playgrounds to play upon and mind is required to imagine you’re on one. Mind however is also part of the creation, without this we don’t do anything, no experience is even possible, so why would you want to get rid of that? Just because humans have used it in a way that causes untold sufferings doesn’t mean that’s what you’ll do with it. Shit, I like to watch videos of the Christkindle markets through out Europe, and I think, if mind created that, what else can it do? I love all the lights, the colorful stands full of colorful trinkets, beautiful glass blown Christmas tree ornaments. The last one I went to was in Munich when my step dad out of the blue said, “Come to Germany with me, I’m paying.” So we went and it was cold but utterly beautiful in Marienplatz. The food, the chocolates, and craftsmanship of what’s for sale there, only the Europeans got a handle on that. Whatever shit you can buy here is truly inferior, just some cheap shit that was probably imported from China. Americans from what I can tell aren’t big on creating anything truly beautiful, which is how all our neighborhoods look like full blown crap circles. My favorite ornament in my very small collection at present is an angel I bought at a German market they had here. My kids and I went to it together and ate some bratwurst but yeah, I don’t even think that was real bratwurst, and the sauerkraut sucked like they just poured it out of a can. I think I tried some strudel after that whole disappointment just trying to make some sense there but you can’t always make it make sense. The ornament made sense. I put it at the top of the tree every year when we get a tree and when I take it off, I always make sure to wrap it up special while I just throw all the other ornaments in a box because on some level they’re all just filler. If I was rich I’d just travel the markets and buy all my favorites, an angel here, and a Santa Claus figure there until I had a full blown collection, then at the beginning of December I’d get the tree and decorate it. I think for some reason nothing reminds me of the magical quality of life more than Christmas time. Maybe that’s how we have it, I’m not sure. I don’t actually care about any of the religious advents that are adhered to it somehow. I don’t think Mary had a baby in a manager or that there were three kings who followed a star across the desert to wind up right then and there at its birth. It’s all really just some metaphors, as everything is. Maybe the manager really represents the nothingness, and the baby is just a representation of creation itself. The wise men just come in to remind us that life is precious, it’s a gift, so we need to really think about what we’re doing with the one that’s ours to create. They represent discernment or the choosing of this over that. That they followed a star maybe represents the North Star. A person’s North Star is just a metaphor for their central most prominent operational truth. It’s really a purpose that remains steady throughout one’s lifetime or an internal compass that never really changes, which is just one’s true inner knowing I suppose. All very interesting though, interesting in the sense that this one holiday attracts so many people world wide. Yeah, that one really took off, or some form of it did. What does it really signify though? Celebration right? It’s basically an outward celebration of life, in some strange way an annual reminder of what one should or might value the most, what and who you love, just too bad we need reminding. I try to remember this very thing at all hours of the day. It doesn’t always work. I can still get distracted or pushed off course but by and large, this whole inner journey itself basically brings you right back to it again and again. What a magical fucking thing that is! I don’t think as a species we realize what we’ve really got going on here, yeah, we missed the mark there. Too bad, too so very bad. I guess we could have really had it all, and who knows, maybe still some of us can. Maybe it’s just a matter of mind after all. You can rearrange, or redecorate any way you like. It’s all up to you. There is never anything in your way, not really, when it’s just some words, some language you learned, but not really even there, not like you think it is, no, not at all.

This feels like one of the creepy nights, where the weather outside has been raining and the first taste of cooler weather has blown in. It’s not really cold yet, the low will be just below 50 but I’m registering a change nonetheless and the darkness outside my door does not feel welcoming. I think I’ve made my own home into a sort of sanctuary. It’s nice and cozy, and there’s always coffee. I’m about to cook some rice, broccoli, and tofu in this special Japanese barbecue sauce we buy from Costco. It’s tasty but I’m kind of missing those two huge pots of Hungarian Goulash I used to make before this whole vegan thing set it. Apparently, there’s a vegan version. In Hungary there’s a vegan restaurant that has basically perfected it so you barely notice it’s not the real thing. There’s also vegan versions of Bratwurst in Germany that are very convincing, but I’m not in either of those places and I don’t really think I’d be all that convinced anyway. Fuck no, I hope I’m smarter than that. What I probably miss most of all on this diet is real cream in my coffee and French cheese. My whole premise and resolve might be lagging. As with every exploit of mind, the novelty wears off. Ego can’t help but cling to the idea that being vegan is better for everything. It’s certainly better for the animals involved, that’s not a hard determination. Were human’s meant to eat meat? Probably. Were we meant to torture animals and mass produce them and their remains into tasty human dishes? That seems like a no but then I always think, “What the fuck do I know?”, and that’s when I always wish it was closer to nothing. Well, if I ever make it over to those emanations, I’m not going deny myself some actual Hungarian Goulash, nor a bratwurst, or maybe nothing. Denying oneself of shit doesn’t even seem like a good practice anymore. What do they call that some sort of austerity? Renunciation of worldly attachments? That’s not for me, I like the world, so much shit here to do, to taste, I’m not against it at all. I saw one video of the Christmas market where the person making the video was trying a toasted baguette filled with melted Gruyere cheese and I was like, “One day, one day I’ll have me one of those.” Of course, this type of cheese is made from the milk of Alpine cows so maybe they’re happier to share what their bodies produce. I just hope no one is stealing away their off spring too. Maybe they just give birth, keep the calf and when the calf doesn’t need the milk anymore they start milking and the cow’s like, “No worries, I’ll share, I’m teaching you something here, share, it’s not so hard to do. Just taste the wonderful things that can come from it.”

All the bills came due again, and once again, it was fucking worse than before. I could not make the numbers between what I get for my labor and what was due align. I was going to be short, very much so this time. So I had to ask my son for a substantial amount of money so that nothing would be late. So that was fucking fun, but shit, I figure giving a little back after all I’ve given isn’t asking all that much, and for sure, he was happy to help. He didn’t give me a hard time about it or blame me for anything. If he does any blaming he credits his siblings with being snowflakes who don’t make any money and maybe never will, oh the fucking horror. He’s actually proud of his sister for trying to get a GED up there, and also her driving license. I told her too that I couldn’t teach her how to drive, not again. I did it once and she was driving but when she hit the back of the garage through some mishap, that was basically the end of it. I figured too it’s not like she was actually going anywhere, the only places she was going to at that time was maybe the mall or to hook up with some friends she barely knew who it turned out were budding alcoholics and just lucky she never got caught up in that shit, because I’m not even sure I could have handled some drunk out of control teenager. I would have lost my shit there probably because I was one, and I know first hand of all the other horrors that come out of that. Shit, I’m still vanishing shit from those days, suffice it to say I had years of shit to get rid of. Yeah, I’m not sure anyone can really appreciate what an actual shit show of a life can be dreamt up, there’s nothing spiritual or pretty or even interesting about any of it. That’s the whole life is just suffering and fucking turn your back on all of it because there’s nothing else out there. That’s where that sentiment comes from, it comes from anyone who having suffered their whole life is finally pushed out of it and into some rude awakening and has yet to come to terms with. Unless you resolve it all, I’m talking from an energetic level, (not mental understanding, no that part is easy) you are basically stuck with it, so you aren’t really going anywhere. You might be awake but you’re still living from the same emanation and there is nothing but suffering on it. It’s a matter then of storing, creating, and discovering enough fucking energy to jump emanations. Actually it’s best if you can just jump around, you’re not trying to get from this one to that one, but to develop the ability to maneuver at will among the millions of different emanations and manifestations that are literally all around you all the time, mostly you’re just stuck on one so you don’t see the others, until at long last, maybe you do.

Jed actually talks about this in his books when he’s describing the burning office and the level of fucking discontent you need to have to do what you have to do. That type of discontent doesn’t come from just any kind of life, no it usually comes from a life sucking existence in which you never fucking win and every single attempt you make at getting to something better only ends in another disaster. That was my life, basically the whole fifty fucking years and whatever relief I had from that only came after the fact of some changed understanding of reality. And some patterns are bound to repeat until you face them and actually deal with them, not in terms of the world and jobs and financial responsibility but in terms of the shit that is in you that still holds you to the pattern. It’s going to be a brutal unrelenting purge there, not love and light and some mind numbing meditation practices, that doesn’t even touch it, it actually covers it up, so have fun with that all you meditation spouting gurus, you might rake in millions from the unsuspecting gullible masses only to die a horrible cancer ridden death. Isn’t that weird that both Ramana and Nisargadatta both die of cancer related illness in the end? Fuck how does that work? How does it turn out like that? Even Eckhart Tolle recently had a round with some cancerous tumor but he says he beat it, they were able to cut it out and destroy whatever else was lurking. I have some strange ideas I know but cancer to me sounds like an awful likeness to the cancer that just lives in you because you refuse to face it which doesn’t require peace or equanimity but a madness filled desire to remove all excesses of artificial delusion from your very own energetic configuration. It is most aptly illustrated by Ahab fighting the enormous murderous whale with a pocket knife, that’s the analogy, you are armed with a little knife and the shit you’re up against isn’t just ten times more powerful than you, it’s a hundred, maybe a thousand, and still, even if it chewed off one of your legs already, you’re right back at it, hacking away at that fucking monster like there is nothing else left to do here.

That, all that, is to me, how this world will never change, because who among us is going to do any of that in order to create actual change? The soldier is only changed when he’s tasked with fighting for his life, it’s not from shooting off missiles or drones but when he realizes he’s lost in the woods, none of his battalion are any where to be found, they’ve all fled and it’s just him. He’s surrounded by the enemy, and they are all trying to kill him, and what’s more, he’s out of ammunition, he can’t even fire off a single round, he’s got fucking nothing, it’s just himself and fate at that point, but surrender, total surrender can swoop in then, for instance he might fall down some hole in the ground, and thinking quickly cover up all traces of it. He might hear them walking around it, knowing that if they step on any edge of it they’re going to fall in too and find him. Will they kill him on the spot or take him hostage and torture him? Fuck he doesn’t know, his life is completely unknown from each passing second to the next, and there is nothing more intense than that but that’s just the rub right there, without intensity, without intense focus, let’s say your life depends upon it, if you lose it, you’re dead, your life is over, you have nothing more to look forward to then what you’ve already had so far, it’s either absolute focus utilizing every fiber of your being, or nothing. And you get to decide. Which will it be? There’s no take backs, you don’t get to start over, it’s not a try try try until you succeed, you get one chance and only you know what it looks like and what it actually entails, no one else can help you. The balls in your court and you either catch it, or it rolls out of sight and a bear eats it.

Yeah, I think that’s where I’m at. Well, that’s fun. I was maybe born for this. My life was just preparation. Now where’s that fucking ball? From which direction will it come? It’s best to stay alert, that shitty ball can shoot off towards you from anywhere. There are no guarantees. There never were. Let me just say this at the end of this rant, when you do this work, you don’t know what will fire back, blow back, or what type of shit will rear its ugly head, and just always remember, if it does only these three words. “This too shall pass”, because that’s where your power lies. Nothing can actually hold onto you unless you also hold onto it. Don’t.