The Strength and Courage of a Thousand Lions

So my daughter is at her grandmother’s house about five hours drive from here. I think she likes it. And I think they truly love having her there. Interestingly enough, they went shopping and found more vegan food up there in the middle of nothing than we did here in a big city. Her grandmother found a store that was close by that was practically all vegan, go figure. Personally, I think she’s brought all this good fortune with her. She’s made of love and therefore finds this. My mother seems to have truly come to life with her around, just I saw her on FaceTime, and she seemed carefree and animated in a way I’ve never seen her like before. It kind of warms my heart that my own daughter is able to bring all this to the table. I think she’s thriving too, because since this is all brand new, she’s really being appreciated up there. I mean she’s always been a breath of fresh air if you ask me, but I can see how our lives get stressed and we don’t have the time or presence of care to show it constantly but she’s getting this now, so I’m happy. She’s also working on her house, just cleaning and organizing which she is very good at. Old people don’t have the energy to keep things neat, if something lags behind it usually stays that way and the rest only builds on it. So she’s taking care of all this for them. Meanwhile, Oma got out and drove them to the fresh bread bakery where they enjoyed a cinnamon roll and some chia together. It wasn’t vegan but my daughter was like, “Oh, well, I can just treat myself”, and I said, “Absolutely, as you should, you make your own rules and no rule is worth sticking by all the time.” It’s only as good as it works for you I told her. I know she doesn’t see it herself but maybe up there she will, just how precious she is, how much she has to give, how her presence shines such light when she’s around. I think maybe it’s like that because she is unaware. I’m not really sure. I sometimes think she could have a whole lot more confidence in what she is, but I didn’t have it at her age, and I’m not sure how much I have now. As you get older, I think you really do dim somewhat, it’s hard to tell when you’ve gone most of your life in some darkness you’d have never chosen but somehow chose you. I’d like to think I’ve given her some leg up, just because I know what she really is. Ever since that fateful day here, I always felt I had received some capacity to feel when my children didn’t feel good and I’ve always tried to comfort or cheer her when she was like that but did it work? Does it help to feel what someone else is actually experiencing and truly understand it from a much better position? I think it does. I think everyone could use a little more actual seeing through what really ails them, which is just the false self that we all have to develop. It’s not really that it’s false which bothers us, it’s all the crap that keeps it from fully functioning that breaks our own hearts. We know life is supposed to be good, and when it isn’t, maybe when others let us down or do things we’d never do, we are left lonely and hurt. There is probably no way for a child to understand what has actually happened to them along the way. I think all the adults of this world should ask all the children of this world for forgiveness, for we knew not what we were doing, no one really does.

Back at home, well I’ve been working out with weights a lot. There’s an empty space left by her absence, time from my own attention that she took up which is now freed up to use for something else. I figure I should get in shape, just stay strong or get stronger, I’ve always liked doing this so it works. I think I was born to be physically fit, it’s in my make up somehow so that’s not work but a type of leisure activity that is somehow more productive or enhancing then just watching a movie I’d say. I wonder now if I have some belief that tries to convince me that this is harder at my age, if I do, I aim to get rid of it. I was quite energetic these last few days that’s for sure and on very little sleep I might add. Since my daughter took her dogs with her, and my son’s dog is here alone now, I felt something off there, like maybe she was confused about the loss of company, after all one of the dogs is her real sister. The first day, she wouldn’t eat. We didn’t know if it was that or she just had an upset stomach. She actually threw up later on as well, but we bought some treats to try to enhance her food so she’d eat it. When that didn’t work and she was still totally uninterested even with some beef treats mixed in, I’m not gonna lie but it became concerning. I felt a need then to just shower her with attention which basically took the place of my sleeping hours but dogs do come first. My rule is basically do what you have to do now and sleep later, you’ll survive.

Yeah, so anyway, the schedule is a little tough. It was easier when my daughter was here because she’d care for her dogs and her brother’s dogs so I could sleep since my son is working all day now, and he’s not here to do it. Basically when he gets up, early, he wakes up at 6:30, he feeds his dog and lets her outside. Then he leaves her in his room since she’s still teething and sometimes destroys shit like shoes, well anything she can find, and about a couple hours later she’s barking to either go outside or just get out of there. I get home late from work already, my sleep schedule is just late, as late as 7 am sometimes if I can’t fall asleep so I get a few hours sleep and I’m right back up again. After giving the dog some love and playtime, she stays in my room and we both fall asleep but it’s not like a night’s sleep, more like a long nap, if I get four hours in a stretch I’m basically elated. Anyway, this has been going on since my son started working so about a month now and there’s no end in sight, not that I can see yet anyway.

I was at work tonight again, and it was bad weather. The rains and storms were back. I can tell you I was lamenting my life all evening. I don’t think I really know what the fuck I’m doing there anymore, shouldn’t I have manifested some other situation by now? How much longer will this last? The question seemed most intolerable, like my life was slipping away and I was basically just standing back and letting it do so. Well, there’s some fucking reality for you, I guess. When I get like this, I sometimes doom scroll the google news for any sign that maybe this country I live in will actually implode in some way. I’m sitting there thinking, “Fuck, could we have a war already? Is there any other country out there who could maybe start dropping a few bombs around here?” Yeah, I’d actually like for shit to be shaken up a little, maybe some actual danger would do it, but alas, I saw nothing. I never do just a bunch of crap about the midterm elections. I don’t actually know how stupid you have be to believe in that shit but I guess most people do like, “Here’s our chance to change something.” You’ve got to be delusion to fall for that carrot but lets face it that’s the crowd you’re surrounded with no matter where you go anymore. Other than that just some stupid stories, something about Ukraine and starlink, ships sinking in the Strait of Hormuz, sexual assault at a frat house (is that even news if some boy took some liberties, fuck that’s only been going on for thousands of years and now if one stupid kid does it in the wrong place, it’s shocking?), something about someone’s credentials being shit, a rollercoaster death (well shit happens, probably tens of thousands of other people died in accidents today so how is he special?), power blackouts in California, yeah nothing interesting at all, zero indication of any kind of impending doom whatsoever. No life ending meteors, no black plague spreading like an out of control wild fire, not even wildfires, no hurricanes, no alien invasions, pretty much just consciousness doing absolutely nothing, not a shred of actual fucking entertainment to be found.

I think I may be missing my daughter. Her bedroom is by the bathroom door and I feel this vast emptiness now every time I have to go and pee, which is a lot. I pee multiple times a day, probably from all the coffee I like to drink or I just like to get shit out, it’s hard to tell. I think I might have a very small bladder, maybe, if there is such a thing which there’s probably not, just something else we fucking made up through our vast hallucinations and have to dream about all the time now like eating and sleeping. I just pray to God there are other planets to go to after this one that at least have a little bit of sense and are actually dreaming up something exciting. Some where some how, there are probably millions of other populations who warn about getting stuck here for a whole fucking lifetime. “Don’t go there”, they say, “You’ll die of boredom, literally the only thing they got going for them is mountains, rivers, animals, and flowers. Then they have these creatures they call humans who are basically zombies, nothing goes on with them, not now, not ever. At least, puppies still play there but the creatures called humans have forbidden it for themselves. They do something called work instead. Can you imagine? No, me neither. Instead for entertainment, they invented something called politics which is akin to watching paint dry, it’s like a circular game where everyone tries to guess who is the most stupid among them and they’re so stupid no one ever finds out.”

Back on my mother’s farm, our oldest dog got sick. She’s had diarrhea and now she’s throwing up. My daughter’s been feeding her some chicken and rice she made for her, but she’s barely eating even that now. My mother decided it was time to take the dog to the vet, so that’s what they did. I told my daughter sometimes those country vets can be more helpful then the city guys we have here because they actually grew up around animals and didn’t just think it would be a cool career choice where everything they learned is from a book. So we’ll see. I’m kind of glad my mom is taking care of this because I’m not in a position to drain my own bank account with some more vet bills.

It turns out our dog had Guardia, some type of intestinal parasite so that’s fun. I guess the whole visit cost $500 but my mother didn’t even complain. She’s got a heart for my daughter. I can see this very clearly. I thought to myself, “She really loves my daughter, if that had been me, my dog would have died.” But actually I know this is not the gist of reality at all. The whole gist is in the reflection, how we see and experience our own reflections in the eyes and actions of others. It’s very hard to actually own up to this completely. We might want to say, “Okay, when they are loving that’s me, and when they aren’t, I don’t know what’s going on but it has nothing to do with me”, and this is a huge mistake on our part. I think it’s a mistake on the part of spirituality in general as well, mainly because most of it elevates non reaction, not investigation or what’s my part in this? How is my own belief involved should be the first question we ask, because I guarantee you, there is one. You may not even know about it, it could be that subtle even so well hidden that you never suspect you hold it inside somewhere, but now I think I do. I am seeing this first hand, how my own beliefs aren’t just creating my own experience of life, but possibly my entire lived reality. There may actually be nothing else but this. Wouldn’t that be wild? And wouldn’t that also be wonderful, for if it does lie within us then we have every right and every power in the universe to change it to our likings. That would be the best news ever wouldn’t it? Just think, if it was true, you can and could change anything you’d like, anytime you’d like to.

But it’s not so easy, that’s my own mind, I once believed that as well. This belief in easy or hard, these complimentary concepts are woven into almost everything we ever think about or even do. Paired with these two, which are really just one, are the complimentary concepts of negative and positive. One is frowned upon and the other isn’t but what if we don’t need them? What if these two concepts which are again just polar opposites, so one with two faces so to speak, actually confuse us more than anything and indeed also cause us the most grief?

I was thinking about all this when I looked back over at my little bit of bitchiness at the beginning of this writing. My mockery of the world, its dramas, its horror, I think spiritually that’s not really allowed. I shouldn’t post such stuff because you know it might seem immature or worse, irresponsible. How dare I degrade anything right? Not very spiritual of me, what pray tell would my readers think about that? They might disregard anything I have to say and just write me off as another maddie in the long line of maddies to roam the earth. Well, I might be one and so what, should I care? I mean it’s good advice to take what you can use and leave the rest, I don’t say otherwise, but my insight was this: negativity is useful stuff. It’s not meant to be suppressed, or hidden away, maybe we’ve actually done this for far too long, otherwise how are systems that almost no one wants or likes able to grow to such huge proportions and have so much imaginary power over so many beings? Could it be that our politeness serves to entrap us? Does it shut down our own children before they even have a chance to develop their own expressions? Do our expressions need to be monitored at all even when it’s not all love and roses? What have we really done to ourselves here? Have we actually denied half of our makeup in favor of a pretty but false self imaging? Is being polite synonymous with being intelligent and mature now to the point where no real critical thinking can actually occur anymore, it’s too dangerous to be real? Does being real actually equate to being cast out of the entire social order no matter where it is? And yet, this pushing down of our real and true feelings about something, where does it lead? Doesn’t it lead to sickness, to tensions we don’t understand anymore, to a life of such inauthenticity we don’t even know what that is anymore? Is dissatisfaction just an illusion to be overcome with mindfulness or gratitude or is it part and parcel of the authentic navigation system we come with? Do we pretend to like stuff we clearly don’t, stuff we might even hate, because we think we look more spiritual this way? Maybe it proves we are spiritual even?

Let me tell you something, there are some people I actually detest, just they are basically horrifying to spend time with, maybe they are toxic I don’t know, but I don’t pretend to like them anymore. And I used to think, shit is that my shadow because if it is it sucks. I should maybe try to find a way to handle this better, forgive it its irritating ways, be tolerate, be loving even, be very kind, that thing needs kindness, and now I’m not so sure. I think we have to be very clear on what we’re looking at, and when something has something to do with us, and perfectly clear, even clearer when it doesn’t. Yes, but where’s the compassion in that? Jed (Invisible Guru) once gave me an exercise just for this issue. He had me imagine the person dying, they had maybe pissed off anyone who would have ever cared about them and just this was their last day on earth, I was supposed to contemplate them this way, whatever they were doing, I was witnessing their last act in the flesh, then I was supposed to pat them on the shoulder as if to say, “No worries, you’ll be out of it soon.” To be honest, I never really tried it. I think I thought about trying this but then never did. Of course, this has nothing to do with some other person, but everything to do with how they are infecting my own interior. It does not mean I’m obligated to be loving towards them. It really means I can see through the whole act, and by doing so, release the charge it’s creating not in them, but in me. They won’t change then only I will but again, it’s not about kindness, it’s not about doing anything for anyone else, it’s about how your own mind picks up on shit, notices certain things but not others, and it’s about correcting this focus so there’s nothing in it that can be highjacked by a little ongoing bullshit, and let’s be clear, this world, will always have some bullshit in it. There’s too much ignorance bouncing off the walls for it not to. My job then is only to sail through this bullshit with as little expended energy as possible because every little emotional hook or tremor is like a stretchy string, and when it’s attached to you in some way, you’re working against your own buoyancy. In that case, if every little emotional string of aversion is a weight pulling you down into the matrix of insanity which is humanity, you don’t need more kindness you need an invisible machete to cut the imaginary web that you’re basically swimming in and through when you leave your house.

The way I see it now is each emanation which is really just a band of reality you’re traveling in, has it’s own unique set of social weights to keep you tied to it, and functioning like everyone in it learned to do. It’s almost like it needs a certain amount of symmetry and reliance that all inhabitants adhere to this symmetry in order for the illusion to remain cohesive enough that no one actually notices how flimsy or fucking odd and backwards it really is. Everyone you see is totally oblivious to the fact that anything unusual is going on, no that’s only you, you saw it so you can’t just go back in like nothing happened. No, you basically see how all the reactions happen like clockwork, you can just see it happening, how the trigger reaches its target and then the ego snaps to attention and does it’s stupid little dance of suffering with all its poor me shit, and how dare you’s. What a strange fucking place it is once you see how it is but no it’s worse than that, you can basically tell that almost anyone who thinks they are awake still isn’t. So here you are with only your Jed books to keep you company while everyone else dreams of cancer, financial ruin, and all the rest of the petty tyrants designed to keep you inside a prison of your own making. Yeah, no, I think I haven’t even begun to break out yet, all these years were really just preparation for some move that’s coming hard and fast. I actually think now I will end up doing YouTube, just not in the usual awakening way. Fuck, I’m not going to give them answers, just questions like, “Let’s really think today. What the fuck are we actually doing here? Anybody know?” And then if they do know, I’ll say that’s not it. You can’t know this. Whatever answer you arrive at will be wrong. Mine are wrong too if I say I know more than “I am”, because that is the extent of all true knowledge, you know you are, and the rest is some made up fantasy shit. And why this fantasy? Do you even like it? Why don’t you choose better with your focus and intentions? Have you ever truly asked yourself that?” Or something like this, I can’t really say yet can I because I can’t fucking know it. I’ll know what it looks like when it arrives if it even does but not before. I’m busy asking myself these questions now, “Why this? What for?”, along with, “Concentrate, focus, even demand”, you know we have this capacity too. We aren’t just hapless vessels left adrift on an endless sea of consciousness to bubble up and bobble along as the environment sees fit. We have capacities and life, if there is to actually be one, is to develop these capacities to utmost extent that they can be developed within your being. Time and circumstances have absolutely nothing to do with it. That’s just a facet of what you’re leaving behind, hopefully for good. It behooves no one to just go along to get along, not yourself and not anyone else. If life has a defining word it’s boldness, there’s a shock value to it. It’s not for sipping tea all day, you can do this if you like, and I’m not saying never sip tea, but it’s not a life plan, and it’s not a life destiny. So what is? Again, pretty strange that we can’t talk about the future at all, or what anything is. The gist of it is what is arising? Because it’s not wrong, forget about all this wrongness shit, nothing is ever wrong, and if it’s never wrong then it must be right. It must be what wants to arise right now, as this or that, and your job if you have one is to allow whatever it is, whether that’s flipping someone off or giving a hug to be any way it damn well pleases itself to be. That’s the flow, not kindness, not cultivating some fake loving attitude towards everything, not trying to change things for the better, not anything but what actually just naturally arises in you, however it does this. Within this, is the perfection, don’t worry if you can’t see it, it’s there, everything is always in perfect orchestration, so much so that in the end, you won’t even have to think about how it is, you’ll just see it plain as day, and on that day, you’ll relax in a way you’ve never done before. In fact, you will think you thought you knew what relaxation was before and realize you didn’t, you weren’t doing it, you didn’t have it, in fact it was totally eluding you, but now it’s not. It’s here. You’ve been waiting for this day. You didn’t even know that, you had no clue, but now it’s here and it’s changed, and guess what, it will change again, and again, every moment there will be something else, just life happening but that’s what you feel into, you enter whatever is arising to enter. That’s all, that’s it. The you of you is done, and now there’s only this.

I’ll leave you with this line from Autobiography of a Yogi, just I’m reading this book now and for some reason really enjoying it. This line practically leaped off the page at me and it goes like this, “Even he with the worst of karma who ceaselessly meditates on Me quickly loses the effects of his past bad actions. Becoming a high-souled being, he soon attains perennial peace. Arjuna, know this for certain: the devotee who puts his trust in Me never perishes.” It should be noted here that it was Arjuna who signals the start of the war, then he’s torn between his duty to fight and what he believes he can no longer do. He doesn’t escape the battlefield of his life, he is asked to understand himself while he’s still on it. That’s not some escape from your life, that’s not going into a quiet room to meditate and pretending that nothing else exists, instead it’s engaging what’s going on from a new perspective, but not necessarily one of sublime kindness and love, no, it’s doing what you know to do. For me this has meant caring for my family and going to the job I do have until I find something else. It doesn’t mean just wait for something to appear either, you still have to take actions as you will and should, but in the end you do it as something else. You become the warrior. That is what life is for. In this context, the wars aren’t wrong, the politics aren’t wrong, but it’s only the people. No one can force a people to do anything, even if they have guns or weapons as the governments of today do, that’s not where the power lies because no external force has any more power than what you give to it through your own mind. A mantra, my very own, not borrowed at all came up in my mind here and I aim to use it for the rest of my life: Grant me the strength and courage of a thousand lions.” Yeah, that’s it. That’s all I’m asking for anymore. I don’t know, maybe you want to ask for something too. I would. I definitely would put it out there.