Tunnels

I might have been remiss to ask for the strength and courage of a thousand lions since how I am going to get that? I’d have to walk through some fires maybe and then see that I’ve made it out the other end unscathed as usual. Fuck, is that just inviting shit? I wonder. I’m always wondering. It’s a fun thing to do, this wondering unless you’re wondering about fires and shit and how you’d traverse them all. At any rate, I think I came down with a type of flu, I mean maybe? Let’s just say this, I felt like shit, no strength, I didn’t have a fever but I felt like I did, just out of sorts let’s say, so I slept. I hadn’t actually slept much the last few days before this onset, which doesn’t even make sense since it was my days off and I didn’t even go anywhere except for a quick trip to Walmart and the gas station. At first, I was kind of alarmed. My mind went, “Shit, am I dying for real this time?”, my own mind is so dramatic. I couldn’t just have a little bug, no it has to make it into an end of life scenario. This is it. It’s finally over. You’re out of time bitch. I thought of doctors then and thought, “Nope, that’s not happening. Worst case scenario I’d have to rent a cabin in the woods, somewhere on a mountain, maybe Colorado, and just deal with myself, all by myself. Then in my mind, I’d get better and maybe the strength of the lions would descend into me.

If you really think about it, it is cowardly to always be running to someone else if some issue or problem comes up, I mean granted there was no way for me to swap out the water heater when that broke, I needed help then but this is me, my own body, shouldn’t I be able to deal with that on my own. My answer is yes. For me the whole body/mind/spiritual trio is my responsibility. I can tell you I felt almost shaky when I was about to get in the car for work, that seemed alarming for about a minute, but then I got in the car, turned on the tunes, and I was there. I didn’t feel great, but I was still doing it. I made it through the shift on half an energy drink, no worse for wear, or so I thought. My mind had actually veered off on a pretty negative tangent but by now I know that wherever it goes is the place to let it go. So I went there, and I basically went into some pretty hateful shit, which didn’t actually alarm me. For once, I was like, “Okay, that’s there, and why not? Who or what am I to judge it? Do I have to be nice all the time? Is loving kindness the only way to be, or might I just be how I really am right now, basically hating my job with all the passion of a person stuck on the third floor of a burning house? Yeah, so I stayed with that. I started off the night with a pretty good attitude and instead of maybe artificially keeping it that way, I just let it fucking go wherever it wanted to and you know as the night wore on, shit just got worse. The drunk men seemed ever more so disgusting. I basically hated on their ways of talking and hooting and hollering. One guy was humping his friends back a few times as some gesture to winning the hand. They spilled beers on the layout before I even got there so I had to work the cards around that, and only one guy tipped me a whole ten bucks as if that fucking meant anything in today’s economy. To be fair, I might have made money early on but the cards indicated something else. My third table was with one of our best players who bets a $25 chip for you along with his bet almost every time if he’s winning and even when he’s not, and he lost every fucking hand, except maybe three, the three he didn’t have a bet for me on. Instead, he left me his change when he left the table which was about $12. Let me tell you if ever there was such a thing as bad luck I was fucking wearing it but let me tell you, it got worse. I started to detest almost every person I came across, there were a couple I didn’t but that’s only because they seemed so sad I didn’t have the heart to dislike them. And then there’s was something else, my right hand. It feels lately like I’ve either got some arthritis going on with it, or all the billions of chips and cards I’ve fucking maneuvered about all these long long years has finally taken it’s toll. The sensation in the hand is more concerning than anything else for without it, I’d have to stop writing as well. If it was so determined I couldn’t do the stupid job anymore that’d actually be great, but to take this activity away would really suck balls.

I thought through out the night just one thing about awareness itself and it was this: it’s forcing my hand. Literally. Part of it was the money, I used to think if the tips were high enough then it was worth my time there, but now not even that is there lately, not that I’m super worried about money, it usually comes through with what I’ll need. It’s not a I’m going to hurt you type of inner impulse like if you don’t act something bad will happen but it is a motivation. The difference between what used to steer my ship and what steers it now, is simply that I’m aware of directions, at least a little. Jed talks about this in the books, how if one thing isn’t working, he waits to see which one does, and that’s kind of where I’m at. I came home and basically wrote this and now I’m off to bed. I don’t feel super sick, just more tired, a little off, but my son who also didn’t feel well with me, came in my room today and said, “I think I’m winning” against being sick and I was feeling this too. I haven’t actually had a “real” flu since I had Covid at the beginning of the pandemic, and that was mild. The fact that I haven’t even had a stuffed or runny nose since then is kind of wild. I used to get sick at least twice a year with something. I did have a little runny nose but honestly it was so mild, just intermittent and now that’s gone too. Let me tell you I’ve had to deal cards with colds so severe I’d have to ask for tissues all night long back in the day, but this is not the case now. I might even be over it for all I know a little extra sleep is all that is in order.

So I woke up and still felt strange, not sick per se but just strange, labored in some way almost like my being was maybe going through a reconfiguration. Of course, we don’t know what that is, we just think, “Oh, I’m not feeling good or right, something must be wrong”, but who knows, maybe something is actually right. It’s supposed to be this way because why? Because it always knows what it’s doing with us. Mistakes are not possible, mistakes are simply an ignorant interpretation of what’s being experienced. Basically we’re so used to being one way, that when something else pops up our minds instantly reject it as abnormal. And there you have it, who the fuck want’s normal? Normal sucks, does it not? Of course, I’ve known that for a long time, I have been rejecting normal ever since I saw it was only an illusion. Even if my own “normal” wasn’t “normal”, not how most experience life, it could still change yet again, for change is always the spice of life, or just what it wants to do since boredom is naturally avoided. That’s really the cause of all events, to stave off boredom.

What I noticed right away at my job is this desperation all around me, not just in the dealers trying to make tips but the players trying to make money, even the rich ones, a couple of our players have millions of dollars but they still gamble and get upset when the cards shun them. Why? Because it’s not money they are seeking but some favor with the gambling Gods, maybe they want to win on the table because they’re not winning anywhere else in their lives. Or they are that bored. I don’t know how bored you’d have to be with your own life to spend so much time in a casino but I’m guessing it happens pretty often judging by the crowds we get. Personally I can’t hustle for tips, I can’t be a flake like that, scrounging money off of people, it’s just a degrading way to be. And my cards don’t lie either, when it’s time to win, they let you win and when it’s not, they don’t. I used to think my state of mind had something to do with what happened but now I’m rethinking this. Why should I change myself to get anything? I am the I am, and the I am doesn’t need to change. It always stays just the way it is. All the events of your life are superimposed on the I am but that doesn’t mean they mean anything. It’s only a thought that tells you something means this or that. I think I used to blame myself for people’s losses, even if I didn’t know them. I used to think, “Shit, if I was just a little friendlier or more accommodating to these rascals who are acting like such fools and sometimes just flat out slime bags, I could help them win.” But it doesn’t work, what happens around me is either you warm up to the “I am” or you reject it and when you reject it, you simultaneously reject everything, because it is the everything. Well, shouldn’t I stop rejecting too then? And the answer is NO. I have every right in the world to reject the false because it’s not the true that I’m ever rejecting. I don’t reject anyone or anything that is being authentic. It’s not even that there is a “me” that is rejecting the false, this is a misunderstanding, the “I am” is continuously rejecting the false all by itself, I’m just left with the confusion that it is. Mainly because you hear or you learned too well that “it’s all love here all the time”, if you are in your perfect state, then that’s all you will see, but no it isn’t. You will see through it all, yes, but that doesn’t make it all loving.

I got an email from this big awakening platform that I checked out. I like to see what’s out there, what’s going on but they wanted me to pay for it and so I let it go. I guess there was an option to get it for free but I was like, “Nah, thanks but no thanks, I got my own system here.” Anyways they still send emails and I happened to glance the first line that said, “Nothing has to change for you to be happy.” I just thought, “Man, who is writing this shit? Everything has to change for you to be happy, not nothing, for one you have to change so that’s not nothing either.” What a bad message though, so irresponsible, it’s really a cop out for the people who want to think they’re waking up when they are really still just sitting there doing nothing. That’s pretty sad if you ask me, because people are very confused, and they are looking for answers, but they always find the wrong ones because the wrong ones are the ones that get all the air time. Of course, it begs the question if you can be happy if nothing changes, let’s say your external life doesn’t change, can you still be happy? Maybe on that level, it’s a yes, you can, you can resign yourself to whatever is happening and just surrender to it, but if you were actually surrendering to it, something would change, so the whole premise doesn’t even make sense. I think the bottom line is always to keep falling deeper down the rabbit hole because the obstruction is always just an illusion you believe in, and so that’s not doing nothing, that’s destroying another illusion, which is quite a different thing. Changing your mind isn’t as easy as just saying you are doing it. A shift in mind can take quite the force of will and focus. Effort is required in a way that makes the effort required for lets say maybe building a fucking house look like child’s play. It’s infinitely easier to just bulldoze a building so you can build some new structure in the physical realm than it is to remove shit that lives inside of you, and thinks to some extent it is you, or has always been you. These are very different operations, the inner world for instance doesn’t work with the same dynamics, and most of them, these inner dynamics are not on board with creating something new no matter how much you think they ought to be, because I don’t know maybe you think you’d welcome it or it’s in your best interest to do so, let me tell you they don’t care. There are forces that are hidden and some that aren’t but either way, you’re like a tiny fish trying to will itself up and out of a net that’s been closing in on it for decades and that net is just your whole world, the one you know.

So it turned out, I wasn’t actually sick or if I was, it got kicked out of here rather quickly. I heard too that people at work were sick. They described not being about to move for three to four days and had to miss quite a lot of work. Me, no, I had one day that I didn’t feel so great but I made it through my shift no problem. Energy drinks are sometimes the deciding factor there but then I basically need one everyday in that place. Even so I was feeling better very quickly, not dying after all. That seemed heartening on some level. Our dog wasn’t so lucky. My son’s dog quit eating this week, or very little. He’s got a vet appointment in one day, so we’re waiting for that, maybe he’s got the same malady as the other dog, we don’t know, but we’re going to find out. At any rate, that took my attention off myself. I got up and spent time trying to feed her. Then I took her for a walk which really perked her up. She started to play with the couple new toys I got her for awhile, actually when I laid down to take a nap she just went ahead and destroyed one of them. I got up to find stuffing everywhere. I just hope she didn’t eat it. I’d like to think she’s smarter than that. The reason we have to wait for the vet visit is we’re going to a place that doesn’t cost an arm and a leg. I guess that’s where sensible people go who don’t want an extra bill as large as their mortgage just to get their dog a little health exam and treatment. i don’t think I’m cheap either. A hundred bucks used to cover the exam and the treatment about five or six years ago. How it got ten times more expensive is really a testament to the insanity of humanity because vets are really more like gangsters now, and not the sweet little pet whisperers they once were.

Let’s be really clear here maybe for once, and just say that all we can really know for sure is “I am”, nothing after this is true. So saying “I am a vet and I can help your pet” is either a lie, or a statement made based on a person’s experience with doing so which either way is but a fantasy. I know I can’t really say it myself so I’ve got to find someone else who can. You’re willing to go along with the charade because in your heart, you love your pet, they’re sweet and loyal, and deserve the best you can offer them. That’s how I think about it. I know if I have to sacrifice something in order for a living being whether that’s our dog or my daughter to feel better, I’m going to do it. Once you know that there is only the “I am” it is impossible to be selfish with those you love. I can be selfish all day long with all the other egos running around on the planet but my attachments to the living entities that grace my life aren’t just a reason to live, they are life. That’s also how I can endure almost anything, and I don’t stop searching or excavating my limiting beliefs if that’s what I need to keep doing.

I was watching an interview on YouTube with Zelenskyy the Ukrainian president and the Diary of a CEO guy. This CEO guy comes off as very genuine which I suppose is actually how his channel is so popular. People crave this type of human investigation and the inner truths that his questions try to penetrate. I found Zelenskyy’s dream of life somewhat fascinating, first off, in talking so candidly about his life and experiences, I ended up really liking him. He didn’t seem to me to be the corrupt guy some media painted him out to be, actually he seemed more like some regular guy who was thrown into the battle of his life. The fact that he dreamt up the whole charade seems completely impossible, but that’d be the truth of this entire world and there’s no escaping the Truth when you know it. Of course, dreams intersect so it’s not just his dream but the dream of many beings. The main takeaway I got from the entire interview was that either he’s an excellent liar and presenter of false experience or he’s just another hapless traveler who is trying to navigate his dream without actually knowing he’s in one and I’m leaning towards the later. His apparent honesty when he was describing what it was like in the moment he found out Ukraine was being invaded by thousands of Russian soldiers and armor seemed pretty spot on, just what a normal human reaction might look like, both internally and externally. Actually his own personal story made sense, that’s why it was so believable. When he said something to the effect of, “I’d never in my life seen such things before”, I believed him because seriously, “Who fucking has?” When it comes to war scenes only the past generations have memories of them, and probably those are very vague at this point. The fact that these inner war scapes can be revived within the human dream is what interests me most. It’s almost like a huge inner human pattern that can infect millions of people is always still active and just waiting in the wings of human imagination to play out once more. The fact that they’ve managed to hold the Russian’s off to some extent, to keep them from taking over the entire country seems to me a matter of dreaming now, not some military expertise, they had the heart to hold onto to what was theirs, their very way of life. That’s a pretty big motivation compared to the other side, which is just to pillage and destroy. Maybe the heart has the upper hand, or it should, it seems to be working in this scenario pretty well. Zelenskyy seemed to understand Putin’s mindset to some degree. He was having a different dream, one where the military and a countries power to persuade or dictate events based on its own identity and security had the utmost importance. I used to think, man, just give it up already, just let Russia take over, they’re too big or too mighty, you can’t win against them but now I’m like, “No, fucking fight, fight till the end if you have to.” The heart can win, that’s the only way it works around here. Everything else will fall away. The fact that it’s only dreams though seems a little ominous. I can never forget that things are never what they seem, and yet, many can dream them just this way, as if everything is exactly what it seems to be. Maybe if war is for something, it’s a huge reminder that tomorrow you might lose everything, there’s no guarantee that you’ll be here or that your family will still be here or that your country will be here. It is all at risk of loss every single moment of every single day so if you fail to cherish it now, you may never get another chance if fate decrees this. So how mad do you want to be now that your child failed to pick up his fucking toys? It doesn’t just become silly, the rift between actual reality and what we think matters can’t even be crossed. You can’t fucking dot the i’s and expect it to make a fucking word. It’s not going to. It’s either you say or see the word as it is now, or you never will. I know that’s all a metaphor, but that’s the only way I know how to say it. Everything else, all the spiritual literature in the world won’t mean anything, it’s not sophisticated or even heavenly, there’s no higher meaning that means more than just being in your fucking life as it is unfolding and responding to this as if you already know how fucking precious it really is. There’s no waiting for next week or graduation to celebrate, fuck all these things, if that’s what you’re waiting for you’ll wait forever because waiting itself is an obstacle.

So Toon made it to the vet and we found out she had hook worms. Damn, I was like what the fuck is that? Well, it’s a thing so now she’s being dewormed but that felt freaky as hell. I guess they can live in the dirt so now I’m tasked with cleaning up the backyard of all debris. I have some natural insect sprays I already bought last year. I was going to use them at the start of summer but my daughter said they could be toxic for dogs so I didn’t. It says they are not toxic which is how they are natural but just to be on the safe side, instead of letting Toon out the back, I got a long retractable leash and I’ll just let her out the front until it’s totally dry out there or maybe it rains. I’m not sure which at the moment but we’ll see. I can tell you this, this dog, which is not so little anymore, no at 6 months she’s 44lbs, has truly grown on me. Since my son is working she spends her days with me and let me tell you, she is one sweet thing. There is literally not a mean bone in her body, it’s just pure love with this one. Poor baby though with the worms. It’s creepy some of the shit that goes down in this place that’s for sure.

Other than that, it’s my days off now. Tonight at work felt excruciating long for some reason, probably because it was craps and literally no one could win. I spent 8 hours watching people lose their money, no joke. It was weird too how they kept coming back for more like they maybe thought the whole operation would suddenly turn around and give it all back. It didn’t. We made good tips but we lost a lot of bets too, so we could have really done well if the dice would have rolled differently. It’s weird to think about how they didn’t. Was there some cause? I just don’t know, maybe it was the tension. I could feel it in the air, just this grasping at nothing. I think the hardest part for me is just this intuition, this sense that all these people standing around are really suffering. They think this game, winning money can fill that hole they feel within, can soothe the doubt they live with constantly, this hope surrounds them and leads them astray at the same damn time. They want life I know but can’t get it. I’m feel completely compassionate to this but also there’s the sense that there’s no way to reach them. Their worlds are locked in around them like narrow tunnels that don’t lead out but further into their own delusions and they will stay in there till the end. There’s no escape for any of them. I don’t think so, and maybe that’s what is really so disturbing for me, because it’s not the money. The money is just the symbolism the collective beliefs are presenting. What I think happens is every person is full of beliefs, and these beliefs are creating a world for them to live in. Most people mistake this world for reality, when in reality, it’s just their mind which is projecting it. So how is my own mind projecting my own reality? What do I believe that keeps me going to this job? Oh, I don’t know just my bank account right? Is there a way to change even that I wonder? Do I just see what I believe I will see there? Geez, if so, I’m up for seeing some bigger numbers like pronto. Hmmn, it’s something to think about. I’m going to be thinking about that one, ALOT, because I’m pretty sure it’s only up to us to decide what to believe and what not to believe. There must be a way. If there is, I aim to find it. I think I have to.

I went to this spiritual group online again, just one more time. I don’t think I could go back. They were all talking about ailments as if it was just a natural part of life. This struck me twice this week, another time I saw someone I used to be friends with and sat with her and couple other people. She also knew my now deceased friend Melissa at least briefly we all hung out together probably more than five years ago, so I brought it up that I couldn’t believe she was gone. It just seemed crazy. What all this stuff really exposed for me was that all these people were talking about doctors, this treatment, this ailment, and it was how they were talking about them. They spoke as if they had first hand knowledge that everything they were saying was real. This one had that relative who died of this disease, and that one knew someone who was suffering from something, the list of disease riddled utterances got rattled off as if this was all just a normal part of life, basically just something you wouldn’t ever really need to investigate because the idea that the numbers don’t lie, made it true. But then I saw the tunnel around them, the world they agreed was the world, they thought they were sharing in this thing that they feel is the world they live in, and they think it’s some stationary thing across the board so to speak, that certain things are unescapable because maybe everyone they know experiences them and talks about doing so, and there’s literally no discrimination of any of it. They don’t question their worlds at fucking all. Questioning isn’t happening with them. It just basically felt astonishing to me on some level that you’d just take the word of anyone or anything you see or saw, and absorb it as some undeniable life Truth. The absorption factor was clearly visible to me for some reason. Things are literally absorbed into your mind and find some niche within and become lodged there. The task for me is to see what got lodged where and when and to remove it. Of course, I’ve always felt I was already doing this, but I think on some level there really has to be such a thorough housecleaning, the job takes what it takes. It’s not a matter of getting rid of the house, it’s a matter of reassembling it in a way that works for you because you and your life are that house and you’re living within it.

I just want to say this, I’ve long since stopped any kind of poor me stories I might have had about my life and the fact that I’m still working at my age at the job I am. I had this chance to be with people of much greater financial means, and leisure and I think on some level, it has actually served me and strengthened me in ways that I’m just now appreciating. For one my body still works, at work I have to perform multiple tasks at once, sometime simultaneously, people often comment how amazing it is that I can have such a handle on it all which is often superior to many others. I often bring a calm to what I’m doing that is just some sense of ease that I don’t even have to think about, it’s just there naturally. I don’t really get stressed. My stress if I had any comes in the form of worrying about the well being of those I’m dealing to. I think I’ll probably quit that. Why should I worry about them? Is there anything to do about it? Of course, they often look upset, they speak it too, and they might look to my eyes for some sympathy in this regard, like why should they have to endure what is happening but how am I to know this? They obviously bring it on themselves anyway. No one is forcing anything on anyone but the broader picture isn’t even the gambling, it’s the tunnel of reality they are stuck in. If it wasn’t this, it might be something worse, who knows? But I can’t help them with any of it, there is nothing you can do for someone stuck in the tunnel but to let them live it out from there. There’s no reason to even try to spring them, that’d just be futile, no one is springing anyone else if you ask me. A person has to do the work, which is not something most are willing to do, they just aren’t, it’s not a matter of choice, it’s more a matter of impossibility. This sucks obviously but what’s really annoying is how they try to emotionally pull you into their predicament as if you held some answers for them. I mean I don’t know, maybe I do have some answers but I’m unwilling to share them. It’s not like even if I did it would be a welcome discussion, they don’t want to know how to awaken, they want to know how to win with gambling, and what’s even crazier is here I am feeling this angst for them, when my own financial situation is probably a hundred times more dire then theirs could ever be. Not that it’s actually dire, but they are spending an amount of money not once but multiple times per night on a craps table which far exceeds what I’ll even live on for the next two weeks, sometimes the entire month or two even. I’m not sure what to even make of it except this: I must be dreaming it this way. There is no other explanation. Not here because I know. I’ve seen how it is and you can’t back out of that no matter which way you look. Where I once used to doubt myself, I don’t anymore because I see it plain as day. The world is like a matrix of emanations and strange things, including other people are not like they are but how we imagine they are. So all this is just in me, I am hallucinating my entire life right now the same way anyone does. That is the way it is here.

As for YouTube, I’ve decided against it. I don’t want to be a public figure, in fact, I don’t want to be anyone’s figure, just want to do my own figuring and leave it at that. One things for sure, I don’t want to wake anyone up, not even sure how you’d want to try that unless you’d been deluded into thinking you now had something nothing else did. I’m not saying that this seeing can’t be valuable on some level, but for me that’s a personal thing, not sharable at all. This writing only works because the person isn’t visible while doing it. Once the person is visible as it would be on a video, you can’t do the same thing. Talking just doesn’t work the same way. So that’s that, not going to add to the YouTube delusion I guess. Shit there’s so much shit on there now, it’s a wonder anyone ever opens the app to look at it. I like the music but I can tell you anything else I look at usually goes through a filter that just kind of says, “Wow, look at that shit”, and then it goes right into a slot that says, “If you ever want to be reminded of how insanity works and what it looks like, just remember this. it’s almost too easy.” But, it’s time to end this one. I’ve already got something else to write about.