You're a Hard Eight If I Say You Are

I got a new badge at work. It happens every two years just a renewal type of thing, but for some reason my new one wouldn’t let me clock in so I had to get the bosses to do it for me which seemed off, just somehow too inconvenient even for me. Then I was on my day off and I get a text to come in half an hour early so we can fix it but that was around the same time that I realized both my son and I had a dermatology appointment in the afternoon which was going to make my logistics very tight. It wasn’t going to be a typical start to my week where I have time to adjust my mindset to another week of work so that felt overwhelming on some level but that’s life. Stress will find you sometimes. Sometimes you will feel like you’re in a hurry or that you’ve really got to deal with something. The reason I’m going to the dermatologist is because I’ve had this little circle on my forehead and it just keeps crusting over but never going away and it’s been at least four months now. My oldest son had sore on his neck, so he’s just going in for a follow up from his first visit when they gave him a cream that made it go away. I try to make appointments together so we aren’t going somewhere multiple times.

It’s very hard to know whether all science is just imagination and belief or whether or not they’ve figured out how some things work and what can affect it. Personally I think there’s a real combination where a little of this works with that and makes up this result. It’s not solid science because it doesn’t work all the time and it’s not right all the time but it’s not nothing either. If it was when I lost my front tooth there’d be nothing there right now and there is. Whoever developed the implant did me a favor, I know that. All this being said if your own point of awareness has shifted to another position where different rules apply it can get dicey. Here I just figure since I’m not having any luck with making this weird spot disappear, I might as well try something else. To be fair I only used tea tree oil on it, but that’s worked on other things for me, just not this time. I feel like I’ve let it go for quite a while but I’m not worried either. I’m not as careless when it comes to my children, I generally follow most of the prescribed medical rules but with myself there’s more than a little leeway so we’ll see. It’s free for me to do it so why not? From what I’ve gleaned on my own, it might be a pre-cancerous sun spot that is easily iced off. Of course, I myself take no stalk in the word pre anything. This is surely conjecture at best and maybe even a marketing tactic at worst. Whenever some implied fearful condition is referenced from something that’s doing nothing now, the hair on the back of my neck always stands up and I smell a rat. I just figure half the world isn’t sick with something for no reason. It’s not just all confusion and the backing up of energy, the way we live, the food we consume, all play a role in over all health.

Anyway, that’s my life right now. I was off today and the temperature at six pm when I went for my walk run wasn’t 105 but an even 100. I went four miles when I was done. It didn’t feel like a lot nor too little either. What irritates me a little lately is that I don’t go out and do it everyday like I used to. Just ten years ago some little four mile jaunt would have felt like an easy thing to me and to be honest, I still don’t find it hard, but back then I’d regard it as some type of better than nothing day. I liked it better when I was out there pushing the limits of what I was capable of doing. I don’t remember ever checking the temperature but I know it was probably hotter as there were times I was over heating from a single lap of the loop I do and I used to keep a sprinkler on in my front yard so as I was passing by I could soak myself in it. Then dripping wet, I’d just keep running oblivious to how it might have looked, but of course, I was in some great shape back then as well and I was probably running a lot faster than I do these days. How I managed to do all that almost everyday and still worked my forty hours is anyone’s guess. Curiously, I remember the running not the job. Most of my running occurred before I woke up though. There was a need in me to do it, to push as hard as I could like there was something to prove either to myself or something else. I don’t really know but most of my runs ran about two hours on a good day in summer. In winter I usually edged off because I don’t like the cold. I have an intolerance for it. Maybe in some past life I froze to death or I got it from my mother when they were forced to flee their home and basically lived and survived the winter. I don’t know what it was like back then but when it’s cold enough to snow it’s usually very cold. I’ve been to Germany in winter and I can tell you it felt a lot colder there than it ever has here, over there the cold makes your feet go numb even when you’re wearing warm winter boots and you’ve only been outside for fifteen minutes. Maybe the heightened fear of war is what really kept them alive, fear in some extreme, as in life or death, makes your awareness, your will to survive, skyrocket in unexpected ways.

It’s weird how things are passed on, but I think all of it is. I think every single pattern you live out before you know any better is a sensation repeat from those who went before you. The events are different only because the times and conditions have changed, but even then, you’d be surprised at how similar your actions and the situations you find yourself in will be. Of course, you always have to take into account that you’ve gotten a combination but it’s usually not so different because likes attract not opposites like you’ve heard. My second husband and my mother’s first were basically identical personalities, both insane, selfish, and not interested in raising the children they fathered. Would that just be coincidence or does it coincide to the fact that my mother never had a father because he died in the war so none of us did? I did have a step father but I always knew he wasn’t my father, and I’d tell him this anytime he tried to impose some rule on me. Later on my mother would recount to me some terrible interactions she had with a boyfriend my grandmother had once. I think part of the patten is passed on somehow through the DNA. The DNA perhaps coincides with the available points of awareness you’ll be able to live from if you don’t ever find out how to get out of the point your parents were perceiving from. It seems to be like this or maybe it skips a generation, you don’t get your parents point but your grandparents. This would actually make more sense, since kids from very stable homes have turned into little monsters, of course, just saying a home is stable doesn’t mean much. It could be that the reason it’s so stable is that the parents have suppressed themselves into a type of coma and then here come the kids to shake it all up. The kids always act as some kind of mirror or reflection. It’s the kids who can trigger a person’s inner demons far easier than anyone else. I’m always reminded of this when I think of the guy meditating in his room. His little daughter comes in to ask him something and he blows up as if she just threw a glass of ice water on his parade screaming something like, “Can’t you see I’m meditating?” Really in a case like this the meditation is actually working, it’s releasing your inner demon and the whole knock on the door is planned as a wake up call to witness your own hypocrisy. Here’s a guy who thinks he’s this enlightened or more enlightened type of person and he loses his shit when he should have been finding it. This type goes out wearing a peace T-shirt and talks about his meditation practice to anyone who will listen but he has zero patience for the child who might teach him the most about life. I’ve heard it said that what you do in your own home, the kindness and generosity of spirit you can display there is your only true measure since the people closest to you are the only ones you actually truly care about. Showing kindness out in the world with people you don’t know is more of a performance art that many take on as an identity. Well, I guess I don’t have that problem. I’d do anything for my kids and maybe nothing for you. You can find your own way is what I figure.

So I went to my appointment and I was told, “We don’t like pink skin that doesn’t heal around here.” I was like, “Okay, what does that mean?” She said she wanted to do a biopsy to check for cancerous cells. I was hesitant at first. I said, “Wow, well what do you think would happen if I did nothing?” I could feel her shift inside, as if I was being utterly ridiculous or childish. That didn’t really throw me off since I expect this from all professionals when I challenge their game. The telling thing was I reluctantly agreed since I figured it would come back fine anyway and if it didn’t the fix isn’t all that bad either. Maybe there’s some truth to the whole malady, I have no way of really knowing but I’d rather not die by having my skin eaten up by some abnormality that was easily remedied right now either. That would just be gross. And stupid.

So we came home and I went to work with a big round band aid on my forehead. I tried to get to work early but the traffic didn’t cooperate. Weirdly enough just for the fun of it, I tried to clock in and my badge was working just fine again anyway so that problem was already solved. As for the scraping, because they immediately slapped a bandaid on it, I didn’t even know what it looked like underneath it until I got home and honestly except for the big goose egg that developed from the pain medicine they shot into area first, it looks like I scratched myself. That seemed fine enough since I’ve seen some truly knocked about faces that go back to the way they were. Our bodies truly are amazing that way. I think maybe it’s all perception, once we forget anything happened, the signs that something did go with it. If the biopsy comes back clear then what? I had asked the doctor this and she said nothing, the scraping part would have taken care of it, so that was another reason I was like, “All right go ahead then” because doing nothing didn't seem to be working. If it doesn’t then I guess they have to cut around it, and I have to get some bangs. I wondered if they’d make me look younger. Bangs to me seem like kind of a kid hairdo, but I mean let’s face it, there’s no benefit to being vain about one’s looks either. Maybe that was on my mind because strangely enough some man came up to me several times during the night at work and told me I was very attractive. I didn’t really know what to make of that, and just said, “Thanks.” If I am still somewhat attractive at this age, I’ll take it because who wants to be hideous? I can’t think of a reason for that.

The whole night at work I felt like some type of zombie. I was so tired I felt like passing out but what I noticed is no one asked me why I had this unsightly bandaid in the middle of my forehead. It’s good to notice how no one actually notices you, at least in that environment, no, those people just look at the chips and the cards and that’s about it. A gorilla could come up to deal the game and as long as the cards are good, I doubt it would even register as a non human. I got out about twenty minutes early, just someone asks you if you’re ready to go because the boss sent them to you and my answer was yes. I went to thank my boss for the consideration, and he’s the only one that noticed the bandaid so I told him the gist of it, that it was getting tested and all that, then added quite spontaneously, “It’s going to be nothing because I just don't do that shit.” He gave me a big smile and a fist bump to that and I came home. I do work with some very cool people. I’m not sure if I ever really emphasize how truly cool most of them seem to me these days, but yeah, you just develop a different attitude when you’ve got some altitude from the whole life charade.

I woke up too early and didn’t sleep well. My stomach was feeling kind of upset probably because I had some refried beans with chips and salsa as a snack before bed. I’m pretty sure the beans are what did it, just not good for the digestion or a little too good. At any rate, I wasn’t sleeping so I got up. I thought I might go for a walk since I had time but then I was too tired and after being up awhile I decided it was smarter to take a nap since I have an earlier shift today. Being tired in a place like a casino just doesn’t work. All the forces will work against you but maybe that goes for all public places, it’s the tiredness that does it.

So another night went by, and still no one even noticed this huge bandaid, nothing like, “Hey, what happened to you?” Maybe most would see that as a lack of caring, but for me it’s different. To me it’s an indication that I am just a highly insignificant piece of the puzzle there and the more invisible I am the more I like it. I prefer to live my life in the shadows now where no one really takes any notice of me. And truly, why or how should anyone take notice of anyone else? I don’t think they should. There’s absolutely no reason that I can see that elevates any one being over any other one, not in a knowledgable way or anything else. A person, any person should be able to stand alone with the Truth. I’m not even saying I don’t sometimes enjoy other people clearly I do but needing anyone to notice me just doesn’t happen anymore. I guess I’m so totally okay with what I know I am, that if I ever make it to complete invisibility that would be fine too.

Of course, I’m not totally invisible since I have a role to play in my own family to the people I value. I don’t really think anything can top the feeling I get when I think about how lucky I was to receive the role of mother. If there’s an honor higher than this, I don’t see it. No amount of money or prestige really means shit next to loving your own children so completely that they might as well be yourself. Personally I think if this realm is ever to come to any sort of equilibrium or easing of suffering, it would have to come from the mothers of the world stepping up and carrying out the job the way I believe it was meant to be done. Maybe in the beginning when the children are young it’s a little bit of a one way street, and you have to work much harder than the society would tell you to. No, you don’t get any breaks, you don’t take a night off to pamper yourself or have a night on the town. I’m not judging anyone who’s done that because before I knew better I thought and did that too on occasion. It was really only after my wake up call that I saw how dissing and disrespectful that was to them because it signals that they are a burden, something to escape from or take a break from when they’re not. They are really just yourself, so it’s not even the children you are running from but yourself. Children will consistently call out your own inadequacies. That’s what you don’t want to face twenty four seven, your own shit. Because of the stupid culture we live in, mothers are forever torn between how they intuitively know they should be and how they learn they ought to be, and it doesn’t line up. It doesn’t work.

Children are however much smarter than anyone gives them credit for. It’s the children who are so finely tuned that they pick up on every nuance and let loose what they feel and sense there. That’s the real reason the child walked in on her father’s meditation, that’s not just a mishap but an alignment they naturally have to carry out. Teaching a child or ordering them to be polite or well behaved is therefore really doing them not only a great injustice or disservice but it might be called a taming of the great consciousness we come as. They wouldn’t even need a teaching if they didn’t learn all they know how to be and do from their parents or caregivers. A child throwing a temper tantrum is really a child showing you what is inside of you, which is always rage and confusion from having been tamed yourself. They are feeling what you won’t because you’ve buried it not from them but from yourself. Every single time a parent gets triggered by their child and feels anything uncomfortable or otherwise, it is the child who is trying to facilitate the parents undoing or awakening. A child will uncover your fake ness because they will call it out, they feel inauthenticity immediately. You can’f fool them, that’s the real reason you can buy them an ice cream and five minutes later they’re acting like they hate you. They feel how you’re trying to buy them with trinkets instead of being what they need you to be because that’s so much easier but they don’t want easy, they want real. As they should, children are always as they should be, it’s only the adults in the room who are too fake, too full of bullshit to tolerate. So when they push your buttons, they are trying to wake you up to reality because they know it. They still know it, and it’s you that have wandered off into the darkness.

My son didn’t get the job he interviewed for. I said then it wasn’t the right one. I guess he’s still being considered for one in Kansas, but who wants to live in Kansas? I just told him the next right thing will appear when it’s ready to which it will because it always does. If I had my way, none of my children would sell their time and energy to anyone or anything, they’d just use it for themselves. I hope I get my way or maybe my wish, whatever you want to call it. Regardless of the things I see around me, the insidious ways we’ve learned to live, I always stand my ground on this. I’m not saying I don’t want them to work but if and when they do I just hope they are able to guard their own energies and follow a path that is truly their own and not some horrific version of a life that almost everyone agrees to adhere to at their own detriment.

So I didn’t walk/run for two days since time didn’t allow for it, or I didn’t allow time for it, same thing really, but I woke up with extra today and went out. Let me tell you at around two in the afternoon it seems hotter than when the sun is heading down. I didn’t put on sun screen because for one I don’t think the sun is my enemy, and two, I didn’t think I’d be out there long enough to get burned. It was weird though probably because of that spot but the whole time I was out there I was thinking about how my daughter would admonish me for not wearing sunscreen, you know, if she found out. I’m not saying you can’t get burned either, surely you can. I did it at the beginning of summer when I was mowing the lawn and was out there for too long. It wasn’t that bad though, I think it was red but didn’t peel later. I was also out there remembering how when I was around 18, I took a trip to the Bahamas with my parents and sister. If someone told me to put some sun screen on, I don’t remember this. All I know is it took about an hour and I was burnt to a crisp. My entire body was in severe pain and redness and it would actually take about a month to finally disperse. What I was wondering today is, why didn’t my own mother or step father demand to smear me down or make a point of informing me of the dangers? This happened on the first day so the rest of the trip was basically a nightmare for me. More so I don't remember anyone else getting burned, just me, and to make matters worse, I distinctly remembering a total lack of concern for what I considered a little bit of a dire situation thereafter, but I literally got nothing, maybe just some annoyance at best. Looking back, I think it's fair to say I was already invisible but just didn't know it which is probably how it bothered me so much. My only goal thereafter was to procure whatever alcohol I could to remove myself from the pain of my situation which to be fair was more than just the sunburn. A couple of German guys that were either friends of someone my parents knew or basically strangers seemed to join the adult company my parents were a part of. I instantly fell in love with the blond one although he was significantly older than me. He wasn’t interested. He was treating me as if I were his little sister which was kinder than I was used to being treated. I guess I might have professed my love to him at some point and he let me down as easy as he could saying something like I should try to grow up first. Of course, I was crushed but more than that, I was really looking for a way out of my situation, which had always seemed hostile to me. In my mind, a trip across the ocean might do it and if I could procure this guys adoration how much the better. He gave me his address that I might write him when we parted. I think I did write him with some request that he let me come live with him, but that request was denied, for good reasons on his part, obviously. What really stood out to me though was this: how tender was my heart back then that I should fall in love in a single day? I actually think if he’d have said yes, come and be with me, I would have given him my full devotion just like that, just that easily. Shit, not so now, the last thing on my mind these days would be pleasing some man I barely know or even one that I do. That actually seems horrifying. I’m lucky now if I can tolerate even a few minutes conversation with most of the men I meet. I think I just look at them as if they are too sleepy to converse with, after all what nonsense is this? Is it just gibberish, some weirdly learned mating rituals? Well I mated, I got the kids, and as for the mating part, if reincarnation does occur, hopefully I’ll never have to live through that again. And there it is again, the pattern. I always wondered how my grandmother never remarried as she was quite young when my grandfather died, something like 26 years old. She had one or two shitty boyfriends my mother described and then no-one just like me. Of course, this sounds like reality, but it’s not, a dream is not the same as reality.

It’s funny though the memories that can be uncovered during a 33:33 minute walk/jog which was just under two miles long. It all seemed hotter with the sun in the sky, but I checked and it was only 95, five degrees lower than my last run which I did after 6 pm. My energy felt a little low throughout it all as well. There was no spring in my step. I walk down one half of the loop and jog the other half although I sprint towards the end of that mark for about 20 seconds. I think now when I think I’m sprinting it is probably the same speed I used to keep during the whole run before. I guess I have really slowed down. Ten years from 50’s to 60’s can maybe do that. Does anyone warn you about that? Maybe my mother tried to when she started sending me a tub of Oil of Olay every month more than a few years ago. I never really used it though because she does and it has done nothing for her wrinkles. I would say on some level it’s a type of resistance, don’t let me get old and wrinkled, but shit, usually it’s already happened. You can’t fight time that’s for sure. Any fighting of time and age will only backfire, mainly because you’ll notice your own decline, this slow crawl towards death will be feared, and there’s no point to that.

This weekend felt brutal. The casino felt like a true nightmare to me. The level of drunk and disorderly seemed especially bad which it always does when it coincides to a lack of generosity from the players. It’s like you can easily tolerate almost anything when they’re tipping abundantly and when they aren’t, you’re just hoping by some small twist of fate they’ll maybe pass out and get carted off which is too rare to even hope for. Usually the drunker and louder they get, the longer they stay, they are filled with a type of stamina but I don’t worry about that. It’s my own aversion that I’m confronted with because who is judging? Who is wanting to do and be somewhere else? I already know how it can fluctuate so I know there’s only one thing to do about it. What’s that? Just die to this shell of a character you’re calling yourself some more, even more. The issue is always that you think you know something like the bills won’t get paid, or worse, the kids won’t eat, and blah, blah, blah. The details of a dream don’t matter or mean anything. Of course, it will fight you, it says stuff like, “But I’ve got dreams, other dreams, I’ve got plans, I’m supposed to be getting out of this mess.” And apparently not, not right now anyway, because this is where you think you are. The whole crew seems deflated when the players aren’t generous or just seem downright stingy. We had one guy who had a lot of money and the only thing he did was throw in a dollar chip for the whole table to bet on eleven for every hour or so of service. I think it rolled once to our favor, so that’s fifteen dollars to split between five people but wait, at the end of the night, he threw me a quarter which is five bucks each. I mean a guy like that, short, bald, basically ugly, with a pretty twenty something girl wearing a four carat diamond on her finger by his side doesn’t inspire confidence that your own spiritual path is doing anything for you. You can judge all you want but he’s the one enjoying life. He’s the one eating in a five star restaurant, and flying around the world. He wasn’t even rude or demanding, actually pretty polite for that genre of character just cheap. On a better day, he might have been the one to make the whole night feel like a success for us, and I’m sure our service would have been much more attentive, but that’s not how it went. Instead, I just felt like I was standing inside some weird vortex of insanity of which I couldn’t extricate myself from. Surely, I should use my mind to do something different, but what would that be? The world of financial freedom still eludes me. I think Jed warned this could happen. Somewhere in his books, he says this whole spiritual awakening might be marked with ten or more years of material poverty. On that note, maybe I’m getting close to the end of it because where is the freedom? Is it only death that will free me, finally forever, of the dream I wound up in?

I woke up and watched a video on YouTube of some young couple traveling around Budapest, seeing the sights and sampling the cuisine. I watched a few on the vegan restaurants they have there as well, sort of a vegan tour of the city. They seemed a far cry from my own world of work and grocery stores. My daughter just asked me, “When are we going food shopping again?” and knowing what my bank account reflects I just said, “I don’t know, probably not soon.” It felt depressing. How long might one hope for a change? Shouldn’t I just give up already? And the answer to that would be yes, just give up over and over again, there’s nothing there, no “I”, no life to save like you think there is. So that’s what I did, just let it all disperse. Dreams come and go, but they always go. Nothing stays, and that’s good to remember. Your capacities for dreaming will determine the rest, and maybe yes, you can develop this to some extent, but you can’t go where you’re not meant to go, and you can’t stay where you’re not meant to stay. Believe it or not, there are other forces in this realm which determines all that. The most you can ever do is not resist them.

I attended an online zoom yesterday which was a sort of cycling workshop for the Bengston method. It was really just a group of people who were studying or trying to implement this current of energy into their lives. I’ve talked about it before so I won’t go into it. You can look it up online if you want to know what it is. Suffice it to say that when shit looks like shit, this is the time to remember where you really are, which is basically lost in a dream and nowhere all at once. There’s no finish line, and no one is ahead of anyone else. Experiences continue to come and go and you ride them out. I’ve got one more night of work here before my days off. I thought for a minute I might go out for a walk/jog but I couldn’t muster it. My body just felt tight so instead I opted to do some stretching and some light weights. Just for fun I did a cycling session. I could see that all the things on my list had nothing to do with my work reality. They were all things that would manifest after I was completely free of this job or the need to hold any job. So I did one specifically for tonight, imagining everything that would make for a magical craps experience not just for the players but for everyone involved. And I’m getting ready for work now, so all I can do is report back with my findings and whether anything seemed to shift in a better direction or not. Always be prepared for the not since the reality always is: nothing is actually happening anyway. You’re only in a dream, but if you are, shouldn’t you be in one of your liking? I should think so, otherwise there’s no point to having created humans. If they must only follow some preordained pattern, that is the same as watching paint dry or grass grow. If you always knew what was going to play out, no exceptions, there’s simply no point to creation at all. If there is a point, it’s that this isn’t the case, a few people might still suffice to surprise and delight and hey, I’m willing. I’m ready to do it. Let me delight awareness and in return, let it delight me. Not like I got anything better going on at the moment. I enjoy the music immensely, but there’s got to be more than that. I don’t just want that, I want it all. I think I’m supposed to feel this way. I know I am. How do I know it? Because I do.

Reporting back, I have to say the night actually went down okay. The first role of the dice lasted an entire hour which is unusual and there were more generous people on it all night. We didn’t get rich but it wasn’t awful either. I’d say it was a definite improvement. I was in a fairly good mood as well. I was making jokes, and when someone bet the hard eight for me, when I had money on it, I heard myself saying, “You’re a hard eight if I say you are”, the whole table heard me, the dice were in the air and damn if it wasn’t. I was just as surprised as anyone. Maybe it was the way I said it, so spontaneously, not anything I actually crafted but just some sort of playful letting loose there. I can’t say for sure, but I think there’s actually something to it. I never forget this one line from the Jed books. I’m paraphrasing here but he says if he wanted something he couldn’t conceive of not getting it. That’s the game I’m after.

Some guy named Swami Vivekananda, no idea who that one was but he’s quoted as saying, “Take up one idea. Make that one idea your life — think of it, dream of it, live on that idea." I think it’s a good idea. That is all you’re really here for, not to awaken, not to be anything, but just to dream, but not dream just anything, to dream it your way. More on that later in my next post I’ll explore that, why we don’t do it and what’s really in the way. Until then, here’s a song.