OMG

Suffering a personal crisis that was peaking in intensity, I called the hotline. As always, they picked up on the very first ring. 
"Heaven Helper Hotline. How may heaven help you?" came the always-pleasant voice. 
"I need to talk to God"
I heard a sigh on the other end, something I had never heard before. 
"I'm soooo sorry. God is not in today"
"Not in?!" I almost yelled into the phone, but quickly remembering that it wouldn't be good to piss off God or his staff, I meekly struggled to say "Can you tell me when he will be?". My shock was so great that I could only manage to think to say this. 
"In 28 days. He's on vacation- his first one in ten thousand years"
"Okay, okay" I struggled to think. "Is Jesus in?"
"Yes- but...."
"But what?" I almost yelled into the phone again.. "He's not available?" I managed to say, then as soon as I said it, I almost kicked myself for saying something so stup.....
"That's right. He's struggling to fill God's shoes, but not even the number one son......"
"I get it. How about Moses? Or any other prophet? Apostles! I'll bet there's a few of those around! Any saints available? How about Joan Of Arc?"
"I think we can manage to get you through to somebody. There is a wait, however"
I pictured a massive heavenly call center, halos floating over cubicles as far as the eye could see, all of the hallowed ones within those glowing cubicles busy fielding calls.
"Would you mind holding?" came the ever-pleasant voice.
(What choice do I have?) "No, not at all"
There was a soft click and then the most wonderful Muzak came over the headset. I almost drifted off, as a matter of fact I must have, because when someone suddenly came on the other end of the line I was roused as if from dreamy sleep. 
"Yeah? Can I help you?" came a brusque voice over the headset. What was this?
"Yes, I'm here" I stuttered. "Who are you?”
"St. frickin' Anthony! What does it matter? Now- what's your problem?"
I was aghast that the Heaven Helper Hotline would have this kind of individual on their staff. "Is there anybody else I can talk to?" I queried this, this person. 
"Not unless you wanna wait"
"How long?"
"At our current rate of fielding questions, about two days"
I didn't want to wait that long. I needed answers right now. 
"Okay. Here's my problem. I got up this morning and figured that I didn't know the purpose of my existence”.

Which way?

Yeshi Kangrang- Unsplash.com

“So? Join the party, pal!"
I brushed off his curt 'answer' and continued. 
"It's something I've been wrestling with for years. And I've been able to deal with it for years. But sometimes...... .....I just can't get my mind off of it. Today I woke up and, with the midterms so close, I felt I had to find out. Because if things go the wrong way...."
"Speak no further, Bud. Whatever happens, it's all good"
"How can you say that? 'It's all good'? I don't think this country or my sanity is gonna make it another two years! That’s all you have to offer me?"
"Nobody here is gonna tell you anything different. We've been answering this question all day. People from the Left are about to jump off a bridge and people from the Right are stockpiling food and ammo. It ain't pretty what's happening out there, but it's all good"
“How is my undesired outcome gonna be good for me, or for the people I care about? God wouldn't tell me that!"         

"The hell he wouldn't! He's the one who gave us this morning's script! He may be on vacation, but he still has his finger on things.  “it's all gonna work out” he told us to say. “Love will prevail. It's the strongest force in The Universe. Everything comes back to the fold sooner or later. You'll see- or maybe not- but your kids will. Or maybe their kids...."
"No, no, no! It's all gonna end! The Left and the Right will never coexist in harmony! They're too far apart and are getting farther apart every day! They're gonna go to war on each other!"
"They already are”
"So- is God gonna send reinforcements, when one side or the other threatens to take over the whole country?”
  "Please, calm down....."
"I won’t calm down! I feel worse than ever!"
"Go watch Seinfeld or something. Take your mind off of it"       

If the light is green it doesn’t seem so bad

Braden Hopkins- Unsplash.com

"Are you kidding?!”
"Not at all! You guys have to learn to relax. You think God is gonna sit by and not intervene? When the time is right, well, actually before, because he's so far seeing, but from your perspective of 'when the time is right', he'll be there. Like Superman! Believe you me, were ordinary people able to turn the tide in their favor they would have long ago. Goes to show there's equal power here- sort of like a standoff. Doesn't take much to tip the scales, and God doesn't see the point in overworking any issue so he let's humans work on problems, sometimes for a long time, then he steps in and 'tink!' everything changes. He's a very good scale tipper"
"Which way?!"
"You'll find out. But remember- whichever way it goes...  ....it's all good"
  Before I could get another word of protest in, the 'saint' or whatever at the other end hung up. I tried to call back but got a busy signal. After about twenty nine more times I finally gave up. 
So I took the guy's advice. I turned on Seinfeld and found I just had to laugh. Jerry and George were in some kind of trouble that had to do with ridiculously tight streetfront parking and then damn if Kramer didn't show up and somehow exacerbate the situation. Elaine had some weird issue with returning a sweater at a high end store- a sweater she bought but never wore- and…. 
….what was I thinking about? About twenty minutes ago? 

Oh yeah- now I remember. I don't know what my existence means, and from the way things have gone- and are going- I might never will. Same for most everybody else. Maybe we're not supposed to know. We're not ready for it. In God's view, we’re Jerry, George, Kramer, and Elaine. Bumbling through life and overreacting to the twists and turns of it. It's just where we're at. 
  Things might seem dire to us, but they're not really, not yet, and there's a good chance they never will be. The maddening issues that vex us aren't going away. We've got to stay with them, in the present moment, and keep working the puzzle of life, meaning, and existence.

Stepping Back

News item: 25% of young adults say that they are 'almost constantly' online. 
Guess you have to do something before you get a job and you spend what seems to be that same amount of time at work.

Which leads to this: when your nose is pressed up against the display window of life, and you're staring at whatever is entrancing you, or if your 'nose is to the grindstone', which is the old saying about work, you're not looking around to see what else might be there and so time passes and next thing you know a day, a week, a month has gone by and "Whoa! It's November already!" you remark, as if you'd just realized something, which you have, and that is that other things have happened while you were away. 

It's at about this time that 'time out' needs to be called, but if you're not ready for it then by all means continue what you're doing but for the others there are things called weekends and vacations and even longer term things like sabbaticals and retreats. 
It's good to get away from it all for awhile because in doing so, you make room for your thoughts to come in again instead of being continuously awash in somebody else's. You actually spend some time with just yourself. Rediscovering what that is.

I've done this enough times to recognize that for the first couple of days I'm going to continue to run on momentum, and then that will cease. What comes next is restlessness and some boredom, which is hard to get through, but the payoff is some sort of extended vision quest period where I break through and enter a state of being that seems familiar, peaceful, and very comfortable. I call this breakthrough point 'arriving at yourself'. 
In this place, space, or state of mind, whatever it is, you get in touch with deeper aspects of yourself, reflect on where you've been, ask yourself what you want to do next, visualize your future, play with concepts and ideas, do research on subjects that interest you, explore possibilities, and fully rest for periods of time- which may be short or long- into states of non-thinking (which creates space for new thinking, interestingly enough). All sorts of treasure awaits. 

You're just not going to get this sort of thing after pulling a shift at work, or setting aside your 'smart' phone for an hour. You have to break the momentum of the mind, get off the fast track, pull off the information superhighway, unplug and unwind. It takes me days to do this, and all the reports I've heard from others say it takes about the same length of time for them. 
Perhaps we need this 'checking out' time more than ever now. The pace of life is so rapid these days that if you're not overworking yourself physically it's highly likely that you're overworking yourself mentally. 98% of the people in the U.S. have cellphones, and around 75% get on the internet at least once a day. We are online a lot, there's no doubt about that.

He’s got the idea

Unsplash.com

It's hard to stay offline entirely anymore so what I've done on my latest retreat is I have selectively gotten onto the internet during my retreat time. I have avoided 'busy' sites and have researched, shall I say, 'calmer' web pages. Pages with less animation, sidebars, flashy graphics, videos, etc. Just the facts, please. 
    Seems to be working very well. Insights and ideas are occurring. Good stuff is coming to mind, ideas that are invigorating, expansive, and different. I'm in control of the content, rather than the content being in control of me, and I'm liking that. 
Due to this, my attention can be fixated on rich subject matter for greater lengths of time. I have no tempting distractions in my peripheral vision that might break my concentration, and the volume on my computer is kept low or on mute. Likewise, potential home base ripples have been proactively neutralized, keeping me fully immersed in a contemplative state.

Sooner or later I will rejoin The World but until then I'm content to spend my retreat in this manner. Instead of it being Go time all the time, it's Chill time.

Does doing something like this sound good to you? If so, give a retreat a try. Customize your away time so it fits your preferences, and sink into some quiet time. It's bound to pay you dividends. 

Used To Think

When I was younger, I was in wonder a lot, and still am. The world was this big crazy machine and the older folks had it all figured out. I, too, would one day be like them, and have things all figured out, or enough things figured out to fit in. 
Well.....
Some of that figuring out has occurred, it most certainly has, but whoa- there's a lot left that I haven't figured out and at this point I strongly suspect that nobody my age has figured it all out either. Some contemporaries of mine are building airplanes, at the helm of huge corporations with tens of thousands of people under their command, and running countries.
Hope that doesn't break any young 'uns' bubbles! 
Truth is, the more we learn the more we find out that there's a lot more to learn. Yeah, we got the surface level stuff down, most if not all of us. That's the easy part. But beneath that level we start to see complexity and wonder how we could have ever been so bold or so brash as to proclaim with conviction that "I (or we) know how it works!" because while at some level that may be true, at another level it may be totally false. 
Take any big, complicated system. A modern car engine, tourism, or even preparing enchiladas. If you break it down to its component parts, simplify it in the extreme, you can say with total conviction that A plus B equals C because there are cars, tourists, and enchiladas. However, variables tend to exist inside those components so the equation becomes more like A plus B is likely to equal C. This is why every car runs differently, planes get overbooked, and there are ten thousand Mexican restaurants serving different tasting enchiladas.

Betcha every one of those jeeps runs differently

Kukuh Napaki- Unsplash.com

A lot of factors in life are hidden, not like in basic math or life, which starts out as fairly understandable but rapidly turns into theory the further into complexity you go. I think the internet runs on theory more than it does on structure anymore because of all the security patches and work-arounds that have been introduced. You could definitely say the same thing for that vague concept called 'The Economy'.
In the business world you get your rose-colored glasses taken off very quickly because there's more intrigue ('variables') going on in that environment than in Game Of Thrones. Even though you might try and figure that continuously shifting arena out you just might end up back at the beginning sometimes because things get introduced that shift loyalties, priorities, and processes drastically.

Kind of scary, how little you find you actually know when you get to be the age where you're supposed to know and people are turning to you for answers. "Hey- I don't know!" is not the response they're wanting to hear. "I can offer you some advice” you may compassionately say, "that might help you to work out the rest of the situation yourself" because you at your age know that unless you're in their exact situation you cannot accurately appraise it, nor can you take into account the many variables that exist, variables which of course they may be only partially aware of.

Which leads me to present some sage advice right now. If anybody tells you that they know it all, turn and run! Figuratively, not literally. Get a second opinion. Maybe even a third. Because everybody's take is going to be different due to the unique ways they wrestled with the universally complicated situations of raising kids, investing, running a business, dealing with coworkers, buying property, etc.. What they know might have worked exceedingly well for them but things have probably changed since then, somehow, in some way, and the same solution applied might not take this time around. 
So a bit of advice and a “Good luck!” is all I can give most people. Play the poker hand or the chess game best you can.

But for those that are interested, I would urge you to read and practice everything you can about something that is touted as ‘new’ but is actually very, very old. Manifestation is the key word. Learn everything you can about that. It just might be a game changer for you.

Tension Model

Taut is the rope that the tightrope walker treads on. It bounces some, and sways a little, but the balance bar he carries counteracts those forces and stabilizes his slow gate from one end of the rope to the other. 
In my Tension Model, think of this taut rope as a sort of bridge that connects 'realities'. 
Uneasy standoffs between people are kind of like a taut rope bridge. In contentious matters, where belief systems are highly divergent, both sides hold onto their positions with a firm grip and the continuation of any matter between them is the tightrope walker moving back and forth between fixed poles. There is little give and take occurring. Neither position is surrendering or sacrificing much, and the tightrope walker can't carry much to either side anyway, so the bridge stays more or less the same. It's limited in capacity, narrow in scope.
But what if one end was loosened? Advantage may then seem to be gained for one of the parties as the bridge would disappear and a new way of reaching the other side could be be made, perhaps an easier way (or a more arduous and time consuming way). 

Might go all twelve rounds

neonbrand- Unsplash.com

Tension between positions is a 'fact' of life that most of us are born into. There is a distance between what we desire and how that desire can be fulfilled and usually acts of sacrifice are called for on the less powerful one's part, the expenditure of a great deal of time and effort, in order to reach the other end of the rope, the place where goals are realized. There is the 'where we are', and there is 'the other end of the rope', where our desire awaits us. 
But what if achieving our desires was as simple as letting go of any rope completely and trusting that what we desire will come about? We make no physical or mental effort to reach the goal other than that which is necessary at the time. Initially, the goal must be visualized as clearly as possible, and any contrarian thoughts about achieving the goal must be vanquished to the best of one's ability. After that, the goal begins to make it way towards you as you hold it persistently in mind, though you may not see any 'movement'. 
Action steps may be called for from time to time to bring that which is desired ever closer, but this involvement by you occurs only when prompted, and by 'prompted' it means you have the undeniable urge to perform the next action step. This urge to do can't be mistaken if you pay attention to the difference between feeling the need to perform an action step and restlessness. They are two very different things. 
Lastly, you stand by, ready to receive. That which you desire eventually lands on your doorstep, or you step into it, only because you wanted it and did the necessary at-the-time steps to realize it. 

In a tension free existence, there is never any real battling involved. The only battle you ever have is with yourself.

Who Dat?

Who dat thinking, judging, worried all time? Where he at? 
In body here. That's where. Somewhere inside. I go look, see if I can find him. 
I look. He not there. So where he at?
Maybe I look again. Closer. 
And still closer. He good hide. No can find. 
Me no educated, though. Maybe I read book. Book tell me. 
I read book. Still no can find. So more books I read.
Still he chatter. Like monkey. 
Maybe try process. Think outsmart him 'cuz I know he hiding in there.
Hmm.... he pretty smart. Maybe he outside, and I think he in!
I know- he here, but he invisible. 'Cuz he talk 'n I hear. 
So I no think! He go away! Ha ha!

Man of many disguises

Pierrick Van Troost- Unsplash.com

Oop. Now he back. And he be back strong. Maybe he mad. 
I go workshop, process with master. 
He go away much longer, but still come back. Now what I do?
More I meditate. Still he there.
Hmm..... I give him name, call him ego.
He want be my friend. I say I don't need no fren' like dat!
(Sigh) He still there. Maybe I make him friend, give him room in back of house.
He like back room. Come out not so much. Help me with math and stuff, then go away. 
Very quiet now, most of time. Seem like lot more space in house.

Dimentia

This is a word that describes the absence of acknowledgement that other realities exist, it is commonplace in mainstream thought. 
If one reads the news, dimentia is apparent in that everything that is presented comes from the "We're the only ones here" perspective. There is no history beyond that which was written in the Good Book, and as far as science is concerned, where they postulate that humans have been here far longer than that, the blanket answer is always that those humans were more apelike than man and don't really matter. 
      Outside of the earth doesn't matter either, all that space filled with all those orbs, some hot, many cool, and with so many cool ones so far discovered, the odds that some of them could be or actually are supporting life is huge yet that too is easily downplayed. "So what? If God had wanted us to know that he would have given us craft to go there" or something like that. Doesn't matter.
Near death experiences, widely reported, are dismissed as last-gasp chemical reactions going off in the brain. Telepathy is simply coincidence. Clairvoyance is seeing hallucinations, Mediumship is being possessed, blah, blah, blah. Whatever the skill or ability, it is derided by the dimented ones, whose position regarding these subjects is "If I’m not seeing it, hearing it, or feeling it, then it doesn't exist. What others are reporting or experiencing doesn't matter (unless they can help me win the lottery, get back my lover, or land me that job, etc.)".

A messenger this way comes

Ryoji Iwata- Unsplash.com

  Were it the other way 'round, if the mainstream media were to regularly report that all of these mysterious things were real and worth looking into, there would be a mad rush to find out but- finding out about these things comes with a price. No longer could people ignore the fact that we're all intimately connected. Oops! That kind of understanding would be very bad for egocentric people, it would be bad for business, which likes to sell people goods that only they or their family use, it would call for some tweaks to organized religion's version of what life is all about, and it would mean the end for despots. 
People (and organizations) would have to expand their worldviews and exhibit some different behaviors, for with the understanding comes the abilities- most times. There are those individuals that might have sudden, unexpected glimpses of that which exists outside of the state of dimentia, that might become aware that there are dimensions other than 3D, where time and space don't matter, and because we use fixed points like time and space to position ourselves things might get a little bit confusing for them but you tend to flicker back and forth until you get used to it. The timeframe for this adjustment process is highly variable and dependent on any individual's willingness to go further. 
    Awareness- the state other than dimentia- tends to vary in intensity. There are times when energies are strong and comprehension is clear, and times when awareness is still there but is more diffuse, less focused. It’s like being led along a path to who knows where, but at the same time being utterly compelled to continue walking. The movement away from dimentia and towards awareness is the epitome of mystery. 
    This irresistible pull towards awareness leads us to cognize that no news source, government official, or religious leader has a firm grip on ultimate reality. The world we're on is traveling through fathomless space and entering regions we haven't been in before. Who knows where we're going, or why?

So what about the economy, or politics? Something far bigger is at play outside of the state of dimentia.

This Just In

  Word has reached us here at The Daily Dose that people lie. Let's go to our correspondent on the street, Darren Philberts, for some insight into this phenomenon. 
"Darren! Is it true that people lie?"
"Apparently so, Janelle. And not only do they lie, but they do it all the time"
  "Give us an example"
"Easy" (Darren hails a passerby on the street) "Sir, can I ask you a question?"
  "Certainly" (first lie).
  "We're doing a story here about lying. Do people around you ever lie?"
  "Yeah! They do it a lot!"
    "Recently?"
    "Yeah, like five minutes ago. I got a text from my boss 'asking' (second lie) if I wanted to work on Saturday. He said somebody at work called in sick. But I know that person is not sick. I know that she is lying"
  "So this lying has an effect on you" 
    "Big time! I was going to spend an afternoon at Dodger stadium with my bros watching the NLCS!"
“Why don't you just tell your boss no?"
"Are you kidding? And threaten my future promotion chances? If I don't show up on Saturday I'll be viewed as Not A Team Player. Sayonara end of year bonus!"
"Uh, thank you" (Passerby walks off muttering. Another one is hailed)
"Ma'am? Can I ask you a question?"
"Uhm... Okay" (third lie. This suit better not be asking me for no personal information!)
"We're doing a story about lying....."
"I'm out of here!" Passerby walks hurriedly away.
Darren looks at the camera. "This seems to be a touchy subject for people!"
A man approaches, carrying a briefcase.
"Sir! Can I ask you a question?"
"Certainly" (fourth lie).
Darren goes into his story spiel and the guy listens. 
"Yeah, I lie. So what? I'm a lawyer. It's my business to s t r e t c h the truth. We don't consider it 'lying' though. We're simply offering a different perspective"
  "Interesting. Thank you, sir" 
"You're welcome" (fifth lie).
A local ruffian is hailed.
"Young man- can I ask you a question?"
"Wow! I'm gonna be on TV!"
"Do you ever lie?"
"Hell yeah! Think I'm stupid or something? How else am I gonna relate?"
"So you're saying that lying happens a lot, as a matter of course"
"Dude, where your brain at? You think I'd be survivin' out here streetwise tellin' the truth? Ain't nobody out here givin' you the facts straight up. It's all twisted. You gotta interpret everything"
"And you're good at that?"
"I'm okay. Some's better than me"
"Thank you for your input" 
"No problem, man" (sixth lie)
Elderly gentleman approaches.
  "Sir, can I have a minute of your time?"
“No!”
"Okay, sorry to bother you! How about you, miss?"
A young girl pauses. Darren gives his spiel, asks her if she ever lies. 
"Yeah. I tell guys I like them"
"Do you?"
"Not all of them. But if I do, they do things for me"
  "You don't see anything wrong with that?"
"Use it before you lose it, my sistahs tell me. We all do it"
"Uh, thank you, miss"
A couple approaches. Darren stops them. 
"No" they say, looking at each other intently. "We never lie about our relationship (seventh lie). We are totally honest with each other. It's what makes a relationship work!"
  "Thanks for your input"
Off they go, to get ice cream or something. Darren stops a policeman. 
"Good morning, officer. Do you or any of your fellow officers ever lie?"
"Never! (eighth lie). "We are sworn to uphold the law. It is our solemn duty. We might joke with each other, and with citizens, but we never lie"
"Sounds good to me. Have a nice day (ninth lie) officer"
"You too. Obey the law!"
  "I will, sir!" (tenth lie)

“No way!”

Mpumelelo Macu- Unsplash.com

"Whew" Darren turns back towards the camera. "It seems that lying is rather commonplace here in society. I just caught myself in a falsehood! After a few minutes on the street it must be clear to our viewers that lying is so prevalent that encountering the truth is rare. Perhaps our next story will be on that topic. 
    But what would be the point in presenting that? Employing white lies or blatant deception is relative to the scenarios people are presented with. Depending on the circumstances, some people gravitate towards one end of the spectrum, some to the other. Maybe the deeper question that should be asked is why do people feel that they have to lie at all? Would it be so harmful, or detrimental to their ambitions, to honestly articulate their needs to others? 
    Yes, it would, telling the truth being diametrically opposed to telling a lie. Truth stands alone, bright, shiny, naked, and unafraid. (Well, maybe not bright and shiny but definitely the other two). People are used to having to get what they want through roundabout ways, these being deception and/or manipulation. They veil their intentions, mislead their opponents in order to gain trust, then ferret their way towards their personal goals, or in business's case, shared goals.

Lying is rampant in our society and due to that, there is rampant distrust. Nothing and no one can be taken at face value. We have lost our innocence and become predators upon each other, predators that search to satisfy personal needs in a jungle environment. It doesn't have to be this way but man thinks he needs to be a wily and perpetually strategizing creature. He prides himself on skillfully playing the game of human life and studies the moves of other astute players with rapacious appetite. He seeks power over the outer above all else. 

Those that seek to control the without have not yet discovered the ability to create within. That which lies within the mind, the attention, is always perfectly reflected in the without. The without acts as a learning tool in that way. 
Attempting to control the without is a cumbersome, karma-intensive, awkward way of bulldozing the personal will through obstacles to achieve one's objectives. Why not harmonize with the outer- The World- to get what you want? It's a far more elegant way. It might call for great patience and trust but The Universe has a way of giving you more than you could have ever imagined”.   

Gulp

Ideas for today's topic float through the air, thought bubbles that contain varying numbers of words that lead to concepts, or completed works, but none compel. Nothing is pressing to be articulated but wait! Upon the wind this one comes....

  "Who are you? What are you about? Where are you going? And why?”

We think we know where we're going (or I where this is going) but we do not in actuality know where we are going because in actuality we know very little about what is actually going on. So we presume. A lot. There is so much that we don't know that it is mind boggling yet in order to comfort ourselves in the vastness, we focus our attention on our immediate surroundings and never look up at the stars for long because if it's a clear night and you do, everything else drops away, doesn't it? You look up at those points of light, unfathomable distances away, go "Oh S---!"  and then scurry into the house to put Sportscenter on after which you exhale a sigh of relief and say to yourself "Whew! I'm back in the known!".

That doesn't change the stars one bit, they're still there.

Existential Percipience

Vincent Chin- Unsplash.com

If you work day shift a lot and you're home at night watching TV or whatever you're not really cognizant of that looming vastness just outside your locked front door but if you work night shift.....
....oh my! Not a night shift where you're in a building all evening and never go outside, no, a night shift where you are outside a lot and with nothing much to do, which is the case for a lot of night shift workers, you're just manning the place 'cuz somebody has to do it and you don't have enough seniority to have things your way so you spend a lot of time with the moon and the planets and the stars, looking at them, but that's not really it either. 
  What really drives the remembrance of the vastness is when you get off of work, like I do sometimes, and it's utterly still outside and the weather is such that the sky is not the least bit hazy and in all their glory the stars and Milky Way stand revealed and just glancing at the panorama you feel helplessly small and immediately wonder "How in the hell did all of this happen?" and "Where is my place in this?" and all that but you can only take so much. It's just too freaky to stand out there looking up because you know you're going back there someday and that puts a bit of humility in you, quivers the knees, and makes you review your performance during your time on stage today. A time of reckoning is going to come for you (but thankfully not this day!) because whatever created those stars and that vastness is intelligent beyond comprehension and probably won't waffle one iota away from absolute truth, which is sooo unlike the human realm, where everything can be explained away.

The stars stand waiting.

Gulp!

Grimstone Manor, Part II

It came to my attention that Alexander Crickston and Sir Loathsome had more to say. Let's tune in:

      “Reality?!” shot back Alexander. "I want no more of your mundane and decrepit reality! I seek to elevate myself higher than what I've previously known as 'living' conditions. Squalor and debauchery may be your chosen station in life, Sir Loathsome, but 'tis not mine anymore. I have caught a glimpse of a more polished and refined world, one which I seek to inhabit for the remainder of my days". 
   "That’s the Alex that I used to know" responded Sir Loathsome. "The one that had a little bit of fire in 'im."
   "A fire passionate in the extreme to distance myself from you and your kind" Alex replied. "Driver, make haste for Grimstone Manor!"
     "See ya wouldn't wanna be ya" hollered Sir Loathsome, but by then the clatter of horses' hooves all but drowned out his final jab.
"My, my, my. There’s a changed man" Lord Chuggleston, one of Sir Loathsome's mates, glumly said. 
"Aye" muttered another, Lady Hampton. "Don't drink the water in Scotland!"
"How long do you think he'll be that way?" growled a third, Earl Smithfield-on-toast. 
"No telling" Sir Loathsome spoke as if he was wondering, which was something he rarely did, for he did not wonder about many things. "I'm afraid our old friend has taken up a new way and left the known and well understood behind. His is a path of exploration, of finding what works and what doesn't. We are all called to stray from the Cock and Bull occasionally, in search of that which might otherwise comfort us, until we regain our senses and return home."
    "The Cock and Bull is our home?" Lord Chuggleston blurted.
    "It must be. We spend so much time here!" Lady Hampton retorted, matter of factly. 
    "There's no better home for me" Earl Smithfield-on-toast replied. "I have no desire to go anywhere else. Not even over to the Coat O' Arms, which is only a block away"
    "When you know it, when you know where home is" Sir Loathsome spoke for all of them, "you are content. Alex has not found home yet, and so he must search for it. I'm glad I'm not in his shoes!"

Breakfast is served!

Madelon-Unsplash.com

And so many a year passed, and Alexander Crickston lived somebody else's dream, which he thought was his. He followed in his father's footsteps and became a quite successful and accomplished businessman. His wife loved him dearly, and his four children adored him, for he slavishly devoted all his time and efforts towards furthering their desires but then one day, one fateful and totally unforeseen day, as Sir Loathsome had predicted, Alexander Crickston woke from sleep and for the first time in decades, asked himself "What the hell am I doing with my life?" The first hints of depression had landed in Alex's mind, and there were more to come. 
He tried to push them away but the instances where he fluctuated between happy and not became more and more pronounced. His family and business could provide no cure for this malaise so he took, upon his doctor and family's pleadings, a long overdue sabbatical and went a'wandering.
Across England and Scotland he went, searching for something, he knew not what, and one day he was close enough to his old home town of Everton to drop in- if he dared. Something compelled him to do so and so he wandered through the town, even stopping trepidatiously in front of the door of his old haunt the Cock and Bull to possibly pay his old friends a visit. 
But, even after mustering up the courage to go inside and in an incognito way see if anybody he recognized was there, what he found when he entered was that nobody he even remotely knew was in there. The pub was also under new ownership and its interior had been so redecorated as to be almost unrecognizable. 
The utter inability to touch base with anything from his past piqued his curiosity so he started asking around, trying to find out what had happened, for he had been away for a very long time. 
It was a contact at the local golf links that was able to provide some information, a man name of Tom Pinch, who was a distant relative of old Mr. Whatley, now deceased.
"Your gang disbanded" Mr. Pinch relayed, "about ten years after you left for London and your financial career. Sir Loathsome, I believe that was the name you called him, got killed in a pub fight over a spilled pint of Guinness that interrupted a critical dart's match final. Made all the papers. After that, Lady Hampton disappeared for some time, then reappeared, a shady figure of the same gender from the south of France on her arm, and Lord Chuggleston hit a big jackpot down at the betting shop, which increased his intake of drink for awhile before he went into rehab. He runs marathons now and competes all over the world in his age group, which is quite high"
"Amazing!"
"Yes. Who ever would have thunk it? Smithfield-on-toast then died unexpectedly after a minor bout of Hong Kong flu but he left a wife and daughter. They're doing quite well. Mrs. Smithfield-on-toast is an artist, and her daughter lives in Wales, I think. You might want to talk to Mrs. Smithfield-on-toast- she lives right here in town"
"I think I will. What is her address?"
"I don't know exactly. She's next to the breakfast shop on Trent. Ask at the shop if she's in, she spends a lot of time there"

Everton, village of

Annie Spratt- Unsplash.com

    Off Alexander went to the shop, and indeed the widow of Smithfield-on-toast was there. Her name was Nancy. 
"Oh- so you're Alexander" she said upon meeting him. "I heard a lot about you. The gang talked about you a lot"
"They did?"
"Oh yes. Pined for you, they did. Lamented that you had gone".
"Oh". The memory of his times with the gang had been so long ago that this hardly registered in Alexander's highly logical brain, but something deep inside became stirred by the news. "I never really missed them"
"That's the way it goes" Nancy said sadly. We never seem to appreciate people at the time we are lucky enough to have them"
"Lucky enough?" Alexander scoffed. "It was a amusing time, but an uncomfortable and disgusting one as well. I've no fond memories of it"
"All the pity to you then" Nancy replied. "You've yet to find home"
"I've a fine home, thank you very much"
"Nah, ya haven't" Nancy replied. "Home is everywhere you are in every moment that you live. It's in appreciating whatever is going on around you and trusting that there's a bigger plan. I can see in you that you've got a bit of wandering left to do. Wander then and while you're doing so, see if you can find home in any of that"
"What a confounding statement!" Alexander thought, and then after a brief bit of garnering more local trivia, he bid impertinent Nancy adieu.
  "What in the blazes does she know?!" he muttered to himself while walking briskly down cobbled Trent lane, a possibly very long road ahead of him.

10/10 Again

I'm only going to write about this once.
I think.
10/10 was the birth day and month of one of my childhood friends, and yes, I was following astrology even then. Anybody remember Sydney Omarr? He was good. 
My Libra childhood friend and I hung out a lot with my other dysfunctional childhood friend, who I wrote about earlier. We never called each other by our real names, only by nicknames. My Libra friend's nickname was a name I clearly remember because it was a funny one. I can't repeat it here because I use it as a password. 
So let's call him Trippalicious, or 'Tripp', for short. 

October

Adrian Curiel- Unsplash.com

Tripp was a natural-born Fonzie, he was the coolest guy in the 'hood. I always enjoyed the times we hung out together, but those times weren't regular. It wasn't like you could call him and he would answer, or you could show up at his house. Ever. No, Tripp just appeared. 
He would show up and whenever he did the day had an almost magical quality around it, indeed it became a special day, because Tripp was part of it. He was liable to disappear as quickly as you could snap your fingers sometimes so you never knew how long he was going to stick around and be part of the scene. I never could figure the guy's M.O. out, where he was called to and what he did whenever he wasn't around. It was like the guy had a need to vanish. 
He might be gone for days on end then reappear as if nothing had happened. Girls really dug him and most guys thought him super cool, though he had his share of detractors. Jealous, they probably were. Tripp had an aura of mysterious just oozing from him, which is a quality impossible to imitate. Charisma, they call it. 

  One sunny Junior High or early High School afternoon, I can't remember specifically, me, Tripp, and my other dysfunctional friend were skipping school and hiding in a grove of pine trees. We were just hanging out, but on the verge of doing something that might get us in trouble, for there was always the hint of that when we got together. I remembered exactly where I knew Tripp from before right then, for I had been feeling a perplexing and persistent familiarity with him ever since we had first met. Due to some hand gestures he was making, or the lighting, or the forest setting we were in, I suddenly recalled that we had been dandies in Europe in the late 1920's. We had been rather splendid and monied fellows, but not gay- no way. A definite dose of double trouble for the ladies. Germany/Belgium/Copenhagen was the general area. 
Now I don't go around in life and have this sort of recognition happening with every person I meet so I know the difference, I know how it feels. With Tripp it was definite. I knew that I had known him before, and this event happened when I was a teen. Isn't that sort of miraculous?
  I think so. But even more miraculous than that was knowing, in a otherworldly juxtaposition of space/time, that we had been placed together again in a different time, with highly different parents, and not at all in anything approaching a highly urbane cosmopolitan setting. Tripp didn't get this, or maybe he did. Either way he wouldn't have talked about it. He wasn't the kind to spill the beans. Keep it forever mysterious was his way and roll with it. 

Anyway, fast forwarding here, Tripp was kind of on the same trajectory as my dysfunctional friend. He wasn't a born rule breaker like him, a crazy at times, almost nonsensical risk-taker-on-a-dare kind of guy. Tripp's issue was alcohol. He liked it but his system couldn't handle it very well, because unlike white guy me, Tripp was a Native American and did not possess an alcohol-seasoned set of genes. He was from a local band that had lived in the area before but was now mostly situated on a reservation about forty miles away. Few of his kind chose to live in town, but his family had taken a chance and relocated. 
Tripp's dad was a great guy who had ten kids, I heard a lot about him from other people I trusted. Tripp's mother and siblings I never met 'cept one, who was Tripp's older brother, and he was alright by me but I know that the entire family got discriminated against. There were places in town where they were not welcome. Not that anybody would outright say it, but you can tell when you get the cold shoulder and I think Tripp and his kind knew they would never fit in in certain social circles, never be let in. 

That's got to cause a lot of pain but Tripp never showed it. He and I were just teens placed in a setting where there was a lot of old stuff playing out amongst the settlers and natives but we didn't see color or race to be an issue.

I never went to Tripp's house, and he wasn’t at all welcome at mine, but I knew where he lived. I tried to call him on the phone a few times to hook up but whoever answered it always said "He's not here".

Tripp became over time (and to the dismay of his family, I'm sure) the likeable town drunk. He would literally drink until he passed out, but before he did, he was hours of fun to be around. He (a man now) could drink anybody under the table- don't even think about challenging him. His course in life seemed to be set. 
It was about at this time that we started gaining distance from each other. Life was calling me to explore different areas of town, and then the country. There came a moment when we saw each other for the last time and you’d think that would have been memorable or something but it wasn't. Just another hanging out session with Tripp, it probably was. 

Tenth

Ales Krivec- Unsplash.com

Then I really moved away and lost all contact until the early spring of 2009 when, during a raging blizzard that had suddenly sprung upon the town I had just moved to, I got word that Tripp had died. He had been found dead in his car after a night of drinking. All of 49 years old. Foul play was suspected, there might have been others around who could have saved him (it can get cold at night in my hometown at that time of year), but nothing ever came of any, and most likely halfhearted, investigation.

  I kind of thought something like that would happen to him but was surprised when it actually did because Tripp had cheated death more than a few times before.
  The news affected me a great deal. There are people in your life that have meant a lot to you, even though you never, ever said anything denoting caring to each other when you were together because that would have been a totally uncool thing to do. 
  So, here's to you, 'Tripp' old friend. Every year I remember your birthday. Not that it would have mattered to you- (or maybe it did?)- but it does to me. 

Cloud 9

     Blissful noncompliance
     Today is a day for drifting, for doing nothing but those things that absolutely need to get done. The world can run without me.
     Today is a day off from work, a day when I answer to no one for no reason whatsoever and I have complete freedom and control over where to place my attention.

     Today is a day for spontaneity.
     Today is a day for rest.
     Today is a day for not looking so closely at anything, unless it is art, which I will look at in exquisite detail.
     Or maybe not.
     Today is a day that might go down in history, but if it does, I won't be in it!

     Today is a day when I am Rip Van Winkle for a day. I will reemerge and ask what happened, while rubbing the sleep out of my eyes.
     Today I am outside of time, cares, worries, and concerns.
      I love these kinds of days.

The course of the river

Traveling down any river, there are twists and turns aplently. It's rare that there is a straight course for long. What's around the bend? You never know until you get there because trees always border the banks. You might get a peek or hear some sounds, that's all.

          Thoughts may abound as to what lies around those upcoming bends, and you might imagine what's there from what you have seen before, but you never really know. You might pass under a bridge for road or train, or there might be a footpath alongside. Animals might line the banks, or there might be some people. Will they be friendly? Hostile?
           The river might for a time get very shallow and almost unpassable, as a sandbar blocks the channel. You might have to carry your craft across the obstacle. Then there might be rocks or rapids or waterfalls. Danger that causes you to abandon the river for a while or even permanently and set out on land.

    Life is like that. You never really know what is going to happen next and if you've been around awhile, you have already faced many, many situations that were unexpected and caused you to change course.

    Will today be any different?

    Change will certainly occurr. It is all on how you handle it. Acceptance or resistance are your only choices because change, like the weather, always happens. 

Vindication

     I don't know why I wrote that word. Let's find out. Vindication is discovering that something that you postulated was true or valid actually turned out to be. At the time you did not know it but you felt you were moving in the right direction.

     There are many times in my life where I felt I was moving in the not so right direction but I did it anyway, feeling that, strangely enough, what I was doing was the right thing for me to be doing and that I would find out the "Why?" later, or, I would never find out the "Why?". It was something that I had to go through, something that had to be done, or something that I had agreed to. This kind of thinking comes to you when you take the turn towards being metaphysical, or getting in touch with spirit, or giving the reigns over to a higher power, whatever you want to call it, however you want to frame it.

     The strange thing about letting go is that it is asked of you more and more until you arrive at the state where I am at present, which is more steering my life by feeling than by knowing. If I put out my 'feelers' (my feeling sense) into the world, into what I 'should' be doing, doing what I am doing right now seems to be appropriate, satisfying, and completely right. Have I received a yes answer, vindication from The Universe? I believe so. It's not a "Yes!" shouted from the rooftops, it's more an inner understanding that everything is unfolding properly. After all, we're just players in a greater drama, some benevolent force or energy is orchestrating all this, and it just makes sense to finally align with it.
     

Doing vs. Being

     This morning as I sit on the sofa thinking about the day, week, month, and even year ahead, I wonder if there is anything I need to do. You see, I’ve come to a place where I do almost nothing yet in that nothing-space everything that needs to get done is done, somehow. I don’t know how it gets done, things just line up.

     Now some people might say that this is crazy, that things just don’t get done by themselves and that used to be my viewpoint years ago when I was like them, trying very, very hard to get things done all the time, 24/7, 365. But since then my thinking has switched around 360 degrees and now I sit here on my couch at home just thinking about things I want.

     I don’t even know if what I do could be said to be visualizing for I don’t put that much effort into it, you know, where I picture the things I want in the finest detail. I tried that, early on, but at best the pictures I tried to visualize came out fuzzy. I had trouble conceiving of the perfect things that I wanted. It was more like a feeling of what I wanted so instead I started to concentrate on what I FELT that I wanted. In that way, The Universe could bring to me that which I really wanted but didn’t know how to visualize. Kind of a backwards way of going towards one’s objective, isn’t it? 

     Then, the next step, when the feeling comes upon me to take some action, I get the impulse to rise up off the sofa or whatever and perform the necessary steps that are required yet I don’t stress over it. If I am still in my feeling state (which I try to be in always) I am able to sense that the timing is right for any action to take place.

    These states of mind are subtle yet persistent and no, I’m not mentally ill. Quite the contrary, I am alert as to my surroundings and acutely aware of them. The senses are heightened even, for awhile, until what needs to be done is done, the action step is completed, and I can again resume my sitting upon the couch, which nowadays could be seen as the command center of my life.