From here to eternity



Listen. Can you hear it? Watch. Can you see it? Think. Can you understand it? Feel. Can you sense it? Live. Can you become it?

What is happening right now? Why this sudden change which feels so complete and true? Why this ego bound self disappearing into the stillness and expansiveness of prana? Is it really true then? That loss and pain lead to self discovery and can only take one to the other side? It definitely seems so.

At this moment I feel that I can accept everything. Loss, pain, happiness, sadness, anger, frustration, joy, bliss, fun, pleasure, stimulation, dullness, hurt, sorrow, rejection, acceptance, jealousy, envy, insecurity, pride, power, vanity, beauty, ugliness, the world, within and without. At this moment this container that holds the ego, the mind, the body, the heart and the soul is so big and so complete and so expansive that it is much more than just me. Me? Who is this me right now when I sense this Unity Consciousness? When I can sense fingers typing, breathing, sensing, thinking, smelling, intuiting, karmic seeds unfolding and the ego building and reacting to all of this. And that I, suddenly, is bigger than the ego. That I has opened up to accept and embrace the prana from outside and realize that without it and the knowledge and acknowledge of it, there really is no I. How can there possibly be when the only reason for the existence of the I is the life force that it has spawned from?

And this clarity has led me to understand how I feel towards you. Very truly. Very honestly. That you and I share this same life force and the strong connection that I feel is really at a spiritual level – this feeling that I need to connect with something so pure as you. I don’t necessarily feel that I need to possess it anymore. I don’t feel that you belong to me. Or that I belong to you. I just know that there is a deeper connection here that will only evolve and grow and expand over the course of time into something beautiful and eternal – beyond sex, beyond relationship, beyond ego and beyond these boundaries of You and I. I know now that at the cosmic level we will always be united. And now that I know this – I feel at peace, in bliss and in joy.
Wow! This must truly be spiritual transformation. :-)

***

Dichotomy
Strange feeling of frustration and peace while I write this. There is confusion and clarity, anxiety and ease, boredom and excitement, stillness and chaos. Why is this happening and in such quick succession lately? What is being positioned to unfold for me in the next few moments or days or weeks and months and years? Where am I being led to or steered away from? Why do I feel that there is a need to be somewhere, somewhere else that is not here and will always be out of my reach but which still needs to be attained to gain freedom and escape from furtive frivolity?

Several things have transpired in the last 24 hours that make me feel even further confused. With moments of total clarity during a mindfulness meditation to utter unconsciousness in the senseless argument with a neighbor upstairs – from complete clarity while reading No Boundary to complete confusion while trying to figure out how the printer works. From a feeling of excitement and peace while understanding my self and my surroundings and their effect on me to anxiety about how to make some of these things happen, today, and boredom around the events as they unfold today. From total control and calmness while drinking tea this morning, to feelings of helplessness and frustration upon not getting my computer application to work.

So, how does one explain this extreme dichotomy in spirit and psyche these quick waves of positive and negative energy as they flush over me and leave me feeling like a slave to their power and possession of me? I don’t feel that this is really the best possible scenario but also acknowledge that I bring a lot of this upon myself – when I struggle, time and again, to keep a balance and then feel anxious and upset when I simply cannot. This deeper understanding of how prana is the life force behind every thing that is happening in an around me – how it propels me to places of deeper clarity about everything that touches my life. That suffuses every situation and colors every thought and heightens every feeling and propels every action – this prana is what unites the within and without, merging the two cosmic entities in a seamless, No Boundary whole. And the moment this prana, this life force enters my consciousness and allows me to merge my self into the highest possible Self, is when I get complete clarity in any given situation.
So, that then is the essence of life – this feeling of grace and godliness and holiness that is simply an expansion of the ego driven self into the universal Self.

This shift in consciousness is simply attainable the moment that I acknowledge the life force, the prana, that is the energy behind every moment in the Now.

Swinging through extremes
Still feel like I am in a state of constant flux with heaviness and lightness battling for supremacy on my body and mind and spirit at all times. When I listen and stay in the moment I feel a lightness and euphoric bliss that is indescribable. It is the kind of high that now I know I can never really experience with anything else – not sex, power, pleasure or achievements. It is this feeling of complete submission, immersion and unification with everything.

It doesn’t last, though. It is often, and in quick succession, replaced by self doubt, anxiety, sadness and despair. A fear of the next moment constantly annihilates the pleasure of the present one. The feeling that all is not good and never will be is the heavy sadness that seems to then envelope every waking moment and every action that I perform. It leads me into this spiral that I find so hard to escape from. It is the end of the living in the Now.

How then do I proceed from here? What is that mental, emotional and spiritual stability that will, indeed, bring me the clarity and peace that I yearn for? What is the feeling and sensation and attitude and energy that comes with this way of being – this completeness and wholeness of the cosmic splendor –when ego and universe become one? When every action and emotion and intellection is suffused with prana?

Symphony of Life
Feeling quite a bit more clarity today – of purpose, approach, desires and goals. That I am finally seeing the pure potential that lies within me – from an objective point of view. As away from the I that constantly colors it in egoistic shades of black and white and gray and every other imaginable color in between.

No, this is objective observation of the simple life-force that seems to get more and more powerful and defined as I begin to focus on it, appreciate it and allow it to permeate all aspects of my life. This suffusion through the consistent process of self awareness, and bringing of clarity to every thought, feeling and action that is experienced is what will bring me closer and closer to Unity Consciousness.

Even as I write this – I start sensing that this is less discontinuous and more fluid than just a 'writer', 'writing' and 'the written' set of discrete events. It is one single event of writing that unfolds in a time-space-consciousness driven moment, that which is without boundaries and without subject or object. And this one fluid movement in these dimensions is called life. And viewed as a simple fluid whole, there can be no subject and object, me and that, me and you, mine and yours, myself and everything that is not myself. Since in Hindu terms Everything is me. Or, in Buddhist terms, Nothing is me. All is one and the same experience happening in this eternal moment.

This thought that I think which brings this feeling of sadness that causes me to drink to lose myself so I can forget that thought or replace it with another thought that will bring a feeling of euphoria that will cause me to dance to music – are all simply fluid experiences in the Now. There is nothing that can be done to change this but yes, a lot can be done to enhance the experience and witness its pure perfection.

And that is where prana, the life force comes into being. All I need to do is suffuse this experience with prana and I will realize that this Unity Consciousness – this Oneness and No Boundary experience – that is happening anyway, and always will happen anyway – now exists in awareness. I can now see the magic of this experience just as I see the magic of fingers flying on this keyboard while another thought races through the mind and my ears ring with the buzzing from the plane wings and my nose inhales deeper breaths of this aircraft and my thoughts soar to another memory in the past and all of this is one fluid symphony that keeps on happening and happening without cessation, without conflict, and without chaos. It just, however, has now reached a state of perfection.
Because I now see it as all of me.

***


May 13: Dark foreboding

Feeling like I’m back to where I started this evening – kind of regression that suddenly seems to have descended on me for no apparent reason. I am feeling down because I’m not feeling well, I’m doing mindless cruising, I’m preparing for a long party night, my head hurts, my heart is confused and my body feels tired and disoriented. On top of that I feel mildly stressed about work, the coming few weeks, trips to London, friends and lack there of, missed connections with family and a general state of ennui. I don’t understand how this can happen overnight. Not even that, within just a couple of hours. The downward spiral from the botched hookup to incessant wondering, worrying, scrounging and stressing. What is the point of this when you are so well aware that this will lead to no good avail. At all.
Even for tonight? What is in store? How am I supposed to act, react, behave and generally be when we all are there together? Is this really what I want? No, really? What is the point of planning and scheming – it should not have to be this hard. In fact, if it had to, it would’ve been already. No, that’s not really fair. There are several circumstances that frequently make one feel limited, constrained and confined and the stint abroad, the weekly jaunts out of town, the unsettled way of life and the work overload - and from their part the indecision of the future in terms of work and living situation – have all amounted to this not even getting any space to breathe, let alone be or become something. Certainly there are some strong and curious ties here – otherwise we would not be in touch and have this sort of strange relationship after over a year.
A year! Good god!!

***

May 14th: The Day After
I will survive this. This too I will survive. That is the nature of the game. To play and play and not look back with regret. One day I will find my own place in life and then I will look back at all of this and feel like there was a deep reason behind all this. A life lesson that can really not be expressed until it is lived out completely and without expectations of an end result.
***

May 15th: The Aftermath
A new day begins – foggy and dull on the outside, yearning and confused within. I sit on my bed sipping tea and typing this and hundreds of thoughts and emotions race through my head and heart and make me feel like a rag doll as I spin from one to another reacting, feeling, hoping, despairing, rejoicing, thanking, fearing and fumbling. And behind this is also the knowledge of the big picture of it all – and what it would take to realize it fully and in its full potential into the daily reality of my life. A supreme effort if you look at it one way and a simple direct action looked at from another viewpoint. It is not easy when the mind constantly tries to trip me into familiar territories using memory and fantasy as its two primary tools to wrench away the perfection of this moment from me.

How do I deal with it then? Does it come from the subconscious? Does it lie buried so deep within me – this awareness of the Truth that the only way to unfold it is to tap into the subtle layers of the mind and have it emerge from there into my present? Or is the subconscious to be used to bury, forget, repress with the hope that these may never unfold again? How do I win this battle of mind over heart, of heart over awareness and of awareness into pure consciousness? When will I realize that the picture when looked at from simply one angle or a singular dimension will always look warped, weird, disproportionate and distorted with some aspects accentuated and profound and others blurred and buried in the periphery, neglected and unacknowledged of their beauty and truth? This then is exactly what seems to be happening in this moment for me.

This then is the face of this reality – whereby this one emotion, feeling, thought and person have seemed to warp and morph into my consciousness so completely that I cannot see the greener, richer, deeper shades of the garden of my life. My family, my friends, my work, my intellect, my heart, my joy, my gratitude, my love and my bliss are being distorted and neglected from my consciousness.

And the only way to change this is to move away, get some distance but immerse myself so completely that I am one with it all. I acknowledge the sadness and pain without resistance or ploy and I acknowledge the joy and beauty with gratitude and acceptance.

***
May 16th: Gaining Clarity

No, I have to wait to get clarity on this situation. Don’t make any hasty decisions, that is just not what you need. To communicate such strong emotions in a letter or mail to somebody who is already so uncommunicative and distant is to break all ties with them without getting any closure to the situation. I will have put something out in the Universe with no hope of getting a response to it. It will be like waiting in a void and hoping that something will eventually turn up and make it all okay.
This situation is out of control – you know it – you’ve known it for quite a while now – so nothing that you do do at this point will make it any better. All I can tell you is to wait, be patient, have faith in the process of healing and visioning and realizing your potential.

Hell, you’re a rocking dude, why then are you settling for this? Why then are you subjecting yourself to such hurt and humiliation? For what? For whom? For someone who is so out of touch with their own feelings that the last thing that they would be aware of was if someone really and truly cared for them? Why is this process so hard? Why do I have to feel guilty about my affections for someone?

And so, I need to wait for this to unfold in it’s most logical and precise way – I need to see and listen to my heart and my spirit and wait for the answer to come from within. I need to stop – get off this rollercoaster ride. Now. And I need to find the stillness within.
***

May 3rd

And so it goes and so it goes – it all moves about in circles and there are then days like these where you think what and how could possibly add any excitement to your life? How many cool cities and chic restaurants and hip bars and beautiful people can you hang out with to feel that you are living a fun, rich, exciting life. And what would that feeling bring for you anyway, in the long run & the grand scheme? What could possibly add to or create happiness and joy again?
And then you look back to your thoughts and goals and ‘thresholds’ built for and around happiness. And you know for sure that there must be something bigger and stronger and brighter and truer than this. That which will make you feel that this has indeed been a journey worth embarking upon. Will it happen today or tomorrow or even next year? Will it happen alone or with somebody real and special or within a group or community? How will you feel when this journey is embarked upon? Where will you be when all this comes about? What will you do?
And now, here? How does one rekindle the spark? What does one say or do that will make an ordinary situation come alive with magic and excitement without external stimuli and substances? What is the one self sustaining trait that one might have that will be true, tested and always mine to hold and to have? Where is that happiness created, sustained and cultivated? If it is from within, why then, can I not feel it on a constant and consistent basis? Why do I need to find it from you, outside, externally and foreign from me? Why is happiness not mine already?

***
May 7th

A deadly game is being played here – between two very strong adversaries – the persona and shadow in the Psyche, the ego and body within the Centaur and the microcosm and macrocosm within the Spirit. I don’t, I can’t see this with clarity, but I feel it with a conviction that is beyond word and thought. That, true happiness can only come about in the complete merging within all of these domains – a fusion and unification that is the yearning of every spirit – attainment of the universal aspiration.
Ultimate happiness is possible only then.

April 05
As far as activity goes --- what can one possibly do to keep oneself fulfilled and occupied everyday of ones life?

***


Apr 17th
Nothing changes – everything changes. What can I take from last night? That we are evolving to another level in terms of our friendship. And that it is still hard for me to accept it at just that. How then can I resolve it? The only way out is to stay away from this situation until I am good and ready to accept it for what it is – and then hope that I can return to it in a constructive, supportive fashion. What can I say? What do I need to do to effect change in this situation?
I don’t know. I really don’t. I have to cultivate patience, generosity, expansiveness and self confidence. I have to accept what the universe is telling me repeatedly. That this is not for me. That the timing is not right and that the world is working out a formula and process that does not include this personal relationship for me. How to reconcile to this way of living and being is the tricky question.
I have to let go. I have to allow us the freedom to just be real and open and supportive for each others causes. And I have to tell the truth.
I’m sorry but nothing seems to have changed in the way that I feel towards you. I thought it had – and the months in London without any contact between us led me to believe that this had passed and that I can now freely move on through my life.
But, it took just one look at you and all my feelings have come flooding back. I can’t say what it is – it’s unexplainable. I know I have had stronger physical attraction or emotional connection or intellectual stimulation with others before. But the overall feeling of ‘wanting’ that I feel when I am with you, or think of you is something I’ve never felt before. It is a quality of your personality that I find incomprehensibly irresistible. I don’t think I’ll ever feel like this again.
So, now what? Life goes on – and I have to learn to live each day on my own terms and find the love and joy and excitement within it all and take this as yet another experience to have had. But for my own sanity and self discovery and growth – I need to get away from this. Walk away while I still can – again.

***
Apr 25th
Physical disorientation because of the sinus and cold and congestion is making me so aware of my body and its functioning. What is working, what is not in shape what needs to be toned, strengthened and brought back to health. Raw inflamed nerve endings and blood vessels and tissues and ligaments remind me of mortality and the fact that no matter how much one tries, the body will always bring you back down to reality – that it is the hard reminder of where you are going towards, finally.
Emotional numbness as a result of the sickness, and emotional awareness that I am trying to inculcate clarity into my actions. Trying to bring clarity into my deeds and thoughts. Asking myself, repeatedly, what is the motivating factor behind this emotion or action? What really is my intention in saying this or doing that or thinking this and feeling that? When I behave in a certain way or react in a fashion or respond in a style, what is the trigger, the basic seed that is generating such an effect? What is the cause behind this karmic wave unfolding? This takes time and patience and that is what I am determined to work with this time. It will all happen, all in good time.
Intellectual processing in a moderate way…thinking about issues and actions around work, how to proceed with the next phases, understanding what are the various factors and players in this new role and on this new project. And also, as always analyzing my own actions and motivations on every front.
Enjoying the stay at House of Blues – if I weren’t a born again Easterner I would have found this décor garish and loud but here, in Chicago, in the heart of the Midwest it is fun and extravagant. Something that feels big and festive and in joy.
Spiritual instinct is what seems to be re-emerging with the constant reminder to stay present, enjoy the moment, my own company, my life, and the energy and forces within and without that will constantly play together and writhe in this Yama dance that goes on and on from life to death and beyond into eternity. Listen to the rhythm of its music and feel the beat of its cosmic heart. Dance if you want.

***
April 26, 2005
So frustrated, so judgmental and negative right now. Thoughts rush through me in quick succession of spite, guilt, anger, pain and helplessness. All because I have created a situation like this out of nothing. You cannot go to sleep with this negativity – what is the point of it? What is the point of scheming and screaming when all that that will achieve is further frustration and despair?
Why am I doing this to myself? Especially since I have sworn to stay present and conscious no matter what it takes. What has happened today that is requiring this level of self analysis and criticism? What are some of the events of this situation that are taking me down this path of negativity and self destruction?
The fact that I did not stay and socialize with the work crowd after the Roadshow tonight. All the people that I need to further my career with this company were present but I still did not find the time to really invest in the effort. Granted that I was sick and needed rest. But then I come home to the room and spent 60 dollars on room service and wine, both of which I did not really need tonight. Regrets, yes and clarity No. Another way to self sabotage.
.
Frustration around the internet cable connection and lashing out at the engineer on the phone advising him to improve his job performance. I feel shitty about that and feel that I could’ve handled it better – frustration, impatience and illness were the cause of such chaos and confusion.
All my senses are yearning for you right now – your goodness and energy and support. Why can I not have this in my life on a regular basis? What have we done that has made it so hard for us to have such a straightforward connection? All I ask for is a true relationship with you – if it can endure London, Chicago, Houston and all the fun and romance and partying of the past 8 months then it can survive anything. Why then is it so hard?
Or perhaps it is very clear and very simple. Perhaps that is the test and the knowledge of that will make me stronger and more stable. Perhaps at the end of this journey, when all I have left are my journals and my meditations and my breathing and my introspection that is when you will see what I had and where I was going with it. Perhaps then all these years from now, you will see that we could have had so much and with such abundance and with such ease. Perhaps then, but then again, perhaps now?
And as for me, in the final scheme of things, at the end of this day? How do I feel about my self – my day, my life, my goals, my hopes and joys and successes and failures and connections and disconnects and overall attitudes about people and things in my life? I don’t know – I am still focusing on so many events of the day and my role and behavior in them that I can’t seem to let go. And I have to – I must. Because only in that is there the ultimate fulfillment.
Loneliness yes…but ultimately Love. Sadness yes, but ultimately Bliss. Confusion yes, but ultimately Peace
***
April 27th
Stop it! – stop your American screaming and clichéd crap – who listens to this anymore – who gets a laugh out of this?
Picture a night in a room alone, lonely, devastated. Everything looks like it will never become better again – conflict and fear are riddled in your body and psyche and the pain of loss is unbearable. You lay in bed and the world spins around you and all you want to do is to stop it. Stop it all. For now. For good. For ever. And the voices in your head and the crashing between your skulls is unbearable and you would do anything to make it stop and find a quiet peaceful place and you know that you won’t find it – not tonight you won’t. And then, your attention, when it cannot stay any longer on this grief and pain and aching and yearning, because you’ve exhausted every possible karmic seed out of it, at least for now, turns to voices talking animatedly, even excitedly, and amidst squeals and giggles and peals of laughter you try to figure out what they are saying. It is, perhaps an animal tamer on Jay Leno showing silly tricks with a panda or Ellen on the morning show interviewing Carrot Top or some other American celebrity regaling a willing and ready audience with another ‘I can’t believe I was such a klutz’ story on a talk show – and it all starts to make sense again. This. The fact that no matter what and no matter where, just when you feel that everything is over, nothing familiar will hold your attention anymore and that this is the end of life as you know it – something so normal, and silly and routine and predictable and ‘daily’ and human will hit you and stay with you. And you will know then – that even this shall pass. And that there will be a next time and a next moment and a tomorrow and a next year and a next you and a new me and we will all be repeating this cycle again and yet again and it will all go exactly according to plan.
Who is it that has planned this though? And who is it that forgets the plan?

***
April 28th
Throat hurts and is inflamed and I worry that I may have caught another bug even as the previous one has not subsided. This will take another week to heal and by that time I will be on another plane and another city in another country and the cycle will continue for some time to come. The physical exhaustion of the body is complete at this time and I feel like the only way to deal with it is by opening myself to the possibility of discomfort and pain for sometime to come in the near future. Nothing comes without a price.
Emotionally low key – not much has happened in the past few days to really feel charged or numbed. I think about you quite a bit and from time to time the emotions become unreasonable, demanding or uncertain, full of yearning and self doubt or confidence and optimism. It is a jaunty ride but I don’t believe that I will necessary have a solution to this for a while so I am just going with the flow for a bit and not get too deeply entrenched in it.
Intellectually satisfying – making progress slowly though in what I need to accomplish this spring and summer professionally and then take steps to address some of my other needs as well. Financially, this will be a fairly soft season with no great movements one way or the other and that too is okay. I don’t necessarily feel the need to grow too much anyway. This is all good and I feel fine for now. More on this as other aspects of my life fall in line – so to speak.
Spiritually confining in some ways but also trying to bring awareness into the little things that happen daily around me. Watching and observing, to keep gaining clarity on my actions, thoughts and emotions. Observing each situation and judging whether it takes me more towards my goal of stability or away from it.
***
April 29th
Doing it right – feeling it fully, living it largely, breathing it deeply, loving it unconditionally, wanting it badly, saying it clearly, trying it fearlessly, doing it completely, being it essentially.
Trusting in myself – completely. That this path is the right path. That no matter what happens, in the future, at this moment, in this now I am completely living my truth. That no matter where this life takes me – in this moment I am fully immersed in it and every aspect of my life is completely synchronized with this cosmic game playing within and without.
***
April 30th
Frustration knows no boundaries at this point – all my senses are reacting adversely to this situation that finds me wolfing down a muffin and gulping down coffee for breakfast after spending half an hour searching for parking and walking another ten minutes to find an empty spot in a quiet café. Well, here I am now and I feel that all my practice of the last few hours may have just evaporated under this frenzy of busyness.
Or did it really? I don’t know yet – I can’t really tell where this is going – what I really want to say to anyone – what am I really feeling. Admit it. Admit the truth. That a part of it is slight disappointment about not hearing back and not being able to make plans for tonight. If I were to ask myself – do I have clarity around this – I would have to say no, I don’t. I can’t ‘til I address and resolve it one way or the other. Would I feel this forlorn were he just a friend? Would I feel this abjectly shaken up if I did not care in the way that I do? Would I be sitting here and feeling like a fool, a fake, being judged and laughed upon by the world – look - a lonely older man sits by himself on a weekend – trying to busy himself with activity, most likely desiring closeness and friendship but perhaps it’s too late for him to find it in this youth obsessed subculture within this youth obsessed culture. Where the only hope of actually meeting and connecting with someone is solely defined by the number of men that you have slept with, put out for or hunted down in bars and clubs and online and in cafes and parks and parking lots.
So, yes, clarity is missing and there is no denying that. But I do want to trust myself – I want to feel that there is a lot that I do have to offer, and with the right people and right community – I will, I can be happy here. How do I find it? Well, perhaps the only way to do it is by building it for myself – from wherever that I am in my own life. It will happen – that much I can guarantee – it just may take time and perseverance and patience, all of which seem to be in scarcity in my life.
Time. What do I have time for in my life? What do I want to build in that time? Where do I want to invest that time? Where will I go in the time that I free up to go somewhere? Who will I want to spend this extra time with? How will this time spent really manifest in my life in the grander scheme of things? I don’t know yet and that is not for me to focus upon right now. All I can do is create the time and invest, utilize and cherish this time that I have released from the useless cycles of my mind that dissipate it to gather instant relief, gratification, pleasure and succor. When, this time could really be spent in growth, learning, introspection and peace.
Money. What do I do with the money in my life? How do I earn it? Where do I spend it? Where to I enjoy investing it? Where do I regret wasting it? How big a role does money play in my happiness? Would I be happier if I had more to spend? Would I be safer, cooler, more secure with more? Would I be fearful, anxious, stressed with less? What triggers my interest in making money? What triggers my distaste in lusting for it? Why do I feel that it is uncool to talk about it but I still think it’s very cool to have lots of it? And if that is indeed the case, my thoughts around money and its role in my world – then I should look again, deeply within myself and find how I want to make it, use it, invest it, cherish it, enjoy it, expend it, distribute it, share it and be free of it.
Energy. Where do I get the energy in my life? To live, love, breathe, work, work out, communicate, travel, emote, create and have sex? Is this a subtle energy that always exists within me in teeming gallons that I can tap into at any given time or is this a rapidly depleting resource that needs to be cherished, preserved, expended with care and caution? Do I have an internal well that will keep on generating this energy on its own with no external stimuli or resources put into it? Or is this an external resource that is used by my mind, body and spirit to create this vital energy that I then use to nourish those very same mind, body and spirit? What would I do if I realized that indeed, with time and age, this natural resource will get more and more precious and that I then need to find alternative sources to generate this energy to sustain my life and lifestyle? Or, that I need to acknowledge the inevitable diminishing of this resource and find creative ways of using it in less and less amounts, economizing on the quantity consumed by either minimizing its use in experiences, lessening the number of experiences that use it or finding the type of experiences that do not utilize as much of it – thus still providing me a rich life but now a more spiritually and energetically conscious one?
***

February 05

Coming Home
So, end of a chapter of life and I don’t have anything to say for it – no way to categorize, criticize or compartmentalize it. It has been and it is over and here are no threads of connections and relationships that I have that would endure even a few weeks of separation.
While I have tried – sometimes quite sincerely – to build a life here, it has proved to be increasingly challenging – friendships that I thought would endure have defied the security of shared times and experiences, dates that I believed would lead to a deeper intimacy have dissolved into unnecessary oblivion, and work challenges have more or less stagnated into those familiar ploys of escaping effort due to ennui.
As for personal freedom itself – what of it? Where has the self confidence and assuredness of the past few months disappeared? Why has, all of a sudden a cloud of doubt and despair descended upon me? It all seems to have happened abruptly without me even making an effort at self dissolution as I have so often executed in the past. There is nothing that I have done that I could not have done differently and produced dissimilar results.
Or is that really true?

***

January 05

Wrapping up 6 months in London

This has been such a disaster in some ways and a success in others. What can I really say that I have achieved and experienced in the past few months? Remains to be seen where I will take this on to – is there a learning in all of this – does there really have to be a learning in each experience that one has? Why has this been the single most hard to figure out experience of recent years? How did this all come about to be so empty in the end? Where will I be going from here when I do return to San Francisco?

Key experiences:

Key adventures:

Key people:

Key discoveries: