Dream Journal 2

I'm walking through a college town, similar to Urbana Champaign, or DeKalb, I cross paths with a girl who is a student at the college, she is blonde, pretty, around 5'7", 130 pounds, sweet and friendly. She isn't following me but we keep meeting on the streets. I cross through a wooded passing and then find myself, by chance, to be at my friend Ward's house, the house is part fictional, partly based on fact. I feel self-conscious that I have not seen him in years, and then I see the girl and she appears to be lost, or too far out of town and I ask her if she'd like to join me at my friend's house. My conception of myself is to be older than her, but slightly younger than my physical world age. She accepts and I knock on the door and wonder how Ward will react, I see him and his first wife Laura, who both graciously accept me into their home, Laura is wearing a furry pajama suit, white, and it makes her look very thin. As I pass into their house I am conscious that Laura is looking at me and I am aware that my face is ugly, but I stay as cool and as accepting of this fact as I can, knowing most likely she won't mention my bad looks. I take a seat and the house is sometimes enclosed and other times partially outdoors. The girl is now gone and my friend Dave is there with his gf Carol and I know I am lucky to have friends, aware that this makes me look normal and safe to the girl. The girl is no longer at the house but she shows up now at the front door, lost, and we invite her in and I am about to puff on a blunt but pass it to her and she takes a hit then gives it back to me and I take a big inhalation. I notice Ward's house has an ice cream cooler and counter like in a shop, I can see 10-15 buckets of flavors, colored brightly pinks blues reds, and we walk over to get scoops of ice cream and then I find myself and the ice cream counter partially outdoors, at a place where I have been before, in prior dreams with Ward and he has lived at this place and I recognize it. I notice hot dog buns and other foods and Ward explains that he helps the owner of the house/bar/restaurant as a counter man and scooper. I imagine Ward's main job, which is scooping ice cream for people and giving out hot dogs, he mentions it gets busy on the holidays. I turn to the girl and ask her name, she says it's Sarah, and we all introduce ourselves, before it comes to me I become self conscious again, the thought that my name, Jim, is second rate, passes through my mind and I know I'm going to have trouble pronouncing it because of how it flows off my tongue, and when I tell her my name I do have difficulty, the m seems garbled so I have to repeat it and then I feel that the impression of my name on Sarah must be neutral at best. Even though I'm aware that I'm ugly I can't stifle feelings of attraction for her, and awareness of my advanced age does not inhibit my desires for her affection, to feel a connection with her. I find myself admiring how Ward lives, working odd jobs for money and in his remaining time working on his art and spiritual advancement. I realize I love Ward because his life is a mirror for my own, he is my spirit guide, always has been. It is now night and I ask Sarah how she is going to get home. She does not know. Ward's house is now further away from the town and the roads which surround it I have seen before, along with its location. My black Schwinn bike leans against the garage, as if I had ridden it to the house instead of walked. I ask Sarah if she'd like to ride my bike back into town and she agrees, but then I realize it's a bad idea because the roads are dark and she might get hit by a car. I am enjoying her company and know I will miss her, but at the same time our meeting seems fated and easy, as if we have a strong, yet very short, connection. We all leave Ward's house and decide to drive Sarah into town, I see a red London-style double deck bus pass by, very close to me, and I sense that I don't know how to ride one, how to get a ticket, but that I will soon need to learn how. I wake up, it is 5:00am, I immediately try to get back into the dream, to be in a lucid state, I close my eyes and imagine Sarah and Ward. I almost get there, almost. It is still dark in the room and I want to return to sleep, but if I do I will forget the details of the dream, so I get the laptop, sit up in bed, and write the details.

Dream Journal I

Before sleeping I focused on wanting to mind travel to India or Thailand, and once there to find myself as a monk living in a small hut. Also focused on wanting to be conscious that I was dreaming, or lucid dreaming. Woke at 6:00am and instead of being in India I was in urban USA working a clerk job which I did not know fully well, which must have meant I was new at the job. My supervisor was Joyce, who was my supervisor at the Art Institute.

At one point I felt distanced from my workmates, sensing the usual feeling that I was different, not necessarily inferior, but because I am unable to feel comfortable and wanted in a work group, it basically does mean that I am inferior in that particular environment. I know in the big picture that everything has its value, but in the realm of human society I have and always be a loser, most likely due to having my consciousness tethered to an ugly body. It's like being a white tulip growing amidst 200 red ones. Nothing I can do will change the color of the flower, and how I ended up in a bed of red tulips is a mystery. I also sensed the familiar dread of having willfully given up my freedom of time and space, knowing that day after day until I quit the job or die that I have to spend the best part of the long day stuck in an environment I don't like and doing an activity that is meaningless. This type of dream is my hidden consciousness alerting me that I have a question in life that my visible consciousness has not yet answered, and that question is how do I get money without giving up my freedom and not ending up in a place where I am a white tulip surrounded by red ones.

At one of my warehouse jobs, in 1990, the office manager came back into the warehouse and stood smoking a cigarette. After observing me for a bit he spoke to me and said "you don't belong here." He didn't say it in a mean way, but in a way of someone who is looking at a bed of flowers and notices one flower that is not the same color as the others. He was basically saying, you should be somewhere else where you fit in. I knew he was right, but at the same time I also knew that my life karma at that moment was to be someone who did not fit in, so I accepted this and was grateful that I somehow managed to still be grudgingly accepted and not completely wiped out by others who knew I was different. At my shipping job at Morningstar a workmate once old me "you think your'e better than everyone else." I found it interesting that he believed he could read other's emotions and thoughts, and that his guess could be completely wrong. I can't recall my reply, but I know I did not tell him the truth, which was that I felt the opposite, that I was inferior to my workmates due to the fact that I did not fit in, both physically and spiritually.

The final part of the dream I was asked to do a task for my supervisor for the first time, to call UPS  and give them her name. A few hours later Joyce arrives, along with the UPS driver and he mentions that I did the task right, but why did I give her last name before her first. I pondered this while he spoke with Joyce and after a minute or two of reflection realized she had written her name last, then first on her instructions. I was pleased, and not surprised, by my ability to follow detailed instructions, which has always been a saving strength for me. The UPS driver then went to the front of the bus and began driving, and we started to move and I realized that Joyce's office was located in the middle of a bus, and one of my workmates, Tasha, who I worked with at the Art Institute, was now with us, so I sit down and marvel at the fact that we are driving down a road on a mobile office. I feel distanced from Tasha and Joyce when Tasha asks Joyce to call in her stock trading company and sell bitcoin that she can make a million dollar profit. When overhearing this I feel despeondent about my own fate, having a few thousand dollars in the bank and no way to stop coming in to work day after day. At least Tasha can quit, but I doubt she will because most people who work fit in and don't feel the need to quit and find a better place to be.

I woke up with the bus driving down the road to an unknown destination.

Letter to David - The Warehouse

Dear David, 

Last night I was caught in a familiar dream pattern - finally landing a job, and it's always in a warehouse (even though I have not worked in one since 1990). Maybe it's because it was in numerous warehouses where I learned survival skills and shaped the outlines of my preferred personality. Everything you see in a warehouse is what you get - hard physicality and an even harder obstacle course for the mind, and of course it is because of the people one sees, the four or five souls slogging it out, grinding day after day, like a dysfunctional abusive family who can't figure out what it wants other than the most basic needs - drunkenness, filthy jokes, bad music, theft, and each peon continually being tested and probed for weaknesses. I wouldn't be surprised if Sartre had warehouse workers in mind when he wrote "hell is people," because what I am really dreaming about is not a warehouse job, but getting stuck inside a dark hell, an indentured servant to the devil with a contract which lasts far too long. During my first warehouse job at Sears I ran into a high school acquaintance and he asked me what I was doing working in a warehouse. It was a fair question, and for whatever reason it felt right for my karma, the work itself being just what I needed - time to think while wandering and walking about, and although I would have preferred walking about and thinking in a quiet woods, that doesn't pay cash, so the warehouse was the next best thing I could find. I'd show up to work a couple hours early and sit in the car reading and then spend the next 8 hours thinking about what I had read. Having to speak and work with the same three or four individuals 40 hours a week I knew I had to create a persona that could not only survive a sometimes brutal environment, but which also had to be authentic and true. This was not an easy task because I could sense that what I valued did not match and mesh with the personalities I was meeting. I did not want to take drugs or drink alcohol, did not want to hang out in bars, did not want to tell jokes or laugh at unfunny ones, and most important, I did not want external circumstances dictating what I could and could not do. Thinking of it now, I guess you could say that I decided to think and act like a warehouse monk - focusing on the tasks at hand, living moment to moment, trying to remain silent unless the need to speak was necessary, not knowing if I could survive the end of the day. I was unsure if such a personality could pass muster with the men I was working with, could someone who did not speak to judge, insult, and dominate, survive? I didn't know, but I was willing to find out. While I imagine warehouse work is not as bad as living within a prison population, it may be just one step removed. In such an environment the way I was acting could be considered weak, but that reminds me of something I read in the novel Shantaram, about the character Modena, whom Linbaba describes as a weak man due not only to his small stature and unremarkable looks, but also because of the nature of his relationship with the tall and handsome Maurizio. Modena was so unassuming that when life took a wrong turn for him and he was considered dead, Linbaba told his friend Abdullah that he could not even remember what Modena's voice sounded like. Abdullah, however, had a different perception of Modena, and believed that he would have made a good soldier, and this surprised Linbaba (who was an escaped convict). When he asked how such a man as Modena could be a good soldier, Abdullah explained that it was because he believed Modena had the power of endurance. And this was what I was going to rely upon, my endurance.  While I do not believe the qualities of silence, reliability, honesty, and kindness to be signs of weakness, I knew I had to put this belief to the proof, to be tested by men who did not share my beliefs by transforming my ideas into the day to day actions of the warehouse. If I faltered on any particular day, or for a moment, all I had to do was keep going, showing up day after day, and in this endurance of difficult conditions my chosen personality would be shaped and solidified in the fires of hell. All that was required was to keep the ideas fresh in my mind and to keep showing up. For five years I endured and kept moving forward, the tests were numerous, some more difficult than others. I persevered and my monk-like personality survived. It was in a warehouse that I experienced both bliss and torment. The final days of working in a warehouse were peculiar and interesting, filled with memorable quotes by co-workers. During my final days at the fire equipment warehouse the person who hired me said "we will never see Jim again." I did not reply but the silent intuitive thought was "one of the truest things I've heard you say."  At the computer warehouse the office manager came back one day and I noticed a look of insight flash across his face as he watched me pulling my parts cart and then he said, astonishingly, "he doesn't belong here," in a tone which was not at all negative. As this was to be my final warehouse job, having had much time to ponder this question in the prior years, I considered him to be wrong, a warehouse was exactly where I belonged, it had formed and shaped who I was, there was nowhere else to be, nothing better to do with my time, if the universe wanted me somewhere else, it would put me there. In numerous dreams over the years I would find myself in new warehouses, starting fresh, the first day, my soul and personality once again being put into the fire of hard experience, having to endure. And last night as I dreamt I was once again in a new warehouse, with the added twist of thinking, while pulling my cart around for the first order to be picked, "ahhh, I have been dreaming so many years about this place, and now, it has come true, I am really back," the feelings bittersweet, the long grind ahead, and how at my advanced age I was still having to endure. When I woke I smiled, how real it all seemed, how easily my consciousness had been duped. I'd be lying if I said I did not feel great relief to have been spared the trials of the warehouse.

Yesterday morning's run my legs were still achy so I decided to cut down to 1.25 miles, which is pretty much a non-run, and the decision paid off because today I wore shorts for the first time and a single long sleeved running shirt and with somewhat fresh legs ran 6 loops around the sunken field, for a 5.35 mile run, the longest so far. I then walked to Lincoln Park and back for a 3 hour workout. Right now I am feeling the wonderful post-run glow which is a blessing.

Letter to David - The Locked Room

Dear David,

I find it interesting that in a period of intense cultural change which is having such a devastating impact on so many lives, the changes happening in my individual existence appear to be in opposition to this negative trend. My meditation practice is flowering after such a very long period of stagnation, bringing peace, calm, and harmony to mind and body. For whatever reason I have been ignorant and blind to the effect of having my breath locked into one position, or room, the room of constant agitation, distraction, excitement, motion. This distraction puts my mind into a permanent state of hyper alertness, as if I was always in some kind of danger, thus necessitating a vigilance of the external world. The breath compensates by being quick and shallow, and after years of habit the upper rooms are shut and locked. This is one reason why meditation became a kind of unpleasant chore, the locked upper rooms being inaccessible made the shallow breathing a literal pain which made sitting still and silent uncomfortable. It was not until this year when I made a renewed effort with meditation that I was able to break down the habits which had been growing for years. I had to contend with a habit (distraction) that had grown the size of large tree - cutting it down in size is not to be accomplished in a day or a week, and knowing this I decided to accept that I might not be able to overcome its power, but nonetheless the effort to try was important, if not to be accomplished in this lifetime, then I could at least prepare the soil for the next life, whenever that would be. I began, and, as I mentioned in a previous letter, after a week or two I was struck with an illness (most likely Covid) which lasted two weeks, which made me suspend my meditation practice. During my rest and recovery I did not forget my determination to sit still in meditation, I had an odd feeling the sickness was a test of my resolve, a part of the process, how badly did I want to practice? Bad enough that when I recovered I began to sit again, and within a few weeks I began on occasion to experience an unlocking of the unused rooms of the breath, each time thinking "what a blessing!" With just a single inhalation into these upper rooms the effect would bring a natural smile and a deep relaxation would permeate body and mind, lasting minutes. With each passing day I was accessing the rooms more frequently, sometimes lasting for half the meditation period, or longer. Last night I was feeling a bit tired and decided to skip the evening session, and as I lay in bed I accessed the upper rooms without consciously trying, and it brought such happiness and relief that I got out of bed and happily sat down to meditate and immediately was rewarded with slow deep breathing. When I get into this state of breath 30-40 minutes pass easily and effortlessly and when the bell rings I find no reason to get up, the deep peace flowing inside is so profound that I can't think of many things which are superior, and with the old habit of distraction becoming ever smaller and fading into the distance, I have little desire to return to that agitated state of being. I see then that the goal is to carry these now open upper rooms with me off the cushion and into the life of action and movement, carrying the peace with me in various circumstances, the rooms being opened and accessed in even the most trying of circumstances. I am currently nowhere near that level of life mastery, but no worry, I am confident that the more I sit the more I can experience this peace outside the meditation room.

It is even carrying into my running, the mind at ease and the body relaxed as I lope and slog around Grant Park. The progress has been encouraging, today was the 10th consecutive day, with the last 5 days being runs of 3 and 4 miles. My legs are slightly achy due to not having a day off, so today was the first day I decreased (3.35) distance to give my legs a chance to recover. Once the weather warms I know I will begin to speed up and go longer, I thrive in hot weather, making me believe I was once a runner in southern Europe, traversing the hills and valleys in some obscure Sicilian village.

Letter to David - AHHJEG and GKC

Dear David,

In 2011 I discovered a blog while researching my first Asian journey. I became intrigued with the story of Keith M and discovered that his path appeared to be not only blessed, but it paralleled mine in some distant, mysterious way, and so I continued to read it as the years passed. During my desert days in Boulder City and subsequent illness there was a gap in his entries. He went from traveling the world to studying yoga in Thailand, then meditating with a famous American Zen Master in Colorado. Out of the blue(s) a random entry appeared one day concerning the MeToo movement, he did not explain much, other than to say he was sorry. Then, another out of the blues moment happened a few months ago - he had developed a cough and after a few doctor visits it was found that he had a cancerous tumor growing in his lung. The entries became more numerous, documenting his diagnosis and subsequent healing attempt with dreaded chemo. Now he is immersed full fathom five, diving deep amid the murky waters of cancer, the shadow of death ever present, as it is with all of us. He is forty years old, handsome, spiritually mature. In his latest entry he requested help from near and far, for various things, from financial support to the sending of healing energy, and even the simple act of letter writing and the gift of pictures and postcards. Having recently been leafing through twenty boxes of photographs, and discovering to my surprise and delight that two of the boxes contained some of my best work, which I had for some reason held back from selling, perhaps from the desire to preserve a small slice of my 18 year history as a photographer, I felt inspired and compelled to write him a letter and include a few photographs, a lonely road, an old broken car, a muddy, empty field, perhaps not the brightest of subjects, but nevertheless I trusted my instincts and sent it off yesterday, the post office lady none too thrilled to handle my payment of cash (strange times!). In my meditations I put aside 15-20 minutes to send healing energy to loved ones and people in need of it, and Keith has been one of the people I have been focusing on, breathing in the cancer, the destructive forces of the chemo, and then, breathing out, the bright burning sun purifying and burning the negative energy into a dark acrid smoke. Breathing in the black smoke, blowing it into oblivion, and then breathing out, cool blue ocean waters enveloping him in radiant positive energy. Sometimes when doing this type of meditation I feel a strong energy flowing through my heart and other organs, my ribs vibrating to the silent music of love and light.

Anger, a fascinating, powerful, and destructive force of  negative energy. Every day I reflect upon the AHHJEG (anger, hatred, hostility, jealousy, envy, greed) and the GKC (gratitude, kindness, compassion). I try my best to deflect the negative and cultivate the positive, using the well known analogy of seeds. I imagine the seeds of GKC growing into massive trees, and the seeds of AHHJEG being buried deep without water or light so that they remain dormant and stunted. Nevertheless, I find it mysterious that humans have the freedom to cultivate any of the seeds, and that some willfully choose the negative seeds. Indeed, religious texts and stories are filled with the fate of souls who are immersed in a spiritual war, on the battlefield having to fight a nemesis. Buddha had to contend with Devadatta, who was the shadow to Gautama's light. In the desert Jesus had a visitation from Lucifer, and while on the cross in his final moments before death was given one last temptation. And I find myself ever returning to Judas, the poor soul who was fated to betray his master. These stories turn existence into a life and death trial, and in my life's most difficult moments, when my soul is on a tightrope, where a single misstep can lead to a dramatic plunge, the oddly compelling (and random!) thought arises "it's a test, don't focus on the pettiness of the moment, keep in sight the long range of time and the height of the mountain being climbed!" And I wonder why life seems sometimes to indeed be a test, a choosing between light and dark, and perhaps there is no choice, that we are born either in the light or in the dark and whatever side we fall on is where we remain faithfully committed. And who is to say why light is better than darkness, life better than death, for the universe thrives with the infinite clashing of the two, a coin whose nature is two sided. I'd like to believe that the one's born in the shadows eventually evolve into the light and the fabric of their souls becomes illuminated.

But my random ideas and imagination of the universe I see to be so small and unsound that I give them up as nothing more than a drop of water lost in the massive ocean of ideas which abound in the universe, and I catch myself before getting boxed in and let it all go, settling mind and body into the great vastness of space and time, seeking to find the place of harmony which was meant for me.

Week 1 of running : 1.25, 1.6, 2, 2, 2.25, 3, 3.35. Fast progress, helped by a reduction of food, the past six days having been single meal affairs, my body craving food, but the excitement of running keeps me from eating, knowing that it will be easier if I can shed a 15lb sack of potatoes. Today was a high energy day, not too surprising because in the past when I have cut down to one meal per day it takes only a short time before energy levels rise. After running in Grant Park I decided to walk to Lake Shore Park to do pull-ups, but was not surprised to find the park now closed. I decided to continue walking north to Lincoln Park and walked in the fields under mostly blue skies, then turned around and headed for home. Once the weather gets warmer and more people get into Grant Park, that too will be closed, then I will be running in the streets and exploring the city anew.

The most compelling and startling scientific fact I have discovered which exhibits the predicament of life on earth is the following -

On a recent walk -

On a not so recent walk -

Letter to David - Running and Meditating in a Lockdown

Dear David,

So far the running is going as planned - .5, off day, then the consecutive streak is 1.25, 1.6, 2, 2, and today 2.25 in a spring chilled morning mist with gray and white skies. I have upped the meditation sessions to 30 minutes upon waking, 40 minutes upon returning from the running workout (after a shower), then an evening session of 30 minutes followed by listening to music while in meditation posture. This is a new routine for me, and I think it is a good one, one of the best I have followed in a long time, actually. I have managed to eradicate less meaningful habits and routines, and the progress with the meditation is producing favorable results. Mind is slowly becoming quiet, body is adjusting with sitting becoming ever more comfortable.  When sitting I try not to expect any kind of happening, just to see how it goes, some sessions are more peaceful than others. This morning was excellent and calm, the afternoon session just completed not so much due to the mind wondering about financial changes caused by the lockdown. If I can continue with 3 sessions per day until the lockdown ends peace and calm will possibly be lingering inside of me.

Letter to David - Bring the Mind Home

Dear David,

I am blessed to receive your music, once again filling in the hours and days with sweet and sad melodies. The first string notes have a John Fahey quality which brought me back into the past, 1990, spring, driving around the suburbs in an old silver car looking for a job and one class short of graduation. One morning I felt especially up against the impossible odds of trying to patch together a life in the universe, a beautiful day, sun out sky bright blue, no white skies then, I felt I should be out wandering in the woods, instead logic and practicality insisted that the best way to move forward was to sign away my time in exchange for money. Only job I had experience in was warehouse work, so I knew I was going to be shutting myself inside a damp dark building for the best days of the coming year. I think I realized even then that free will has its limitations, I knew I was free to drive my car down the road and in two days be in Yosemite or somewhere on the west coast, but that plan was not the right one because it would cause too much disturbance to the universe, the better way was to work with karma and later I discovered that through perseverance and concentration one gets everything desired through a slow process that somehow bends reality, just an inch or two left or right of center. The harder part of life is in the waiting for those few inches to move, it can take years depending on how stubborn and large the mountain is, and if one wavers before the movement then it never comes and one is left bewildered and wondering where all the time went. So I park the car in a grocery parking lot, walk into the store and buy a paper, and emerge into the bright squinty light with a heavy heart and back in the car I slip in a mix tape of Fahey songs and this one plays -

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7dZZVFUqA1I

I felt immediate fortification and pleasure, a real godsend. Strange, isn't it, what sustains us, for some it's the safety and security of family and career, or perhaps life is so terrifying that once any kind of shelter is found it is never abandoned, and this I believe is called a closed mind, and for myself stability lay in beauty, of the earth, people, animals, trees, clouds, blue sky and lake, forests and fields, and just as important, the beauty created by artists - paintings, music, photographs, poems, novels. I drove off in search of a warehouse in Bensenville, Fahey and his guitar filling my heart with strength and joy, and somehow that forlorn day turned out to be special because the universe it seems is compelled to keep unique and unusual combinations, in this case the mixture of despair, beauty, hopelessness, and faith. And isn't it also interesting how music is stored in the mind, it seems to not have its own place to stay, but instead is lumped in with whatever else is going on in one's life at the moment one listens, so now whenever I hear When The Springtime Comes Again I am transported back to the grocery store parking lot reading the want ads.

This morning looked to be promising with the white sky giving way and allowing blue and golden light to mix with the earth elements, and when I reached the lake I felt the exhilarating urge to run (!), and not having run in 4 months, I was reminded of my times in Chiang Mai in 2012 and 2018/19, when I began running in the hot weather after not having run for months. I ran 1/2 mile and walked the rest of the way, but just that little bit made me feel high and happy, which almost seems a crime with the current world circumstances. When I reached Lake Shore Park I decided to look into the little free library box and with 20 books to choose from my intuition told me to take Peace of Mind by Thich Nhat Hanh. Next to the library box is a unique hand carved tree bench and I lay on it with my feet up on the railing and read "As you breathe in, you can connect with your body. Bring your mind home to your body and remember that you have a body." I smiled, laughed out loud because the universe loves finding order in the chaos, for earlier in the day I sat meditating, gazing at the white stone elephant with a note taped to its trunk, three ideas written out by hand, which currently are the main focus of my existence :

- Bring the Mind Home

- and Release

- and Relax

You tell me, isn't the universe confirming the correctness of this particular life choice of mine, saying to me through the random finding of the book "Keep at it, Bring the Mind Home!" 

Letter to David - The Faraway Loneliness of God

Dear David,

Just now returning from an evening walk, the air not too cold and the colors of the blue white sky giving the lake a glowing calm. Stopping to skip stones at Oak St Beach and then striding the jetty until the chess pavilion reminds me of a hot summer morning in the 90's and we battled our guts out while slamming a green fuzz ball and then back at your home you treated me to a Knudson's spritzer, flavor red, and we sipped on your porch, and God bless youth, we found more energy to run and bike to the lake, I was loping down the street with you at my side both of us weaving in the traffic with the sun rising and getting hot and we didn't care we were flying!! And then we reached the lake and I thought why not let's keep going and we cruised south all the way to the chess pavilion and we stopped like it was nothing being young then I hope we had the sense to realize the greatness of the day and I think we/I do/did because 25 years later I am thinking about it and savoring it like a raga in nocturne mood. And then turning into the park and going back south along Rush St the faded lights of a downing sun mellowing the usual city glare and now everything is soft and this special light brings me back into my past and I watch my nine year old self wandering in a field with five friends and we are walking talking balls of energy and one of the boys gets a little too far ahead and one of the other boys turns to the four of us and motions to scatter and we all see and understand the beauty of the game, where the sorry boy who gets left behind has the exhilarating thrill of surprise to find a once bustling field of action has changed into a silent church of one and even the birds have fled and a pure thrilling abandonment descends upon everything and for one brief moment he feels in his bones the faraway loneliness of God. And now I'm walking beside the Museum of Modern Art, the streets abandoned, feeling a certain shame creeping in, as if the whole gang has fled and to my great surprise I look around and see nothing but deep feelings of a cold quiet. I slept long the night before, with dreams no more far fetched than the present real moment, where it seems to be folding in on itself like an out of tune accordion and all I know is fading fast the empty buildings pass like corpses stood on end all the spirit gone I'm the last man standing at Columbus and Wacker and that isn't saying much.

Letter to David - Lockdown

Dear David,

Hope all is well with you and your family. The virus lock down reminds me a bit of Camus' The Plague, with the exception that people are not dying in large numbers and not in such a gruesome way as plague death. As for myself, I mentioned I was "off-grid" in a recent letter, that refers to being psychologically off-grid, which I believe is positive in times of societal unrest and impending confusion and possible disaster. The first step in going off-grid was to stop watching television in 1987, followed soon after by not reading newspapers or magazines. When the internet came around I decided I could carefully pick and choose news stories to bypass obvious propaganda so I began to read news again via AP/Reuters. I also was able to view more films because when I have the option to choose what I want to watch (unlike television, which is  a handful of channels all based on the same propagandist themes) it becomes easier to pick the wheat from the chaff. Having a mind which has had low propaganda contact for the past 3 decades takes one off-grid culturally, and in a risky time such as this virus lock down it probably gives me a rather unusual perspective from which to watch it unfold. Even though a lock down is in place, I believe walking is still allowed, so my normal daily routine of meditation, walking, reading, art study, and eating, will not be affected other than having to search for toilet paper and soap on occasion.

Letter to David - Random Pleasure/Random Pain

Dear David,

A few days ago a new insight arrived during my zoo walk. I realized, based on another recent insight about my self being nothing but the accumulation of past moments and the storage of these moments for future reference, that if I experience a great amount of pleasure, more than is normal, the longer this pleasure experience lasts, the more it will be stored inside my past, and when the pleasure is finally reduced, or, worse, taken away completely without any way of recovery (such as death of a loved one), the severity and duration of pain which will arise due to the loss of this pleasure will be dependent upon the intensity and longevity of the pleasure. I then began to think of what the great pleasures are in life, according to my own experiences, and they are, in order - 1) sex/love with a female 2) physical movement (running/walking, etc)  3) food  4) reading philosophy/history/religion/psychology/literature 5) the creation and contemplation of beauty and art  6) the spiritual path/meditation.

Being nothing but a collection of past moments, I called upon as many as I could and saw that the more I loved a female, the more pain I was going to feel when the female was no longer a part of my life. The intensity of pleasure and pain was of such strength that while in the presence of the female I could lose job, be robbed of my savings, get randomly beaten during a walk, and still have enough pleasure in my heart that these things would do little to erode my confidence in myself and life. However, when the female becomes permanently absent the hole in the heart becomes so prominent that no other object of pleasure can assuage the feelings of deep loss and grief.

Calling upon another recent insight, that of the complete randomness of my thoughts, emotions, and choices, that even though I do have some degree of freedom with the body (e.g., I will decide tomorrow to arise at 5:00am, instead of noon), there are other parts of myself which I have little control over, such as what gives me pleasure and pain. While I can choose to ignore women, there will always be something in my emotions which signals that there is no greater pleasure than being in the presence of a loved female. All I can do is observe this quality of the body and deduce that the reason I love females has not so much to do with pleasure, but rather, it has to do with the universe knowing how to achieve its aim, which is to have a constant dance of objects and animals, and the only way to keep the dance from dying is to continually produce new animals through reproduction. My body serves the needs of the universe by reproducing, and the way to get me to reproduce is to make me feel immense pleasure when in close proximity to a female. The problem is not so much the lack of freedom in this process, but the subsequent pain and emptiness which arises after the aim is achieved, reproduction is successful, and the subsequent fleeing of the female (either physically or spiritually).

Through these insights I now have a better understanding of why the Buddha thought the middle way was best. To obliterate the senses with absolute denial of pleasure may cause some wonky spiritual progress, but it is more likely that a balanced approach to pleasure and pain will give the best results. Too much pleasure causes too much pain, too little pleasure causes too much pain, but just the right amount of pleasure can cause the least amount of pain.

When I returned from my evening walk tonight the above ideas were swirling around inside of me, random as usual, and then one of those special  moments of synchronicity occurred, which makes me think that pure randomness can sometimes nourish connections which are deep and beautiful.

Letter to David - Loss

Dear David,

Every day new lessons emerge, or, things which interest me, prick me into a searching gaze, and the gaze invariably ends up inward. The past, my past, it is all so random, 8 billion pair of conscious eyes pulling in colors and shapes in an infinite progression of order, each life its own unique game of hide and seek, who seeks and who hides? What led me to one book over another, one thought pattern over other patterns? I've walked 19,300 days though forests and cities, cutting a ridiculously illogical and instinctive path and when looking back at it I laugh and wonder how I made it this far, what need to worry, someone who survives a jungle trek by repeating a five word mantra is master of the imaginative universe, the lunging tiger, slayed by the fire of words.

I dreamt of my father a few weeks ago, even though I have not seen him in 30 years. He was not there when I needed him, and perhaps if he had been it would not have made much of a difference. I'd like to think I have forgiven him for breaking off a budding family just getting ready to bloom, it taught me about the pain of loss, the pain of a trust being broken, the pain of a love being severed. How plunging from affluence to want and need didn't mean much, the sun still shines down on my head and I recognize that in deepest loss a new life is planted.

Letter to David - Grief

Dear David,

This past week I have experienced a vast changing of my inner landscape. It began when I lay in bed and a great feeling of loss and grief came over me, out of an apparently happy time of my life, and yet, it felt as if I had lost someone close which left a hole in my heart. The following days the valley shadows of grief visited me, and listening to a Chalisa by Krishna Das would make me weep uncontrollably, something I have not done for 33 years. Day after day I wept a great sorrowing while listening to Krishna Das, and today I tried to walk but gave up and decided to sleep, read, meditate, and cry some more. It feels as if someone close has died, but even in death I am usually composed enough with positive energy to not be so overcome with grief. And yet there is no external death to latch my grief onto, it appears my grief is coming from a long forgotten dark corner of my psyche, and watching it emerge into light has cast my consciousness into a dark pit of despair and emptiness. I know I must let these feelings flow and not try to push them back into the corner, and I also feel in a certain sense that this can be yet another test of the meditation, when bringing the mind home means I will be pulling it through a wet and stormy night.

Traveler of the Century

I quit my job at the AIC back in sept 2018, and going 18 months on savings completes the plan/goal of having time to live life on my own terms and conditions. Now I must begin looking for another job and begin the process again. Now that I am past 50 I no longer am so confident in my luck, fate, destiny, etc, perhaps because I feel I have already approached it, tagged it in passing, and now am floating into the distant void of an uncertain future.

I am reading Traveler of the Century and on page 246 found this gem which points to my own personal facts of existence -

"I'm embarrassed to tell you this, Hans admitted, but the fact is I'm running out of money. Up until now I always did things in the same way - I worked, saved, and traveled until I ran out of funds, then I started all over again."

Compliment

March in 2020 is not like March in 1990, or even 2000. The sky is poisoned with white particles and the sun scorches from depleted Ozone. Still, if I am alive I still have the chance to use consciousness diligently, being as fully aware as possible from moment to moment.

Today on my walk the air was almost 60 and after turning around at the zoo I walked along the boardwalk and then when I crossed into the underpass a female runner passed by in the cool shadows, and when I emerged I saw her leaning against a boulder and facing me. She spoke, and after I took a few steps I realized she was directing her words at me. I stopped in front of her, calmly gazing at her sun glasses. She told me she wanted to give me a compliment, I did not say anything but held her gaze and the thought passed through my mind in less than 1 second that she must have seen me walking many times through the park, and she was going to perhaps say that she admired my dedication to walking every day, but after the second passed she did not say that, but instead said "your head of hair is beautiful, it is the best I have seen,  ever." I must have been a bit stunned because I just kept gazing at her because I could have been given a hundred guesses as to what she would have complimented me about, and none of the guesses would have had the word beautiful or hair mentioned. She may have repeated her compliment during the silence, I am not sure, but I eventually said thank you and asked how her run was going. We soon after parted ways but I have been wondering what her motivation was in deciding to give me such an unusual compliment. Being distinctly ugly, I don't expect to have any part of me described as beautiful, and maybe she knew this, and decided to do something memorable by telling an ugly person they have a beautiful quality. If this motive is true then I have no problem with it, even though the words themselves are untrue, the intent was to give a big dose of positive energy to me and I can feel the warm result from feeling such a good energy.

2020 - Birth/Death/Birth/Death

I was walking through Lincoln Park last week and I began to internally chant Birth/Death/Birth/Death.

I am using a meditation bell timer on youtube to start and end my sessions. I made a schedule and within a week I became ill with influenza and the schedule had to be put aside for 2 weeks while I rested and slept. Something similar happened when I was following a meditation schedule at the Eugene Zendo in 2014, after a couple of weeks I became ill with influenza and by the time I had recovered a few weeks later the meditation term was coming to an end. It seems that my karma violently resists the destruction of habitual distraction, the ego fearing the end of itself.

This morning I arose at 5:30am and increased the bell timer from 20 minutes to 30. I hope to eventually get to 40 minute sessions.

Now that I am past 50 and getting uglier with each passing month I find that the way I have lived my life up to this point has indeed led me here, but more than that, there comes a realization that with the decline of the body comes a decline in fate and fortune, and gradual drift into decay and death. What is an old man with skills that do not translate into work for pay do to survive?

I will be leaning on Osho's answer in the coming months as my money and time fades away - "Be realistic: Plan for a miracle."