This is how it starts. Imagine now that you are walking down a set of railroad tracks in a very dark tun- nel. There is nothing above you to grab a hold of and the walls of the tunnel are per- fectly aligned with the tracks so there’s no getting off. This tunnel looms on forever in front of you and when the train comes, and believe me it’s coming, it is going to run you over and annihilate you just as surely as it has annihilated everyone in the history of the world. There you are, all alone, there is nothing to comfort you now, you can’t turn on the tv, you can’t get drunk or eat chocolate, or go shopping or start a new ex- ercise program or whatever it is you do, nothing, no more distractions are available. Off in the distance, you think you heard the whistle of a train but you have no way of knowing just how near it is or if that’s what it was because things tend to echo in a tun- nel. All your life, you have been running down these tracks sometimes at full speed and sometimes crawling but always moving forward trying desperately beyond hope to get out of the way of the train and suddenly you just stop. You are out of gas, you try to move but now nothing is happening, your legs won’t budge even another inch forward, you struggle now, you try to use your mind to propel you but even that isn’t working, it’s completely out of imagination and fantasy, and nothing, there’s nothing “you” can do. You are at the mercy of the conductor you think but wait, it’s worse than that, much worse than you thought, there is no conductor, the train is empty and no one is driving it, not God, not you, not anything. Are we having fun yet? Yes? No? Maybe? Feel free to click away from this now and don’t ever look for it again. Get in your car now and go see a good movie and com- pletely forget you ever came across anything like this. Try your best now to have thoughts like, “This is not my kind of thing, you know this just seems way to weird, and I don’t really have the time for reading right now anyway. I think the garage needs

1 cleaning out so I’d better do that instead.” Perhaps, there’s a new muffin recipe you can try today. Anything that can distract you from reading this, go with that. The best advice I can give to anyone who doesn’t want to be torn apart limb for limb and thought by thought is to keep enjoying your life and pretending that every- thing is fine and eventually it will all work out. Continue to get up in the morning and go to work and enjoy the gossip and the cocktail parties and go buy those fancy new high heels you’ve been dying to have with your bi-annual bonus, god won’t they look fabulous with that sleek black dress you have that you will fit into after you lose those last ten pounds. By god, you will be the envy of the party, maybe that guy will finally take an interest in you, you know the one in cubicle ten, the one that never even looks at you, yeah that one, well he’s just so cute isn’t he, maybe if you get your act together he will ask you out, you know maybe if just maybe you can somehow make yourself good enough for him, that is. Remember that new diet you just came across on Face- book? You should start that today, get rid of all the junk food you have in your fridge and go out now and buy all the ingredients you’ll need for it like tofu and kale and cayenne pepper. Pick up some new yoga pants while you’re at it and a new yoga mat so you will be motivated to actually attend the classes you already paid for. Don’t for- get to do all those affirmations you’ve been slacking on, “I am beautiful”. “I am suc- cessful.” “My life flows easily and effortlessly.” Hurry up now, time is running out, you’re not getting any younger you know, the clock is ticking and it’s ticking for you. Tick tock tick tock tick tock. Or whatever silly life you think you have going on. No? You still with me? Is your built in bullshit container completely full? Can’t muster even one more fake fucking smile? Can’t convince yourself that if you just buckle down, and start saving you will get out of debt in another year or two and your life will finally be different and you’ll finally be able to enjoy yourself all the time and

2 not just on weekends? Can you remember that you said that same thing, what was it now, ten years ago? Or maybe you’re one of those who did “make it”, you know finan- cially free, successful career, pleasant family life, well you got there, but then your still not happy, it’s just not satisfying, it’s like the surroundings have changed and nothing else and you can see that it’s all just bullshit and the life that they sold you just doesn't add up? What’s going on here? What is missing? Why are you even here? Just what is this life really for anyway? If these are questions that arise in you then, let’s get on with it but consider yourself warned and continue at your own risk, as you know, someone out there is fond of saying. Let’s get back in the tunnel then, the train is getting closer now, you can see the lights ever so faintly in the distance now and you’re afraid to look back to see how fast the lights are getting brighter. Maybe, if you just look straight ahead and don’t look back, they’ll disappear, maybe you just imagined it, but wait now you think you heard something again, it was a whistle. Everything goes quiet as you listen intently, holy shit, there it is again, you know you heard it this time, it’s getting louder and a terror like no other terror you have ever felt before fills your body from head to toe. The fear is overwhelming. You are going to die and you now know it. Fuck, there must be something you can do, you try your legs again, willing them to move, to make any movement whatsoever but they won’t budge, this is not happening you tell yourself, surely there’s someone who can help me, maybe there’s someone up ahead you think, so you use your voice and you start screaming, you scream like bloody hell, like a complete lunatic who’s about to get hit by a train when suddenly to your horror you realize that there are no sounds coming out of your mouth. It’s like one of those dreams where you try to scream but you can’t. This is how it starts. And this is the book.

3 Chapter One: I Dreamt I Was Born A Girl. “I dreamt I was born a girl. living alone in the world, passing the hours away. I looked into the face of sorrow, tempted by the taste of tomorrow, and the scent of yesterday. But that was only a dream of a dream, this world is not what it seems.” The Silent Awakening by Tina Malia I’m not writing this, in fact, this writing is not even happening, whatever words you think you are seeing here are not really here, you can’t read them and I can’t write them. I am literally just a figment of an imagination in the one dreamer as are you so whatever I say here is not really being said. I don’t have to worry about what I say here because I’m not saying it and nothing is being said, even so this writing appears to be happening, even though it’s not. This is probably the weirdest way to start a book, if it is a book, which it isn’t, there are no books anyway, not like you think there are. Weird isn’t a thing either just another idea in the head that you think you have, which you don’t but don’t worry, any worry you have or have ever had is not real either. That’s the good news. This whole thing is actually good news, if you can grasp it, you might find out that everything is actually okay and always was and always will be. I suppose that’s why I try to say anything even when I don’t. Trying is not a thing either so don’t even try to understand this, it is what it is and that’s all. Never-the-less, here’s the story. I had a sad life for as far back as I can really remember. I started crying, really cry- ing, like when your heart is truly broken, like how you cry when you know that no one in the entire world loves or cares about you at all, like how it feels when you think that there is something so terribly wrong with you that no one could ever love you, totally forlorn crying, broken hearted crying at around the age of thirteen. At fourteen I was sure that I wanted to just die but I couldn’t do it so I starved myself in hopes that it

4 would happen on it’s own and just in case there was someone who did or could love me there would be time for them to save me, time for someone to rescue me right be- fore it happened. So I became both bulimic and anorexic and I started drinking and life became more and more intolerable. I don’t need to go into it, just know that life sucked for me from a pretty early age and that’s how it started. I was, however, wildly efficient and good at crying and though I couldn’t have known it at the time, it was probably this blessing that saw me through. Oddly enough, even back then somehow I sensed that how the rest of the world was viewing this thing called life would not be enough for me, and so I grieved what I perceived as that most precious loss, the loss of life itself, perhaps how it was meant to be. Around the age of 18, I finally managed to get pretty thin and oddly enough I started to feel better about things. I remember thinking I didn’t care anymore what anyone said or did after all I could die so what would it matter and that thought actual- ly made me happy. Now when my parents yelled at me or during whatever hateful thing anyone was doing, I would think “go ahead, what do I care, I’m probably not sticking around for much more of this shit anyway.” All of a sudden there was an inno- cence about me and I became rather childlike, unable to make sense of my situation I think I finally accepted it and somehow that freed me. To the world, it would seem I had just given up and I had but my total surrender brought relief and I was able to en- joy many simple things again. It seems I was no longer looking for the future to fulfil me since I didn’t see that I had one anymore. Looking back, I don’t think I was ever in any real danger of actually physically ex- piring but it was bad enough that my parents finally decided it was time to put me into some kind of treatment and my happiness was short-lived. Probably my “I don’t give a fuck anymore” attitude and my utter non-reactivity in the face of just anything that was said or done to me was troubling to my parents so they sent me to this one month

5 treatment program which managed to normalize my eating for the time I was there (then it just went right back). Nobody was addressing my drinking so on our nights off, I went out and got drunk. Afterwards was a long draw out weekly therapy session with a lady named Anne whom I rather liked and looked forward to seeing. I don’t really remember what we talked about other than my family, traumatic events, and how I could learn to deal with things better. She tried several times to bring my parents into the discussion but that was a no go since my parents wanted no part of it. My eating was back to being a mess and my drinking was absurd for someone my age but you know it was what it was. All hopes for me coming back to a resemblance of some kind of normal life were squashed. Anyway after about a year with her, everything rather suddenly came to a head so to speak and I had something of a nervous breakdown or looking back now probably a breakthrough. During this time, I became intensely fearful that I might dis- appear. What I really thought would happen was that my “I” as in my mind would somehow cease to exist and that I would be completely unaware of the fact that I was gone. Needless to say, I was drinking heavily as that was the only way I could keep the fear at bay but on one night it was so severe that not even that was helping and I was certain that “I” as in my mind would die, it might happen at any moment, it felt like it was very close to happening. I was going to lose myself. I might go crazy and not even be there to know it, that was my fear. It was so intense that I simply became so utterly terrified that in the middle of a snowstorm my mother actually drove me to the emer- gency room where I somehow explained the situation and I was given a sedative and sent home. On contacting my therapist Anne the next morning, an emergency meeting was made for that or the next day. Now Anne was located in the next city over which was about two hour drive because at the time, eating disorders were so rare that no one

6 where we lived specialized in them. At any rate, both my parents drove me to my ap- pointment, which was odd because my father rarely (if ever) went along and for a time I actually was driving myself, but this time they were both in the car and during that drive I tried to explain to them that I could “see” why everything in my entire life had worked out exactly the way it had. I could see how one event had shaped the next event and how this feeling about this event had shaped my reaction about a next thing, on and on. It was like I could see the whole thing had just followed a path that naturally would have followed, I remember trying to explain to my parents how noth- ing was anyone’s fault and that whatever happened just naturally happened on it’s own according to what it had to work with. My parents of course weren’t having it be- cause I was saying things like “when you did this, and I thought that, then that’s why I did this, then that’s why this happened” and they still thought I was blaming them and they wanted me to see that nothing was their fault, that they hadn’t been a part of any of it and that whatever misfortunes I had and whatever behaviors I had were all of my own making completely fabricated by me and not any reaction to anything they had done. My problem was that I couldn’t see how good I had it and why I wouldn’t just do as I was told was completely baffling to them. Long story short, I was given a prescrip- tion at the meeting which greatly relaxed me and my “vision” disappeared and I went back to the way I was, misery intact. What happened next isn’t important (none of this is after all it’s just a story) but my life was on it’s own trajectory and according to what most people call “normal”, it wasn’t and never would be. Suffering and fear were my base emotions through most of it. Fast forward 25 years, I’m now 43 years old and I have three small children, and a husband who wanted nothing do with us and had run off and I’m back to living at home with my parents. As it happened, my son was attending kindergarten at the lo-

7 cal school and one of the parents of his classmates happened to “mention” to me that she had seen a book at Walmart that day or that week that “reminded” her of me. Now we were all in the habit of sitting outside the school waiting for our children to exit everyday and I do remember talking with this lady once maybe twice on the lawn when the weather was nice but we were hardly close friends and at best just acquain- tances. Looking back, I don’t really remember thinking of myself as a particularly “spir- itual” person, I did think the whole religion thing was just crazy, couldn’t even imagine how anyone could even believe such nonsense and I might have dabbled in medita- tion a few times but as far I remember nothing really stands out so why this lady thought of me when she saw “A New Earth” by Eckhart Tolle for sale at Walmart and mentioned it to me is just the way the universe works. It knows exactly what you need when you need it. As it happens, I thought it so odd that she thought of me at all that I immediately ran down to Walmart and purchased the book. I think I did take it as a sign that I was meant to read it so I guess that was kind of mystical of me. I had to bor- row the money, had to talk my mom out of $10 bucks which was no easy task, she had plenty of money but it was “her” money and she had to think about whether I de- served it or not, go figure, but I think she did give it to me or maybe I stole it, either way I got the book straight away. Anyway, I loved the book, really couldn’t put it down and read it in like two days, then I realized that I had checked out “The Power of Now” about a month before from the library but I didn’t read it all because I couldn’t get into it. I had no idea what it was talking about but even so something in me saw the pattern of it all mainly that I was meant to read it though I didn’t really know why. I think it’s safe to say I was in quite a bit of pain at the time though this was a normal condition for me by then as I’ve al- ready said too many times. My parents were constantly berating me, what a loser I was for marrying a loser and now living with them. I was on food stamps which was literally

8 the only source of income I had had in quite some time. I hated living with my parents but I had no where else to go. I hated them too. I had for some time actually hated everything about them, the pettiness of their characters, the total lack of even the smallest amount of compassion for me seemed to go all the way back to the day I was born. My parents were both from Germany and their cold hearted nature had complete- ly baffled me all my life. Love and or forgiveness was not something I had ever experi- enced, not by them, not for myself and not by anybody else either but I had children now and I’d be damned if I would ever let anyone lay a finger on them or hurt them in anyway. I forgave my children for any and all misgivings, tantrums, anything at all with a ferocity that you’d be hard pressed to find anywhere. My father had once slapped my son across the face, he was just a baby about two years old and I had attacked my father with every riding toy in the room hurling them at his head. Half eaten dishes sit- ting on the table were thrown, missed and broken against the wall splattering food everywhere. I was asked to move out after that and left to be homeless with my chil- dren for a few months. Well, it hardly matters now but the fucked up nature of the life I was living can not be overstated. Moving on, I was so enthralled by the teaching of Eckhart Tolle that I must have looked it up online and found out that there was a Meet-up Eckhart Tolle group near- by my home and I decided to go. I had never been to anything like this before but on the night in question my parents agreed to watch my children for me while I got out of the house. Well long story short that’s the night it happened. That’s the night I disap- peared, completely. Seriously, when I got back from the meeting and walked into my parent’s house I was no longer with us. The Sandra that I thought I was my whole life up until that point in time was gone. Sandra didn’t even know she was gone so she wasn’t worried about it because how could something that was no longer there worry

9 about anything. The person was not there to do it. In fact, although I seemed to know the place, after all I drove home and knew how to get there, knew my parents and of course my children and the house and things like that, I knew these things but the “who” that knew these things was not there. It was like the body was there and even the mind was there but the entire history of this person was gone. I did not even know it but I was in heaven. I had no judgement about anything at all, nothing bothered me, I simply had no context for anything to bother me, no context within to judge anything as being better or worse than anything else, everything just was and what was, was apparently all right with me. I did not want anything else, didn’t need anything to hap- pen or not happen. I just remember thinking that the whole thing, the whole life was unreal, and after a time, it was curious to me as it dawned on me how these people I was coming in contact didn’t seem to know it, like I was looking at them and I had the thought, “I think they think they are real, that’s weird.” To illustrate how I was functioning for instance, a few events still come to mind about this time. One was right when I got home from the meeting to find my mother drunk and hurling cuss words at my father in the big living room with my children just wandering around playing with their toys, they were only five, four, and three years old at the time. Normally this would have pissed me off to high heaven as I was hell bent on giving my children a better early life experience than the one I had but I literally could find nothing wrong with the situation like I was just like “oh okay” except that I possessed the thought to take my children out of the whole thing and upstairs to the room we shared and put on a movie so they couldn’t hear it. This just happened natu- rally and there was no worry involved about children being scarred or traumatized. There was no thought that anything wrong was happening or shouldn’t be happening, no thought that my parents were being horrible people and irresponsible, nothing like that.

10 About an hour later, my mother knocked on my door and we sat on a small couch that was situated outside my room and I listened for about an hour to her drunken venting about what a complete asshole my father was. Now this wasn’t a new behavior on her part and had I been in my “usual” state she might have been met with a “For God’s sake, shut the fuck up and go to bed already.” Well, they say the apple never falls far from the tree. However, I neither agreed nor disagreed with her, I think I never said a word but she seemed to want me there so I sat there with her completely unaf- fected. I neither cared what she said and I had no caring whether I sat there or not. This went on for a time until I guess she exhausted herself and went to bed and so did I. The other event happened later that week, I was sitting at the computer and for some reason my mother came into the room and completely laid into me with every insulting remark you can think of, basically cursing at me and ripping apart my charac- ter from top to bottom. Well, you have to know my mother to know how cutting and hateful her words can be delivered, like if you have a heart at all, she is reaching in there and ripping it out. Once again, I just sat and stared at her, I had no feeling one way or the other about any of her words. I made no move to escape or to engage in my own defence. I was simply not there to do it, like literally nothing happening and nobody home. Other than that, I vaguely remember laying down to go to bed each night with all my children cuddled around me and feeling the most exquisite sensations I had ever had. This went on for two weeks until for some reason it occurred to me that I might want to stop smoking and so I tried to quit smoking and just like that Sandra was back, and bam, so was misery. I didn’t know what happened, I had no background to know what happened just that I liked the way that I was then and now I didn’t. I got an email

11 notification from the Eckhart Tolle group asking me to review the experience during that time and I wrote, “This could be life changing.” Well, I was right about that. So that’s how it all got going, not really, nothing is going anywhere but let’s pre- tend it is. It’s not a pretty story but it takes what it takes, anyway none of that really happened, sometimes you get a nice dream (probably people with nice dreams don’t come here but you never know) and sometimes its closer to a nightmare, either way you’re fine. Well, you might not feel fine, maybe you feel like shit, maybe you are sit- ting there comparing and thinking “damn and I thought I had it bad” or “that’s noth- ing, my life was ten times worse.” Either way, it’s all going to work out since you are lit- erally dreaming, and sooner or later you can’t fail to realize that you were never any- where and nothing ever happened. Unfortunately, the dream is basically all laid out for you in childhood and the only reason it feels like a problem is that you think it’s real in the way everyone else does. Once you know it’s not things do eventually tend to go in a better direction. The one thing I can say about my dream is that if some dreams are better at making their dream characters go in search of the truth, mine was exceptional. I couldn’t have asked for a better story. Chapter Two: You think you're lost but it's not true. “You think you’re lost but that’s not true, you simply lived a dream or two, you trav- eled all this way to find, you never left your home behind.” Already Home by Andrew Lloyd Webber Somehow, over the course of a day or two, my experience of life went back to the way it was before, bullshit intact. Gone as quickly as they had come were my days of going outside to sit in a chair by the pool to smoke a cigarette and stare in wonder at the night sky like I had actually just found out there was one. The sky went back to be-

12 ing unnoticeable and the noise in my head took over my utterly blissful knowing of everything which was actually nothing with the same old incessant overall feelings and thoughts that “my life is fucked” and “Somehow I’ve got to get it together. I’ve got to get out of this place” that had filled it before. One might think that after an experi- ence of this type, of this magnitude, two whole weeks of being some other type of be- ing, that something would have eased up a bit, or that I might have had some type of inspiration that would have set my life right but no. According to the standards of “normal” functioning my life actually got much worse and would continue to do so for some time. Later that year, my mother finally left my father so to speak, well we moved, how that wasn’t actually leaving him since he wasn’t invited, I don’t know. What actually happened is that she sold her business and decided she wanted to live in the country and so with my help we drove all over Arkansas looking for a suitable house. We were living in Dallas at the time, had been for many years but Arkansas real estate was cheap so that’s where we looked. The plan was that I would go with my mother be- cause “my father” was the problem and I would raise my children in a nice wholesome place out in the country in nature. We would have a beautiful garden, raise chickens and other animals and basically take it easy and just live the simple life. For once, she was actually being nice to me and I even believed that my problems were over, that I’d take care of her and she’d take care of me and my children. My father stayed behind in the house in Dallas and when he actually got on with his life and tried to divorce her a year and half later, because you know she had left him and they hadn’t been living together, she was dumbfounded that he had his own life to live I guess and tried to stop him from ending it so for a short time we left the house in the country and moved back.

13 Well, I guess my mom had discovered through snooping in his emails that some lady from Germany was coming to visit him and my mom regardless of the living situa- tion thought he still belonged to her and determined to catch him red handed. Well, I wasn’t having such a good time on the farm anyway so I was actually relieved to be getting back to civilisation so I went along with it and in the course of a day and a half we packed up the truck, closed up the house and drove straight back to Dallas. It was around noon when we got there and no one was home but a little investigation found this lady’s suitcase and things up in my old upstairs bedroom so my mom took it and every single thing she found there and threw it over the balcony into the living room below and instructed all my children to help her throw it all in the pool, which I guess they did although hesitantly, well I think they threw in a couple things but my mom did most of it. After she got it all in the pool, she went to her room where she had left an overflowing over sized walk-in closet full of clothes and put on an old black evening dress and started to drink from the case of German Beer she found in the kitchen. Af- ter a few drinks, on second thought I guess she saw some bleach and decided that would go well on top of the clothes now floating in the pool and into the mix. Well, I think the kids were thinking that she had ruined using the pool for awhile which they loved. My dad had taught them all to swim before we left the first time, and they had numerous memories of fun with him out there. Needless to say, it was a true fiasco when they finally did come back to the house and my mom started screaming and throwing a fit worthy of a two year old, well her wrath when it was ignited was just some baseline ugliness that knew no bounds, didn’t I know, all that anger was now luckily directed at another target, instead of straight at me like what had happened the minute we moved to Arkansas. I had started drinking some of the beer as well, but you know I was quiet, just trying to subdue some of the pain I felt for having helped out at all in this craziness. In the end, my dad had to call

14 the cops and they stood guard while he retrieved what he could of his friends clothes out of the pool. My kids helped him. I’ll never forget the look he gave me when he asked me why didn’t I warn him. I could have called him and given him a heads up. I knew I should have, I had thought of it even, but for some reason I didn’t. I just stayed out of it but there was a betrayal there that he would not soon forget. My mom had me call the locksmith after they left and changed all the locks. We lived there for like six months, just long enough for my mom to realize that it was over. My dad went to a motel and never came back. He did come and see his grandkids a couple times, would pick them up, take them to the movies or bowling like he used to do but the visits were few. Eventually, when it became clear that nothing would ever be the same, we packed up again and all went back to the farm. Long story short, the life we both envisioned on the farm did not match up at all with what happened. Apparently with my father out of the picture, if I hadn’t been completely my mother’s object of hatred before, I was now. Let’s just say we had a small hobby farm and I did all the work from morning to night while my mother com- plained and continued to criticize me to no end. I apparently could do nothing right in her eyes, no matter how hard I tried and believe me I tried. I found myself mowing an entire acre on an old riding lawnmower, building fires and burning debris and branch- es, leaves, you name it. I learned how to use a rototiller and planted the garden while being eaten up by ticks and mosquitos. I did all the laundry, all the dishes, all the cleaning, just never stopped from morning till night, such were her demands and I did it knowing that I didn’t deserve any praise, didn’t deserve any better, I was lucky I had a free place to live with my children, one day I’ll never forget is when she just looked at me and said, “For some reason I always knew you wouldn’t amount to much.” I even once at her request tried to sheer four grown sheep with some other guy she found who also had no idea what he was doing. Listen, I’m not a country girl,

15 didn’t grow up on a farm and I have always weighed around 115 lbs. I don’t know jack about most animals let alone sheep, hell, I didn’t even know how the sheers worked but hey no problem, you want me to sheer some sheep for you, what the hell, I’ll give it a go. Have you ever tried to sheer a a grown lamb, let me tell you it isn’t easy, first off they are husky fucking animals and weigh probably over two hundred pounds, they are shorter than you but weigh more than twice as much and the only way to get near them is to corner them and grab them by the horns and somehow flip them on their butt because once they are on their butt they become docile. This doesn’t mean you just toss them on their butt and that’s it, no they don’t just let you walk up to them and say let’s do this, just wanting to grab a hold of them takes a lot of courage, and then if you do manage to wrangle the beast onto it’s butt you have to hold them there and then while you are holding them there they literally shit on you. One person holds and the other sheers. We did it both ways. How the fuck you sheer the bottom when that’s the only reason the thing is staying still is beyond me. We didn’t sheer their butts and what we did sheer was the most uneven haircut in the history of sheep sheering, I’m sure. Totally laughable but hey I tried. After about four hours of this we finally gave up exhausted, with shit and wool everywhere and this woman whom I called my mother, calls out to me that I should get in the house and make dinner for my children. I was like, I’m out here sheering your fucking sheep, have been for the last five hours in a barn that’s stifling from the summer heat and you can’t put some chicken nuggets in the oven and feed your grandchildren? Boy was I pissed and you know what she was doing the whole time, just sitting in front of the TV totally relaxed and doing some knitting. I do not lie when I say I could not please this woman. After all that, I had to make dinner and do the dish- es, including hers. Her deal was that she was paying for everything, it was her money that kept the lights on so I should do all the work. So that’s what I did and still it wasn’t

16 good enough. If it wasn’t for my children, for my immense love of them, I’m sure that I would have given up and hung myself in the barn, that’s how bad it was. Well, some dreams really do suck, no doubt about it. Then later that same year, I was sitting around and my mom was reading through the school handbook for whatever reason. My two oldest children were both in first grade and my youngest would start kindergarten the next year. So she says to me rather calmly, “Did you know they have corporal punishment at this school?” and I’m like “What’s that?”, because apparently I have no idea what that is and she tells me that they spank the students. Now, I’m alarmed and I jump out of my seat and say “They do what?” And she tells me again and I say, “No way” and she says “well that’s what it says here” and I look at the handbook and it’s all laid out like how many swats for which of- fences and all. So I get on the phone and immediately call the school and my exact words when they answer the phone are “I’m looking at your handbook and I think I’m reading here that you hit children there?” Then she explains to me that yes they do but if I don’t want my children spanked all I have to do is sign a piece of paper forbidding it. “Damn straight” I think “if you even lay a finger on my child I will fucking kill you” so that very minute I drive down to the school and sign the paper. Good god, what next, but you know after a week or so the whole incident just evaporates and I forget it for the time being. My kids are never in any trouble anyway so nothing comes up until the start of the next school year. Now my youngest is starting Kindergarten and you know this is kind of a big deal not only for my child but for me because it will be the first time in a long time that I will actually have some time to myself because all the children will be away for the whole day. So you know there’s all the hoopla and we meet the teacher and it seems all sweet and stuff and on the second day, the kids get off the bus and my littlest one runs up the long gravel driveway without stopping and straight into me where I’m

17 standing on the big porch, throws his body and arms around me and says in a terrified voice, “I never want to go back to that place.” Well, it took me more than a minute to find out why because the child could barely talk that’s how frightened he was. Appar- ently, his Kindergarten teacher had brought a paddle into the room and it doesn’t look like a ping pong paddle, it’s a long worn out well used piece of wood with a han- dle and says to the children “if you don’t behave this is what you have to look forward too.” Then she leaves it on her desk as a reminder. Well that’s when I really started to lose my shit, first of all you have to know that punishment isn’t a thing for me and my children because for some reason I don’t be- lieve in it. I don’t punish my children and I don’t let anyone else do it either not even my mother. As much as I just take in all the verbal abuse from my own mother, I don’t let her say a hurtful word to my children at all, and of the times she did, I would blow my top, saying something like “don’t you ever speak to my child like that again.” I don’t see how hurting and/or humiliating anyone can have a positive effect on anything and the whole thing is just cruel to me, it’s sick and wrong and I don’t like it, in fact I don’t even seem to be able to tolerate it. Long story short again, because that was a whole big journey for me, I had many lengthy meetings with the school, I even joined a group that was trying to pass a law against it and stood outside their school with a sign that said “My principle beats butts. Positive role model or child abuser.” Keep in mind that this was a super small town out in the sticks and all the residents were actu- ally in favor of beating their children and you can imagine what a spectacle I must have been. My mother kept telling me to just forget about it, that I was making a fool of myself, and of her, “it’s not that big a deal” she’d say. “They’re not going to hurt your children” she’d say “so just leave it alone.” But they were, there was something about “school” that would hurt my children, this I knew deep down. I simply could not recon- cile the fact that anyone with such a big capacity to cause hurt and pain to an innocent

18 child whether physically or emotionally (even if it was to slap a big F on a paper) had anything to offer. Even if they could teach math or writing, I felt that it was completely useless if the fundamental capacity for compassion and empathy didn’t come first and I saw here how it was actually being destroyed. I tried to tell them that for all their ban- ners against bullying at the school they were providing the perfect example of how to do it and that was what was causing the problem in the first place. There was even this young man who took me to his house to show me ‘his paddle” that was used on him so many times that when he finally graduated elementary school, the teacher gave it to him like it was a trophy, a gift, for what, that he fucking survived. Yeah, well fuck that and fuck you. I hated these people and it would take many years before eventually what I real- ized is that these people could not behave in any other way then the way they were behaving because they were raised the same way and their favorite line of defense was “I was spanked and I turned out okay” . Of course, I thought , like hell you did, you are obviously not okay, anyone who hits a child on purpose, like completely premedi- tated thinking it was a good thing to do “for” the child is a complete lunatic in my book. And I was like if what you are is “okay”, I don’t want it. That’s not my idea of okay, not by a long shot. Then it occurred to me (and this was something of a turning point) why strive for “okay”, that seems a lowly goal anyway, shit, are we only here to be okay? How stupid it that? I did not come here to be just “okay”, What the fuck is that? Is that all this is? I just don’t think so, something seriously wrong here. To be true, times were getting even darker for me. My whole family was against me taking my children out of school. I think they were sure I was crazy since all of soci- ety says no one can thrive without it. Well if that were true than wouldn’t we see almost all of the America people who were forced to go to school thriving? Not happening. I don’t see any thriving going on anywhere, all I see is bullshit, I was, however, hardly in

19 a position to offer anything better they told me, pointing to the failed life I was living. “Look at you”, my mother once told me, “you have no money. You are a total loser.” My mother was frankly embarrassed of me and my very public displays of protest against this school system and she made it a condition for living there that my children attend school so more homelessness ensued. Sometimes we’d leave for a few months and then come back to my mother’s house and then leave again. How I stood my ground is anyone’s guess, but doubt and fear were my constant companions, after all, my mistake stood to ruin three entire lives. My kids did attend several different schools after all that out of necessity, meaning there were times I was trying to get on my own two feet so to speak and I had to work and couldn’t afford a babysitter but they were always short lived like a month or two, sometimes only a week, or a few days because invariably someone at the school (other schools and schools without corporal punishment, schools in completely different parts of the country) would treat them disrespectfully and I would go off. A simple example would be my daughter might ask to go to the bathroom and be told no, then come home and tell me about it and I would go down to the school and say “Listen here, when my daughter asks you to go to the bathroom it isn’t really a question for you, it’s a cour- tesy on her part to let you know where she’s going so the answer to that is always yes because you aren’t in charge of her, she’s in charge of her. Got it? You work for her not the other way around.” Or once when my son’s class had to line up to leave the cafete- ria, they were told to put their hands behind their back and my son wouldn’t do it but he put his hands in his pockets instead to avoid detection. Of course, I was furious when he told me about it and I went down there and told them “My son doesn’t put his hands behind his back for anyone and he never will, he’s not a criminal but maybe you are, what is wrong with you?” Later that week at the same school which was in the worst part of town because we were homeless, I was picking up my kids and I hap-

20 pened to be walking behind a teacher who was dragging a little black boy by the hood of his coat down the hall and I took out my phone and video recorded it. Then I called the school and told them what I had a video of and that I wanted my children transferred to better school (well I wanted the Montessori school but I didn’t get it) or else I was sending it to be shown on the six o’clock news. When it came time to have the meeting, I couldn’t find the video on my phone for some reason but I stood my ground, said I wasn’t going to show it to them and they must of known what I’d seen because the next day my kids were transferred to a school in nice part of town, trans- portation provided for free, but even that turned out to be not in line with my idea of how children should be treated with golden gloves and nothing less, nothing less I say, not going to have it. There were so many things and I did not beat around the bush, I was always blunt and to the point almost like the strength I’d never found for myself, I had found for them. Needless to say this was never well received so we moved around a lot because I’d have to take them out and lose my job at the same time. One time I even went so far as to write out cards that said “I have the right to call my mother at any time I see fit for any reason and this card states you must respect this request immediately. This card is legally binding and failure to comply will have dire consequences.” I would not under any circumstances compromise their integrity even if it meant financial disaster which it most often did. It felt like I was at war with the whole world and I think I was. Okay was not going to do, okay was bullshit, no, so we moved back to Arkansas again and again and I do not lie. Nothing actually happened. When I said “I do not lie” in the previous paragraph, I was lying. To be true I never lived in Arkansas or anywhere else for that matter. If I called my mother right now and asked her why she was so utterly nasty to me she would say she doesn’t remember ever being nasty to me. That’s because it never hap- pened and all the things that you think are going on aren’t. Seriously, I don’t even

21 have a mother or children for that matter and there were never any sheep but the dream does appear in the way it appears and some aspects of the dream are more in- sistent and realistic than others, not really but even if your life is a dream you might as well live it. What else can you do? Maybe, I’ll get back to the story of Arkansas later in this writing but I can’t really know. The only thing other thing I really want to mention right now about that horrific place is that there was a thrift shop located in a small town where because of my food stamp status, I was allowed two free grocery bags worth of free stuff once a month so I used to go there and see what I could find. Keep in mind this is the most ass backward part of the country so finding a completely free book there called “Spiritual Enlighten- ment: The Damnedest Thing” by Jed McKenna in that place was highly unlikely. Once again, the universe suffices to cut you a break and gives you a clue to what is actually going on. I read this book and loved it. I ordered all the books and read them and loved them and nothing happened. So I read them all again because I knew what they were talking about but I just couldn’t get it and still nothing happened. Of course, there were never any books. Seriously, I recently went back to my mother’s house to see if I could find my original copies. She never throws anything out so if they were actually there, I would have found them. I went through the attic, through every part of the house, and could not find them. Well, you know dreams are weird like that. Now if you can’t remember where you left something you can just dream order a new one online. So I have all my books back and then some and these days, my dream has evolved to the point where I don’t have to steal to do it. So what am I doing here? What am I trying to say? It’s 2:30 in the am and I’ve had about nine hours of sleep in the last 48 hours. What does any of this matter to you? Or to me? Why do I sit here and imagine that I am writing anything at all?

22 Silence comes over me now. What is this place? The appearance of a desk and a lamp and the sound of a space heater humming from across the room. What else is here? The app on the iPad I am using to write this shuts down, the whole app just closes on it’s own, just like that, and it goes back to the home page where I have a picture of Ramana Maharshi. That’s what happened after I wrote that last question last night. I just sat there staring into his eyes and then he seemed to say “Enough, go to bed.” So I pretend there’s something called a bed and something called me and I get in it and go to sleep. Chapter 3 If I Said What's On My Mind “If I said what’s on my mind, you’d turn and walk away, disappearing way back in your dreams, it’s so hard to be unkind, so easy just to say, that everything is just the way it seems.” A Man I’ll Never Be by Boston Okay, enough, I feel like you are sitting there wondering what is this, what is this story I’m reading? You can read it and just see that it’s heartbreaking, you can swap out all the details and put in your own, but what is the point? What is the point of do- ing that? We’ve all had our own particular brand of heart-ache, our own battles within the dream, how the dream just isn’t living up to anything, how it just somehow isn’t enough, but most of all we SEE that it is utterly ridiculous how this dream is operating, that things just don’t ADD UP! That we don’t add up, on the one side we have these miraculous things we call “life’ and “love” and even “God” and on the other we have some impossible monetary standards that only a select few are able to achieve and even those people aren’t happy because if they were they wouldn’t be involved in the greed and demise of the multitudes. What is it that is going on? It just doesn’t make

23 sense but and here’s the rub, it’s believable. The whole story makes just enough sense to be believable. Until of course, it isn’t. Meanwhile, maybe you have been studying all these realized masters and you do get it, but then there’s that part of you that says, well, that’s all well and good but you don’t understand “MY PREDICAMENT”. My life isn’t like that. I don’t have a simple life where I can ponder and accept all this stuff because I’m busy trying to fucking survive here. I’ve got bills to pay and people and things to take care of and pay attention to. Let me tell you, “No, you don’t.” If you are reading this, you only have one thing to do while you still have a body and this is it. What you really are “consciousness” didn’t just accidentally direct your attention to this writing anymore than I just “accidentally” wrote these words. There are no accidents going on anywhere. No words and no one to write any words, all the images you see are not real and neither is the “you” that you “think” you are. The thing is you can’t get there from here so you must go where no one else goes and you must go it alone. No one else is going with you so don’t even bother about that, don’t bother trying to tell anyone about it, don’t bother trying to “discuss” this with anyone, nobody cares at all about this, not because they don’t want to but be- cause they aren’t capable of caring about it. What you think about anything including you, yourself and this life that you think you have is your biggest problem. There is no you and no one else is here either. That’s what you have to realize but the one that you are trying to convince of it, the one that needs to know this, the one that wants to know this isn’t here to do it so that’s where it turns into a big mess. I mean you have to see the dilemma of trying to convince something that isn’t even there that it isn’t there. This is a major mind fuck because the you that you think you are has to bypass all the obstacles that are telling it that it does exist, which is everything, it’s whole damn life,

24 and it doesn’t help, not one bit, that literally every other person you can come in con- tact with is on board with the lie. There is no easy way around this and words won’t do it for you. Actually words are part of the problem, because even the words are in on the big lie. The words are mak- ing up all the wrong ideas about everything you think you know which you don’t and yet obviously you somehow have to work with them to cut through the crap that you call “your life.” That’s why I can’t even say it to you, because the word “you” is not really there. I hope “you” see “my” problem when I say that “you”, “my”, and also “problem” aren’t really there either. So you know how you think things are happening all the time? Everyday, every minute that you are awake and not in your bed fast asleep (and even then), you think that something is happening, you are doing the dishes, or going to work, or taking a shower, whatever it is, is not actually going on. Seriously, just because you think you are seeing these things or feeling these things happening they’re not. Nothing is hap- pening. Nothing has ever happened, not now, not then, and not ever. I know it’s hard to believe and I know what you’re thinking about this. You are thinking “What the hell is she talking about? Nothing happening? What a load of bull- shit? This girl must be crazy. What a stupid person! “. You are thinking, “I have a life. I have a family. Or I had a family but now they’re all gone. Or my children are well be- haved and are going to college” or “my oldest son is on drugs” or whatever fucking story you have going on. It could be any story. (You heard one story, you’ve heard them all applies here.). “I have money” or “I don’t have money” or “everything’s work- ing out” or “nothing’s working out.” Literally, every single thing you have ever “thought” has happened or didn’t happen but could have happened or is happening now isn’t fucking happening. Nothing is happening. The whole entire thing whether you are ten seconds or eighty five years old has simply never occurred. Nothing has

25 ever occurred. Try to wrap your head around that and you will quickly see that you won’t be able to. You can’t wrap your head around anything because you don’t have a head. You don’t have anything and you never will. You may be sitting there with these words on a computer screen front of you or on a smartphone in your hands right this very moment and I say to you with the utmost sincerity that you are not sitting any- where and there is no computer or phone resting in something you call your hands. I know I’m getting very blunt with you but that is really the only way to go. I’ve had it a lot of easy ways and I can tell you it doesn’t work worth a shit that way. All the things that you think have happened did not happen. You haven’t struggled to make ends meet or run a successful business, you aren’t sitting by a fire in an expensive home or sitting on a street corner, you are literally no where. Nothing is here like that including you. Of course, there’s no way for you to believe this, no way because there’s no one there to believe it, and the thing that thinks it is there is completely against believing that it isn’t, that’s what I’m telling you. Anyway, “you”, the thing that thinks it is here is way too invested in what it thinks is happening, what it thinks has happened, and what it hopes will happen to actually figure out what is happening which is nothing. All the things that you think you’ve done, the good and the bad, all the so called mistakes, and/or accomplishments will just vanish and you will be left with what’s actually here which is nothing, not nothing exactly no it’s definitely not nothing more like everything but not something like you think of when you think of something. If you knew that it would be a shock, albeit a very pleasant one but you don’t know that because there isn’t a you to “know” anything. All your cherished ideas and opin- ions about the world and your place in it would be gone. Now for some fortunate be- ings (of which there are none) this would be most welcome especially those imaginary characters whose dream lives aren’t turning out so well. If you are reading this, I’d take

26 a guess that you’re one of these lucky ones since the ones whose dream is moving along in a rather splendid ordinary way will never start the search. These confident characters spend their whole lives “thinking” that they’ve got it all figured out and they wouldn’t in a million years look twice at something like this if they did come across it, (which they won’t) after all they have plans and are going places, and once you know the truth, you don’t go anywhere since there’s nowhere to go. Either way it doesn’t matter, there is no “good” way or “better” way because there aren’t any “ways.” So no one is doing better than you or worse than you because all these ideas are just “ideas” that don’t mean shit. I know you don’t know what I’m talking about so let’s talk about why you can’t un- derstand this. “You” as in who you think you are is a fictional character in the big ass dream that we all call this world. This “entity” if we can even call it that is the part of you that “thinks” it exists as you even though it doesn’t. This thing which is a non- thing , what I am calling an “entity” is how your mind works to create the appearances of your particular dream. It is a completely non-personal operating system that has used all your particular characters early childhood experiences and emotional im- printing to produce a very realistic picture of what you call yourself that is living “your life.” From a very early age, you were literally “convinced” that you were this and the years that have gone by (not really) have cemented this idea of you in your mind, in your operating system, so trying to break out of this is like trying to break out of what you have always known as “you”. Furthermore, this you that is not is actually convinced that it is you so trying to break out of it is like the equivalent of breaking out of a maxi- mum security prison with a body that has no arms or legs. So any time you make any move to break free of it, it stops you because it has by this time taken complete con- trol of your dream for so long that any disturbance that threatens it’s existence is taken to be real and it then “directs” your attention away from finding out about it. In a way, it

27 actually “is” the director of your attention. It is in charge of dictating what you are aware of and it’s doing that same thing with everyone you know. Got it? Well, here’s where it gets tricky, let’s say that you actually figure out what’s going on and now you want to break free, guess what happens? It uses anything and everything it can to convince you that doing this is a very bad idea. Seriously, like shit in the dream, the stuff that really means something to this fictional character that you thought you were all this time, stuff that really hits you hard, that threatens the very “life” of this character, things like your children or your money or maybe your spouse or good friends or even your brain or body, whatever it is that you value the most starts to go haywire and you start to feel very bad about all these things. You might feel a lot of fear and your thoughts might be thinking about all the bad things that you “think” are happening to you or that could happen to you. It almost always tells you that you are going crazy, it loves this fear the most because it’s like the worst thing that can happen in the dream, insanity, that’s where you lose all face value in the dream. This is where it is absolutely imperative in your understanding that “nothing is hap- pening.” Nothing has ever happened. You have been living in a dream world and the dream is coming out of your mind. There are no other people, there is only your mind producing the images of other people and at the same time these “others” are pro- ducing the image of you in their dream. But be very very clear here, you are all just part of the same dream which is not real. People even animals might even attack you and you might feel very very out of place. It may feel like your entire life is spinning out of control and the worst part of all this is that you may feel that it is all your fault. You feel like you are to blame for all this shit going wrong but nothing is going wrong because nothing is happening and there is no “you” to blame for anything. If there is no you then who is there “to do” anything. All your life you’ve never “done” anything or been anywhere. All this is, this chaos and

28 fear is the imaginary dream character pulling out all the stops to get you to stop look- ing at it. This response is automatic, it is your particular conditioning on auto-pilot. Nothing can happen to you because there is no you for it to happen to. I don’t care if you believe me or not because you’re not there and neither am I so who cares who believes anything. When you find out what is really going on, what you actually are, you will ditch that pathetic character you’ve been forced to play your whole life faster than a New York minute, whatever that is, but fast, faster than a speeding bullet, yeah, probably faster than that or not. Sometimes it’s slow, very slow going, sometimes it takes awhile, years even, little by little you whittle away at it, so I’d start now if I were you, and don’t wait. If you wait too long, you will be on your death bed and right before you take your final breath, you will get it and then you will gasp, “Wait, just wait a minute here, you mean I missed it? I missed the whole point of my existence? How can this be?” And a tear will slip down your old wrinkled up face right before you go flat line. Sorry, times up. Chapter 4 Watching Closely Over The Journey “No way construction of this tricky plan was built by other than a greater hand with a love that passes all our understanding, watching closely over the journey.” The Wood Song by The Indigo Girls Let’s be clear, that all this ‘stuff” I say I went through never really happened. It was in my imagination and that’s all. It is quite simply, just a story. It may be a funny story, or a tragic story, or even a stupid story, still just a story. It’s not even “my” story. I was not the creator or even the dreamer of this story, because neither of those things actu- ally exist. Even so let’s get on with the story. Well, as you can see, things were just not really working out so well for me. My children were pretty happy most of the time and that’s about the only positive thing I

29 can say about the whole mess. So there I am, I’m not going along with what all the oth- er people are going along with, so you know I’m a real outcast by this time and in a way so are my children. My real problem at this point is that my children are just still so young that I can’t work without having someone else look after them and I can’t find anyone to look after them that will go along with my ideas that looking after my chil- dren means they are free to do what they want and your only job is to make sure that they are safe from harm and having a good time. They don’t have bedtimes or meal- times, or school work or anything of that nature, and they are calling their own shots as to what they want to do at any given time. Even so on a physical level, we had to do things just to survive, to have food to eat and a place to lay our heads at night and for those reasons only we sometimes had to “behave” ourselves lest we be discovered as the outlaws we were and hunted down. Other than that we did a lot of running around, going nowhere and doing nothing of any importance to anyone but us. We had all but given up on the whole “school” thing except that I was haunted by fears that I was the crazy one and not all the people who were hurting children in ways that seemed utterly fucking apparent to me but no one else. Being the “crazy one” is, well let’s face it, not the easiest thing in the world to live with. It’s one thing to be ‘crazy” when it’s just you but when you have these children that you feel responsible for, like you feel you are responsible for their entire future well being, it is a real ugly animal not to mention that there are actually laws in place against treating your chil- dren with respect and letting them do what they want and be what they are. When I say the whole world is against that, I mean just that, but let’s face it the consensual dream that’s going on now is beyond crazy but that’s the nature of dreaming when no one knows they’re dreaming. I did not “know” I was dreaming either at the time so to say the whole thing was painful would be an understatement of the grossest magnitude. I had to fight myself

30 tooth and nail, day in and day out, not to conform to some kind of standard set by the society I was living in. At any rate, as fate would have it, we are back at my mother’s house and my moth- er has finally agreed to let me live there and register my children as “homeschooled”. The kids can read and write but aren’t interested in doing any “school work” so to speak even though I’m trying to get them to do a few pages of you know math and grammar, every now and then, without pushing too much, to keep the wolves at bay, and my mother happy. At least this way, I don’t have to work and I can stay with my children and make sure they are free from harm. So one night in September, for some reason I go online to see what Eckhart Tolle is up to and just for the hell of it I click on the “events” tab even though I know I don’t even have enough money to put gas in my car to drive down the lane. I see that he is going to be speaking in Washington DC next month and for some unknown reason, I go downstairs to watch TV with my mother in the family room and I say to her, “you know that guy Eckhart Tolle that I like so much, he’s going to be talking for a night in DC and I want to go. I’m going. I don’t know how I’m going, no idea, but I am. I have to. I’m just letting you know.” I had no idea how I could even have said that given the circumstances but that’s what came out of my mouth. Well, whatever comes out of your mouth just comes out and you are not actually in control of what that is like you think you are. Enter the Universe cutting you a break, my mother who is drinking and really drunk at the time slips totally out of character and says “yes you are. I’m going to pay for it. I want you to buy the best seat available too. Whenever I went to the theatre, I al- ways made sure I had the best seat as close to the front as I could get. You never want to sit in the back where you can’t see., might as well not even go if you have to sit in the back.” Then she says “I don’t care how much it costs and goes and gets her credit

31 card and hands it to me and says “I will watch the children for you” and I just look at her and think “Who are you?”, and “What have you done with my mother?” So right away, I quickly purchase the best seat I can still get which is like four rows back from the stage and I buy an airline ticket to DC just in case she sobers up and changes her mind. Now I don’t want to leave my children for any longer than I have to so I make it where I fly in the day of the show and the soonest I can fly back is at six in the morning the following day.

Your wish has been granted. After that I start re-listening to every talk he’s done that’s available for me to find online. Now on the day of the event I wake up at like four in the morning and I have to drive two hours to the nearest airport. Right before the city, I hit a traffic jam, no wor- ries, I’m listening to Eckhart Tolle talks downloaded onto my phone and wired to my car radio, so I don’t panic. I don’t have a lot of extra time but I have some. It’s not as bad as I think and I make it to the airport in plenty of time. I don’t have any luggage to check because I’m not staying very long so I’m just carrying a small backpack. So I fly into DC and take the train into the city. I have some time so I go by the White House and some tall white thing and take pictures of them to send to my kids because it’s the same neighborhood and within walking distance of the theatre. It’s a beautiful day, the sun is out and it’s nice and warm enough to take off my sweater. I’m excited. I’m feel- ing quite nice and whole world just feels right to me for a change. Before the show, I stop in a sandwich shop and grab something to eat and then I’m at the venue in plenty of time before it starts. The crowd outside is friendly and I talk with a few people about the area. Once inside I find my seat, and I’m pleased with how close I am to the stage. To the right of me is a lesbian couple whom I chat with and to the left of me is a good looking single man, but right

32 before Mr. Tolle comes on stage the man gets up and leaves and never comes back which is curious to both me and the couple, and gets us chatting because we are all like “how could anyone leave this?” Anyway, the show starts and I can feel the energy, there’s something happening to me while he talks, I can’t say what that was because words fail here, but I “remember” the feeling as the same one I had during those two weeks years before now when “I” disappeared. This “feeling” or “this something”, I don’t know what it is but I want it, I want to “keep” it. It is peace, happiness, and well being. Somehow for a few hours, I know I am back where I belong. So the show ends, and I don’t want it to. I never want it to end but it does and I say good-bye to my new friends sitting next to me and I exchange emails with one of the ladies. They are sorry that they can’t offer me a bed for the night because they know I’m going to sleep in the airport but they live an hour away. I’m like no worries, I am not worried about anything. When we exit the theatre it’s dark outside, so I find my way back to the train station and take the train back to the airport to wait for my flight out in the morning. I spend the night in the airport lobby, the chairs are plastic and hard so I can’t really sleep though I try to close my eyes when I can. All the people passing by are friendly, they all smile at me so the whole place just feels welcoming even though I’m tired by now and it’s been a long day. The long night passes by un- eventfully and I fall asleep on both the planes home but they are really just short naps so when I go to drive home it’ s a real struggle to stay awake but I make it without stopping because I’m anxious to get back to my children. And nothing happens. I’m still the same person I always was and the feeling fades. A week later my mom is on my case again because she doesn’t like the way my children are allowed to do whatever they want, why don’t I give them chores at least she suggests, they can’t just hang around and have fun all day she insists, how will they ever learn to make a living if all they know how to do is have fun and do what

33 they want. I don’t have the answer to that but then I don’t see anyone really living in any meaningful way so what the fuck. I try to just ignore her because I’ve learned by now from Mr. Tolle that it’s the “painbody” in her trying to activate the “painbody” in me and I try to resist that but her anger is so extreme that I sometimes succumb to en- gaging her. Either way, it doesn’t seem to be working out because I’m afraid that my children will be affected by her unrelenting criticism of me and she’s periodically a binge drinker. Still, I try to keep the peace but this just seems to anger her even more, and one night she gets drunk and starts screaming at me so I take my children up to our bedroom and I lock the door. She is really going off this time, and she comes up and bangs on the door screaming “Get the fuck out of my house. I don’t want you here. Why did you come back? You are a fucking loser. You are a terrible mother. Your children are going to be losers with a mother like you. Get out. Get the fuck out of here” and we all sit huddled together in our room waiting for the storm to pass be- cause this isn’t the first time this has happened. Her tirade goes on all night however, it’s the worst one ever and she even goes so far as to try to break our bedroom door down by throwing her body against it and when that doesn’t work she gets a screwdriver and tries to unscrew the doorknob and break in that way all the time cursing and screaming at us in a drunken rage to “Get the fuck out of my house now, right now. I don’t want you here.” The children and I are just sitting in silence looking at each other and shaking our heads thinking “she’s in- sane.” Luckily for us she doesn’t get in and we just stay there perfectly quiet and wait for her to make her way back downstairs to pass out which she eventually does and I’m just thinking, “I can’t take this anymore.” The next day she stays in bed all day and doesn’t say a word to us because she’s so hungover and I cautiously go in her room several times to make sure she is still breathing because it is so quiet. Then I write an email to the ladies that I met in DC, I

34 have already been emailing them but I decide to write an honest email about what is really going on in my life because I feel stuck. I don’t have any money to go anywhere and I can’t bare the thought of another homeless shelter because in a lot of ways they are worse than this place and I don’t like the rules there either or how the children have to stay quiet and be forced back into school because that’s always a requirement so I resolve to just make the best of it when enter “the universe cutting you a break” yet again. A day later, I get a most unusual email back from my friend saying they have all discussed my situation and it’s come up because the sister of one of the ladies hap- pens to live in the house right next to them and once a year she leaves for six weeks to live in another home she has somewhere else and since she won’t be there anyway, she is offering up her home to me and my children to live in, free of charge, so I can get out on my own. Food will also be provided while I”m there and the two ladies live right next door so they will be my “support” through this “transition.” Are you kidding me? I just don’t know. One of the ladies is a practicing psychologist so yeah this is ba- sically unheard of. I don’t know about you but most psychologists don’t come any- where near people like me, no instead they back away, perhaps they think it’s just not good business to get personally involved with anyone needing as much help as I did but that’s not the case here. So it takes me a day or two but I secretly start packing and getting organized for the umpteenth time and decide what will go and what I’ll have to leave behind. We have moved around so many times and have lost so much stuff I’m used to it by now and so are the children as I go through everything and ask them “Keep it or trash it?” Surprisingly for all we’ve been through, once we lived in a tent for three weeks, the kids are anxious and ready to “get the hell out of here.” To our advantage, when it’s time to go, my mom gets drunk again and spends the day completely unconscious

35 and passed out in her bed, so I can make my escape without having a confrontation in which she will ask me “Where do you think you are going? This is it Sandra. I’m all you’ve got. You can’t make it on your own, that’s why you keep coming back here. Well, if you leave again, just make sure you really do never come back, I’m tired of all this, you come here and turn everything upside down, your kids leave a big mess everywhere, and what do I get out of it all, nothing.” How many times I’ve heard it, I don’t remember but it’s never pleasant so I’m quietly and as quickly as possible load- ing up the car to make a clean get away. Earlier while she was sleeping, I went in her purse and found $300 which I needed for gas and food for the kids. (Sorry about that, Mom, but you left me no choice and I doubt you’ll even miss it.). My car is a real piece of shit and I can only cross my fingers that it will even get us there but you know I have to try at least for the kid’s sake. I will literally do anything for my kids like they are my only motivation for even taking another breath, there’s something about the children, I can’t put my finger on it but their well being is always on my mind, like I live only for them. Everything goes as smoothly as possible and just as the kids are coming out of the house and getting in the car, my mom comes out the front door and sees what’s going on. She can barely walk and I hate to leave her in that condition, for a moment I just feel so sorry for her, and for leaving her all alone in that house again but once she starts screaming, “Oh, leaving again? Where you going to go this time? You know they’re going to take those kids away from you one day and don’t blame me when they do. And don’t come back. Don’t you dare come back. If you leave right now, don’t you ever come back. You hear me, don’t come back”, the drunken slur of ugly words trail off behind me as I drive down the noisy gravel drive and under my breath I say ” I won’t” and “I swear on my grave I never want to see you or even talk to you again as long as I live” and away we go.

36 That was the last time I lived with my mother in my mother’s house. I drive all night, I can’t afford a motel room so I’m running on energy drinks and coffee and a single hour nap at a rest area but I make the trip and less than twenty- four hours later I am over a thousand miles away and my new friends meet me at a gas station and I follow them to the home we will be living in for the next six weeks. It’s a large impressive two story log home set on a beautiful wooded piece of land. The in- side is like new, modern, and warmly furnished. In the kitchen we find a table full of food with lots of children’s snacks laid out for us but we are told we can help ourselves to anything we like and the pantry is also full of food. One of the reasons we all thought it was viable for me to make a good start in the area where these ladies live is that there is a casino in the area and that was my profession before the kids were born and it pays well. I have a lot of experience in the field, I deal all the games there are to know and I’ve always been damn good at what I do. Long story short, we had a lovely time for six weeks, really lovely, the ladies were super nice but the casino wasn’t hiring dealers only cleaners so I became a cleaner for awhile which sucked and didn’t pay enough for a family of four to live on so after the six weeks were up we lived in a one room motel for three months. One of the ladies gave me $1000 for the motel for the first month to keep us out of the homeless shel- ter and when Christmas rolled around we spent it at their house where they had gifts for all of us under their tree. My gift was a beautiful meditation shawl which currently hangs on my wall as a decoration. Eventually I was able to rent a run down house in an ugly part of town and the government helped me out with childcare expenses and food stamps because jobs like that don’t pay enough but you know they are so happy you are slogging away at a job that makes you want to jump off the nearest bridge that they’ll help you out just enough to keep you afloat. Honestly, for the first time ever I had a social worker who pulled all the stops for me, literally grabbed up every avail-

37 able fund she could find, even paid to get my car fixed. Well, that was a first, maybe things really were looking up. The only significant thing that happened that relates to why I’m telling this crazy story at all is that if you look really closely at the events you can see that “Presence” was at work in my life, literally the dream was unfolding in the way it was always meant to. Too bad I didn’t know it, it would have saved me a lot of mental anguish and suffering if I had. Well, that’s the nature of dreaming. Another significant thing that happened is that I discovered a meditation online called Pure Awareness. One night we were at the other house with our friends which was just a short trail through the woods and enjoying dinner and a movie that they in- vited us to spend with them. One of them had an Ipad that she let me play with while I was there which was cool because I’d never owned one or been on one before, totally amazing piece of technology. Some how or other I had it in my mind that I wanted to start meditating and I wanted something to listen to, to help calm me down about everything that I needed to accomplish in a very short amount of time. How or why I stumbled across it, I can’t remember but I did because it just “popped up” for me. I didn’t know what I’d found until I started doing it but I noticed right away that it had the ability to make me feel different about things. I actually felt a calmness or some- thing that made my day better. How anyone without a minimum six figure income sur- vives in this country without a struggle is still beyond me but apparently certain medi- tations can keep you from killing yourself and get you through just about anything. Actually, what was happening is that by doing the meditations consistently, “Aware- ness, Presence, Consciousness”, what ever you want to call it, started to open up something else in my dream which was why despite all the hardships I was still experi- encing, the dream was starting to work better. As luck would have it just as I’m about to throw in the towel and admit defeat and maybe go crawling back to my mother’s house because I’m working four ten hour

38 graveyard cleaning shifts for almost no money and usually on less than four hours sleep a night because I have to take care of the kids during the day, casino gambling becomes legal in the next state over and they are in a mad rush to get them up and running and get everyone’s money. It’s a hundred mile commute back and forth one way but I get hired on the spot and I drive a thousand miles a week for six weeks so everyday to and from work, I listen to Eckhart Tolle talks over and over again. I’m work- ing the night shift so probably it was the only thing that kept me from falling asleep at the wheel on the way home and it keeps me going, because I NEED something to keep me going. Meanwhile, all I can think is I’ve got to get this, I’ve just got to get this. I often think back to those two weeks, what happened there, and I know about, I’ve heard about this thing called “spiritual awakening” and I want it. Somehow there’s something to figure out even I don’t have a clue at all, just this pull toward that. Eventually we get moved so my long commute ends and we have our own place which is an old kind of cool two story brick row house in a somewhat decent part of town. Rent is high in this part of the country but I’m making good money now and I get a live in to watch the kids. I offer free room and board, (there are only three bed- rooms, the boys share one and my daughter gets the nicest one and they get the small one and I sleep downstairs in the living room on the futon) wifi, and all you have to do is be home by ten and sleep here five days week. Sorry I can’t pay you anything because I don’t make that much money but after going through a few flaky kids, I get a nice lady to take me up on the offer and the kids are okay with her. She has her own job which doesn’t pay enough for even a single person to live on in this town during the day and no social life. She’s overweight and just likes to watch TV and drink diet soda. She doesn’t really do anything else, doesn’t cook or even clean but my kids are beyond self sufficient by now so the whole thing seems to work and the kids seem to like her well enough because her demeaner is easy going enough.

39 I like my job now and the people there like me. After a short while I get upgraded to the high limit pit and so my work is rather easy. I don’t have to do the grind work out on the main floor so I’m not working my ass off either. I don’t have to deal craps unless I get bored and want to because the crowd out there is pretty rough. Mostly, I deal a high limit roulette game almost everyday with $100 minimum bet which stands empty 80% of the time except for the occasional rich guy so my job is mainly just standing. There is no cleaning involved, obviously, so what more could I want. I work the 10pm to 6am shift and 4 out of 5 days at 5am my supervisor tells me to take a 20 minute break and then clock out so I get paid for the whole last hour and I’m usually home before my shift is even over. I don’t know why but I feel like I’m being “handled with care” at this place, everyone is that nice to me. The kids are fairly happy and we get a dog. We are settled for the first time. I can shop at Costco and the boys now have PlayStations, my daughter has an X-box and I get a Kuerig and a Vitamix blender but go figure, I’m still not happy. Maybe I want romance I think, you know I could use some attention so I try going out to a few bars and look around at work. I try the online thing but never get past a few days chatting online with someone. I can not relate to anyone it seems. I don’t know how all these people are satisfied at all with what this world is offering and I’m now better off than a lot of people. I just don’t get it. I start needing a cocktail on my days off, something to take the edge off this unhappiness. Shit, I don’t want to be here either. The future still looks gloomy as hell. There’s got to be something more than this. I’ve got the kids but I’m lonely. I feel completely alone in the world. I’m back on speaking terms with my mother and my father comes to visit for a couple days and we have a great time. Then for some reason I remember a book called The Presence Process by Micheal Brown. It was a suggestion to me from the guy who held the meditation that I attend-

40 ed, the one where I left myself at his house, now like five years ago. Anyway at the time I bought the book and read it once then carried it around for years until I gave it away to someone I thought needed it more than I did. So I looked it up on Kindle and low and behold it’s now available on there so I buy it immediately and read it again. I’ve tried to do the actual “process” I don’t know how many times before but I can’t seem to make it past even a few days of the required twice a day fifteen minute breathing meditation part which is the whole process because for some reason either the breathing part is too hard or I just don’t have that much free time. Finally though, I’m determined come hell or high water to do the whole ten week process this time though, ten weeks of breathing continuously in and out through your nose without pausing for fifteen minutes twice a day and the weekly required reading and repeat- ing of “conscious responses”. I don’t know if it will even help but I figure I’ve got to try something and for some reason, I’m drawn to it. I’ve never been able to forget about this book. During the year I go through the whole 10 weeks three times and what happens? My experience of life starts to change. Suddenly I decide it’s time to look for a better job in a better part of the country, so I start applying online and I’m hired by two casi- nos so now I get to “choose” where I want to go. So I take the best choice and we move again, but this time we move to a really “nice” house with three bedrooms so now all the kids have their own room. I get a dishwasher, brand new washer and dryer, garage and a big yard in a very nice part of town. Things just magically seem to fall into place, when I need money to move, my father asks me how much I need and I want to be comfortable and not stress so I throw $5000 out there just for kicks, like lit- erally I’m just totally joking and he says “you got it”, what? Totally unheard of, that’s not my life, my life doesn’t work that way, my parents don’t even like me but now they do and that’s how things are going.

41 And yet, something is still wrong though, I’m making more money and the living is nicer but it’s still not enough so I do the process again and I revisit my Jed McKenna books. There’s something in those that I just don’t understand, I’m not feeling what they are trying to tell me, to wake up but I still don’t know what that is. At long last I try to do some spiritual autolysis. Just one night, I sit in the kitchen determined to try it. I don’t have any idea even what to write about, don’t feel like I can even do it at all, just feel stupid like I’m not even capable of it but I’m like what the hell, I’ve got to at least try it, because I keep reading the books and if it says to do it, then by god I’ve got to do it. I just can’t live like this, like there is something missing, an itch that I can’t scratch, I don’t know how to even describe it, some longing, some “not rightness”, life is shal- low, why is life so shallow, I mean it’s life, life has got to be something else, this just can’t be what it’s all for, it doesn’t make any sense, the whole thing, the money game and the social status game, I just don’t understand, I need to know what it means, what is this thing called “life” even for, I have to know, either there’s something wrong with me or there’s something wrong with everyone else. I just don’t know. So out of this deep insecurity, just this total not knowing how to do this at all, I start to write anyway, just think well if it’s stupid, then it’s stupid, and I write out this. Here’s what I wrote. Spiritual Autolysis You have to start somewhere. You don't want to but you have to. I have to because it just sits inside of you like a curse, like a bloody fucking curse, your whole life, my whole life I've been living with this bloody fucking hell inside of me and it just eats at you almost every fucking day. You know you try to be strong, you tell yourself "be strong, be better, try this, try that, maybe if I fast for two months, yeah that's what I'll do I'll fast for two fucking months and that will work, maybe that will work, it's worth a fucking try anyway, just clean the fucking shit out, get it all right the fuck out of me, I'll do it, I can do it, I have to, I have no choice and then fuck, I can't do it, one day, two

42 days, maybe even five, but I can't do it, this is stupid anyway, I'm just fucking hungry as shit and it's not helping anyway, the shit isn't even moving, it's still fucking there, that bad fucking shit burning a fucking hole in my gut. It's killing me I know it is, it's killing me slowly and I can't stop it, and I can't fucking live with it either, so on to something else, let's try this or something new or back to fasting if only I could get it right if only I wasn't such a weak minded fuck I'd be able to do it, can't give up have to try again, I try again and fail again, always fucking failing, I'm a fucking failure. Isn't that what my mother always told me? Yeah that was her favorite fucking line what a fucking failure I was, failed daughter, failed wife, now a failure as a mother isn't that the fucking worst one, your ruining your children she would tell me, why because I’m actually nice to them, fuck her what does she know she fucking failed me too she fucking ruined me good, it's bad when your own mother treats you like a piece of shit when your a kid and your own mother doesn't give a fuck whether you ever come home in fact tells you don't fucking come because we don't really fucking want you anyway, yeah that shit is deep it's wide and it's spread like fucking cancer through your whole life the whole fucking life was wasted fucking bloody fucking hell. No, I don't want to write, I never want to write but now I have to because the shit is just there, it's there and it wants to come out and it doesn't care that I am trying to avoid it, I'm trying to find another way to get out of this but I'm here now and I can't get out of here because I'm not even here anymore, I've gone to another place and I don't seem to give a shit about this world because I already know it's not even real. I know already it's not real and my mother's not real either. It's all just a mirage, I can see that already but the shit is still there. I'm not okay with the shit because it's just overflowing into everything and even though I know I'm different, I'm not like anyone else I know, I'm not all wrapped up in this and then that like fucking lint stuck all over the place and for what? For what? What's it all for? I'll tell you what it's for, it's for fuck-

43 ing nothing. There isn't anything out there or even in here. What's that they say? No one here gets out alive? No you don't but what they don't tell you is no one here gets in alive either. That's the fucking truth, you may be alive for your first five fucking min- utes out of the womb if you even survived that fucking noise but you are basically born dead or at least half dead, for sure, by the time you can tell someone your name you've been had, welcome to the world of the walking dead. Is it any wonder that there's a popular TV show with that very name? Of course not, deep down people know that they are fucking dead living in a fucked up fantasy land that will never satis- fy them at all. It will be one up hill battle after another, one fucking problem after an- other and no one tells you but you will never fucking arrive anywhere. You will not fig- ure it out unless you wake the fuck up and figure out what the truth is. The truth that you are just living in a nightmare that has continued for fucking ever. No amount of success or money or fucking love relationships can ever be what you want, how can you even know what you want if you don't even know what you are? Even then what you are doesn't even want anything except to be known. But you can't know who you are until you know what you are not. And you are not anything that you ever thought you were, you are not even a person, that is the lowest thing you can even be. I don't care if you even think you are some generous, fabulous, loving, compassionate per- son because if that's what you are what does that make everyone else, assholes? We are assholes. Every single one of us is an asshole. We are all walking around trying to get something that will fill the big black hole and nothing works. The minute you think you've finally found something to fill it up with the bottom falls out because the hole is fucking bottomless. You and your life are just a bottomless pit of fucking wanting and wanting to get from here to there and you never fucking arrive not because you can't get your shit together but because there is no destination big enough to fill a bottom- less hole. The hole can not be filled. The only thing that can fill the hole is to realize

44 that this whole fucking life is not even real. It's all a fucking delusion, but don't dare tell anyone that if you do figure it out or you will be locked up in an insane asylum. I'm alone. I can't tell anyone and I can't talk to anyone about this. I'm starting to see that the shit is not even real. Seriously who can you tell that too. Everyone is living in this fucked up dream and they think this dream is all important and it is to them. It's after-all, all they have but I start to see things are just not really there at all. But what is the truth? What is true? Here I am in that place, I don't know that either. I'm in be- tween, half on one side trying to peer into the other side to see if it's safe to let go and cross the fuck over but I don't even know what that means without being insane. If I told anyone I would be insane so I'm alone now, but am I? What if I can't even be alone? What if I am all there is and the world is just what I've imagined it to be all along, what if I've just imagined this whole thing and there really is no world, nothing at all but what I see which isn't real, just feels real and looks real, what if we are all just dreaming all this shit up and what the fuck, we couldn't have dreamt up something better than this? Why wouldn't we dream up some nice comfortable shit instead of fucking crap? And my dream life isn't all that bad from the perspective of the Ameri- can Dream. I have a job, I have three great loving children, a car, food, money, shelter, hell I'm about to buy my own house but I'm not like the others I don't see this great accomplishment, like I should be so proud of myself. I'm dying, I'm 51 years old and my life is running out and the whole thing was a complete waste of time, all that suffer- ing and all that fear, omg how much fear have I had to live through, fucking fear is like a fucking curse, ripping your fucking insides out every fucking day, fuck this shit, I want to know the truth. I don't know what the truth is but I suspect this isn't it. This life is not the truth. Sandra is not the truth. Another day I'd rather not write, terrible day, nobody ever loved me day, nobody ever will day, poor me, everyone hates me and no one can love me, my daughter re-

45 flecting that back to me at the store, pissed off that we are shopping at the discount store, you fucking loser you fucking failure, that kind of day. I loved a guy and he didn't want me, no one wanted me, they all left when they found out who I was, they didn't want that, that needy girl looking for love, hoping for love, no one wanted that, nobody wants that kind of love, is that even love or is that just a big dark hole that no one can fill, way to big and way to deep, don't fall in there they probably thought, you will fucking drown. Away they all left one by one going away and I'm alone again, al- ways alone, alone in my deep dark hole, but wait who was that girl? Am I just a girl or a woman now? Can I be that story? Why am I just a story? Is everything just a story? Is everyone a story? Why do I have be an ugly story or a sad story? If I'm just a story can't I choose a better story? How about a happy story with a happy ending? Or is that just for movies and fairy tales? Hey no fair, I didn't get the fairytale life and the fairytale love, I got no fairytale, what the fuck. I want the fairytale, not this other crap, I don't want lack and loneliness and depression and sadness and fucking poverty and just fucking holes in my life. My life is just full of fucking holes. What the fuck? What did I ever do to deserve this shit? This just sucks ass and I'm so fucking nice, I'm so fucking nice to everyone and I'm the one who gets all the holes? How the fuck does that work? Unless... Unless, no one gets the fairytale because it's not a story. You are not real. You were born into a particular family in a particular part of the world and you had all these imaginary experiences and the story just wrote itself from the pieces that were thrown it's way. But you are not a story. You can't just be a story. You can't just be a fucking story, even if it's a good story, who the fuck wants to be just a story, stories are for books and movies and television shows. Stories are not for real life. Surely, you don't get pushed out into the world through a birth canal just to live a fucking story, how stupid would that be? And all these years, you've been walking around thinking you

46 are this person, wondering who the fuck all these other people think they are, well they look like they know a bit more than you do, their stories look like they might be working out or not, you know there are people with some stories that are a hell of lot more fucked up then yours. But if you are not this story, this story of you, and your past and your thoughts going all fucking day and night long like a big fucking monologue that never says anything new, than what are you? Who are you? You could have had any number of names or stories, well you could have if you were born somewhere else to someone else, then you would have a different story but it doesn't tell you who you are. And everyone else is going around believing the story of whatever story they have, they are all going around the same as you with their own little or maybe big in some cases stories of who they are and most of them aren't even all that different, same issues, you can read all about them online, millions of people popping pills to try to straighten out the story a bit, or at least tolerate it better. Could the whole world be delusional? All of us walking around believing stories that we didn't even get to write ourselves? We don't even get write our own stories, put whatever shit we want in the story so it can all work out? No, they aren't even our stories, they are all just filled with whatever crap got thrown our way because that's how some other story was go- ing. And no ones writing their own stories either, nobody is writing their own stories but you know you have to be responsible for your own fucking story no matter who wrote it but you can't because the shit just keeps writing itself after the initial storyline has been laid out. Shit, how long do you have to live to finally be able to be in control of your own story? I think you can't, it's not possible, because once a story always a story. It is after all just a story. You don't read a novel and then put it down and come back and read it again only to find out the entire plot has changed. Once it's down on paper and sent to press the story doesn't change. Fuck, the story of the world hasn't changed AT ALL. We are still just going around like a bunch of fucked up stories stick-

47 ing to our stories. Maybe there's no such thing as a good story, in every story there's a problem or a villain and then it either gets resolved as in fairy tales or it's just another tragic ending. Death is always the ending. Everything eventually ends in death, end of story. Is that the truth then? I don't know but fuck the story. I'm done reading now. I could read more but what's the point, I could just keep reading my whole life and don't get me wrong I love to read, and it's very useful for some things and also an enjoyable pastime as far as pastimes go but if I want to find the truth, more reading isn't going to help me along right now anymore than posting funny memes on Facebook is which by the way I love to distract myself with way too much. Of course, my ego loves it because it takes up so much time, there's no chance of really getting into this writing to wake up thing which it knows will be the death of it. Nothing in Maya's world actually wants to die after all what would or even could want to be annihilated? Certainly not the all important self, no it doesn't want that all. It only wants to feel good and even better to look good. It would love nothing so much as to tell everyone "see I told you so", I really am fucking great and fuck you for not noticing it sooner or for telling me otherwise. You should have seen that I was smarter than you and that I was special. But you didn't and now I'm great and fuck you. There's abso- lutely nothing more painful to the ego than thinking it is less than someone else in any way. That is the biggest "it sucks to be me" thought it can have but as far as thoughts go it's actually infinitely more useful than the going around thinking you are better than the others because it never wants to see beyond a thought that makes it feel good, after all isn't "feeling good" what we are all chasing after? I'm at work now and instead of Facebook I decided to write tonight or at least try but don't I look so good here with my nice keyboard and all and what do I have like ten minutes or fifteen at most left to my breaks. This will most likely be a pointless un-

48 dertaking but I really feel like I should get in the habit of looking for the truth no mat- ter where I go or what I'm doing to I guess see how it goes. Of course, this job is what I do for money and that's it, if it wasn't for money you can bet one hundred percent odds that I would not otherwise be in this place. It's a precarious kind of job too be- cause I'm a casino dealer and my money comes from tips so it matters greatly whether people are winning or losing and whether or not they feel like sharing any of it with you. It's a great place to people watch and it's a great place actually to watch how your ego reacts to either winning or losing the bets that people will make for you when they feel like it. On the one hand, if someone makes a bet for you and you lose it, meaning if they don't win, you don't make any money and it goes into the pocket of the house and/or casino you work for so you think well that sucks and why the fuck did that happen and if you do win and you get to make money, you wonder again why did that happen and how can I make it happen again. (And again, and again, and again.). Or like what just happened on my last rotation, a player will come up and just bitch at you that they never win and why don't I let them win and I'm watching my ego as it gets out it's imaginary sword and swings hard and decapitates them while screaming shut the fuck up. I could feel the discomfort as they just went on and on and I'm stand- ing there dealing cards to them thinking, it's going to be my pleasure taking all your fucking money you stupid fuck. This is a normal occurrence amongst dealers but the difference is I'm standing there aware of the discomfort and of the thinking and I'm thinking that's my ego being activated and I'm just smiling because I can feel it but I know it's not real. I know that self is not real. End of writing. Well, looking back I might say I don’t even think I really knew that self was not real. I don’t remember knowing that at all, not like I know it now, that was just the begin- ning of the whole thing. Not sure how I even wrote that because that was not my ex- perience at the time, not how I remember any of it but then again, dreams are dreams

49 and they work the way they work and no one is actually writing or saying anything, it is itself and it seeks itself when it wants to seek itself and whatever way it dreams to do that is just the way it dreams. So then I realize I’m not happy at my job. I don’t like the people and I don’t like the way they do things there. The atmosphere just doesn’t seem friendly to me at all but when I do another job opens up and I think about applying for it but I wait. I’m not sure, not sure if I want to make another change and all that but at the last minute I de- cide to apply and I get the job. So I take that job and my income practically doubles and I like the people. The people I work with are so nice, I make friends with the man- agers even, we go hiking together and we are close like real friends. I’ve never had any real friends so this is all new to me. I don’t know how this is all working but I’m feeling good when I go to work. Everyone likes me and I like them and I literally feel at home there. The year before that my dad died and left me enough money to buy a house so now I have my own house and I buy a brand new car and get another dog. I buy my kids stuff they’ve never had before. I buy them the latest iPhone as soon as it comes out. I buy all kinds of shit. I have good credit so I get credit cards. Now I’m sit- ting here, I have a great job, a great house, good food, I have the fastest internet speed you can buy, the kids are happy and doing things they enjoy, and I’m still NOT HAPPY! All the things that I thought I needed are here now and it’s not enough. I have all the trappings of a “legitimate” life now. I’m “respectable” enough on the outside and in the eyes of the world. I can now conduct myself and walk around like I know what I’m doing. But on the inside, I am still full of fear. Oh my God, what is it going to take??? How much longer??? This isn’t it. This still isn’t it. I throw my hands in the air, in utter despair, and cry out to the heavens, “For God’s sake, what more do you want from me?” It wants more. Much more. Haven’t even got started yet.

50 Further…. Chapter 5 Not the Girl You Think You Are “Your not the girl you think you are, there’s someone standing in your place, The bathroom mirror makes you look tall, but it’s all in your head, in your head.” Not the Girl You Think You Are by Crowded House It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to see that no one you know including yourself is living in a way that is actually worth living. Anyone with even a little insight can see that something is amiss with how the human race sees things. “What the fuck is going on?” is a question that everyone should be asking themselves but almost no one does. Even the fact that almost no one is asking themselves this question on a daily basis is like a glaring red flag, a clue that all the things that everyone’s ever told you about life can’t possibly be true, that this can’t be it. I mean how many people actually believe that the purpose of life is to see how many hours you can work at a job you hate (well maybe you don’t hate but it’s something you have to do not something you want to do) to see how much money you can make and how many things you can buy with it before you die? Apparently, almost everyone, isn’t that what everyone you know is telling their children about why they need to go to school so they can get a good job that pays good money so they can live the good life? If you don’t go along with this scenario then you’re a failure and that’s bad, sorry for you, your life will suck and it’s all your fault you lazy worthless piece of shit. Neither is it about “the job”, you may even like your job, that’s not it, it’s about the fact that everyone seems to think that “working” is somehow your purpose for being here, and through this “working and toiling”, eventually depending on how hard you work at it, you get to “be somebody” as if you weren’t someone already as if what you do has this unbreakable connection to what you are and how valuable you are. You’re

51 not anybody, and that’s the big looming fear underneath it all, that fear is the driver of it. Meanwhile the children watch their parents go to work everyday and come home utterly exhausted and used up, stressed out, and most of the children are like “screw that” if that’s the “good life” I don’t want it, which is why the parents and the schools have to increasingly either entice them with rewards or threaten them with punish- ments to get them to comply with the fiasco. If that doesn’t work, there are doctors now who will diagnose these unruly little children with made up diseases like “opposi- tional defiant disorder” and “attention deficit” and put them on drugs to quiet them down. There’s nothing wrong with the attention of the children, it isn’t in a deficit at all, the only thing happening here is that the “attention” of some of the children just isn’t going in the mad direction of everyone else. There’s plenty of “attention” there but now it’s a disease because the child doesn’t want to focus it on what all the school teachers think they should be focusing it on, as if this whole big “education thing” is the end all to being alive in a meaningful way. The child’s “attention” is actually “con- sciousness” and it’s saying “No, not this way. I will fight you. I will fight for my life.” Unlike the adults in their lives the children still have a sense of what they were made of and for and when they look around at all these serious and somber people, they know “this isn’t it” and just instinctually they turn away from complying with it. The parents of course want the child to fit into this notion that society has drilled down everyone’s throat that if your child doesn’t perform well in the school system there’s something wrong with it. They tell everyone that they have the answer to the “good life” but have you seen their life. Most of them hate their jobs and the children as well but forget about how they are living they have the answer and they know what’s best for your child. Come again?

52 Listen people, have you looked at where you’re living right now? Do you turn on the news? Do you ever wonder why it could be a sane thing to do to drop bombs on anyone? Maybe, wonder why there are police now almost everywhere you go and it’s a crime to drive over the speed limit, or to be homeless as if someone owned the earth? Shit, where I live I can be fined for not mowing my lawn. Most adults don’t like this version of so called reality but they all feel powerless to do anything about it. Mil- lions of people complain about the corruption and stupidity of government and yet allow it to drain billions of dollars out of all the pay checks so everyone has to work longer and harder just to survive anymore. Do you ever wonder why almost half the population is on some kind of drug or needs alcohol to have a good time or just un- wind from the burden of this thing they call their life? How many people are just cram- ming food down their mouths all day long and becoming overweight and unhealthy? Why is everyone trying to escape their thoughts or feelings? It’s like deep down most people can’t even stand themselves anymore even the so called successful ones are killing themselves nowadays. Teen suicide is like the worst it’s ever been. Maybe, it’s actually gotten to the point where people can’t stand being something they are not anymore. And you think children should just naturally want to jump on the bandwagon with that? Children know your life is just stupid, that’s it is ignorant dreaming. They sense how stressed out you are about having to make it through another day at work, how you need to clean the house because you are worried about what someone might think of you if you let it get a little messy or about what ‘you’ might think about your- self and what kind of person that means you are. They see how you are functioning everyday in the most idiotic way possible, as if this was all real and very, very impor- tant. They are just alive, they are life, and don’t have a fucking clue what all the fuss is about.

53 Children come into this dream world full of the truth, and little by little it gets sucked out of them by the ignorant fearful adults who model this ridiculous unreality that everyone seems to go along with. Maybe, that child who is throwing the biggest tantrum ever because his adult says he can’t have that thing he wants is trying to say “No, your wrong, of course I can have it, I can have anything I say I can have because none of this is really here and I get to make it up as I go along.” And maybe that screaming says, “Leave me alone, get your hands off me you lu- natic! What the fuck is wrong with you? Don’t you know how this works?” The child’s “I” is still pure so it’s a lot more playful than yours is. I don’t know if you’ve noticed but children like to have a good time, they aren’t worried about what they need to do or what time it is. They don’t worry about tomorrow, hell they don’t even know there is a tomorrow until they learn that from you but have you ever seen one? Have you ever seen a tomorrow? I’ll bet you haven’t. Neither do they worry about how much money is in the bank, they are just happy to eat when they are hun- gry and drink when they are thirsty. They don’t give a damn about where they live until someone else gives them the idea that maybe they are poor and that’s a bad thing to be. They don’t even worry about whether or not someone else likes what they do. If someone gives them a toy, they don’t wonder whether or not they deserve it. They are literally just playing. So are you, except that you “think” that you’re not. Trust me your life is playing itself. Remember when Jesus said that in order to get into the kingdom of heaven you had to change and become like little children? What do you think he meant by that? He meant you had to get rid of all the things that you think are true which aren’t true so basically everything we teach children about what they are, how everything is work- ing, literally every concept or idea that was ever taught to you has to go in the trash, that’s what needs to go. You are not a person and this reality you think you see is just a

54 mirage of dreamers dreaming up the same thing because they all believe the same things. Why, for instance, do so many people in the world who love this guy Jesus so much obviously don’t believe this part of what he said? Why don’t they try to become like children and let children be children instead of doing everything in their power to make the children into some new and improved version of themselves? Unless, maybe they aren’t even really here, because they are all going along thinking they are something other than what they are, and what they think they are is incapable of be- coming what it is, which is nothing. But children know what they are until you tell them with words that they are something else. But what can you do? Well, you can just go along with it all and you’ll have plenty of company if you do, misery likes company don’t you know, or you can figure out what you actually are and maybe enjoy your life before you die. Either way, you die, so it doesn’t really matter, you were never here to begin with anyway, but something is having an experience and maybe you want to know what that “something” is before it isn’t here anymore like it is now. If you do, you will have to stop believing not just “some” of what you have been taught since you started breathing in and out but all of it. You are not a “person.” The whole “person” thing was lie number one. You can’t blame anyone for teaching you this lie because everyone believes it so they don’t even know that they were teaching it to you. It has just been the underlying “assump- tion” for so long that it is NEVER QUESTIONED by anyone. This is the mother of all as- sumptions that trumps all the other ones. This is the underlying belief that shapes your entire experience. So let’s just for a moment, suspend the belief that you are person. Ok, now you are no longer a person, so if you are not a person, what if anything could you actually be doing? What actions could you be taking, right now, if you are not a person? What if

55 anything could you be “responsible” for if you are not this separate entity called a “person”? Remember, if you are not a ‘person” then no one else can be one either. This isn’t about you, it’s about figuring out what this whole thing called life is so what’s true for you has to be true for everything or it isn’t true at all. There does appear to be an experience happening, every moment a different ex- perience appears to be happening. Now remember, you are not a “person” having an experience because there’s no person, there’s just an experience being experienced but by what? The person experiences everything as if it is happening to them but if there is no person then there’s no one for it to happen to so maybe it isn’t really hap- pening at all. How can you know for sure if it is? On what criteria do we base our “as- sumption” that something is happening? Don’t we first have to assume that we are a separate entity that things could occur to? How do you really know that you are any- thing? We once again “assume” we are here on this thing we call earth which we also “assume” is here where things are happening. Just because everyone we know is on board with “assuming” the same thing does not make it true. So what is really happen- ing? Have you ever just noticed that ANYTHING you thought has happened is just a “memory” in your head? And there are some things you think happened that you can’t remember so did they really happen? When I’m driving to work at night I see myself driving home in the opposite direc- tion and before I know it I am. It’s true I now have a “memory” of having gone to work but that doesn’t prove that it actually happened, We say “I” am doing this thing or that thing but what is this “I”? Isn’t this “I” just a thought and a memory and nothing more? Ever look back at the last two years and wonder where the time went? How much time do you think you really have? You make plans to go on vacation and pretty soon it’s come and gone, and you are back at your job waiting for the next one. The whole thing is just a memory now. Maybe it was always a memory, just some made up fanta-

56 sy all in your mind and playing out on a screen you have mistaken for “your life.” Maybe, there is no you in it at all. Maybe, you’ve never made a move in your life and every move you thought you made, every decision to do this thing instead of that thing, every idea you ever had, wasn’t yours at all. Maybe, all the thoughts in your head that you think are “yours” aren’t yours. What then? What could you blame your- self for or congratulate yourself for then? Remember if this is true for you it’s true for everyone else as well, so how could you blame anyone for anything ever again? Who is even there if you aren’t here? Well, if that doesn’t get you thinking I don’t know what will. Of course, you are not really here to do any thinking but the part of you which “thinks” it can think might have some very different thoughts, if you let it, which you probably won’t because nobody does, not because “you” don’t want to but because the “you” that you think you are has some pretty thick walls (walls masquerading as strong negative emotions and very important activities you absolutely must attend to right now) surrounding it to keep any really intelligent thoughts, thoughts that might expose it, from seeping in. Or maybe I’m just full of shit, I don’t know, maybe look around at your own life and ask yourself if it looks like something that is worth living, like is it precious and sacred, or just some trivial thing to be squandered away so you can have the best house on the block? Well, you have to answer your own questions. Chapter 6 There's A Battle Ahead “There is freedom within, there is freedom without, try to catch the deluge in a pa- per cup, there’s a battle ahead, many battles are lost, but you’ll never see the end of the road while you’re traveling with me.” Don’t Dream It’s Over by Crowded House So there I am settled in my new house. It’s the first house I have ever owned the first home I could ever call mine and our first Christmas here I go way into debt and I

57 just put presents everywhere. I want it to be the best Christmas the children have ever had. The whole thing, the whole “Christmas” night lasts about two hours tops. We have a nice dinner, but the kids don’t really seem to be into it and I’m looking for that “specialness”, isn’t there supposed to be some kind of magical thing going on right now, but I don’t see it. Then we take turns opening all the presents, the kids have like twenty or twenty-five presents each, the most they have ever had in their entire lives and they are teenagers now. I have like three which is fine because it’s not about me. So now all the presents are over and I anxiously ask everyone “Are you happy?” and they say “yes, of course” but I can tell they are just going through the proper motions for my benefit and there’s still something missing here. For all the money I spent and now have to pay back, I feel more than a little cheated. Shit, I could have spent much less and gotten the same thing. The kids aren’t even excited about their new stuff like you know it’s just more stuff. Life is about having nice things isn’t it? Anyway, time passes, I continue to go to work forty hours a week at the casino and the kids live their lives at home safe from the confines of school or anything else. They play video games and talk on the phone with friends they have made online. My old- est son plays basketball so I take him to the local recreation center that has a free court almost everyday but it’s just him and me most of the time. We still don’t really know anyone, we aren’t friends with anyone in the area yet. As the weather turns warm, I start back on my jogging. I start out slow and by summer, I’m running upwards of five or six or even seven miles a day. Physically, I am in the best shape of my life and I revel in the fact that I am stronger than almost everyone I can even come across of any age. I have quit smoking cigarettes and turned to getting my nicotine threw vap- ing which doesn’t seem to slow me down at all in my running. Work is going well, all the people, my boss, everyone is so nice to me. I have zero problems at work and the money is better than any job I’ve had in a long, long time

58 but you know this still isn’t it, so I go back to my Jed McKenna books and I re-read them all again. Yes, one more time, back to the drawing board. I’m missing something and I have to figure out what that is. It’s like it won’t leave me alone. I can not be satis- fied until I get to the bottom of things, because this isn’t it, this isn’t enough, this I know. Then I find the Jed McKenna forum called Invisible Guru which is curious because I’ve searched online so many times before to find out anything I can about this “Jed McKenna” guy and I never came across any “forum”. I would have latched onto any- thing like that immediately I know and I see that’s it’s been here for several years al- ready. How could I have missed it, I wonder? At any rate, after reading for several weeks, I eventually start a thread and my intention to find what I’m looking for well you know this “enlightenment” which I “think” is the state that I was in when I just naturally disappeared so many years ago, a state of utter bliss, intensifies. I have work, I have the children’s needs and the house, and I have the search. My running is part of the search because when I’m running I seem to get all these “thoughts” running through my mind that are not my “usual” thoughts so that’s when I really ramp up the running. I don’t care how much sleep I’ve had or how late I worked or how tired I am, nothing can keep me from putting on my running shoes and just going as hard as I can. Something feels like it is happening but I don’t know what it is, but suddenly I’m just blessed with this natural ability to run my ass off, work my ass off, keep up with hundreds of household and children activities and never run out of steam. It’s like I am on fire, going full speed ahead and at the front of it all is my “de- sire” to know the truth. Somehow I’m just fired up, like nothing is going to get in my way, like I will either figure it out or die trying, I am that motivated. I have to do the mandatory things to live but other than that I have no other activities, no social en-

59 gagements, not looking for a boyfriend, don’t hardly watch TV, just mandatory activi- ties and the search. So one day, it’s my day off but I worked the night before and I’ve had like two hours sleep. I take my son to the gym in the early morning because that’s when he likes to go, and it’s summer so before I go into help him and rebound the basketball, I decide I will head out for a long run from there first. There’s a park about a mile away which I run to and in total I run about eight miles that morning, it’s one of my longest runs ever. Then when we are done there I clean the house, and later in the day I drive my daughter to her dance class. While she is in her class I go sit at a coffee place and I write something on the forum. Then we come home and I’m sitting on the couch, I’m totally exhausted but I’m reading the part by Marichelle, I think it was the Yolanda Peri- winkle piece. I’ve read it probably thirty times before this but for some reason I’m drawn to it again that night. Anyway there I am sitting on my couch when my daughter and son who are across the room by the kitchen start talking to me and I hear them but you know I’m reading so I don’t look up right away but when I do they are there only they aren’t the same thing they were the last time I looked at them what twenty or thirty minutes ago. No, they are talking and I see plain as day that they aren’t real. It’s like somehow their personalities have separated from their bodies and are off to the side. So I see it all plain as day, we are not real. Well, I’m in a bit of a shock so I immediately run to the computer and write Jed a personal message that says: Jed, where are you? My children just vanished before my eyes. I can’t write that online. My children aren’t real. They don’t exist. I’m so sad. I don’t know what to do. I have to act like they do exist, they don’t know that they don’t. I’ll never leave them but the whole thing is a lie. I’ll just have to take care of them as if they were real and never tell them unless I ever can. What do I do now? There’s nobody here. Am I here? What

60 am I? OMG, why me? Jed, I get it. Is anything real? I mean then what is this place? What’s it for? Anything? Nothing? Yeah, maybe I’ll just go to bed and when I wake up, it will all be back to the way it was, no that’s a terrible way to be, better not. I’m not making sense because this is the weirdest thing ever. So eventually I go to bed and when I wake up, I don’t go running. I just lay in bed. And then I wrote: Well, I don’t know. I mean all the people are gone so that just changes everything. The bodies are walking around thinking they are real, thinking their lives are real. I’m still here but my life is gone. I just woke up and I’m laying in bed drinking coffee and trying to think ‘What am I going to do now?” Other than look around to see what’s here. This is going to take a while to get used to for sure. My whole life was a search for the truth, like everything I did. I was jogging everyday because you know I wanted to look good, I wanted people to see me and think wow, you’ve really got a great body (for your age) and all that. I wanted to find a partner, someone to love and take care of me, and all of that but now that’s out the window. I mean what’s to love or take care of? Omg, who am I going to find? Kind of hard to find something, someone who’s not there. I mean if the other people aren’t real and I wasn’t real, it kind of puts a new spin on things. Omg, I wanted to be something, look like something, just like what all the people who think they are people are still doing but all that’s out the win- dow. Who’s going to see me now? So do I go jogging? I might. I don’t have to, like I’m not even sure if my body is real. And I’m thinking probably not but I’m still going to ex- perience being in it somehow, just not in the same way. The dream is sooooo heavy for something that’s not real. I’m definitely feeling lighter. I mean I want to laugh. Everything I thought was true, and there’s the loss, the loss of everything and every- one or I could cry but I don’t really feel sad. I feel relief. Game changer!!! Could I lose this? Could I get sucked back into the dream? Does that ever happen? I don’t even

61 want to think like that, as much as I’m losing, this is so much better. God, all those problems??? A lifetime of problems that were never really there. Okay, now I’m like I can’t believe it happened, like words don’t make sense, because what’s going to hap- pen, what’s ever happened? Thank you Jed. Omg, thank you. I don’t know what to say. I’m not even sure that words are real. I don’t think I can really make sense right now. There’s no way to make sense. There’s no sense. It’s like it’s a lot and yet it’s nothing. Okay, stop now, hit post. And that was just the beginning. Things were very surreal for a few days like I went back to work and when I went to tip out, I made like exactly $500 on the dot, out of probably a hundred different variations of tips. Not long after, a guy says to me if you deal me four of a kind I’ll give you $500, next hand four of a kind, he forked over the money. Last time I saw him he said if you give me four of a kind I’ll give you $300, yeah it doesn’t work like that, only works the way it wants to work. In a span of two months, I dealt two royal flushes back to back and got some nice tips. And things went back to normal. After all that, things went back to normal, tips went back down, life got hard again, my debt piled up, I went back to running, and the kids went back to being real kids. All the people went back to seeming real again, in- cluding myself. Oh, God the pain of going back to that, back to this struggling, the heaviness, and let’s not forget, the biggest thing it went back to feeling like, fear!!! Fear came back like a vengeance, the whole life threatened to fall apart on me and I still had to go to work and pay all these bills, it just didn’t seem fair. Well, you dream what you are used to dreaming that’s for sure, I guess until you don’t. So back to square one, it seemed. I stayed on the forum but I felt as confused as ever. I got the part about people not really being real. I even got the part that I wasn’t exactly real like I thought I was, but just how was it all appearing then. My own life

62 wasn’t appearing in a way that seemed all that different to how it had always ap- peared, not really except that I no longer seemed to have any difficulties with my chil- dren or other people, well when you get that no one is really there like they think they are it’s hard to have a problem with them because basically most problems arise be- cause one party wants something from the other party that they either aren’t willing or are unable to give but when you know that all the people are walking around thinking that they are real but their not, it’s impossible to want anything from anyone. Who would you want it from? Even so, the fear that I had lived with all my life was back. Every month, every pay check I worried if I would be able to make ends meet. The kids were back to always wanting something I couldn’t afford to give them and they seemed unhappy. I worried about them constantly and just catered to their every need the best I could even if it meant no sleep for the already weary which it more often than not usually did. I was running ragged. One night I was driving home from work and I missed my turn and almost got lost if it wasn’t for the GPS on my phone and I had been making that same drive five days a week for two years. Not once but twice at work I accidentally locked my purse in the wrong locker, the one next to mine, with the wrong lock and a manager on duty had to come along with a security guard to get it out for me. What was going on, was I go- ing crazy? My oldest dog, a German Shepherd scared the crap out of me by barking and growling at me like he meant it, like he was going to attack me and bite me. He eventually did bite one of the children and we had to let him go. He just turned vis- cous toward everyone. Someone at work keyed the entire driver’s side of my almost new car, for what, I wasn’t sure, I was in a hurry that day and I might have parked just a little too close to the car next to me was the only explanation I could find. My son start- ed a new basketball league and in the first week he sprained his ankle so badly it

63 turned black and blue and he missed his spot on the team and had to take a lower po- sition. At games, he didn’t even get to play, just sat on the bench. My daughter was putting on a little weight and just the way she carried herself made me see her pain. My youngest son who had never worn glasses suddenly discovered that he couldn’t see and an eye exam declared he should have been wearing glasses his whole life. My daughter needed some too and we found out she had asthma. Well, you get the picture? Life sucked again. It was me. I had fucked it up. My best wasn’t good enough, it never was, no matter how hard I tried or what I did. It was still all my fault. I was a bad mother. I was failing my children. I had to struggle to make the money last from pay check to pay check and I was in over my head in bills. Oh god, what to do? Chapter 7 Something Wrong With This Picture Here’s the thing, first “I”, the whole shebang of wrong ideas I thought I was disap- pears for more than a week, and I’m so happy in a state of nirvana, without a care in the world, all my concepts of right and wrong and good and bad flushed away by the absence of the false sense of self, then “I” come back and right along with it comes all the garbage, endless misery. So naturally I would want to get back to that state of bliss and the spiritual search is ignited with the thought “what the fuck was that?” And “how can I get it back.” And then life happens, survival keeps you busy as hell for fucking years, but here and there, now and then, there’s an impulse in you that just pops up again and again urging you to figure this fucked up thing that everyone thinks is go- ing on called life because the abominations of it are just too big to ignore. That’s when you might come across a book about say “sacred geometry” and contrast that with the appearance of a terrified little five year old child being whacked on the butt with a wooden plank by a insane principle or coach for chewing gum when he wasn’t sup-

64 posed to. Seriously, this is still a common practice in almost half the schools in my country, well no wonder they are all crazy here. So you take these two pictures, one of perfect symmetry of say a rose with it’s end- less variety of brilliant colors, perfectly formed petals, the protective appearance of thorns on the stems and then you see the innocent child who is being beaten for something as stupid as chewing gum at the wrong place at the wrong time or just go to Youtube and maybe watch a video of the aftermath of a bomb being dropped on a random village in a faraway place. Take a really good look at the distraught parents perhaps sobbing over the corpse of their now dead toddler that they are unable to let go of. Really look, anything will do it. And you know something is really wrong with this picture. You think to yourself “how in the hell could something called a human being be less valuable than a fuck- ing flower? No one in their right mind goes around with a stick beating flowers, no says to the rose, “Listen, we don’t like your thorns and we are going to just snip them right off of you (even sometimes saying this is going to hurt me more than it hurts you) until you learn not to grow them anymore”, no, everyone is in awe of flowers and they pass them around as a sign of affection and grow them to admire their beauty but hu- man beings are born into sin and need the devil beaten out of them? Shouldn’t some- thing as magnificent as a living body that can walk and talk and think and feel be worth more than the rose? Shouldn’t that be a thing of reverence and awe and beauty too at the very least? No one goes around trying to change flowers but as soon as a child comes into this world the first order of business is to change it up from what it is and turn it into something else. We don't train flowers but the human organism needs to be tamed, toned down even, put in its "proper" place. Wildflowers are beautiful and they rise up and grow where ever they fucking feel like it, but not humans, hu- mans are somehow flawed right out of the gate. Come again?

65 So years go by, survival goes by, reading goes by, things get strewn in your path to keep you moving forward however slowly it goes and then one day there I am at the Octoberfest with my mother and her boyfriend and my three children and we are all sitting in this big tent and the German oompah music is blasting and I look out over the dance floor and what I see is a perfect formation of people dancing perfectly in tune to the music only they aren’t really people, they are like holograms, outlined like ghosts, phantoms. And a year before that I looked across the room and saw that my children were talking to me but they too were ghosts. Here’s the rub though, the mind will let you see the truth like that but it doesn’t put two and two together like it should. It thinks “it” is there seeing this and never says to itself, “I must be a ghost.” No, it thinks that it has this special ability or vision to see that all the other people and things are like phantoms but fails to realize that it is also a phantom. Listen what is a phan- tom, it’s a mirage, a hallucination, a vapor, ethereal and ultimately empty, consisting of nothing. So the self, yourself and myself, can vanish completely, be devoid of all it’s markings, it’s mental history, ideas, thought patterns, emotional baggage, everything that is unique to this particular self can vanish like it was never really there just as sure- ly as yesterday is gone forever and just exists as a witness to phenomena but not at- tached to any of it anymore. All the concepts that directed it’s attention into certain di- rections that then manifested in it’s particular behaviors and particular thoughts that were unique to it’s conditioning just slip off like a robe and it remains there completely unbiased towards anything and rests there in perfect peace and harmony. This my friend is the "Natural State" and it neither harms itself nor anything else. It is a state of perfect love and it's affect on anything it comes in contact with "in the dream" is to bring that back to alignment as well. So what happens then? What happens then is the mind comes in and says “forget about that, you must be nuts, you had a mind glitch, mental illness moment, whatever

66 you saw you just imagined it, your mind is playing tricks on you, you better not tell anyone about that, you will be labeled a lunatic, they might even lock you up, not real- ly a good place to go, just get back to work, pay your bills and try to fit in as best you can, you don’t really want to go this way.” Yes, the mind comes in and uses everything in its arsenal to get you back on track and into the world everyone else is in, what everyone else that you know calls “the real world.” The “real world” you know the one I’m talking about. The real world is a dangerous place and in order to survive in it you need to follow the rules set down by your culture and society. The real world where fear rules and you can never relax and let down your guard, the one where what you wear and how much money you make and where you live and your choice of car de- fine your worth. That imaginary world of shit where everyone gives everyone else shit in one way or another from sunrise to sunset. The one where there is a lot to figure out and worry about. That world. But maybe, you’re not so sure, you know you saw what you saw, you fucking saw it, could it be possible that you are the sane one, who saw the real world which is not even a real world and everyone else you know are the fucking nut cases. Hmm, let’s look at that. First off, lets go back to the flower or the intricate functioning of a human organism with its billions of cells working side by side in perfect unison, now what kind of entity with the intelligence to create that would create it with the intention that it should spend it’s life being a miserable petty depressed fearful stressed out little thing that struggles every day of it’s life. And in this charade, all the people will strive to make something of themselves and their children something too and at the end of all that, at the end they disappear into death never to be seen again. Does that sound like a “sane” and plausible purpose for being alive, you’ve been given the miracle of life and that’s all it’s for? A lifetime of a few highs, here and there just to make it seem that all this suffering and struggling was not in vain. Go out and take a good look at

67 how birds live, or rabbits, or coyotes, or any animal and think really hard about the fact that they are just peaceful creatures going about the business of life in the way they were programmed to and then contrast that to a human being. Is it possible that everything else in existence was meant to fully enjoy life but humans? That the thing that created the appearance of these things got fed up by the time it got to humans and just said, “You know, I made everything else so perfectly, that’s getting a bit old, time to fuck some shit up.” Nope, never happened. I don’t think so. Anyway, then you keep seeing it again and again, in little things and it’s on going. Now you know what you know but not so fast. Knowing what you know should put you at ease and it does from time to time but then there’s still the problem of the person that you once thought you were but now you know you aren’t. This person has issues. It has life issues, like maybe survival issues or future survival issues, well this entity that you thought you were but that doesn’t exist keeps using these issues again and again to try to distract you from leaving it in the dust from which it came and to where it will return as the saying goes. Everyday it distracts you into thinking that you have a job maybe and it tells you that the job isn’t going to work out, that the job is going down- hill. It fucks with your tips at your job (well your mood isn’t too good and people pick up on that) to get you to focus on THIS ISSUE instead of focusing on the fact that noth- ing like a job ever existed just like no one exists and there’s nothing to be seen any- where except inside your mind as a mirage. What would happen if you truly saw and accepted that everything you see is created right out of your own mind and not from this solid and unchanging reality that the “you that you thought you were” seems to perceive. Would that not annihilate the “you”? If you saw that it was all just a projection then would you not also see that this “fear based entity you call yourself” is also just a projection and no more real than the passing image on a tv screen?

68 Listen up hard here, here’s where it gets really dicey, you are having a dream and in this dream there are apparently other entities (maybe, who knows) there are these other characters who are having a dream who think that they are real and awake and in reality. If you have a family or a job, or both like me they are around you almost all the time and they are talking to you as if they are real and in possession of the truth of what’s going on. It’s rather blatant but it’s also very very subtle the effect that all this can have on you because you are used to being where they think they are and they can’t come to where you are. No one is coming to where you are, except in very rare instances like under special circumstances like you seek them out. What’s worse is that you may actually come across on an energetic level (not by what you say or do, those aren’t up to you anyway) but people of the lie can sense something about you that just doesn’t coincide with all the crap they live with. Everyone is mentally and emotionally invested in what they think they are, after all it’s all that they think they are, and even if you never say a word, they can sense it in your eyes that you are seeing right through them and a vulnerability is exposed, and if there is no opening in them, no light, con- sciousness is buried so deep in them, they will react to your very presence with hostili- ty because you are touching something in them that could blow them apart and the only way to put these ones at ease is to play along and make things easy by just nod- ding your head in agreement with whatever they say. Nothing is really happening so what do you care, you might as well go along with it. None of this is true, this is all in the dream, really there is nothing there but your- self, the same self that I am but this was my impression of things on the way out of the dream and it was troubling to me so I’m sharing it with you so maybe I can spare you the trouble of going through all the trouble of thinking there is some thing called trou- ble. There is no trouble believe me every second of every breath you take and every thing that shows up for you is right on track in a line so perfect that no human eye

69 could even comprehend the straight and narrowness of it all. There is no getting off the track by the way. The only way you can go on the track is toward home, your true home. No matter what you think you see, or experience, believe this…you are travel- ing in the only direction that anything ever goes…homeward. I imagine that at the very last moment, the last breath of any life, ultimately everyone realizes this and a peace washes over them so gently that in that moment instead of dying they are actu- ally being born again. If you need to believe one thing, believe this. Just this. Chapter 8 Cradled In Love “I kept the love you gave me alive and now I carry it with me, I know it’s a tear drop from Mother Earth but in it I can hear a dolphin sing, telling me I’ll never be alone, I know you’re right here.” Cradled In Love by Poets of the Fall I love to keep my bedroom very warm in both the winter and the summer but es- pecially in the winter. I would rather wear a thin nightshirt and keep the heat on high than to be bundled up in sweats and sweaters when I am at home in my little bed- room. There’s something about this room and it’s warmth, the bookshelf with all my treasured books, the picture of Ramana Maharshi, the candle, and the unfinished white lady Buddha sitting on my dresser, all of it makes me feel at home for the first time because I’ve never been here before. I’ve never “been” anywhere but right now this is a rather pleasant dream to be having so I pretend I am. There’s a softness that’s come over me tonight which I’m enjoying, just letting everything be like it is, letting me be like I am as well. Am I in this or is this in me, I try to notice because the thought appeared and it’s definitely in me. This room looks fa- miliar but I’ve never really been in it the way it is now, the way I am now, being in this room. The cold winter outside is safely at bay, the future no where to be found right

70 now and the past, that useless thing, must have been swept away by the icy night wind. That’s a good place for it. I’m having a glass of wine but I don’t need it. I’m not trying to get away. I’m not trying to go anywhere else. I don’t need to do the dishes, or fold the laundry in the living room, I can’t see those things right now. I let them vanish. I let everything vanish. There’s a song I want to hear so I get my headphones out because the house is quiet, the children are all in their rooms, quiet in their own little dream worlds. Isn’t it incredible how we can all have our own little worlds? The world inside us, how deep it is, how wide it is, how endless it is, how vast? Do you know what is coming next? What miracle is coming down the pipe for you? Or maybe what catastrophe? What do you know? How far you can dream? But let the dream dream itself. That’s all that’s needed is to let the dreamer dream. We stunt the dream when we forget we are dreaming, when we believe that we are people. Let the dreamer dream anything it wants to, this is not real. Stop thinking that you know anything about anything. What could you know when all you see are memories? From memories all you get is an endless repeti- tion of the same dream over and over again. Aren’t you bored of that already? Time to let go, and don’t know. Don’t know anything. The next day I notice all the things I say that don’t make sense anymore. Nothing I can say can make any sense anymore, not at all. There are no people here, there is no world, everyone and everything is only in this dream, in the dreamer dreaming. I am not doing anything. No one anywhere is doing anything. The whole idea of choice falls away, I let it fall, smashing on the shores of truth into tiny fragments of lost hopes. What has ever turned out the way you planned it? The dream comes and then fades away. That is all it ever was, the notion that any of it was real was just that, a fanciful no- tion, like a wisp of dust in a gust of wind.

71 All my striving, trying to be a “good mother” gone as well. I was only a character in a story. All this time just an empty shell, a broken record playing the same song again and again. I fancy that my song was “better” than other songs, and I don’t like the oth- er ones but it was never “me”. I never did anything, the imaginary times my song sang sweetly and kindly when it came to raising my children was only ever grace. It was only grace that brought me here, that placed me in that Eckhart Tolle meditation where I lost myself more than ten years ago now, grace that put that book by Jed McKenna in my hands, but not “my” hands at all, in “it’s hands”, nope that doesn’t work, maybe the hands that contain it all. There are no hands. I am only the dreamer of hands. You see you are not doing anything. I am not writing. I am not sitting here in this nice warm room again. All it is, is the music playing. If you don’t like your song you can change the music by realizing that you aren’t the one playing it, you never have been. Now you can let the music choose it’s own song, your song will play when you let it play. Just relax now, there’s nothing to do anymore, nothing to think about, no plans to make, nothing to figure out, just listening to the music, whatever is playing that’s what you listen to. You listen to whatever it is, it could be a sad song, or a slow song, or rock and roll, it may make you dance or make you cry, you never can tell. I sit in that and listen to this sweet song. I am the song. I am the music. I am every instrument that has ever been played, every note that has ever been sung. I am every sound that has ever been heard, every thing that has ever been seen. So are you. So is everything and yet nothing, nothing here, nothing anywhere. Total emptiness, the dark black night looming out over forever, and millions of bright shooting stars streak- ing across it so quickly if you blink, you will miss it. Don’t miss it. Don’t look away any- more.

72 You are the writer of every word you have ever read. You are the painter of every picture you have ever seen but not the you that you think you are, the you that you think you are isn’t doing anything. I am not here at all and neither are you. Chapter 9 Stairway To Heaven "There's a feeling I get when I look to the West, and my spirit is crying for leaving. In my thoughts I have seen rings of smoke through the trees and the voices of those who stand looking." Led Zeppelin and the most famous "awakening" song ever written. Here’s just some more writing, the chapter titles don’t make sense to me anymore neither does the order that they appeared in. This feels like it wants to go next so here it is. As a note of interest, the song that’s mentioned is one almost everyone has prob- ably heard at some time or another. After this writing it appears, it occurred to me to look it up, the song that is and see like if has any story connected to it or when it was written and all that. I knew the song just like everyone else does because it’s basically legendary but that’s about it. It wasn’t on any of my playlists and I was never a huge fan of the band that played it. It literally just popped up in my awareness that day but you might want to google it for yourself. The next bit…. I’m at work in this dream I dream and the mind, the dream character says ‘This is not good. This is not going to work out.” And it’s having a conversation with itself that goes “this is terrible, I hate this life” and counter “shut-up, just accept your fate, you don’t know what might happen, at any moment something wonderful could happen, you could make a thousand dollars or more”.. Both are ego, but beyond that, beyond all voices, all doings and not doing, over there, there’s a quiet place, an empty place, empty of all voices, of all circumstances, of all hope, of all despair, empty of all that,

73 but not nothing. It’s what this show, this play of all forms is appearing in, that, so you know I drop it and I go over there. I seem to be tired of the all the ups and downs, the good and the bad, tired of that whole fucking game, even the ups seem over-rated, and the downs well, what can you say about them, they just get deeper. If I didn’t have kids to take care of, I’d just drop the whole mess of it, drop the dream off, drop out, and walk away. I’d just wander around and pay attention to maybe a tree or a bird but this job and these people, I’d run away from it without so much as a “see you later.” Well, you get what you get and that’s rather painful if it doesn’t look like much or you have no use for it anymore. Probably, don’t ever think you are out of the pain, as soon as you do it will tell you you’re not even close, haven’t even touched the surface, it’s a a long way down, longer than you ever thought it was but you know you pick up speed when you’re falling so maybe when you hit the bottom you will just go splat and the end of “you” will go rather quickly, who knows maybe it happens so fast you barely notice it and that’s why you can let out a laugh. Until then, I’m just watching and feeling the body and I’m not so afraid anymore, well, I guess that’s something. I’m ready to lose it all now, that’s how deep the pain goes. It’s like you can’t do it anymore, you can’t hold on. The whole thing has become like a hot flame and if you try to touch it, it quickly sears another hole in you. Well, you have enough holes already so why make more. Nothing anyone can say or do to me at work means anything anymore, I don’t even see people there anymore, just a big room full of walking and talking completely brain washed ignorant dreamt characters. So many of the people I come across in the casino are just so all consumed with the contents of their minds that you can barely get a smile out of them. It’s painful to watch them, as they wear their self absorption on their sleeves, it’s like all they can think about is me, me, me, me and my problems,

74 me and my life, me and my money. They throw money away like it’s toilet paper they just wiped their ass with and they have zero concern about anyone else. In the casino, it’s like you are not interacting with people but animals, not even animals but wild beasts. The negative energy level in that place must be off the charts. Now when I come home it’s a different dream altogether. The house is calm. The children are calm, three teenagers live here who don’t have a care in the world. I walk in the door and they immediately call out to me and the first thing they do when they see me is give me a big hug and a kiss. They can feel the energy coming off of me af- ter spending a night at work and ask “You ok?” and as always I say “I am now.” There’s so much love in this house and in the children that it’s the first thing that hits you when you walk through the door. I’m at home now so I’m starting to calm down. The pain of my job in this dream still lingers in me, in the area of my heart or my abdomen. Right before I was about to get ready for work tonight, these words appeared in my thoughts “yes there are two paths you can go by but in the long run, and there’s still time to change the road your on” and I was like I know that song, how do I know that song, and what song is that so I googled the words I was hearing and found “Stairway to Heaven.” I played the song and I listened to the words. I played the song over and over again on the way to work. Well, there was something there, I don’t just go around hearing random song lyrics, must be some kind of message, some clue so I’m listening for that, really paying atten- tion. Then there was a van that was driving really slow down the road I take but I wasn’t worried about being late so I just followed along slowly. At a four way stop, another car turned before me so now I was behind two slow cars, that’s fine, whatever, and then I was behind the van again at a stop light to turn left onto the freeway because the other car had continued straight and I noticed an old sticker on the back of the

75 van. It was folded over so part of it was unreadable and only two words were left to be seen. It said “NO ONE.” Yeah, well it didn’t surprise me because I know what that means but the way it appeared did kind of send a shiver down my spine. Not like I see those two words very often much less on a creepy white van. Back to the song playing on my car speakers, “when she gets there she knows if the stores are all closed, with a word she can get what she came for.” Something about words, words have power maybe? “There’s a songbird who sings, sometimes all of our thoughts are misgiven”, when our thoughts give our heart or mind doubts and or fear that something bad will hap- pen. Ok got it. “And my spirit is crying for leaving”. Is that what this is? My spirit wants to leave this place and go home. “And it’s whispered that soon, if we all call the tune. Then the piper will lead us to reason. And a new day will dawn, for those who stand long and the forests will echo with laughter” The piper is consciousness and it’s leading me, stay the course, the new day is coming, there’s that laughter again. “If there’s a bustle in your hedgerow don’t be alarmed now. It’s just a spring clean for the May queen.” The May queen is Maya. Maya is you and she’s cleaning you out so don’t be afraid, face every emotion, walk head first into the storm, everything is coming out of your conditioned mind, so upsets are your opportunity to forgive the past. “Your head is humming and it won’t go, in case you don’t know, the piper’s calling you to join him.’ I’ve been called and there’s no stopping it. Well, I’m here, come and get me already. I’ll go willingly.

76 “And as we wind on down the road, our shadows taller than our souls”. These real- ly are big shadows, looming like the darkest night ever, what we think we are is the problem. The ego has become a monster, its own worst enemy. “There walks a lady we all know, who shines white light and wants to show how everything still turns to gold.” Show me please! “And if you listen very hard, the tune will come to you at last, when all is one and one is all, to be a rock and not to roll.” Pay attention, it will come when you realize it is all in you and nothing will ever effect you again, it is all you. There are not two of any- thing, all is one. “And she’s buying a stairway to heaven”. How much? How much for the stairway to heaven? Everything. All of you. Clearly, this is a song about awakening. Everything is the awakening, everything you see is it. That’s the riddle. It’s already here. You’ve been in it the whole time. There’s never been anything else. What? How come I’m not laughing? I thought I was supposed to be laughing. Oh shut up. Chapter 10 Here's How It All Might Go Here’s how it all might go. I go to work at the casino which is my job now in the dream and I don’t feel good, physically my body is tired and my stomach is upset. It’s a Saturday night and I sense that my bad mood may be a result of all the sad and ob- noxious people I am running into on my blackjack tables, wait I said that wrong, it’s the other way around, the depressing scene is a result of my mood that was created by the uncomfortable physical condition I’m finding myself in, either way, I’m not feeling well and no one is tipping and when they are betting for me, I lose the bet. As a last

77 straw, I deal a straight flush on the three card poker table and the guy stiffs me. I know he can’t even help it. He is completely oblivious to the fact that I work for tips but you know fuck him, compassion does not seem to arising and I get tapped out and leave the table without spouting off the customary, “It’s been a pleasure, you will now have a new dealer by the name of blah, thank you for playing” and just leave without a word. My capacity for obnoxious drunks seems to be full and my body clearly feels like it wants to get away from the whole situation so that’s what it does. I go on break and decide that I’m going home. Since it’s a weekend, it’s a three point day but I can half out and take a point and half on my record at any time. I don’t have any points because I’m a model fucking employee and never call in sick or half out, well I’ve got too many bills to pay for that, so I’ve got plenty of room for fucking points. I decide that I no longer give a fuck about the money I might make if I stay be- cause something is telling me to just bail so I tell my boss I’m halving out and he says no problem but can I do one more table while he finds another dealer to take my spot and I say sure. The next thirty minutes finds me dealing blackjack to the president of some com- pany and he loses every hand. It’s a full table and all the other people which are his friends and family are winning and losing but he’s not. He loses like ten hands in a row, finally wins two which he isn’t even happy about and goes back to losing. He is telling me it’s my fault and asks me why I’m treating him so badly and starts looking at me like I’m the devil, like he is sure I have singled him out and I’m doing it on purpose. I just give my “I don’t know what your talking about” look because I can’t seem to find any words to respond with. He says “this can’t be happening” but that’s what’s appear- ing. I think in his mind he is way too respected to have anyone, much less some low life blackjack dealer, take his money away from him as easily as I am. “This is just unre- al” he exclaims loudly, and “I’ve never in my life seen anything like it’. Stay tuned, I

78 think, you might be on to something there. I have a mind to tell him that the fact that he obviously thinks he is someone important in this dream, that his arrogance about who he thinks he is probably has something to do with it because I’ve noticed a pat- tern that super unconscious imaginary dream characters usually lose to me in an al- most uncanny certain way (it’s like my energy just sucks something out of them leaving them almost helpless which they absolutely hate) but you know I just keep my mouth shut because I no longer talk to people who aren’t there. When thirty minutes are up and I leave the table, I hear him telling everyone that I stole his money. I guess his dream character missed the part where they call it gambling but whatever. The most infuriating thing about some dream characters is that they literally de- mand to be taken seriously. They are so sure they are real but they need you to vali- date that for them so are they really sure or is it their inherent insecurity that really dri- ves them? I think somewhere deep down they know that something about them is missing. They are in fact missing the most vital fact of their existence and though they feel it, they don’t have a clue what that might be so they hold on to what they think they are with every once of emotion available to them. Their fear is so great that any deviation from the norm is vehemently attacked and shunned thereby making it that much harder for those who would escape this insane dreamscape harder still. The big- ger the ego, the greater the fear it seems. None of this actually happened, I’m not a casino dealer and there are no losing players or obnoxious people anywhere to be found. I’ve just been watching a movie albeit a rather unpleasant one from the perspective of my own dream character but you know it goes the way it goes. Nothing is wrong with this picture because nothing is happening. Only the dream characters are judging the content of the picture as good or bad, winning and losing, and unpleasant versus pleasant. The reality is I’m not here or anywhere else, I don’t have a job where I make money or don’t make money,

79 and my body doesn’t feel good or bad because it isn’t even here. There is no body. All that’s really happening is that I’m still seeing a picture created out of my conditioning. From there, I imagine that I clock out and cash out my rather small amount of tips and I drive home. I accept that the play of this consciousness which I am was appear- ing in the only way that it could have appeared and I accept that everything is perfect because nothing can be any other way. Nothing is happening anyway. No one is do- ing anything anywhere. “You”, the “you that you think you are” thinks something is happening but it isn’t. It also thinks that it is the one doing this doing but that’s just not true. It also thinks that it has done something wrong to deserve this seemingly rather unpleasant set of circumstances whether in this life or the last or whenever. When things don’t go as planned according to the parameters of the dream, dream charac- ters either blame themselves or other dream characters. This seems to be an intrinsic characteristic of dream characters. This deep seated fear is usually accompanied by an intense feeling of impending doom, or maybe it’s shame when the dream character is seen through. I imagine that waking up from the dream might be easier for someone who has nothing to lose in the dream. Someone who can just ditch whatever lifestyle that they thought they had going on and just walk on down the road into the abyss but abysses are few and far between in the collective dream nowadays. I get home and take a long hot bath, talk to my daughter for an hour, and then go to bed and get almost a full eight hours sleep. I wake up feeling physically much bet- ter and I have the “idea” that I need to start eating better so I do that and I have a fairly nice day. I do the dishes and I mow the back lawn because my daughter wants to go out back and play soccer which she has recently decided that she wants to play and even though the grass is dormant, it’s long because my dream character never mowed it during the last part of summer, so now the back is finally moved and she can play there. I decide I need to drink more water and go lighter on the coffee so I finally

80 do that after months of just thinking about doing that. My whole body seems to like me again. That night I go back to work and things are a lot more pleasant so I stay my whole shift and I make decent money right up to the last hand I deal. While I’m at work, I get an email from my guru that says “so you see something, you are conscious of it, now, what informs you that you are aware?” I read this right before I’m set to go back out on a table and I go to the wrong table and make a quick $25 tip from a player that likes me but they changed the rotation so I get tapped out and go to the right table which makes sense because it’s empty and I can stand there for thirty minutes pondering his question. I wrack my brain and I really “think” about it. After about fifteen minutes of this, the thought of responding with “I don’t know why don’t you just tell me” blows across my brain and right after that the word “attention’ just pops up out of the clear blue and a shift in my perception happens instantaneously. On my next break I get out my phone and excitedly write back the word “attention” and on my way home I get an- other email from him that says simply “yup”. Now I’m paying attention to my attention and I realize that’s all I am. The feeling that I get from this is so peaceful and all my dream problems seem to melt away. I get off work and drive home in a kind of renewed bliss stronger, much stronger than the ones I have had before. The words “level up” come to mind right now. My dream character was and is still playing in the background. She has been the ‘creator”of my dream for so long that things she took to be ‘real’ still show up in my appearances and these are accompa- nied by feelings of fear, shame, and dread. This doesn’t make for a good time but it takes what it takes, and it’s not like you can “go back” even if you wanted to which my dream character would reply “hell no.” The words “go back” don’t even make sense anymore. Go back where? Who is there to go back? No one is going anywhere and

81 what has been seen can not be unseen. There are no people on the earth. There is no earth. If there is anything it is just “energy”, every person you think you see is some type of energetic life force, positive and negative balancing each other out somehow in a fantastic cosmic dance of sorts, billions of eyes all focused on the object of their “attention” looking outwards but never inwards to realize that that’s all they are. Not billions of “attentions” either but one, one never ending infinite being. Crazy. Comical. Tragic. Wonderful. Perfect. Chapter 11 In A Whole New World Consciousness is always talking to itself and when you finally get quiet enough, when your conditioned thoughts start to thin out, you start to hear it more and more. It speaks through songs or that smile you got from a stranger, it is a knowingness that knows itself. It takes some time, earth time, for things to settle, to get a grip so to speak. It’s like you’re in a whole new world and you don’t know how it works yet. Little things pop up here and there, grabbing your attention and pulling you back in again and again, until one day maybe you are in the kitchen like I was on your day off, nothing unusual go- ing on whatsoever and the immensity of this truth just knocks you down and maybe you just start crying, the immensity of the emotion is just that much. At first, it’s just another beautiful song, you don’t know how you found it, what thought, what inclination even made you look, you can’t remember, ah well it doesn’t matter, it is itself, that’s all. There you are, about to do the dishes, such a mundane ac- tion, and then you hear the words speaking not to you or even at you but through you and most distinctly for you telling you that no one ever left you, that you were never in any danger, that all along it was only yourself in yourself in love with that, totally forgiv- ing love, a guiding love, that all this time it was reaching out to you, pulling you in, tug-

82 ging at your sleeve, look here, look here, it’s all here, right here, it’s okay, I’ve always had you here safe and sound. It was standing beside you the whole time, not apart from you at all, it would do anything for you, had been trying to reach you every sec- ond, every minute of the night and day, tirelessly waiting patiently for you to come home. Then a feeling comes over your body, like a giving way, a giving in, and gravity has it’s way with you, you let it take you, and feel the weight of your body merging with the earth somehow, becoming one with above and below and the entire circumference of the space which seems to move with you as you. There’s a weight to you now that feels solid, grounded and yet somehow lighter with this love that is everything. You feel it as yourself, like an energy field that is at once absorbent, completely yielding and yet impenetrable, powerful. Thoughts, and fears don’t enter here at all and you aren’t in it, you are it. Maybe, you feel as if you are in a bit of a shock but if you do it’s a good shock, like what you might feel if someone, your guru maybe, took a stick and without any warn- ing smacked you upside of the head with it and pop instead of feeling pain, you’re more like sleeping beauty being awoken with a kiss and finally coming to your senses. Like falling off a cliff in a sleeping dream and waking up right before impact but the fall was only your entire life, and every mistaken idea you had about what was actually going on. Ah, the relief, the safety of it all is like a golden elixir. The weight of the world has been lifted off your shoulders and only now can you sense just how heavy that really was. How did you ever even carry on in such a way for as long as you did? How was it even possible to survive that way? You think you should have perished long ago. You should have been crushed or suffocated under that burden. The gratitude you feel for having been released is so overwhelming that you can only feel compassion for any-

83 one under its spell. The contrast is so huge that you think you will never forget the un- bearable suffering that everyone else is still walking around with and only kindness in deed and thoughts arises again and again. All those poor dear people walking around thinking they are someone, or some thing, trapped in a living hell of their own misunderstanding. What hellish nightmares are so readily available for them all and yet you walk free, a nobody, no accomplishments, no agenda, nothing but a vapor, not doing anything. Your relaxation is complete. You are like putty in the hands of fate now, safe and secure in this all encompassing love show, you can’t go the wrong way because there’s no you to go anywhere and wrong? What wrong? Wrong was only ever a word, a concept, wrong my ass. The whole wrong anything goes in the trash. Wrong is like the cancer of the entire dream world. Once you see this one anything goes and only peace washes over you in an endless stream of well being. It’s like you’ve been trying all this time to swim upstream against a powerful current because you’ve mistakenly been led to believe that your home was up ahead and over there, and you desperately need to get there somehow, you know you do because “THIS CAN’T BE IT!” but to your surprise now getting home is being carried by the current not going against it. It seems so funny now, you’ve been walking along the edge of the cliff for so long, terrified that you might slip and fall to your death, always holding on to twigs, scratch- ing and clawing at anything to keep from slipping closer, never realizing that all you ever had to do was let go. Just what did you think was down there? What did you think would happen? Oh, I know all right, over that edge is failure, complete and utter failure in the eyes of the world, well, have you seen the world lately? Just whose eyes were you so afraid of failing in front of? Really you should take a good hard look in that direction. Walk around anywhere and listen in on any conversation you can and all you will hear about is some useless complaining about some triviality of this sort or

84 the other. Nobody even remembers that they’ve been granted the gift of being alive anymore. Don’t, however, for a minute think that you will ever stay in one place or that there is some final state for you to be in like eternal bliss. It will come and go, these mo- ments of clarity, at least for some time, until maybe there’s nothing left of you to even recognize one state from another, when one state no longer has preference over any other one. Until then, though the next day may find a hidden pain in you, in your heart perhaps, deep inside a vast sadness may sweep over you, some part of you is being uncovered, an attachment most likely to some deeply cherished ideal that got im- pressed upon you in childhood. Or maybe, when you realize that there’s only one thing anywhere in existence and you seem to be the only one who knows it. Maybe, it will be troubling to look around at how stupid the dream you are in has become. It will become increasingly difficult to have conversations with all these serious people you seem to be surrounded with because you know that you don’t actually exist as a per- son and neither do they. It may take awhile to just lighten up about the whole thing and people may mistake your constant unconcern for something like uncaring. Just send them your love, that should put them at ease. Well, you might want to tell them but don’t bother with this at all, the best you can do is just realize deeply that everyone you come in contact with has been pro- grammed to behave and talk in whatever way they are doing it. If you are able to look deeply enough into them, you will see what you want to see, yourself. Trust me about this, it’s there, and they are just fine no matter what they think they are thinking about and so are you. One thing that you must absolutely come to terms with now that you’ve come this far is this, your life is not your own. You were never in control of any- thing and you never will be so make it your task to find and uncover every last bit of your own loving heart, forgive yourself so completely that you can look upon anything

85 and shower even the most ignorant situations with love. That is really all there is to do here. Experiences come and go, so let them, let everything be as it is, leave yourself alone, for God’s sake, for once in your life, just leave yourself alone and let your life be as it is and stop trying to change it. It’s not your job to change it, it’s your job to be in it. Let that sink in maybe. Your resistance to what is, your non acceptance of what arises for you is what keeps everything stagnant, it is like watching the same movie over and over again. It keeps you treading water and only seeing the same damn thing over and over again and you know it’s just fucking exhausting to live that way. Life is not meant to be exhausting, not at all, it just is. Your mind is in constant judgement mode because that’s your conditioning, without this there isn’t even a mind like you think there is. For all the talk of minds going on these days, has anyone ever actually found one? Life is intelligent, it is supremely intelligent. Life lives itself as itself, and everything arising from nothing is that. Life is a masterpiece beyond all comprehension. No one can say what it is because no words are good enough to describe it. It is that much. It is off the word chart. Chapter 12 Just Further…And Further Still… Here’s the thing too, you can go from that last place, blissful, and poetically peace- ful, back to square one at literally any time it seems consciousness wants to take you somewhere else except you’re not really at square one, you are outside of square one now looking in on square one, looking at this character that you thought was who and what you were. Here’s how it looks and feels like from my dream perception. My daughter is six- teen and learning how to drive so we go out driving. Yesterday we went out driving

86 and it was great, I was relaxed, trusting her and the universe to let things unfold in whatever way it wanted to unfold and the whole thing went by without a hitch. She was happy with me and I was happy with her and the day ended with much affection. Next day, we go out again. The day is grey and still chilly after another night of rain even though it’s the middle of May and it’s usually sunny and in the eighties by now. I’m tired because I worked late the night before so I’m a bit short on sleep but that’s not unusual for me because that’s the life this character I’ve always played has it right now raising three teenagers. Even so I accommodate her request to practice some more driving so off we go. I feel a bit on edge for some reason and at the beginning of the drive she realizes she didn’t adjust her seat in the car and pulls over but before the car has come to a complete stop she puts it in park and the car jolts abruptly be- cause apparently it doesn’t like that. No worries though we were barely still moving, nothing is broken and we continue on and tackle roads that are faster than just driving around the neighborhood for about an hour. I have an errand to do as well while we are out. I have a single cup coffee machine that I need to exchange at a store across town because it came missing the filter part. I tell her that maybe she can drive us there and back but on the way I realize that the driving part is going to require us to go onto major roads and major traffic that I don’t feel she is ready for so I have her pull over and I take over the driving and we com- plete my errand and few more while we are at it. Yesterday I got a card in the mail from my mother wishing me a happy Mother’s Day and one of our errands requires a stop at the drug store where we see all these guys in line with only one thing, a card, and we think it’s funny because we know that they are buying cards for their mother. Something is eating at me though and I feel it and while we are in the store I’m going over what my mother wrote in my card that stuck out to me the first time I read it which was something to the effect that since I’m

87 such a great mother I should spend the day pampering myself in some way and I half expected there to be a check with a few bucks in it for me to do that with but there was nothing just the card and I knew that the only pampering I was going to get was going to be in the form of cleaning up the house, cooking dinner, and going to work on that day, just like every fucking year. Nice words mom but you know, fuck you. So that’s running around in the mind of this character I’m used to playing, rather sad. Anyway then I drive part of the way home and pull over about three miles from our house and let my daughter finish the drive. When we get home she is pissed, she tells me I didn’t trust her and that I should have let her drive the big roads and that I was making her nervous, basically that my lack of trust in her was making her not trust herself but you know she has had less then eight or nine hours of total driving time at this point so whatever. Sorry. When we get home she goes in the house and I just stay in the car, in the garage and just sit there in the dark being in whatever it is that I am in for like three or four minutes until my daughter comes out and asks me what the hell I’m doing to which I reply “Nothing, I’m just sitting here.’ So I single handedly get all the packages out of the car because she doesn’t help me and I go in the house and she’s asking me if I’m mad at her. I’m not mad at her and I tell her so. Then she says she wants to do some more driving and I say “No, not today, I’m done for today, I’m tired.” I have to work tonight and the house is a mess and there is dinner and laundry so there’s really no time anyway even if I wanted to. Now I’m stuck in this feeling too and she asks “Why are you mad at me? I can tell you are mad.” I’m mad all right just not at her so I just tell her “I’m not mad at you. I just need to be alone right now to chill out” and so I go to my room with a cup of coffee and while I’m in here, she takes the credit cards we were using today that she was car- rying in her hoodie pocket because I didn’t have any and opens my bedroom door and throws them at me which you have to know is completely out of character for her.

88 I don’t move and she closes the door. I’m just where I am with what I’m with. I see the thoughts running through my mind like I’m on the outside of them looking in and they go like this “Tomorrow is Mother’s Day and I should call my mother but maybe I’ll just send her an email that says, “you know what, I’m not celebrating Mother’s Day this year because well fuck Mother’s Day, it’s a stupid fucking holiday anyway, you enjoy your fucking day though, thanks for the card, I didn’t get you anything, well that’s tough but it is what it is. What was that bullshit you wrote about pampering myself, I mean really you should just keep that bullshit to yourself because you know that’s all it is, nice words that don’t mean shit. To be honest, you are just full of shit anyway and I don’t even like you much less want to call you my mother. First of all, you know that I have to work so just what type of “pampering” do you think I could possibly fucking muster? Yeah well that’s a good joke and fuck you again there. You on the other hand should get yourself a nice bottle of vodka and really relax like you are used to doing and don’t worry yourself about anyone but yourself, okay. There that should be a nice day for you. Too bad you have to be all alone with just that stupid boyfriend of yours who treats you like shit and is just a leach but that you treat better than you ever treat- ed me in your whole life. Good luck with that and the rest of your stupid gross life. Happy fucking Mother’s Day!” So I see all those thoughts go by and I feel the anger that comes with them. The thing though is that I know that none of that is true. There was never a mother, it was all only a bad dream, but this is how consciousness takes the crap of the dream stuff and brings it up so you can get it out of your dream. I have deep seated emotions in this body, feelings of terrible worthlessness, of being let down again and again by this mother that I thought raised me. And this energy that was created by those experi- ences wants to go away now so something nicer can take its place. So I sit in this ener- gy, and it’s like a fire in me becomes very hot, scalding hot, and it’s burning up this

89 character that I thought I was. I don’t need to play that painful part anymore. I am not what I thought I was anymore. I’m not at the mercy of anything or anyone. That role, that character never actually existed, the whole thing was just like a movie that I thought was real, but it wasn’t real. Nothing is wrong. I don’t say this is not supposed to be happening. I don’t say this is wrong or even feels wrong. I’m grateful to be done with this. After about fifteen minutes, I’m able to leave my room and I go out to do the dishes and make dinner. In between cooking and cleaning, I check in on my daughter and she’s seemingly asleep on her bed cuddled up in a fuzzy blanket. I try to talk to her, not really believing she is actually asleep but just avoiding me which it turns out she is and she’s mad now and wants nothing to do with me so I leave her alone and send her a text that says, ” I’m sorry if I let you down today. I love you.” And then another one that says, “It’s not that I don’t trust you. I’m just too protective. I can’t bare the thought of you ever even being scared. I’ll try to do better next time.” And one more that simply says, “Please forgive me.” She doesn’t read any of them so after making dinner I enlist the help of her brothers to keep an eye on her tonight while I’m gone. It is imperative to me that I don’t leave off to work with her in that space all alone. For some reason, I have to know that she will be okay. Before the boys go in her room even while she is still feigning sleep I sit on the floor and tell her again I’m sorry and that I love her and she responds by turning away from me so I leave her again with no fuss. Then it’s time for me to get ready for work and the boys have gone in her room and either woken her up or just gotten her atten- tion and they are asking her to become right with me again. Well, she’s still in her bed but she’s talking now and seems to be lightening up though she refuses to forgive me so at some point I ask my sons to leave us and as I’m sitting there again on the floor, I feel the energy, Presence is strong and I face her in silence with no more words, some-

90 how the Presence expands from my body to include hers, indeed it seems to expand across the entire bed and then room and when I look up at her, she is reaching out to me and brings me in for a hug and once again all is right with my world. Seeing now that there is only one, I have become the mother that I needed to have and my daugh- ter doesn’t have to live out the energetic imprinting that I might have passed on. You see children really are only Presence until they forget that they are and they intrinsical- ly know that trusting what is, is to acknowledge what they are. So when we as parents don’t trust the world or ourselves, they interpret it as threatening and naturally react to it and in the end if it continues as it does for most children, the end result will be that they don’t trust themselves which usually leads to suffering. So I get dressed and get ready to go to work and leave the house with a peaceful heart. Through out the night and the next day, memories surface that I haven’t thought of in a long time. The first one is a memory of me and my little sister some forty years ago now. It’s Mother’s Day (I think) and my father who works for a big fancy hotel chain isn’t coming home for some reason after all and my mother who is clearly three sheets to the wind tells us we are going to the hotel. Not wanting to let her leave by herself in that condition, we endure a terrifying long twenty mile ride on the freeway to the hotel with my mom drunk and driving and at one point, at the tender age of just thirteen I remember having to grab the wheel to keep us from hitting another car but somehow beyond all rational odds we make it safely to our destination. My father has gotten us all a suite to stay the night in so we eat dinner and do that and the night finishes off with my parents having a great big fight as is the norm by now. Well, dreams are like this. The next memory has me in California. I am sixteen and have run away from home and I am almost exactly 2126 miles away from my home. When I left home I remember thinking I wasn’t wanted at home so I was going to do my parents a favor and just get

91 out of their lives so they could be happier. I charged a bus ticket to Los Angeles on their credit card which cost next to nothing given their income as at the time we were quite well off. My father had since become the general manager of the hotel chain he worked for and we lived in the hotel in a big suite so even if it was dishonest I didn’t feel like I was taking too much after all my mother regularly bought hats that cost as much or even more. At any rate, after being homeless in LA and wandering the streets, some guy finds me and lets me stay the night at his place. He’s a nice guy, not a creep, and genuinely wants to help me in my plight so after some talking, I give him my parents phone number and say it’s okay to call them. I’m ready to go home. So he calls them and tells them, “Listen, I have your daughter here and you know she’s not in a good place, no where to live and way too young to be in this situation so what do you want to do?” I think he was beyond shocked when he heard from them as most parents might have been besides themselves with worry but not mine. All they said was, “Well, you know that’s too bad and she’s welcome to come home but she got herself out there so if she wants to come home I guess she’ll find a way to get here but we aren’t going to help her.” I think when he got off the phone I was just sitting there crying and wondering if I really did want to go back but the streets weren’t looking too friendly either so I figured I would. I missed my bed too much. I know the guy felt really bad when he told me he really wished he could help me out more but he didn’t have much, probably just barely surviving himself so I said I understood and I asked him if he knew which freeway would be in the direction of my home and asked him to drop me to the entrance of it so I could hitchhike back home and against his better judgement he agreed and gave me a ride to it. Long story short, about ten minutes af- ter dropping me off, a trucker who was headed in my direction picked me up. Another nice guy, he fed me and cared for me like I was his own daughter and when he had taken me as far as he was going, he got on his CB radio and arranged the next ride

92 and the next guy did the same and the next and the next and that’s how less than 48 hours later I arrived back at the hotel suite doors unmolested and unharmed. Needless to say, my dream character and who I thought I was carried this story deep in her heart for many years and often pondered how her own mother could not have cared less for her safety and well being (not even worth the price of a hat) after all she was really just a child, still just a frightened little girl. When confronted with these things, her mother told her she often regretted doing that and that it was her step father who forbid my mother from securing my safe passage home but even that didn’t suffice. “No”, I had once screamed at my mother one night from my now own drunken rage, ”Mother’s don’t do that. Mother’s care for their children no matter what, even if it means losing their fucking husband. You are not my mother because you aren’t a mother at all. I don’t know what the fuck you are but know this, I hate you and I always will.” Things like this run deep in a dream character. The emotional damage of feeling unloved and unlovable carries an emotional charge that usually last a lifetime creating nightmare after nightmare. In this case, it manifested as a lack of support, lack of trust, and lack of money and always struggling to make ends meet, even when I had money it felt like this, in fact the feeling of insecurity actually became worse when I had more money than when I had less. This is all dream stuff so what does it have to do with now that you see you are no longer this character, that it actually was a dream or in this case a nightmare. Well, one of the biggest obstacles at least for me was that every time I thought I was getting close to the bottom of things, my dream seemed to get worse and take my attention off the fact that I was in fact dreaming and back into the fear. There seems to be this bottom feeding belief that following the spiritual path should shower blessings upon you and that if it doesn’t then well God just as you sus- pected doesn’t like you very much. God of course isn’t really out there to like you or

93 not like you, but you are very attached to either feeling loved or unloved by some- thing outside of yourself because of your earliest conditioning that told you, you were a person that this could happen to. It’s not personal in the least, your dream character developed in a completely unbiased way using whatever experiences were available to develop from and if those experiences were less than loving than those are the feelings and experiences that repeat from situation to situation all day long, all year long, year after year UNTIL maybe they force you to want to get to the bottom of things. Here’s where that big word FORGIVENESS comes in again, because this is not only how your dream and all the things that you think you did or didn’t do developed, all the things that you dreamed happened, the so called good deeds you did or the not so nice deeds you did, you didn’t do any of it because it literally didn’t happen, it was only dreamed and everyone you ever dreamed was a part of it was in the same damn boat believing things were real that weren’t and acting according to their own programmed condition. What you have here folks is no one responsible for anything. Completely off the hook from top to bottom. My mom’s earliest memory is of being aboard a train outside of Dresden, Ger- many during a massive bombing by the United States near the end of World War Two. The passengers were encouraged to disembark and hide in the dark cold snow filled woods of the forest to avoid being killed. She was just over two years old. I’m not real- ly sure she actually “remembers it” like we all “remember” things like where we work or where we left our keys or things that we actually remember since that age is very young but I suppose it’s possible. Maybe, long after the fact I imagine it was probably a pretty big topic of conversation in the family for years or even decades to come after all even I heard the story and the fear, the absolute terror of that day and the events before and after leave an impression that haunts forever more. Two to four months be-

94 fore they were living where all the family had always lived in a border town next to Poland, when the bombs started dropping and my grandfather was killed by one. Then it happened that news spread that Germany had lost in Russia, and the Red Army was headed their way. Word also had it that the soldiers in that army were rap- ing all the women so my very young newly widowed grandmother took herself and her three young daughters along with her cousin who was pregnant at the time and they fled. Good thing too, Wikipedia says the Red Army did come and the town was “devastated” (whatever that means…I guess it didn’t want to elaborate) in March of 1945 a little over a month after the Dresden massacre. They were trying to get to an aunts house in Hamburg who had married well and could put them up. It was more than six months before they would arrive mostly on foot and catching trains as they came available and my grandmother fell deathly ill at one point and probably would have died if a kindly farming family hadn’t taken them in and nursed her back to health along the way. Terrifying times to be sure in the dream. The point is I never real- ly believed my mother and I was always sure she was exaggerating about how bad her circumstances were, you know she had the old “I had to walk five miles and then catch two trains both ways to school.” Of course, I had never seen war and so had no concept available in which to understand the horror of it. The point is nobody knows anything at all of the experiences of anyone else in this dream but suffice it to say that nasty dreaming at the beginning of any life will almost always lead to nasty dreaming later on. Unfortunately, that’s sometimes the stuff dreams are made of but if you take that scenario and contrast it to the times I grew up in and the stuff I grew up with is it any wonder she thought I was an ungrateful sloth and treated me as such? It it any wonder she hoarded her belongings and money even and became enraged if I want- ed to borrow anything? What I’m trying to point out here is that the dream actually makes perfect sense in that the circumstances surrounding the development of the

95 dream character are absolutely on point and free will is not a possibility at all. Every- thing is firmly determined from the conditioning and the dream conditions will deter- mine the extent of the suffering that will be endured during that lifetime and the only thing that can alter this is to recognize that you are in fact dreaming and allow con- sciousness to clear your eyes of the debris of the past. To this day, my mother is a binge drinker, something builds up in her, probably terror, of which she is completely unaware, just a feeling of severe unease arises and the only way she knows how to subdue it is to drink herself into oblivion for a day or two and while under the influ- ence of that a rage like no other rage erupts from deep within her dream character and unleashes it’s wrath on whatever it comes in contact with. Well, I can only imagine how angry a child whose entire life was ripped apart at the seams, indeed whose fa- ther was taken away, whose home was taken away, all security vanishing at the hands of a brutal war dreamt up by delusional dream characters would be. Such is the nature of dreams by dream characters who never see that the dream is in them and no where else. They dream up their own destruction and spread it around. Luckily, toward the end of life, the conditioning tends to wear a little thinner in some cases and the end of life as a dream character more peacefully winds down. So too, my mother has become softer and more loving or maybe I just don’t dream her the way I used to, probably a little of both. And forgiveness and compassion arise by themselves because there’s no one to blame for anything. There never was. That includes you. Even the slightest word out your own mouth or the slightest gesture is not your own and it never will be. Waking up and realizing there is no one here but you alters the dream because the past which is all the dream character is made up of stops repeating itself ad nau- seum. Then all that’s really left to do is breath and watch what you do. Your resistance, your struggling against what is was what was holding you hostage this whole time.

96 I woke up on Mother’s Day and called my mom to wish her a nice day. I couldn’t talk long because I didn’t sleep well the night before and was going to take a nap be- fore making dinner for the children. It turns out I didn’t have to make dinner or do laundry because I set my alarm wrong and it didn’t go off so I didn’t wake up until my son came in my room and asked me what time I worked and it turns out I had 30 min- utes to get up, get dressed, and get out the door. Nobody likes to deal the craps table on Sundays because they think they won’t make good money on it and I don’t usually like to take the stick when we open the game but on that day I did because something told me I had to set the tone for the night. Turns out it was a great night for tips, and we broke the current highest record so far (which happened the Sunday before when I was on it) by more than three times that amount. The dice were so good that they changed them out half way through the shift but I was just laughing and thinking, silly humans, you can’t mess with Presence. Presence does what Presence does. And so the new dice were just as good as the old ones. It turns out I did celebrate Mother’s Day after all and it was the best one I’ve ever had. My Mother’s Day gift was to finally be what I was and not pretend to be some- thing I’m not. Someone asked me that night if I liked my job and I just said “What job? I don’t like working so I don’t do it anymore.” A few days later, I was dealing blackjack and a guy was trying to tip me but I lost almost all my bets and when I was leaving he said, “Sorry, I didn’t make you more money,” and I just said, “Listen, it’s fine, I’ve got the one thing that no amount of mon- ey can buy, no amount. Believe me, if I lose every single material possession I have, I won’t shed a single tear.”

97 That’s when I knew that one more thing that was hanging over my head had finally evaporated. Freedom granted. Hallelujah. Chapter 13 Hard Parts So there you are, not really, you aren’t anywhere, you know this but there’s just the little problem of this body still functioning with all its conditioning. This body has con- ditioned responses to situations that it is used to finding itself in, (even the situations themselves are conditioned) for instance, if the body is still finding itself driving to a job that it had before the realization occurred, when it gets there to function in that ca- pacity even though “you” know “you” are not, the “job” is not because nothing is but this, all is this, everywhere, all encompassing consciousness and not a thing more but illusion and appearance the uncomfortable feelings that used to arise in the body mind (if they were used to arising in that particular situation) because of it’s condition- ing may still arise, don’t be troubled by this. It doesn’t mean anything except that as James Carse so eloquently pointed out in his book Perfect Brilliant Stillness, “It is like a fan that continues to spin for a while after the plug has been pulled.” Let everything arise that wants to arise without making a story about it. There aren’t any stories. All the stories are gone now. Whatever arises now, just arises without you. You aren’t there anymore. None of it is personal, it never was and now you know it. Sometimes at work in the casino de- pending on what type of character I’m coming in contact with compassion arises and sometimes it doesn’t, sometimes I’m just annoyed because you know some characters are just annoying. At first though I was troubled by my feelings of annoyance, that myth of bliss forever more is another lie, a diversion, just whatever arises arises, some feelings seem nice and some don’t but really it’s just we are so conditioned to label

98 and think of some sensations as good and some as undesirable that these feelings even seem to feel pleasant or unpleasant. I suspect that eventually it all evens out and pain and pleasure on an emotional level becomes much more tolerable and even de- sirable in a variety sort of way. My tears, my sorrow, when it arises is sweet now, even heavenly. It’s too bad that in the dream, something has to be wrong to have them and you have to hide them even, a sign of weakness and all that. For a time though, it’s bound to be confusing but you know confusion itself is just an idea, another concept that for some reason has negative connotations in the dream. Confusion itself I’ve heard is perfectly normal response when a shift as large as this one occurs indeed any shift. What we call confusion may be the mechanism of rearranging, first you destroy the old structure and everything is laying everywhere in utter disarray and chaos and then all the pieces come back together and form something entirely different. The body itself seems to carry some resistance or some energy that is itself at times still in opposition to what you know now. It’s probably rearranging too. I mean let’s face it, most of us aren’t exactly positioned in such a way where we can just spend the day in utter sat-chit-ananda, sitting by the seashore in perfect still- ness, or listening to beautiful music just sitting in the warm sun outside on a perfect day, or curled up by a roaring fire, the snow falling gently just outside the window and there you are, you need nothing, you need no thoughts at all, everything is all there is. If we’d known, if we’d started out with this understanding, sure, we’d have designed our dream world accordingly but for most, I suspect there will be years of loose ends to tend to before our body can just stop and totally relax the way it was meant to, all our thoughts ceasing to be just a poor repetitive memory and our bodily human con- cerns completely ended forevermore. Yeah, no, probably you will still have to take out the trash on Wednesdays or Tuesdays or whenever yours comes. Money still needed to live in the dream will come to you in the same way you are used to receiving it, until

99 maybe you get tired of that way, and dream up another way. Always remember, any- thing is possible in a dream precisely because it is a dream. Before we get to that though, all this nice stuff, maybe let’s just get hard for a little while because I seem to need to get hard here hopefully not for too long. Well, let’s say you’ve seen it, you know it now and you can’t deny it, there’s none of that remain- ing in you and once it’s gone, you know there’s no putting it back. It’s like you can pre- tend something now but you can’t pretend it without pretending that you know you are pretending, maybe that came out right. So there you are dreaming away, you know what’s going on now, all the people who don’t really mean anything to you have vanished, they’re not there anyway like they think they are but well maybe you’re at work and so you play along to play along, if someone gets upset now because they are drunk or losing or both, you’re not bothered about it, even if they say “Your cards are terrible, you must be the worst dealer in this place, come to think of it I never win with you”, making it personal and directing it at you, you can still go along with it, “aw- ful just awful, I totally agree with you, probably I was a murderer in my former life” but you know you say it with a smile on your face or under your breath and mutter “it will be okay.” No one really attacks you at work anymore, who would they attack? They must sense it so that’s over. The blame game is over for you. You don’t give it and you don’t accept it. Dream characters know who they can mess with and who they can’t and now it seems you’re in the latter category at least among complete strangers. Even maybe you are walking with a friend and she just got back from seeing her parents, she’s trying to move them here to live near her, and away from her sister who is taking advantage of them, so she can watch over them, and you know it’s a lot for her, there are all kinds of dynamics going on, painful stuff, how’s it all going to get done, the parent’s health is failing, it’s a real big mess and all that and there you are, you just listen. It will be okay you know that and you tell her it will all work out (leaving

100 out the “in the end” part) you’ll see but you don’t go into it. There is no friend there, not really but you like her dream character, she’s got a nice one, very pleasant, super funny, humble, super likable. You don’t talk about “these things” with her, she’s not a seeker, just a normal everyday girl living life the best way she knows how. You are close but not that close, just close enough that when she first came back from her trip and you asked about it she said, “It was hard”, and for a moment that absolutely hu- man quality of utter vulnerability came out and by instinct you just said, “Awe”, gave her a hug and an “I love you” escaped your lips. Still, there’s no real attachment there so it’s not a big deal, sounds cold, but it’s not. You just know what she is, a dream char- acter, playing the part in the dream she was destined to play. Just another expression of consciousness, one you can appreciate. Well, I’ve been working up to it I suppose but I don’t really choose the words. I don’t have a plan here. My planning days seem to be over. Maybe I can’t even say this right now, we’ll see. I’m listening to instrumental Secret Garden on my headphones right now so that helps to ease the pain somehow. Maybe you’re not to this part yet, well it hurts, it hurts a a lot I’d say, down to the very bones but every downside has to have an upside or it wouldn’t be down at all now would it? So let’s say you’ve gotten to the painful part where you don’t exist like you thought you did, that was hard enough I know, a real ride through hell, I’d say. Yeah, I guess I don’t know how to say this part except to just dive right in. The people who are closest to you, your family, your spouse maybe if you were with them like twenty years, ( I wouldn’t know, I never got that close with mine, well mine weren’t around long enough anyway, three years was all I could ever do with the coupling thing), parents for sure, and even siblings but by far the hardest I’d say would be your off spring, probably worse for a mother but what do I know, I’m not here to say I know anything. All I can really say is what I experi- ence when I say that I know that there aren’t any people here, that the people that you

101 think you see is just consciousness masquerading as an imaginary dream character ex- pressing itself through that form whatever it looks or acts like, that they aren’t choos- ing anything, that they are dreaming accordingly to their conditioning and nothing more. Listen big here, you have your seekers and you have the other ones, the ones who don’t want to know, and don’t even NEED to know. I mean it’s going to be weird because there they are talking about all kinds of things that you now know don’t even exist. This is easy to just blow off when you don’t have any invested interest in this enti- ty who thinks it’s an autonomous person but you know is just a conditioned shell fol- lowing the orders of it’s inner dialogue but when it’s let’s say your own child, then what? Then nothing, at the end of the day, you have to let them go and know you are not in charge of their life now, nor were you ever. Let’s face it, no one gives a damn what you think, you are not important to anyone. The whole thing is just a performance albeit a very elaborate one but a performance nonetheless and you just happened to get lucky and find out you were on an imagi- nary stage where imaginary things were appearing as real but now they’re not. How are you going to talk now? What is there even left to say? Who would you say it to? Well, it’s just something to do now isn’t it, you gotta do something? When you need to talk, even if you know you are pretending to talk, you are not going to talk the same, how could you? How are you going to talk about the future like everyone else does? It ‘s not that it can’t be done, it’s just hard to do because it doesn’t interest you anymore. How are you going to talk about other people like everyone else does, you know “that idiot” or “that selfish bastard”? These things have vanished for you but still you’re chil- dren are going to want to know what you think about things and when you say any- thing close to the truth (like “don’t bother about what anyone else thinks at all just love yourself and know that everyone you meet is doing the best they can with what was handed to them and try to love them too) you might get slapped with “I’m not trying

102 to hear about your schizophrenic shit” and it might sting a bit. It might be like a cup of ice water thrown in your face. Don’t need to know, doesn’t matter and not up to you!!! So your family, the ones that you love, they don’t belong to you, you can’t help them in any way except how it arises for you to help them which is not up to you. I’d say right now get this one sentence down and use it as often as you need to when talking with people who think they are real, “I don’t know but I’m sure it will all work out one way or another.” Even the seekers don’t really want to know the truth. No, they are all going along to retreats and then starting these meditation meetings. I went to one tonight out of curiosity, the guy who started it went to this guru’s retreat and now he’s started this “awakening” group. He had the experience that “he wasn’t separate from any- thing” (well he had a nice experience but missed the part where you’re not separate from anything because there’s nothing to be separate from including you) and so he felt compelled to share his “journey” with all the other beautiful spiritual beings on the planet. It’s a nice sentiment to be sure, nothing wrong there, (nothing wrong anywhere anyway) but even these guys don’t want to wake up. There’s just a group of like four people and I can tell they don’t want me to spoil all the fun and good vibes. Tonight they played this video from their beloved guru whom they adore talking about failing or not succeeding at spirituality and awakening or something like that. Afterwards everyone gets to “share their thoughts” about “what came up for them” and all that, how they can relate or whatever. All kinds of analogies came up about how they can be easier on themselves, references to success and money and stories of whatever, all ego talking about dream stuff. Listen they don’t have a clue. They are in there trying to make the dream better, trying to make things easier for who they think they are but they are no way interested in waking up.

103 I don’t know about this other guru guy, I can tell he’s trying to be fairly entertaining and seems to know what he’s talking about but if you ask me he sugar coats and beats around the bush so much the reality of what he might be trying to say gets completely lost. Well, maybe he’s realized that it’s the only way to get people to follow you and tries to get in an inch at a time. His audience is mainly an upscale fringe class who don’t have all that many pressing issues, aren’t really suffering all that much in the dream so the absolutely fucking burning desire to rid yourself of yourself is just a fan- cy little ember on the verge of going out. But you don’t need an expensive flowery sa- cred retreat to see it, the gutter will probably get you there faster anyway and if you go the slow way, well your imaginary human body might expire before you get there. When it got to me I said, “Well, I get how he didn’t succeed because if you wake up, you will be gone, no one will be left to succeed at anything.” Damn, you should have seen the look on their faces like instead of saying that I’d just said, “Fuck this shit!” Yeah, I wasn’t done so then I said something like “the you that you think you are isn’t really here, actually all you think you are is what you think other people think you are. You actually perceive yourself the way you imagine other people are perceiving you. That’s why when you have all these thoughts about who you think you are you are almost always having a dialog with someone or something, to exist you need an audi- ence. That’s why there was a practice of people sitting for years with awakened mas- ters because the master was gone, no one home, so nothing to mirror, so maybe the other one wakes up too. ” Yeah, well I could feel the fucking hostility in the room, you know like “what is this crazy person talking about” and maybe “who the fuck does she think she is?” (Nobody folks, that’s who) super uncomfortable for them but not for me. Then I stopped and said “you are not the doer anyway but when you are gone, then the body/mind might do some other stuff that’s super cool because “you” aren’t there anymore and now it can do what it wants. Success? You will have forgotten what that

104 even was by then.” And then for some reason I started laughing and said “Oh, well, it’s all good.” And it does what it wants. And we moved on. No idea why I said all that and don’t care. Not going to go back, just not my thing, the point is “let dreamers dream” even if they think they are dreaming about waking up when they aren’t. Who cares? None of that really hap- pened, I just had a funny dream and now I know why I won’t be hanging out with any of those so called “seeker” types in this dream. All that seriousness, yeah I can’t be around that anymore, takes the fun out of everything because you know they are do- ing something there, adding something “special” to their lives. They have this self im- portance that they are helping someone wake up in this “sacred” space (as if there were unsacred places) but not really, just adding to the confusion and strengthening the ego instead of taking a hammer to it. And that’s exactly what they want to be dreaming about, they want to dream that they are doing something to wake up. Well, it looked like it was working for them until I started to hear about all the fear they had about the natural disasters currently going on in our shared dream world and the lady who does a bit in this group, some twenty minutes of Qigong focused on balancing the energy with the fright and flight response in the body. For some reason, I had the thought that it was my energy they were reacting to (if it was my bad but don’t worry I’m not going to be back so carry on little dreamers) but I’ve been doing a bit Qigong lately and I fully enjoyed all the movements. Then there was a lot more talk about mother nature. Well, that’s Maya and her tricks are endless and circular in how it keeps up the illusion that there are people do- ing nice things and isn’t that what life’s all about anyway. (Trust me you will be nice enough when you realize that the only thing here is you because to fight anyone or anything is to fight what is only in you) It seemed to add a bit of hope that what they

105 were doing there with all this “spiritual stuff” was a benefit to others like how divine of them. I don’t have to add anything to my life because firstly I’m not there to do it and second because what ever there is to be “added” (concept) gets done all by itself. I’m out of a job right now because the casino is shut down until further notice do to the natural disaster. Now I know why I made such good tips the pay check before it hap- pened, just being carried along here and I’m enjoying this vacation immensely. Not worried at all even so I might lose everything. Oh well, for all I know it could be a turn in the right direction for once. I never did like that job in that I see how it creates suf- fering. I don’t have any desire to create suffering for anyone, even if it’s only a dream with dream characters, and I’m getting paid to do it. I would like to dream something else now if I can. Either way it’s not up to me. The point here is you are on your own. Whatever happens is just an appearance, a dream in the dream. You are the only one who can confirm this for yourself. There is no outside help, everything is only in you, so any help you get will come from there, yourself. There is nothing else. When I was leaving the meeting, these dream characters asked me about my teenagers, how my being out of work was affecting them and I said, “They are all good. They are getting a lesson in …what’s that word… oh frugality, couldn’t have come at a better time.” Seems to going well anyway. Or maybe I’ll hit the lottery and then they will get a lesson in how everything works out for the best and the whole casino dream thing will be over for us and me and my kids can go enjoy whatever we feel like enjoying. What the do I know? Only this… One way or another it will all work out. In the end. There is no end. Never was.

106 Chapter 14 Visit With Mother I went to visit my mother over the weekend since I’m off work. I had no reason for the trip but my daughter wanted to go and invited her friend to come along. The boys don’t have fond memories of living there or of my mother for that matter so they stayed home alone and took care of themselves and the dog. My mother loves my daughter, she is probably her favorite grandchild, which makes sense, since I was my grandmother’s favorite grandchild. My grandmother whom I called Oma used to send me chocolates and marzipan and pretty clothes and shoes from Germany. In a lot of ways I was closer to her than I was to my own mother. She used to come to visit at least once a year and would stay several months but as the years wore on she came less and less until eventually by my teen years I was left to fend for myself. For most of my life, I thought of my Oma as an especially kind and gentle woman and it wasn’t un- til much later when I was in my thirties that my mother started telling me stories about what a horrible mother she was to her. I guess I’ll let that tradition die with me, I don’t seem to tell stories like that anymore, you know if anyone loves anyone else, why kill the love? It seems to me now that the human mind has just been perverted and twist- ed in so many ways and if there is anything left to it that is worth saving at all it really would be love and kindness, tenderness, and compassion. Before anyone can give it away, however, they will need to learn how to conjure it up for that pitiful human being that they were forced to live as for most of their lives. This is easier said than done to be sure but if it isn’t done, then anything even if it looks like the qualities mentioned above, or it’s these qualities as known through the conditioned mind it won’t really be those things at all and just a cheap imitation, for sure, just a knock off. Unfortunately, dream characters aren’t capable of anything else, the false can only ever express what it is, well just look around. I shouldn’t have to say anything more about that.

107 So I sit in my room, the pain seems to have returned full force, the hurt, this hurt is so enormous it fills this body to overflowing and it spills out. The loss of job and mon- ey cuts a dream character right down the middle exposing the ugliest of fears to the open air. She fights now too and lashes out not just at herself but at her teenage daughter who mirrors to her the epitome of cultural vanity and apologies will be needed again. Her daughter is she sees the person she used to be or at the very least a striking image. Knowing that the families only income has abruptly come to a stop, my daughter has suddenly decided that it’s a good time to dye her hair. It will only cost twenty bucks she swears so what’s the big deal. Her hair is dark brown and she wants it to be light brown now which will require some bleaching along with the ap- propriate hair dye color. When there was an income, I wouldn’t have hesitated in the least to say “Sure, whatever you want to do, I’m game.” I might even have offered to take her to a salon instead of leaving her to experiment with her own limited hair dresser skills but it seems that’s part of the fun anyway. Now that the situation has changed however, I find my dream character has a more than slightly different reaction to her request and it seems like an outrageous idea given the new circumstances so I look at her like maybe she’s flipped her lid. I mean it suddenly seems like a very selfish demand not to mention the vanity involved and I completely forget what it must be like to be almost seventeen years old and stuck in a house with a mom who’s temporarily lost her job and doesn’t know how long it’s going to last or much less how to get all the bills paid for the next couple months. It’s just getting to be summer now as well, the time when all the other kids are finally free of their school imprisonment and are available to go out and get together and do things that cost at least a little money and for her the plugs been pulled on everything. I can’t help but mention here as well, that it’s not like she has just any old mom, no her mom isn’t even a mom, doesn’t act anything at all like all the other moth-

108 ers, her mom is just different, or weird even but up until now, those qualities seemed like a plus and not a minus, now probably she’s not so sure, she hasn’t spent enough time in other homes to really see how they are operating, but on the surface those other mothers seem to like acting like they know what’s going on when they don’t know shit, so there’s that as well. So this anger rises up in my dream character’s body and thoughts, and at first I say “No, I’m not spending any money on that right now. I have to be careful with money now.” Right away, it just doesn’t feel right, it feels off, way off, who is saying that, who is that fearful person worried about money again, God I’m tired of her, and she’s slight- ed don’t you know. She’s mad because she feels so misunderstood, like why doesn’t this child understand what is happening right now, that the money we were used to getting isn’t going to be deposited into the checking account on the next payday, that the reason I’m saying no is because I actually care about the well being of her and everyone else in the family. No, she doesn’t get it but she’s not mad, she’s hurt. She’s hurt because she found something that would be fun to do for herself and I have com- pletely sucked the air out of it with my stupid human tendency to worry about the fu- ture, not just that, but I have effectively painted the future in a doom and gloom light that anyone in their right mind would say “Fuck that” to. So when I tell her as I some- times do that things won’t always be this way, there will come a day when money will no longer be an issue, even that we could hit the lottery (I buy the tickets), I guess when push comes to shove, I’m just a liar because I really don’t believe it. And well, that’s the life of a dream character living in a world that it thinks is solid, predictable, and very, very real. To make a long story shorter, I changed my mind and we got the required items for her new look, it cost double then what she had anticipated which she apologized

109 for and to which I replied, “It’s fine.” Dream character bypassed? No, not yet, it wasn’t done with me so soon. A bit later something else came up, now it was a trip to the mall with a friend, to which the dream character rose it’s ugly head once again, “oh for fuck’s sake, what now?”, I thought and bit my tongue and then it hit me, it hit me hard, and I saw what I needed to see. Remember this, when any other dream character pushes your buttons and upsets you, that is your clue to finding out just which stupid lie you are still believ- ing. No one does anything to you but for you. Remember how there is only one thing here, there is only one thing here, not a thing, just pure brilliant consciousness, the same in you as in me, the same here as there, this and that, now and then, pure unadulterated intelligence and love. So in this dream the people that you think you see are just you. If you haven’t completely dis- solved everything standing in your way of living the life you were meant to live be- cause some part of your dream character still lingers even if it is unconsciously, the person you think you are seeing is going to reflect whatever issues you still have right up in your face. For instance, my ignorant dream character might hide behind words like responsible, sensible, and even down to earth (that one has a nice ring to it) when it comes to money and the material necessities. The thing about dream characters is that they can’t be here, right now, in this moment, no they only live in the past and the future but get this one thing, the past is the future for them. They are actually creating the future dream appearances from the content of the past that they think happened. It is a viscous cycle from which almost none of them ever escape and they unwittingly pass on generation after generation. “How on earth to stop it? What is really behind it all? What are the mechanics of it?”, you might wonder. Listen (yeah I know I say this word a lot), look around right now, what is it that you are seeing right now, how do you feel about it, what thoughts are passing through

110 your mind, and what is it that you don’t like about any of it? You have to notice these things, there’s an energy, a resistance to whatever situation you think you are finding yourself, you think you need to change something about it, if not today, maybe there’s nothing you can do about it today or this month, or even this year but always there is this thought or this feeling that there’s somewhere else to be, something else to do. That is the place to enter, to go there and look, you have thoughts and feelings literal- ly embedded in you that are telling you that this isn’t it, that you aren’t it, that there’s something else that needs to be done, something else to know, to study, to read, to go, you name it. No, everything you need is already there. You are literally looking at the images that were created from the limited perspective of an imaginary dream character. Maybe, close your eyes for awhile and see where you are then. I’m siting outside on the patio of a Starbucks. I drove my daughter to the mall so she could meet her friend there today. I gave her a hundred dollar bill I was saving, (for what, tomorrow?) and said have fun. The wind is blowing, the air is warm but seems to be getting cooler, another storm is rolling in. The patio is full of dream char- acters, talking, I can’t hear what they’re saying because I have my headphones in and I’m listening to my favorite music. The chair I’m sitting on feels comfortable, my weight sinks into it, my fingers feel the keys of this keyboard, and my eyes watch as the words they write appear miraculously in front of them. Where else would I be but where I am? I am just here, the wind says hello again and again, cars are parked around me and traffic flows by, a fire engine, people walking by, a table of young girls across from me all have their hair dyed don’t you know. I have the thought to text my daughter “you okay?”, so I do that and she texts back “yea, haven’t bought anything yet”, well that’s funny. It’s getting a little chilly so I have the thought that I walk across the parking lot and grab my jacket out of the car so I do that and put it on. It feels nice, soft and now I’m warm enough. I take a sip of my iced coffee. A rain drop falls from the sky and

111 hits my keyboard so I grab my things and relocate to a table under an overhang. Now my eyes see a different view as I’m facing the opposite direction and all the dream characters that were sitting on the patio before have left. I’m the only one out here now. I stare out at the scene and sit back and listen intently to the music in my ears for a few minutes. This is just my dream now. A lady waiting to park looks out her car win- dow which is open and catches my eye and smiles at me, I smile back and away she goes. I’m right where I am, seeing what I’m seeing, writing what I’m writing, nothing is happening, I’m not supposed to be somewhere else doing something else, I am at the only place I could ever be which is where I am, not trying to do something, not doing anything. All moments are just whatever they are. They are your moments to be inside of, even maybe you hear the sound of cars accelerating loudly trying to get through the busy intersection or you see someone is backing out of their parking spot and a driver coming around the corner honks at them, like I did just now, so what, allowing it as it is. Then for some reason, I pick up my phone and look at blogging applications be- cause I’ve been thinking about maybe writing more regularly and putting my writing in a place where it will be easier to find and read in a linear way. Well, that’s fun, so I read a few articles because I don’t know anything about blogging software and I’m not even great at computers but one thing I do know is if I need to know something I’ll know it so whatever. Then I look at the time and think to see how much longer my daughter will be, if I should get ready to go, all this seems like it is happening by me but it’s not. Nothing is happening, just some movement in this dream, I’m not respon- sible for it, I’m not making it happen, it comes out of this dream character and ap- pears, none of it is important or matters in the least, it’s just this particular dream char- acter’s dream at the time.

112 Nope, she’s not ready to go yet but I’ve been here for a few hours now so I feel like getting in my car and driving back to the mall to wait outside in the car so I do that. Then I text and ask how much longer, her friend’s grandmother is supposed to pick him up but she’s not answering her phone so my daughter asks me if I can drive him home even though it’s in the opposite direction of where we live and I say “Sure, why not.” She can’t leave him there alone at the mall because he doesn’t have a phone or actually it’s broken. On the way home I ask him how he broke his phone and he says he didn’t and he tells me he got mad and broke a door at his house so his mom in response took his phone and threw it to the ground smashing it. His mom is a pub- lic school teacher don’t you know, well it’s a rough world out there for everyone. So many frustrations I can’t even really remember them all anymore but it did remind me of the time not long ago when I was leaving work and my son called to tell me that my daughter had gotten locked out of her room. Two of my children once asked me for locks on their rooms because their bed- room doors didn’t come with any so we bought real locks, the kind that require a key and installed those. My son was the first to get locked out and even though we all tried to pick the lock first, I ended up having to call a locksmith to get back in putting me out quite a bit of cash for a three minute job. So needless to say I was none so thrilled to hear this latest development and just said, “Oh wow, that’s too bad. I’m on my way home. I guess we’ll figure it out then.” Even though after the first incident, we had agreed they would hide a key somewhere in the house outside the room, for some reason it hadn’t happened. I pondered the situation with a quiet calm on the ride home completely oblivious to the hilarious outcome I would find when I got there. They had opened the door alright. My son ever helpful had taken a hammer to the door knob and knocked the fucking thing right in half which allowed him to open the door. The door got a little banged up but you know not too bad, just a few scratch-

113 es. My reaction when I saw it was. “Holy Shit you fucking rock star, how the hell did you even do that” and I was just amazed at how once again everything was just being tak- en care of while he demonstrated how he had done it. Then they showed me the video of my seriously mild mannered son going Rambo on this door and we were all in hysterics at the theatrics of it. He said he was inspired because he didn’t like the idea of paying someone for a job we could do ourselves. And after I remember that I drive down the road to drop off this kid and think “but for the grace of God go I.” The dream doesn’t end, I think I thought I it would for some reason, like I would just miraculously get out of it for some reason too but while the dream continues the context of the dream ends. It’s not life or death here folks, it’s not right and wrong any- more, it just is what it is, and sometimes it’s just so outrageously ridiculous that it just begs you to recognize that it isn’t real. While we were at my mother’s house, I had the thought of going for a jog. It’s a lovely scenic very hilly gravel road lined with trees in the Ozark Mountains that sits at the end of her driveway. When I lived there before I also liked to jog or walk and right down the hill was a trailer where four or five large dogs used to congregate. Whenev- er I went that way I thought it was a toss up whether or not they would just bark at me viscously like they always did or attack me but nothing ever happened. It’s been a cou- ple of years now since my last trip but things have changed quite a bit since then and all the dogs were gone now. Whether I imagine it or not, there’s a stillness that has seems to have settled on the place now. Still when I went out jogging I noticed that I had the thought of wild dogs on my mind even though I knew that no one has seen any in quite awhile. So I was jogging in the opposite direction and as I was a truck coming up the road at me stopped and leaned out his window to talk to me. He said, ‘There’s a copperhead in the road up ahead, I think I ran over it so it might be dead but I’m not sure.” Now what are the odds of someone coming up the road to warn me

114 of danger at just the right time I might be headed into it? My thought then was a feel- ing like the universe looking down upon me and giving me a wink while saying, “See, I got you.” On my second day there in the morning I was having my coffee on the back out- side deck, not really thinking of anything. A few minutes later, my mom came out and joined me and one of the outdoor cats came up onto the deck with us. I’m not really a cat person but my mom has four cats in total and for some reason, I get the thought that I have yet to see the black and white one and ask where it is. Her boyfriend is out in the barn messing around so she calls to him to come over and asks if he has seen this cat. “Come to think of it” he says, “no I haven’t seen him in a couple days.” So they start thinking of all the places he might be, like maybe he got locked in a room in the house or a closet or how about the loft in the barn? The loft in the barn is a closed room and there’s no way to get out of it. It can get very hot in there in this warm weather. As it turns out, my mother’s boyfriend remembers going up there to get something a couple days ago so he goes to see if the cat is in there and we find the cat. He’s fine, just hot and thirsty and hungry. When you need to know something, you will know it. Pay attention. All the clues are right in front of you. Late the first night, my mom and I are sitting on the couch, the only ones still up and I just say, “I have had the perfect life. Thank you.” It doesn’t matter that she then tried (unsuccessfully of course) to convince me that I didn’t. I know what I need to know and that’s all. My daughter didn’t spend even a dollar, said she couldn’t find anything she want- ed. Imagine that. Chapter 15

115 Nothing And so I here I am. Nothing happening. I’m okay with that. If something needs to happen, I guess it will happen. It’s nothing to do with me anymore anyway. I’m working on posting my writing on my own blog. Why am I doing that? I don’t even care. I seem to enjoy this writing thing so I find myself doing it. I’m not doing it because I want or need something to come of it. Just doing it to do it. Who cares? I don’t have the sense that I’m the decider of these things anymore. I’m a bit under the weather today still with some weird digestion issues. It’s been a few days now. I went to the doctor when the pain was more than I could stand but that’s over. I’m not in pain now just a bit uncomfortable, oh well. I’m not upset about it or worried about it but you know I’m taking it easy. I don’t have to work now so I’m able to do that. I’m sure I’ll get over it, you know everything feels in order, probably just what I needed since it’s been bothering me for a while and I just let it go. Maybe, now it will go away or maybe not. I don’t think I will die, but let’s say I do. If they said, this is it, you’re done for, I think I would just say, “Well, okay, I guess that’s that.” I wouldn’t freak out about it, probably be a relief to get out of this body suit anyway. I don’t see that happening, I feel like I’ll be good to go in a week or two but you know it goes the way it goes and there’s nobody left here to fight which way that is. The body just goes along with whatever arises. Earlier today, I felt pretty good for a little while and I thought, “you know, I think I will finally clean the toilets”, so I got up and did that. Now both bathrooms have clean toilets, so great. Then I thought, “these bathroom rugs could use a washing so I gathered them up and threw them in the washing machine.” What’s the big deal? Now that I’m out of work I have to watch the finances but there isn’t anything I need money for except to pay the mortgage, utilities, food, well the necessities. The boys are good with having everything on hold for now. My daughter likes to ask for

116 money and I’ll give her a little something to keep her occupied and happy but it’s not overboard. Teenage dream characters are spendy little things don’t you know. I don’t blame them for it. I don’t ask anymore, why are you doing this? Everyone does what- ever they do based on their programming. They didn’t get to pick the program so why blame them for it? I don’t have to say yes all the time but I don’t blame anyone or any- thing including myself for anything. I figure I will get back to my job before homeless- ness sets in, that’s not likely to happen but if it did well it would just be what it would be. It’s not here yet so why fuss. I’ll tell you one thing, when the kids grow up and move on, I won’t need much. I have enough clothes that I like well enough now to literally last me for the rest of my life. I don’t seem to care too much about food either, actually on a fast at the moment to aid in recovery from this glitch, but when I am eating I’m happy with just the basic stuff, I could eat rice and beans three times a day and be perfectly happy about it probably won’t but fancy anything seems over the top, more like an unnecessary has- sle if you ask me. Not saying I won’t ever eat out, depends on where I find myself, what I find myself doing. Maybe tomorrow or next week I will want some fancy clothes and fancy food after all. Nobody knows, neither way is better than the other so who cares? I can’t predict what will arise in this here dream so I don’t bother trying. Surprise is bet- ter anyway, much more fun if you ask me. The point here is I’m good now. I don’t feel bad about anything. I don’t sit here and think I need to figure anything out. I don’t say like I’m here but I should be over there anymore. I don’t think that maybe I could have done something differently or better than I did. Or if only this, or if only that. It is what it is and it all just seems fine because it’s nothing to do with me. Even if my kids get mad at me, maybe, for whatever reason, maybe they are bored or frustrated about the money, and they yell at me let’s say that. I don’t think I don’t de-

117 serve this type of treatment, or what have I done to deserve this or why don’t you act better than that. I might even say stop it, who knows, but if I did I wouldn’t wonder why I didn’t say something better than that. I might even have a different thought later on and a completely different action seemingly in direct opposition to the first one. Like let’s say my daughter got mad at me because she wants to buy a pair of pants online and I say no, not right now. Then she yells at me, and then an hour later I get a differ- ent feeling about the whole thing and I go to her and say you know what I changed my mind, here you go, here’s the credit card. None of that happened (yet) but if it did I’m trying to show an example here, that whatever goes down is nothing to do with me or anyone else that appears to be in- volved. Even lets say all that really did happened and my reaction was I started crying, a sudden sadness rose up and now I’m crying. Well, then there’s crying and a feeling of sadness that is there now in this body I seem to carry around with me. I don’t think this is bad or someone shouldn’t have treated me in a way that made me cry. I just think okay crying is appearing but it’s still nothing to do with me. I don’t think I shouldn’t be crying. Maybe there’s crying now, so what? What’s the big deal? Anything that appears just appears now. The only real difference is only that now you know it’s nothing to do with you but it just is you. It is all of it you. You now know that you are just a dreamer having a dream. You now know how the dream particulars get thrown in and so you don’t have any reactions to them anymore in the way of any of it being personal. The dream is still appearing, well I hope so, otherwise you are dead, and then maybe you don’t get to see anything anymore, or maybe you do, who knows. Actually, the whole thing is rather fantastic if you ask me, endless variations of anything anyone can imagine. Too bad everyone isn’t imagining all the utterly fantas- tic things they could imagine but you know it works with what it has to work with and that’s all.

118 It sounds confusing because I’m using words here like you and me and I. Like there is an “I” or a “me” or a “you” but hopefully by now you know that I’m just using them in context with dreaming a dream and not in the way that they are always usually used. So it all goes along rather well I’d say. I got the thought that why not play some cards with the boys and it came out of my mouth like, hey we haven’t played rummy in awhile, you want to play and they both said yes so we played nine games. I won seven out of nine and it was funny because they thought I was cheating but no the cards just fall the way they fall, always have. I guess I just got lucky. It’s crazy how the whole time everything was just an idea in your mind and nothing was true about it. Seems pretty weird to me how with all the characters running around now, hardly any of them are able to see through the whole mess of it and just live their whole lives causing chaos and suffering on each other, taking every silly thing as so serious, so many stupid ideas and just going on a tangent with them. I mean now that the whole dreamstate is so weird you would think that more of them would start looking but I guess if you don’t you just don’t. It could be so different if the first thing you learned when you were born was that everything was just yourself and just fun and games down here, nothing to do but dream up fun stuff to do and love every minute of everyday. Yeah, maybe they say first off, listen none of this is real so there’s no need to be afraid, you can’t do anything wrong or anything you are not supposed to do. However it appears for you is just the way it is supposed to be, nothing to do with you at all, it’s all just a big show so dream up anything you like, this is your time to do that. You can’t even screw this up if you tried so whatever you want to do, go for it. Have any experience you like, this place is friendly as hell, everything just falls into place all by itself because it is you, yourself, you are it. I wonder how it would look like then.

119 And then all the little dreamers would know that they were just divine love itself and love everything and all the pain and suffering that they are dreaming up now could have just disappeared before it even started. Yeah, then the idea that another dreamer was a better dreamer than you would never have occurred, maybe you would fight because you know you just want to try it and when it was over, everyone would just shake hands or hug and say, well that was different, not sure if I liked that or not but thanks for trying it with me. You know you are just playing with yourself where ever you go so if someone takes your coat, you’d just say here you go, I got more where that came from if you want it, I got all kinds of shapes and colors too why don’t you just come over and see what you like, you can have as many as you want or take them all, I can always make more. I’m not a Bible person but I get it that Jesus saw what was going on which is why he said the things he did like, “if someone takes your coat give them your pants too”, or however it goes. Why on earth do you give them more when they are already tak- ing something from you? Why would he say that? There’s only one reason, and that’s that he saw that everyone was only yourself and it was only a dream, and the way it works is kindness and love out, kindness and love in. Whatever you give, you get be- cause the only one you can ever give anything to is still you. I can’t for the life of me figure out why no one gets it. It seems so simple. Same with to give is to receive. It’s nothing to do with being a good person so you can now think of yourself in some high regard, it’s because you are the other person, everything you see is only yourself coming out of yourself. Same with the whole “whatever you do to one of my brothers you do to me”. They are you. I and the father are one. It’s not that all these things add up to one, like all the pieces put back together make one, no, they aren’t even apart to begin with. The whole thing is just one. I don’t know. I don’t get the whole religious thing, how God

120 got to be out and up there and everyone and everything else was over and down here. With all the scholars over the centuries, you’d think it would have been discov- ered and widespread by now but I guess not and instead we got this weird place where everyone thinks they are a separate piece of existence and they don’t like to share at all, instead they are all like listen I am better than you, smarter than you so I deserve more. Also, what’s mine is mine even if I have more than I need it’s still mine. All they are really saying though is listen I’m afraid of this place, you never know what will happen so you have to protect yourself and take as much as you can get just in case you run into to trouble down the road. Well, I got what I need and then some, so if you need something come and get it. Take whatever you want, there’s more where that came from. Rambling over. Chapter 16. So Now What? So what happens now, now that you know how it is and what's really going on? Nothing, just nothing again, nothing is happening. You don't finally after all you have been through, your years of pain and struggling to understand, get to be somebody. Who would you be, somebody else? (Well, that's what you were hoping for, I know) You just found out you can't be anything, all you can do is be, but being someone or anything isn't a thing. You don't become famous or important in the eyes of the world. Oh I know there are highly regarded and sought after spiritual gurus out there and I'm sure some of them probably are awake and that's why they play the role they play now in the dream but being awake doesn't necessarily land you that role. If it does happen that way for you in the dream, I doubt it would happen right away, probably takes years because it will take years for you to completely assimilate. Depending on how old you are, well it probably took almost a whole life to create the character that you thought you were and though the demolition won't take quite as long, clearing away

121 the last remnants of what you thought you were will be gradual for most people. Be- coming important in the eyes of the world isn't all it' cracked up to be anyway, but what appears isn't up to you anyway. I'd say now is just a time to kick back, just go along to get along until you get the hang of things. But don't worry once it starts it can't be stopped. I've said it before and I'll say it again, "Consciousness loves nothing more than to know itself as consciousness" (that's why it feels so good...incentive) so once it gets a hold of you, it won't ever let go. If you do turn away all that happens is your life becomes more miserable until you finally make the connection that this is the way that goes with the flow. I'd even go so far as to say that if you've read the Jed McKenna books more than once and you've obviously made your way to this here or you wouldn't be reading this right now, you've got a good shot at it. This type of spiritual search isn't ignited in just anybody. Dream characters who are getting along in the dream don't come here, why would they? They think the dream is working out just fine, they think they know who they are, where they are, what they're doing, why they are doing it and where they are going. Even though they don't know they are dreaming, the dream itself is manage- able. Your dream, on the other hand, isn't like this. Your dream has probably had some real lows to it, something just has never been right with you, the good times have nev- er lasted long enough to out weigh the bad and you can't get over it. The whole thing just isn't enough, maybe you even thought of ending it. Remember Jesus said, "the meek shall inherit the earth." That's you. He didn't say "people who have perfect over achieving families, or good paying jobs, or are 'upstanding citizens", no he didn't say any of that shit. Listen, this is all good news, it actually means that there's something in you that values your life, that says my life should be worth more than this, and of course it is, your life is life, it's the most miraculous thing that's ever been created by the creator. If you are reading this, then consciousness is trying to wake you up. It's

122 saying I want you. It's literally saying "I can see into your heart and I love what I see, looks like you've had enough, time to come on home." Your dream character wants a different life I know and it will get one if the only thing you want is to know what you are. It won't wake up if you add something to it like, "I want to know what I am and lots of money." Or I want this because I want a lot of money so I can enjoy my life. You might get all those things when you wake up but only if you don't want them first. If you put your dream (your life situation) first and only read this stuff because you need that to work out, it probably won't happen. Why not? Because that's what you will be focusing on. Listen, this dream is in you, the things that you think you need to take care of, accomplish, succeed at are just ideas in your head, the obstacles are your very own demons. You have to slay your demons. The dream itself is the distraction, what's in the way. You have to be willing to stand naked, bare assed, destroyed from the inside out, defeated even. You have to give up everything, every single part of you, every shred of vanity, pride, and arrogance, everything that the rest of the world tells you you should be fighting for. You have to be willing to be nothing, a nobody, and then maybe it will happen. If it does you will see that all the things you ever thought were against you were only ever you. You were only ever against yourself. Totally crazy, I know, all you really want is to be happy so what's the problem, the problem is dream characters can't be truly happy because they are literally made up of memories, and the future never out runs the past it only comes out of it. I watched this video, well actually it was just a picture of Adyashanti and his voice talking and he was saying how you have to love the Truth with all your heart, with your entire being in order to wake up. While that may be true in the end stages, at the be- ginning, how can you do that? You don't even know what the Truth is so kind of hard to love something that much and you don't even know what you are supposed to be

123 loving. Most people will just slap that "God" label on it but that doesn't work to well because that God let you down, right from the beginning you were doomed to suffer. So I don't see that it's all that helpful if you don't know what Truth is yet. In that case, hatred is your best friend, hatred of all the useless petty crap that has been heaped upon you and everyone else in this dream, all the judgements going on from morning till night, like how is it even possible to say that some people are worth more than oth- ers. Why just because they had more opportunities to have a nicer dream? Well, that's the direction I'd go. My thing was when I saw that school teachers were beating little children with wooden boards and no amount of logic could convince them they were doing anything hurtful. All the children having to go along with all this crazy stuff, and being made to feel humiliated and afraid and wrong if they didn't. That stuff just got to me but you know everyone finds their own thing. Of course, once you do know what the Truth is you will love it but not all at once, because you will confuse things that are coming out of you with it. Some super crazy loving experiences will come and then some not so nice things and you will have to face the fact that the Truth is you created both of them. The bad things come out of your conditioning though so once you get rid of that and realize that it never had anything to do with what you are, it will be a lot nicer. The idea that the dream is going to work out in any way you had planned is not a thing. I tell you what I don't even want anymore is for my life to turn out anything like any of my nice ideas of how I wanted it to. God no, my imagination is not even close to what it should be when it comes to that and besides wouldn't that be boring? Every- thing turning out just the way you thought it would? No surprises in that at all. No thanks. The way things go along now are so much nicer and there's like nothing to do, I don't have to do anything, I've nothing to do with it. I'm just seeing what it is that I do and I'll tell you I never know from one minute to the next what that might be. I'm open

124 ended now you might say. If I think I know how something is going to go, then I"m stuck with that because I can't even conceive what's really in my best interest. What looks like a blow turns out to be win win for everyone. My daughter got her driver's license. I literally had nothing to do with that. Then her older half sister in California invited her down for the summer. What happened first is that this neighbor girl, the one we took on the trip to see my mother suddenly went crazy. Well, what happened is that she got in trouble with her parents and decid- ed it was my daughter's fault. Yeah, it was like the weirdest drama, the girl was just mean, said she wanted to physically fight my daughter and listen there is none of that dumb shit to going down on my watch. For real, my daughter had no idea what the hell she was talking about. Anyway, it was sad you know but the problem is that every- thing is a mirror so if you are growing up with parents who are always blaming you and putting you down and punishing you, it doesn't matter who you come in contact with, you will literally fabricate a scenario that mirrors what you are used to getting even with the nicest people. So my daughter was like all freaked out and really sad, and then her sister came on board with the visit. Now listen I haven't been working so money is crazy tight but grandma sends a few bucks to tie us over and what do I do? I give it all to my daughter and then some so she can take a trip. She left yesterday and so far is having a blast. The two sisters have never met, they have the same father and different mothers. They are just three years apart so my daughter is the youngest at sixteen, and there's another sister in the area as well nine years older. These sisters were all meant to be reunited. It's lovely. That was their destiny. It all works out, but you can't figure it out ahead of time. I'm back to work tomorrow, not even worried about the money because I'm open ended now. Now that my daughter is driving, I can go on my own trip. I've applied to go to on a special trip with some other people who are like me. I don't have the money for it right now, not like any of it. I'm not wor-

125 ried about going. If I'm meant to go, I'll go and if not I won't. It's not up to me. Either way I will know that everything is happening in my best interest. It can't be any other way. Well, it's hard not to love that, what's not to love. I love it with all my heart, you can count on that. Listen (yep), you really need to hear what I'm saying here and it's this. You can not go wrong and there's literally nothing to figure out. It is happening, all of it, with out you. You're not even in it because nothing is really happening, just a little dream. Yeah, it's weird, I know but if you really, I do mean REALLY, think about it, isn't it for the best. Nobody really getting hurt, just a lot of really crappy dreaming going on these days. So now you know you are just having a dream, well maybe you think, hey I want a nice dream now, listen that is just more dreaming. It's nice to have this kind of dream but it's still not you, it's just that now you are dreaming that now you want a nice dream. Nothing wrong with that, if it happens that you get a nice thought like that, lucky you. So maybe, now you are looking into things so you can figure out how to have a nice dream, well that's your dream now, just pay attention and see where it takes you. It doesn't need to make sense, probably it might just look crazy from the human perspective, well if it didn't it wouldn't be a dream. Before you didn't know you were dreaming so you thought there was a you that had to figure out how to have a nice dream and you know maybe work your ass off or however you imagined you do- ing it but now that's not how it's working. Now you just walk around having a nice dream. You don't really care too much what's going on now, you are just enjoying whatever is happening, well you might as well, like why wouldn't you? As long as you know that nothing absolutely nothing can appear that is not in your favor, that it is somehow designed beyond your immediate comprehension to take you exactly where you are meant to go for the highest good of all. Can you just enjoy that? Isn't it only your fear of where your mind thinks it is going or what the mind thinks is happen-

126 ing that causes all your fear and suffering? Believe me, where ever you are and what ever it looks like, you are right where you are supposed to be. Where is that? On your way home, toward understanding that you never actually left home, it was all just a dream. Trust is really the key. How many times do you have to see it to believe it? You get glimpses everyday, coincidences, all kinds of little clues from morning till night, if you don't think you are you are just not paying attention. Three or four times a day now for the last three or four months, whenever I open up a device or for whatever reason I glance at the clock maybe on the stove, in the car or I open up my phone, I see dou- ble or triple number combinations. It's always eleven after or it's eleven eleven or one eleven or five fifty five or two twenty two but I'm not waiting for this time to roll around so I can say this is happening, I'm just noticing that it is. If I expect to look up and see one of these numbers however I won't. It has to be a surprise. Well, that's strange you might think but consider this. The picture you see is coming out of you, however if you try to create the picture by thinking that you know what it will be, it comes out of the past by way of the dream character. When you don't know, when you have no expec- tations, neither are you avoiding anything, just completely open, fearless, accepting, trusting that things are in perfect order, that nothing can ever go wrong, then you by- pass the dream character and it's conditioning, it's past and something totally unex- pected, and usually much more pleasant can appear. So my best advice is don't try to know something, whatever you think you know, forget about it, toss it, things you think you know come from the "you that you thought you were." Literally, I don't care how if you know that when you walk down this street it will come to an end at this street and there will be a light there, you've walked down this same street five days a week for the last five years and it's never changed. Forget about it, the next time you walk that way, make it the first time and forget that you've ever seen it before. Forget that you

127 know where you are going because you don't. You don't know anything. You have memories and that's all. Nothing else. Now you are in a different world, and this one doesn't need you, it is you. So leave it alone, it knows what it's doing without your help. Your help is just a hindrance to it. Listen, (oh god not again girl you need to find another word already) you can not go in the wrong direction. You may go in a direction that causes you pain but it isn't wrong. If you go into something that causes you pain, that pain is there for a reason. It's trying to tell you something. It's trying to bring your attention or direct your atten- tion to something you need to be aware of and address once and for all so it can stop appearing in this dream you are having. It may also just be a redirection, since most people don't continue in the direction of painful experiences and will change course if need be but just know this any pain you have is a push to get you to see something you don't want to look at so if you ignore and turn away all you're doing is postponing it for another time down the road. I'd say take a look at all the little pains and find the lie in them if you can because every time you try to avoid pain it just gets a little bit bigger, the pushing it away is like putting another layer of earth on top of a volcano. Eventually volcano's erupt and the more stuff that's covering it up, the more stuff that goes flying up and out in all directions causing even more devastation. You know I started this whole thing because I wanted to get out of my life and in the end I discovered that what really happened is that I actually for once got into it. Most people look at their ordinary life and they don't even value it. All the time you are just wanting it to change somehow, but once you get into it, you see all the won- derful stuff that you can do to make the people around you as happy as you possibly can. My kids don't do dishes, probably because I never made them do dishes at all, it was just my job. Then as they got older I started thinking that they should help out more and do the dishes but they didn't want to do it so I got mad. I said why should I

128 have to do all the fucking dishes and I got all bent out of shape feeling unappreciated. You know what I think now, I don't mind doing all the dishes, I'd rather my children be off doing something fun rather than making me feel appreciated. One day they will have to do dishes, it's kind of a part of the dream wherever you go, probably when they do they won't even hate it because no one forced them to do it when they were kids. I might have the only kids in America who never had to do dishes, well so what, sue me. When the kids were young I always cleaned up after them, literally whatever mess they made I just cleaned it up. I always cleaned their rooms for them. It used to drive my mother crazy how I always picked up all their toys and never made them do it, I never said a word. Well, you would think that they would have just grown up to be messy because maybe they just figured that I would do it but you know what that's not what happened. The older my children got the less I had to clean their rooms, like it was just this gradual thing. Three teenagers in this house have practically spotless rooms, not because I say anything, or ever said a word, apparently that's just how they like it so that's how they keep them. Honestly, on any given day, my room is usually more of a mess than any of theirs are. The only real job left is to spread the love, whether that looks like doing dishes and laundry so someone else doesn't have to or something else, like becoming a Jed. All you can ever do is what Ramana Maharshi said to do. "Work with the available light." Chapter 17 And here’s something else.... Everything is taken care of. I know you think that it isn't, that there is a "you" that has to take care of all these things, from everything as basic as securing food and pay- ing the rent or mortgage, to creating positive relationships with others, being nice or

129 even being hard, and basically behaving in whatever your idea of a respectable or ac- ceptable way is but just bluntly NO. There is really nothing that "you" can do other than whatever it is that "you think" that you are doing. Even after you 'see" that there is no you, you are not in control of anything. Nothing is up to you. There isn't one. Whatever you think you are seeing is what you are supposed to be seeing. Maybe, now that you know that there is no you, you just sit there, well it could happen, then that's fine you just sit there for a time, but odds are you are going to get bored and want to get up after awhile, not necessarily but in all likelihood. So now you get "an idea", listen this is not "your idea", you aren't choosing your thoughts like you thought you were and maybe, depending on where you are at in your development, the con- ditioning will step in and say, "there's no way I can do that", or "I'd like to but it's im- possible, things like that aren't in my options." If it's an idea that's coming from con- sciousness you can trust that if it resonates with your sense of well being and dreams you would just love to dream, go with that, things will actually align in with it. Whether or not it happens isn't the point, the point is that you are moving along with the flow of consciousness to go where ever it is that it wants to go. You don't know where you are going because you can't know that. You aren't going anywhere anyway. When you don't know, when you don't even want to know, you can relax, you just don't need to know, that's how the magic gets in. The very acceptance of not knowing opens the door that you really want to open. It is the door of unlimited possibilities, not things that "you" can do or plan or achieve, forget about "you", again, there isn't one and even if there was if you could see what it was made of you would take a torch to it any- way. So what's happening in my dream? I'm back to work at the casino. The night be- fore last I was just laying in bed doing Jed's breathing thing and for some reason I just kept doing it, all thoughts finally stopped and the focus on the feeling the breathing

130 was creating continued on it's own for more than an hour or maybe two I don't really know. I was just there. Then, I fell asleep for a couple hours and that was the end of my sleep for the night. I woke up at three am and stayed awake enjoying my dream for the rest of the day. At six am I went to the gym with my oldest son and rebounded basketballs for him for four hours, not an ounce of fatigue in me then we came home (he drove, looks like he wants to get his license too now so he can drive himself to the gym without being dependent on me to get up after my late night at work, another nice development for me, uninterrupted sleep when it's needed) Then I made smoothies and lunch for everyone. After that I took a 45 minute nap, it was going to be longer but my daughter called and said she was ready to come home so I started looking at airline tickets, then I found some and then she said she changed her mind and sent me a screen shot of how her sister texted her that she loved her (beautiful) then I watched a live stream with A.H. Almaas of the Diamond Approach because I just love this guy, his presence is like a jolt to my system, I'm not all that interested in what he says just feeling being in his presence is all I'm after. After that I went jogging and walked the dog. The day was warm, the sun was out, I felt grateful to have a body that can move the way it does. The whole world just felt so right. I forget about the unpaid bills, all the catching up to do after being unemployed, listen there aren't any bills any- way, just another stupid appearance in the collective dreaming going on. Then I went to work, not caring about anything. I drive to work seeing the sky and the birds flying overhead from time to time, I am crying, I am so happy, I am in love with being in the love that is all there really is. I worked my whole shift, tips were typical nothing over the top, just what I need to get by, all good, toward the end of the night, exhaustion sets in and I make it home and pass out immediately as soon as my head hits the pil- low. I wake up after five hours sleep ready to start another day, renewed, refreshed. There doesn't seem to be a hair out of place, just relaxation as far as the eyes can see.

131 Another typical day in the life of this ordinary dream character, a life not much unlike other lives on the surface of appearance, but deep down within, every moment such gratitude for just some simple things, like going jogging and walking again, sitting here writing in this bedroom, the taste of a cup of coffee, a run to the store to buy a few items, a pineapple, a couple avocados and a cucumber for my salad later, some cookies for the boys and a bag of my son's favorite chips, nothing special except that it's all special. My daughter snapchats me on my way home, she's at her oldest sister's house hanging out with her four year old niece, simple times how easily we overlook it all in favor of some fantasy of grandeur. Just for once, stop trying to get somewhere else. We do not even taste the water anymore. Now everyone is slamming down eight cups of water a day, let me tell you, you don't even need that much water, you just need to know that you are actually drinking something amazing called water. Hell, you are the water. There you are cutting up an avocado for your salad, maybe you don't like them but I do, I'm looking at this plant, can you notice what an incredible thing it is, how it tastes, avocados are fucking amazing, same with a banana but no one sees it. Same with you, same with the illusion of that other being walking down the street in front of your very eyes, sitting across from me at the blackjack table, what miracle has happened to make this dream appear? To make your eyes to see these shapes, to hear these voices, this music, ah the music, I'm partial to the music, just can't get enough of it. What about the appearance of your legs that carry you across the room or on a walk, your arms and your hands so you can cut up the avocado and put it in your mouth, what about the taste your mouth delivers, deliciousness and then maybe your stomach, feels nice to have some food in there. How about the bed you get to crawl into at night, the feel of the pillow and the blanket, the comfort of closing one's eyes and the drowsiness that slips you off to dreamland, lets you check out and holds

132 you safely through the night? Or a hot bath or shower? How it feels washing the days dust off of you? So many things, right there in front of you every moment of the day, my child, talking to me, what makes his mouth move, what thoughts are able to be ex- pressed by him and heard by me. No, nobody is noticing these things, everyone is fo- cused on what words, are they the "right" words not the fact that there are words. So many things are the gifts, all amazing wonders and there you are worried about your silly job, and the silly bills, what calamity tomorrow might bring, listen there is no to- morrow, not one anywhere to be found. There is not even another moment to be found, this is the only one, this is all there is. Maybe a nice thing to do is just sit or lie down, just sit there or lay there in yourself, feel the chair or bed or floor or whatever you are resting on holding you, supporting you completely. Maybe then you can have the nice thought, this is good, this is enough, wherever you think you are, whatever you think is going on, just be right there, and feel how you aren't the one holding anything up, that there's really nothing that needs to be held onto by you or anyone else, that it all is just fine all by itself. There isn't a you that has anything to do with any of it anyway, so you know just let it be what it is. There's nothing for you to do about anything anyway, whatever comes just comes, and then it goes. Never forget that one thing, coming and going, appear- ing and disappearing, constantly, everything just passing by, never staying the same. I'd say just relax, totally relax, nothing is happening so why stress over anything? If there's something that you are supposed to "do", some action to take, you will take it but you don't have to "think" about what that might be. The whole "thinking game" is just a weight you don't need. Nothing is up to you, you aren't doing it, not then, not now, not ever. There are no important things at all anywhere. It simply will be what it will be, appear the way it appears and that's all it is.

133 There's literally nothing to accomplish, nothing to fail or succeed at. Nothing is good or bad at all, I wish I could make you see that. I wish I could make you see that no one is more or less than anyone else. All it is, all you have ever thought you were was just a thought that got planted in your mind, even the thought that you had a mind was planted there by whatever dream you dreamed. It's not serious at all so just scrap it. There is nothing to be but what you always already have always been. Who cares if you are the only one who sees it? If someone is meant to see it they will see it but there's nothing for you to do about anyone or anything. Even if you wanted to do something, it's not up to you. It feels tricky but it's not. It's the simplest thing in the world to just be what you are. Being something else is hard. Why be something else when you are all that is already? Forget about what other people say and do, they don't even know about it. All you really have is people walking around appearing in the only way their conditioning allows them to appear. They are all deluded, well so what? It's the way it is, it's the way of the dream to appear the way it does, just a little show, might as well just enjoy it. It's all taken care of. One day or night, not so long from now, it will all be over and you will just slip right on over out of this dream. And nothing, I tell you nothing, will ever have mattered in the least. It will all be forgotten as everything is. So you know you can let go now, just hand it all over, completely surrender the whole damn thing, this life that you think you have you don't have it. It's not yours, not up to you at all, it is just all that is and you know it's wonderful. The whole thing is just utterly fantastic. Even a drive in a car is fantastic, fucking amazing development in the dream, there you are floating through space watching a landscape fly by, and going from one picture to the next. Maybe drive to the woods, see how that looks, see how the picture is always changing. The sounds are always changing, all the songs that have ever been played are it. If they are playing they want to be heard so maybe just listen, just really listen

134 and know that you and the song are the same thing. That it is all you. The bird is you. The tree is you. The elephant is you. The waterfall is you. Even the bloody roach is just you. Someone told you the cockroach is a nasty thing, yeah I don't like them, I don't have any here, but I've been places where I've seen them, I'm probably not going to get over not wanting to be near roaches, you know I don't think my conditioning re- garding roaches is going to change in this lifetime but who knows? It's not up to me. In the end, what more do you want? Maybe, you think you want to be special but who is there to be special? Even the guru's aren't special, no they are just laughing because they know that you think they are but what they really know is that they are not. There's isn't anybody there. No one and no thing is any more special than the to- tality of what there is which is just this which is all pretty damn special if you ask me. No one thing is special, nothing is apart from anything to be separated out as special. So you know, you get over it. Everything is one, no difference at all between anything anywhere. All that is is awareness, what's it's aware of makes no damn difference, no up, no down, no here, no there, no good, no bad, no nothing, no thing. Well, the joke really was on you, if you wanted to be special, you should have stayed in the dream but it's a little late for that now. All you can do now is ask yourself this question, "With no one home, just who would you be special too anyway?' All you have is a bunch of imaginary dream characters who are only made up of and running off the random script that they got stuck with. To be special to them, is to just go along with, some how fit your own dream character in alignment with theirs, well why not, except one problem here, kind of a big one, you aren't the doer, whatever you think that you are doing isn't being done by anything called "you." So if it happens that you find yourself some nice company in the dream, it's all good, but it was never up to you. Whatever you think is happening is just some more dreaming.

135 Well, when it's all said and done, dream away, that's the only thing to do here any- way. Go ahead and dream big too, you might as well because there's nothing to lose and maybe now you know it. Listen, I know you don't get it. I didn't get it either, just couldn't really wrap my head around it all. I said I got it. I said you know I get it but then when I really did get it it was a completely different animal. You have to consider this, but not just say it but to take it all the way, to drop down to the very bottom and heart of the matter, what I'm about to say is a game changer. It's not about believing though, it's about a much bigger word and that word is "knowing" and here it is. In all your life, you have never done anything wrong. You are not to blame for a single thing, not even the slightest gesture, nothing, not a word of it. I know you think those are nice words, but really, how would you feel if you knew that they were true? That it was true? That there was never anything there to do or say anything. That it was never up to a "you" at all. What kind of emotion and freedom would come over you? It's easier to let all the other people off the hook, but to absolutely absolve yourself of all blame is really to know that "the truth really will set you free." And when you extend this one thing to yourself, it automatically like a nuclear bomb explodes and annihi- lates everything in its path, so to the history of blame, worry, and concern of all that's ever been or ever will be is gone. Gone, I say. To set yourself free is to free the world then finally, you can let it all be as it is and just enjoy the show from the only seat in the house worth viewing it from, your own open heart. Chapter 18 You’ll Never Walk Alone “When you walk through a storm, hold your head up high and don't be afraid of the dark, at the end of the storm there's a golden sky and the sweet silver song of the lark.” By IL Divo

136 So I'm having surgery in a few days, maybe as you are reading this or it's done al- ready depending on when this is posted. I'm not looking forward to the actual "going under the knife" thing but I've had a bodily issue that has been more than a little an- noying and caused days of what seem like endless bodily discomfort for more than a couple years now so I welcome an end to it. It seems I was trying to avoid going the whole "doctor" route thinking there must be a "natural way" to resolve it all and maybe there was but if so, I never found it and now I am all out of patience with this thing and just want it gone and statistics claim this surgery is 95% effective in eliminat- ing the problem once and for all. The post recovery pain is reported to be off the charts and for that reason alone, I'd by lying if I said I wasn't just a little nervous. Even so everything just aligned with taking this course. I'd gone to see a doctor about it not long ago, I think I mentioned it in previous writings, and still nothing improved. Then I was lying in bed, and for some reason I picked up my phone and called to make an- other doctor's appointment. I was going to call another doctor for you know a "sec- ond opinion" but “for some reason” I called the same clinic and my doctor had an opening in an hour and "for some reason" I said ok and zipped on down there. At the appointment, it was determined that things had changed now and surgery was in or- der and probably the only solution at hand. Recovery time is a recommended two weeks off work, how could I pull that off when I was already behind in the money de- partment, well I just let that thought pass on through and scheduled the surgery. Next came the time off work, that was approved same day, and my mother came across and said she'd make my house payment since I'd be losing another entire pay-check. The only thing left at this point is to have my son get his official driver's license so he can do the driving as I will probably be drugged up and bedridden for at least a week and I'd like for him to be able to drive himself to go play his basketball and go out and get things as needed. His testing is in a couple days, I've no doubt he will pass. Now

137 this is something that I could have taken care of a long while ago but it didn't happen that way and now it is. Once again, you can easily see that once you uncover the pres- ence that you are, things tend to go in a better direction completely in line with your total well being for experiencing life in a body. God only knows what my level of en- joyment in this thing I call "my life" will be like with this out of the way. Yeah, well I can't wait and I will be sure to let you know. Suffering on the level of mind is really gone for me now. I don't say this is my fault or if only I had lived better or any of that nonsense. It is what it is and it's all just fine. Nobody consciously creates the obstacles they have to face and only letting go lets things appear in a most harmonious way. Nothing is up you, I can't say this enough so here it is again, 'there isn't one." The whole idea that you were the creator of whatever character you got stuck playing was always just a fantasy. No one is responsible for a god damn thing down here but waking up from all the lies will definitely free you up from creating suffering and pain to yourself and others. My daughter face-timed me from California late last night. It seems her sister has been drinking a lot and last night she got really drunk and they got in a fight where the sister was saying some rather mean things from her fog. Now my daughter doesn't drink, has never even had a taste of it in all her sixteen years but she was reacting to the hurtful words and said she wanted to fly home in the morning. I said that's fine and texted the following to her. "Listen to me, right away, right now. I want you to come home but if your sister is that drunk you can not take even one word she says at face value. All you can really do with a severely drunk person is consider why they can't stand to be in their natural state, why they need to escape who they think they are in the first place, what terrible thoughts are telling them they aren't okay just as they are.

138 In a drunk state a person actually treats others and talks to others what they really say to themselves at themselves so you need to understand she isn’t really talking to you but to herself. It's a terrible place to be so all you can really do is try to get her to calm down and go to sleep." (So you know it's been quite a few years back now but I realize that when I was living at my mom's and she was drunk and screaming at me to "get the fuck out of her house, to leave and never come back, and I don't want you here", maybe she was really talking to those airplanes that were dropping bombs near her during World War Two, well you really get a glimpse of how nothing is personal at all, just how dreams are made) Well, what happened then is I actually got to talk to her sister and the first thing I said was "I know it feels bad right now, but I promise you it's going to be okay. I'm not mad at you in the least and I don't want you to be mad at you either. Listen, darling, I love you and I know you can't see it right now, but I can see it and I'm here to tell you that you are the most beautiful thing I've laid eyes on all day." Then I let her talk about how hard it's all been and I said I knew it had been. Well, don't I know, it's hard as hell to be something you're not and not to be valued for what you are. Children grow up being told that they need to "be" something other than what they are, that they need to "do" the right things in order to be valuable and it's a huge hurt that follows when no one sees that you already are what you are and that is enough, it's more than plen- ty. Long story short, my daughter ended up coming up behind her and wrapping her up in a big hug of love, thus ending the conflict. I said I thought it would be a good idea if she came up here to stay with us for a while, for as long as she wanted to stay. I said she could come here and just rest, that she wouldn't have to work or do anything if she didn't want to just stay and let us love her. Then they got her some food and wa- ter and my daughter said she would tuck her into bed when she was tired enough to sleep. It ended with the two of them planning to drive across country to get here in-

139 stead of any airplanes because she said she wanted to come, that she wished she had had a mother like me to which I said, "I am your mother. I have always been your mother, you just didn't know it but now you do." Then I joked, "once you get in this family, you never get out though, no one ever wants to leave it." Will they actually drive up here together? No idea, I don't need or even want to know these things, and it doesn't even matter, whatever will be will be. It was never anything to do with "me" anyway and now I know it. I am not even the one who spoke those words. Love really is all there is and it's never late, it's never not there, it finds you wherever you are. It is there right now but there's no "you' in it. "You" is actually standing in front of it. This very idea of a "you" is like something that blocks the rays of love from you seeing that you are love. It blocks you from realizing that you are not separate from it, that it's not something that you need to seek out, or get from some- where, how can you find what you already are? Where would you look? It is not "out there", it is all that is. It is perfect compassion, total forgiveness, and complete accep- tance of anything you think you are seeing or feel you are experiencing. When you know this it flows out of you (not really "you" but itself, what you really are) like it was always meant to do. It is just its natural functioning. Life is really just an outpouring of love and nothing else. Without a "you" in the picture to resist what is, the picture be- comes a thing of beauty all by itself. What does that look like? It looks like whatever you are seeing right now. So this morning, I call my mother to let her know that everything is set for Monday and to give her my mortgage link so she can pay that and she says she's just going to send a check for three times that amount and I'm like "wow, that's a lot of money, oh my God, thank you." I was going to try to go back to work after a week if I was feeling well enough because of the money thing and I might still do that but now I have like no worries at all. Well about a year ago, my mother slipped in the bathroom and broke

140 her wrist so badly that she had to have surgery. The bill was a lot and for some reason not covered under Medicare or whatever system she has, yeah her part of the bill was like ten times what my out of pocket for mine will be, anyway, as it turns out yesterday out of the blue, her sister, my aunt who really is super wealthy called her and told her to send her my mother's hospital bill because she just wanted to take care of the whole thing for her. And so my mother paid it forward by giving me enough money to not have to worry about a thing. And this how things are appearing. Total synchronici- ty. So what do I have to let go of now? I've heard myself talking a lot about this issue of pain. I've said things like “Fuck, I hope they don't try to give me something stupid like oxytocin, that stuff doesn't even work", or "I hope they give me morphine, it comes in pill form, Fuck, they better not let me suffer", or "I'm terrified of the pain and they better give me something that works, it's not like I'm a candidate for drug abuse." So I sit here, and I remember the last time I had surgery which was about four years ago, I had a ping pong sized benign lump under my arm and they put me under, cut me open, and cut it right out. They gave me some pain meds (I think it was oxytocin lol) but I left the hospital and I literally had no pain. I remember now how odd it was that I couldn't even feel the place where the cut was. I never even had to take a Tylenol much less a pain killer. I think what I thought at the time was "damn, I guess they did a good job" but I remember thinking it was odd, like how could you even get cut open, have something cut out of you and sewn back up and not even feel it, not have any pain at all? It really didn't make sense. My doctor told me that after this surgery "we are not going to be friends." He said he would be my friend but I would probably hate him. Yeah, well, we'll see, hate isn't something I do anymore so even if I am in pain, I doubt that will arise. Either way, I have to let go. I know it will be taken care of, the thing about pain is...it does not last.

141 All pain is coming and going just like everything else. All feelings are coming and go- ing. All thoughts are coming and going. Only what is real remains. I will stay there then. Now I'm back at work. I don't feel great and I don't want to be here. The whole casino thing feels like a real downer and I'm just kicking everyone's ass and barely made any tips all night. So there I am, I've been super quiet, I just don't feel like talk- ing to these people right now. I just want to get through these next few days and get the surgery over with. I let it all be like it is. I know I'm being taken care of because I know nothing means anything and nothing is happening even if it feels like it, just whatever it feels like is how it feels like but the "me" that used to take it personally is not there. So that's some dreaming. Then my daughter calls me, it turns out her and her sister still aren't getting along and she wants to come home right now. So I say okay and I get on my phone on my break and find a ticket that's not crazy expensive but leaves in a couple days, the flight times are right because I still have to work so she has to arrive during the day which narrows it down immensely, in fact this is the only flight that will work. So I call her and I ask her if she is truly sure that she really does want to come home because she was hoping to spend her birthday there and she says yes. It's a non-refundable ticket so once I buy it it's either use it or lose it. She assures me that's what she wants so I buy it. A day passes and she's having second thoughts, she doesn't want to leave her sis- ter in this bad way and really does wish they could both drive here. I say okay, whatev- er you feel is best, follow your heart, that's the only thing that really knows anything. At first I think there goes four hundred dollars down the drain but I don't freak out and get mad or say it's wrong because I know that I just don't know, and however it is is how it is, that includes everything of all this stuff that isn't even really happening. Sure there are still thoughts that play, old conditioning still creating thoughts like "Damn, I

142 could have used that money to stock up on food or given it to her brother to buy some new basketball socks (there are special basketball socks and they aren't cheap) and Nike leggings" or whatever I could have spent it on had I known I was going to throw it out the window. And those thoughts create a sense of unease in the body, (you know that sense that there's never enough) but I don't take them seriously, for real I don't take anything seriously. I'm not mad about it, I'm not mad at my daughter for changing her mind, I know she's not doing anything, that in fact there is no "she" to do it, just the play of Presence streaming in endless ways of which ever way it goes. I know there's no "I" to know anything about it, the play of life writes itself, well you don't get out of your seat at the movie theatre and start screaming at the screen when your favorite character gets screwed over, no you are just watching and maybe think- ing "wow, I didn't see that coming" and you keep watching. The next day, my son takes his driving test and he fails it. There are six stops signs in the test and each time he stops he does it the same way but two of them just aren't "long" enough "stops" as perceived by the ignorant character who's being paid to perceive them so that's an automatic fail. My son is pissed and he's like “Fuck that id- iot", and I'm like welcome to the world of idiots. We don't test at the DMV but at this school because the appointments are easier and there's no waiting but the tester on this day is the owner of the school and he tries to sell me a $90 driving lesson after he fails him but I"m like nah we're good. I'll have to pay again for another test, well for this guy the more kids you can fail the more money you make. "We have to make sure these new driver's are safe", he says to me but I just laugh to myself and think the idea that anything is unsafe or that anyone is "making" anything is just another joke and the day I count to three at every stop sign I come to is the day I'll never get anywhere on time. So my son drives us home and I tell him, "the only reason to count to three at each and every stop sign is if you are in the middle of a driving test with a complete

143 moron or there's a cop behind you." And it is the way it is. We go back and get a dif- ferent tester the next morning and he gets his license, passes with flying colors and all that. The dream is only annoying to people who think it is real, once you don't it's quite a different experience. As it turns out, the next day my daughter decides she really does want to come home and uses the ticket after all and now she's back asleep in her bed as I write this last part. I'm done with work for the next couple of weeks and the surgery is tomorrow. I'm going to spend the day cleaning up the house and my room which is a mess, and get easy food for the kids to make while I'm under the weather. I already bought pa- per plates, bowls, and cups so the kids still won't have to do any dishes, I know that goes against what anyone else down here considers "normal behavior" and for that reason alone, I can just laugh my ass off about it. Normal was never my thing. The "idea" that life is going to be smooth sailing from now on is really just an idea and it's actually one that throws a lot of people under the bus so to speak because while it's true that one's life becomes drama free, life has it's own ideas about how it's going to appear for you from now on and those don't necessarily coincide at all with anything you might have imagined. More often than not, some hard things might come up that actually confuse the so called "seeker" to the degree that he becomes convinced that he's actually headed in the wrong direction and maybe even calls off the search in favor of some much needed comfort. (Like going out for beers with his buddies). The biggest difference is really that awareness is aware without the concept of awareness. So anything a "you" can think "it" knows is gone. Now there's no you to know anything. Life still happens, your mouth opens to speak, ideas come and go, ac- tions happen or don't but they happen on their own without "your" doing. So you know it's easy because it's not up to you. (There isn't one, again).

144 So it's the night before my surgery now, probably when you are reading this the hard parts are already over. My dream appears in the only way it's capable of appear- ing at this time. I accept that completely. I'm cleaning the house, clean sheets on my bed, dishes washed, laundry done as much as possible, and doing this writing. My en- ergy is low, been on clear liquids all day which actually includes coffee (well, that was a nice surprise) even if it has to be black (tomorrow I'll have it with cream again) and nothing after midnight. My surgery is at seven am and I have to be there before then so not going to be much time for sleeping which works because I don't feel like I could get much more than a nap in anyway. It's a day thing so I'll be home shortly after that. The kids are driving me and well, I guess we'll just have to see how it goes from there, see how I'm doing, how I"m feeling, how the pain is and all that. Not much point worrying or even thinking about something that we know nothing about now is there? This is actually good coffee. The taste is pretty good even without creamer. Now I have to drink some medicine again that tastes like shit, I'm trying not to gag, deep breathes, and then a bunch of water. Maybe the coffee wasn't such a good idea, too late now, feels like I could throw up but can't do that just lay here, let it pass. "It might be awhile before I like water again" is a thought that comes from somewhere. Okay, that's over. Feeling super tired all of a sudden, I close my eyes, you know just breath- ing, just a passing show, no fear, no concern, it's quiet, very quiet. Two of my kids are at the movies, and the other in his room and me in mine. Life feels very very good however it goes and appears. This body/mind wants to make the bed now with the clean sheets and blankets and then take a hot bath, wash my hair and who knows maybe even shave my legs, there's a bit a vanity creeping in, don't want to be unconscious with dirty hair and hairy legs, that's seems so fucking funny to me.

145 After that, I'll just do some reading, I got two books going at the moment, one is "Be As You Are: The Teachings of Sri Ramana Maharshi" and the other is "The Tenth Man: The Great Joke" by Wei Wu Wei. The words are somehow comforting to me now that I seem to know what they mean so I like reading them. Just a quiet calm seems to come over me whenever I do. So then I'll probably read a bit, lay in bed doing some of "Jed's breathing" (for those of you who don't know Jed's breathing, I highly recom- mend it, for some reason when I first learned of it, I didn't take to it right away you know I had thoughts like "well, that sounds nice, the whole breathing thing is well and good but what's the big deal, I've already done some breathing", but when it was time, it took to me and now I really can't get enough of it) and take a couple hours rest. Well, it's not up to me. Someone asked me to talk about flow or being in the flow. There is a huge mis- conception here that "being in the flow" means that only pleasant things are going to be appearing and not what is actually appearing which might not be pleasant at all and that there is something that "you" can do about it. Listen, whatever does appear is what should be appearing because if it is appearing it is the only thing that actually can appear at that this particular time. So 'being in the flow" just means that you allow whatever is to be as it is. Nothing is really happening anyway to a "you" because there isn't one. In a few hours, my dream might not be so pleasant but it doesn't mean anything is wrong, I'm not worried about what will happen to "me" because there isn't one. Not even my body belongs to this "me" I thought I was. So you know, I just say, do with me what you want, I am all yours, in whatever pleasant or unpleasant form that appears to take when and wherever, how and however it takes. I let go of my life because I realize now that I never had a life, I am life and life does what life does so I'm in good hands. The "thinking mind" does not have access to the complete intelligence of conscious-

146 ness but I trust it knows exactly what to do with this body/mind better than anything "my mind" can conceive of. Nothing can happen because nothing is happening any- way and I have complete trust that "All is well." Chances are very, very good that the next time you hear from me, I will be feeling better and ready to go to parts unknown even to me. Now it's just time to breathe, that's all I need to know because it's all I do know. Chapter 19 The thing about everything is that there is always more to see. It's not like you can get to any place and just stay there. That's not how anything is working. Really, when's the last time you stayed anywhere? Put some thought into this question, like really try to remember the last time you were completely and utterly static? Hmm, how about never. Honestly, it seems astonishing to me now that this seemingly trivial yet tremen- dous fact just gets completely and utterly overlooked so fucking easily. How many times have you heard yourself or someone else talk about being stuck? As if this was an actual condition. I'm not talking about your physical location, sure you could have lived at blah blah lane for thirty years now but even so blah blah lane itself hasn't been static either. I've been living in this same house for over two years now, when I moved in it was brand new and now already, the moulding in the kitchen needs painting, there are small dents in the walls, and the window sills are chipped and worn out from the dog jumping up on them and that's just for starters. What I'm talking about is how you think you are going from here to there and you wind up somewhere completely opposite of where you thought you were going and it never occurs to you that you have no idea where you are going because there's no there to get to. Like there I am thinking ok, here's a piece of the puzzle and I'll go ahead and solve that and then I find out that, that piece of the puzzle fits into a much bigger puzzle and so more puzzling work to do which is just "what other lies do I be-

147 lieve that aren't true?" Well, I guess it has to be that way, once the unraveling has be- gun it can't be stopped, can't just settle down I guess, discomfort has a cunning way of propelling you in the only direction worth going in, toward complete and utter well being. So it is for me, it seems, it just doesn't let up, and it's becoming increasingly clear to me that my physical condition is what is going through major upheaval at the moment. Well, the surgery went well apparently and honestly the pain was not that bad. Not anything like I imagined and I don't hate anyone except maybe I do hate my doctor for telling me that it was going to be so awful that I would hate him (except no, I take responsibility for my own dreaming now however it goes). Unbearable, horrific, terrible pain however, never fucking happened, Advil would have done it but you know I did get these pain meds and I thought well, let's pop a few just in case, might as well be as comfortable as possible until I found out that a ter- rible side effect of those pills was going to be a nasty upset stomach that took my at- tention off any other pain I might have felt and focused all my attention on the fact that my stomach was in knots, or mangled or whatever it was and so that just sucked. So I took like four pain pills all together and that was enough to screw my stomach up for, well I don't know yet because it's still fucked, unless it was these other pills, antibi- otic (I took three of those, not in one day as prescribed but one a day for three days, well that was as good an effort as you are likely to get out of me) that you are sup- posed to take after surgery so I got the double fucked. And of course, that was exactly what was supposed to happen because it did. And then it dawned on me, who knows your own body better than anyone I asked myself and I finally stood up and said I do and then I knew what to do. Consciousness knows what you need so if it doesn't feel right to you to go along with "medical" advice just because it seems to be recommended for the general pop-

148 ulation, then I'd say scrap it. (Disclaimer: nothing I say is true.) I'm not saying I didn't want or need the surgery, that was supposed to happen because it already did and I know I'm better off for it but this after care and going into a state of total health where nothing more will be needed, is it's own animal that's apparently on the verge of star- vation because it says feed me, and do it now. I'm not leaving until you do, so I got that message loud and clear. "It's a long, healthy life for me apparently whether I like it or not", is a thought that appears. Is it true? Nobody knows, all I'm really doing here is telling you the thoughts that arise within this dream character. Well, it makes sense, (not really, but you never know) whatever is in there that pre- vents me from treating my body like the temple of God that it is, that needs to go, and the only way to get it out is to go in and get it. I'm talking about deep, deep, beliefs here about what it is that I think I am walking around in, letting it function the way it obviously wants to function, and going along with it. There is fear in the body, there is unresolved pain in the body, there are old patterns that still need to be released, this I know. And so while I have this time off, (I'm taking my full two weeks) I will be explor- ing and making some rather big changes to the way I care for this vehicle I seem to walk around in. How do I do that? I watch where my attention goes when it comes to the issue of this body. I have to pay attention to what it tells me. I have to learn to pay attention to that because that's not something I'm used to paying attention to. To be honest, I'm not sure anything I know about what kinds of foods are right for me are ac- tually what's right for me or if I just took it on faith that so called "healthy" foods or ways to eat were good and others were bad but could it all just be more bullshit? I mean on what authority do we really even know that eating salad is ideal? Hmmm. Maybe, we don't even really need to eat at all, how do we know? How do we know what we think we know about anything is the real question.

149 Listen, I've never really taken very good care of this body, to be honest, my hatred of what I thought was "myself" was often directed at this physical form I thought I was. God only knows how many different diets I've been on in my lifetime, couldn't even tell you, but when it felt like I couldn't "fix" the inside, my attention went to work trying to "fix" the outside. Well, everyone is doing it these days, it's completely normal be- cause you perceive yourself to be as you perceive others are perceiving you (yeah, can you even believe it, I still to this day some roughly 35 years later remember my dad screaming at me on some random night, he said, "why don't you get off your fat fucking ass and do something?", I wasn't even fat, never have been (well, I made sure of that) but for some reason it made a lasting impression, he disapproved of me, that was the perception). so you know if you can mold your physical form into being thin or muscular ( the most sought after physical attributes in the dream world right now as far as physical forms go) or preferably both, you might get a lot of compliments or ad- miring glances or reinforcement that something about you is okay. And if that is work- ing, keep it up, you might actually get to "be someone" someday if you do. Well, it works the way it works, just look around at all the fancy clothes, and gyms, organic food, vitamin industry, movie stars, make-up, tanning salons, hair and nail products, I could go on ad nausium, the dream is just stupid anymore and we wonder why the fat kids always get the bullying. The people who are "in charge" of dictating whether or not something is acceptable (or ugly versus beautiful) in this consensual dream are lu- natics. Not their fault, of course, but lunatics just the same. Of course, you must strive to be better than someone else so you can feel good about yourself, and what's be- hind this madness, there is no you, you don't have a self, you are the self, and there's only one of those in all of creation, one living being breathing life into everything. Once again, the fear of "no self" is the driving force behind all this foolishness. And that's the way it is, it does seem a shame that so much suffering has to be created but

150 that does seem to be the way of the dream world, and to be honest, as long as there is mass misunderstanding, suffering will come in one form or another, always has and al- ways will. So I'm just laying in bed writing this, wondering what the day will hold. I'm in a bit of pain, took a couple of Advil (while half wondering what toxic concoction was in those things), I have nothing pressing to do but try to relax. I'm not going to eat today, just going to take some liquids, water and juice, and tea or whatever arises, give this poor stomach of mine a much needed break, poor thing probably confused as hell by now, never knowing from one day to the next what odd food combination was going to hit it next. I'm not trying to lose weight, I don't even have to try to do that anymore, I lost another ten pounds over the last six weeks without even thinking about it. I don't even need to lose weight, any more and I really will be a stick figure. I remember Jed saying once that fat people had a lot of memories, that that's what the appearance of fat actually is, so maybe my memories are going. Well, good riddance however that arises. The good news is the physical form is terribly resilient, actually we could learn a lot from it just by observing how easily it will bounce back from whatever torture or abuse we've heaped upon it and never holds a grudge, just continues to do the best it can with whatever gets thrown in it's direction. Sometimes I think it's a wonder that there are any bodies left after all the stupid shit we have done and continue to do to them, even the stress of jobs, all the endless activities we've been sucked into per- forming, all the drugs we've pumped into them, even the endless stream of emotions racing through them reacting to the endless stream of inner criticisms that almost everyone listens to hour upon hour, day upon day...(you should have done this, why'd you do that?, why'd you say that? Omg, what's wrong with me?, what should I do now?...Who do you know that doesn't have this?) , the lack of even ten minutes a day

151 of true relaxation, of complete stopping, well, now we know why it had to throw that sleep cycle in there, how else would it recuperate? The fear involved in just daily living now is at a record high. You know my mother, during the war (if you've read the previous stories) after they finally did get to Hamburg, to my grandmother's sister's home, the bombs still contin- ued to drop, there were siren's in the night, and the place of safety was the lighthouse that stood little more than a stone's throw from the small house (the servants quarters where they lived now) just through the patch of trees on the banks of the Elbe river because the logic was that the light from the lighthouse gave the aircraft their bear- ings as to where they were and so it was needed and wouldn't be bombed. On many a night therefore my mother as a young girl remembers running to the lighthouse for safety. Is it any wonder that our houses in America which were never under any threat were filled to the brim with every lighthouse trinket imaginable whether it was a salt shaker, a blanket, a needlepoint picture my mother made or a lamp or to this day, my mother's mailbox is a lighthouse? What we long for more than anything else is a re- lease from fear and a sense of safety. We actually long for a place to sit still, for still- ness, too at long last, "be still and know that I am God." We are searching for ourselves because that's the only place safety can be found. (And the phone rings, it's my moth- er calling to see how I'm doing, well of course it is and she asks, "What kind of pain killers did they give you?", so I tell her all about it and she says, "Well, don't throw them out, you can give them to me, I might need them", and I say, "no worries, I got you", and I get a mental picture of how I can drop them inside her lighthouse teapot in the top cupboard behind all the lighthouse coffee mugs for safekeeping, just in case, safety is needed. Well, I took a bath, that felt nice, and I'm dressed in shorts and a tank top. It feels good to be out of my nightgown. My daughter needs something from the store so I

152 go and while I'm there I see some ingredients that formulate my own original soup broth to aid in my plan to stay on just liquids today. The ingredients are just so utterly bizarre that when I get home I immediately make up a mug of it and well, what do you know, I like it, it's unlike anything I've ever read or heard about, my own magic potion, it feels warm and soothing going down, comfort in a cup. And that's a little nice dreaming there. Afterwards, I finally get out for a walk. No jogging for awhile, but I'm happy just to be moving. The sun is hot today, it's about ninety degrees. I take the dog with me and we do one of our shorter loops and I try to get her to go another round but she adamantly and stubbornly pulls me and the leash in the direction of the front door so I give in and put her inside and continue for three more loops by myself. I feel pretty good, I think, all things considered and then I think about this thing called time and how just a week ago today, I would have been getting ready for work, the future, the surgery and that whole mess, still a looming unknown, and now it's all past already, and what about another week from now, all past and out of sight, all actual physical pain just a memory, just like that. Then I think about how the whole life will be like that and I wonder, what is it really, that we need to fear? A hundred years from now, not a trace of anything left behind, not for anyone, we will all of us have evaporated by then. So then my daughter informs me her Apple AirPods case won't charge so we de- cide to go to the Apple Store so they can swap them out before our year warranty is up because we are not even sure exactly when that is. It's getting late, so we talk about putting it off until tomorrow which is what she wants to do but I have some tentative plans tomorrow with my bed and staying in it the whole day so we decide to go tonight. So we drive out there to the mall, where our only Apple Store is. It's about a 25 minute drive, thirty if you count the time it takes to park and walk through the mall even though we park at the closest entrance to it and so we get there and are told

153 there are no more walk-in apps for the night because all the technicians are taken up until the time they close which is about an hour from now. No problem and we take the next soonest appointment time which is tomorrow around six pm. Then we drive right back home, but she says she needs to get something from the hardware store so we go back out and do that which takes about an hour. Every six months or so, my daughter likes to rearrange her room which means moving shelves and pictures and well it's a whole ordeal because they all have to be put up somewhere else which means using special screws in the drywall and plugging up the old ones and painting over it. This is what she likes to do. Her birthday is coming up next week so she bought a new desk top and wants to hang some make-up lights on the wall behind it. I'll figure that out when I get to it. I'm not particularly good when it comes to carpentry but so far so good, each time somehow I'm able to get the job done. I don't know what was wrong with the old desk but you know, who cares? I can go along with any- thing these days, nothing is a big deal, this is just the way it goes. After the hardware store, as we are pulling out onto the road, my daughter says, 'wait a minute, I think I saw an animal, did you see something?" I did, I thought I saw a stray kitty so we drive on and then she decides that we should go back and look for it in case it needs help, so we drive around for fifteen minutes and she gets out and looks into the bushes I thought I saw it run into but we don't see it again and she feels sad for it but you know it goes the way it goes. "If you were meant to find it and help it then that would have happened," I say but "it was just not meant to be." And so she gets over it and we drive home listening to music and singing along and I'm glad I didn't have to deal with a stray cat tonight. When we get home she goes to work on her room and I come to mine to rest. I make myself another cup of my "magic potion" and write this. I'm tired now but I'm re- laxed. You may think "my life" as I live it is boring and probably it's not for you, well, of

154 course it isn't, otherwise this would be your life and not mine, but what does it really matter? This is how things are appearing for me right now, should I fight it? Should I say I want something else? Who would say that anyway? You know who would say that, someone who thought that their entire life would always be this way, someone who thought they were "stuck" in a life full of petty errands and whatnot that they didn't think was all that exciting but there's no one here to be stuck anymore, and what's more "stuck" just doesn't exist. There are quiet days and there are other things, nobody ever knows what's around the bend. Now is just a time for me to be quiet. It's a time for me to realize that this is really as safe as it gets. I lay on my bed, I feel it solid beneath me. I am that I am whatever that is right here right now and you can be whatever you are. It's all just fine, lovely re- ally. I let things take their own course. I take my hands off the wheel and leave the dri- ving up to the one who knows how to drive. I am safe now and I let this body be taken care of by the one who created it. All I have to do is pay attention. It will show me where I need to go. What more is there to do but breathe and not even that, just letting it all be what- ever it wants to be, breathing happening, shopping happening, writing happening, what ever the is happening. (Which of course is just nothing but a dream) The next morning my daughter wakes me up at ten in the morning. She wants me to go back to the mall with her to buy a shirt because her and another friend are go- ing to meet a boy she likes later on in the day and you know none of her other clothes will do. I can get the AirPod thing taken care instead of going to the appointment while we are down there. So we go to the mall, and I put my name in and wait for the Apple people to call me while she goes to find what she thinks she needs. Long story short, she gets back just as my appointment is starting and she says we have to go.

155 She needs to get home to get ready, so what do I do? I say no. I'm going to finish this now, whoever you are meeting can wait so she gets a bit annoyed with me but not too much and we find out that the warranty is already past so all we can do is buy a new pair. Well, now we know. On the way home we find out the boy can't come after all, hmmm well that feels about right? "Well", I say, "if it's meant to be it will be, mean- while, if I were you, I wouldn't bend over backwards over anyone." She spends the day with her friend and I spend the day at home but not in bed. No, the universe has other plans for me. I go for another walk but instead of just walk- ing, I get the idea that I want to see what jogging feels like so I do and it feels fine so I alternate walking and jogging and get a good workout in. My daughter has the car and has been gone all day with it, then she asks if she can just stay the night at her friends instead of coming home. Well, I don't need to go anywhere, I'm already in bed so I write back, "As long as you are having a nice time, I'm fine with it. I trust you know what's best for you anyway. This life is meant to be lived , not stuck at home in your bedroom (well sometimes you want that) so happy times and I love you!" Then I decide to cook up a couple of vegetables and I finally eat something solid while watching a documentary on what it's like to hike the entire Pacific Crest Trail be- cause you know I had the idea that I might want to do that one day but now I'm not so sure because after I watched that I looked up "movies about the Pacific Crest Trail" and I got a link to a page of 25 movies I should watch and I was scrolling down that when I came to a movie called "The Way", ( yeah, well out of all the movies this is the one that grabbed my attention) which is about hiking the Camino de Santiago in Eu- rope and then I started researching that because in all actuality as much as I like na- ture and a challenge, this little hike looks like a lot more fun to me ( something of a spiritual twist to it I see well that's fitting now isn't it) then coming face to face with a rattlesnake or a bear or even a swarm of mosquitoes just not so sure I want to dream

156 that up anymore. Probably someone needs to remind me I'm not twenty five anymore lol. So my oldest son comes to my room to see me and while he's in here, I decide that I'm going to watch this movie but all of a sudden I get the idea that instead of watching it on the laptop, since my daughters away, I can grab the big screen TV that she has taken to her room and throw it up on my desk which is right in front of my bed and watch it on there. My son is happy to help and brings it in here and rents the movie for me even so here I am about to watch a movie in my own little movie theatre. After that we go to the kitchen and I make the boys some food and my son says "look at you, just five days later and there you are walking around good as new and we thought you'd be down for a lot longer than this" And I'm just laughing and say, "Right? That's because I'm a badass. We forgot to factor in the "badass" part. I'm a crazy badass but once a badass always a badass." And he gives me his mock serious look and says "Stop, just stop" and is shaking his head but I can see him smiling and I'm smiling and it's good times for sure. The point is this life is safe. There's nothing that can hurt you. Any fear you may have is based on an assumption. What is an assumption? A thing that is accepted as true or as certain to happen, without proof. So you know, if you can't prove it, then maybe just forget it because in the end, what can you prove? Answer that and you will find the one thing that you are looking for. I don't know where I'm going or what I will do, but one things for sure, whatever it is, I will make the best of it. I suggest you do the same. And now it's movie time. Chapter 20 So things "seem" to be going along like that and it "seems" that I went to bed last night but when I open my eyes, time and the whole the idea of needing to do this or

157 that before then and now is gone. It feels like a another wall of resistance to what is has fallen down and even though it appears I'm doing something, I'm having some coffee, I'm still laying in bed, I've slept way past noon, there's nothing to do, every- thing is just the way it is. I hear the dog bark and I intuitively know from this particular bark that she needs to go outside so I get up and let her out. Then I think about how the car needs an oil change and it's way over due, 2500 miles overdue, I've thought about this before obviously but for some reason now is the time to get that done, so when I go to the kitchen to let the dog out, my daughter comes out of her room and joins me and asks me if I want to finish her room now and I tell her about the car and she asks if I want her to go with me. So I say, 'if you want to but there's nothing to do there but sit and wait in the waiting room for like an hour or so' so she says she will let me know. She needs to take a shower and she goes to do that and I come back to my room to finish my coffee while I'm writing this. Nothing needs to be done, whatever appears to be happening does so by it's own volition without any effort on my part, in fact "I" don't seem to be in "it" at all, like there's the appearance of happenings and doings without an "I' connected to it. The feeling is just total relaxation, complete utter letting go, overwhelming relief, and trust beyond any artificial trust I might have imagined before, just being with nothing to be. There's almost an imaginary visual sense to it, as if the body itself is sloughing off some type of casing that surrounded it, like an energy field that's cracking up and fall- ing away. As it does so, each piece that falls releases a sense of freedom and a differ- ent quality of energy, bliss even or maybe it's more accurately just calm, the sense that there's nothing to hold onto, like a merging into what is, complete non resistance to whatever might arise. I get up and get dressed to take the car in. Whatever is appear- ing to happen is really nothing at all, just part of the dream.

158 My daughter decided to go with me, we pick up a slushie for her along the way and we take the car in and wait for an hour and a half in a quiet waiting room. I'm reading a book on my phone and my daughter is across a small table in another chair reading whatever it is she reads on her phone and quietly laughing for most of the time. Toward the end I look out and I see a car that looks like mine in the garage with no one near and I say jokingly, "I don't think they've even started yet." So my daughter says, "Go ask how much longer", so I do and the car is done. I walk back in the door and my daughter looks up at me and I say, "It's going to be another hour" and she says "Omg, you're kidding" and I say, "Yeah, just kidding, the car's done, they are com- ing to give us the keys" and she laughs and everyone else in the waiting room laughs along with us. When we get home I try to go for one of my walk/jogs but the pain is back and I can't do it. Apparently, it's not all down hill like I thought, sometimes it's back up and then maybe back down again later on. One thing is certain, I doubt I will ever again, take feeling no pain for granted, like how many days have gone by in my life so far that have been completely physically pain free and I simply didn't even notice, never appreciated those days at all? Well, I was lost in my head then, lost in a dream full of useless worries, focused always on what lay ahead and never what was actually here and now I'm not. So I laid in my bed and waited for the Advil to kick in (who cares what's in there, if it works it works) and everything to settle back down. The next day finds me well and I get in the longest jog/walk so far this summer, this time really appreciating the fact that I have no pain anywhere whatsoever. It's no achievement or anything. This particular body/mind happens to enjoy this type of dreaming so you know it was a good time. There are billions of body/minds with bil- lions of conditioned combinations and none is better or worse than any other. The conditioned "picture" of the dream isn't separate from what the dream is occurring in,

159 really there's no "in" because if there was an "in" there would have to be an "out." But nothing is "outside" of anything, there is just all of it. There is no one viewing or living any of "it", the "it" is gone because the idea of "it" was an imagined concept, Maya, the illusion of a separate entity responsible for and living its "own" life. So "you" or "I" isn't even there, never was, and the idea that there was an "I" was just the dreaming. In order to even have an "I" you have to have words and then out of the words thoughts arise, all just more dreaming. The words and the thoughts that arise from the concept that there are even words are just illusion. Words create concepts which in turn create emotions in the dream character which in turn create the dream but as much as we talk about "the dream", there is no dream. The dream is only real to the dream character who is dreaming it so if you drop the dream and all the words that started it to begin with then the dream character just melts down into a big blob of nothing but dream stuff and not even that, it's like the rain that falls hard from a big thundercloud, you can hear the drops hit the pavement, that's how big they are some- times and then the sun comes out and just like that everything is dried up, well, it might take some time, there might be puddles on the road, but just wait, and it all evaporates and it was like it never was because it really wasn't. This is why you hear so much about "silence" and how Ramana Maharshi said something to the effect that silence was the most powerful practice for awakening. When I went to that silent meditation, so many years ago, I mistakenly thought it was the power of the group, the combined energy of all the people, and I used to try other groups to see if I could recreate the conditions that made "me" disappear and pro- duced such a total lack of concern for what was appearing (even what we call "terrible shi”t even my mother screaming at the top of her lungs at me right in my face, just a foot or two away, telling me what a piece of shit I was, that I was a complete failure and utter disappointment, non stop, just one raging angry insult after another for like

160 twenty minutes) and a total disconnect from the appearance of the dream into being just what I was, the bliss of no thing. The complete lack of judgement, how? It was the silence in that meeting. It was the first time I had ever even sat in silence, the instruc- tions were "just be here with what is here" and the only thing that was there was si- lence, about two hours of that and apparently it's possible that the dream character just disintegrates. Silence is the enemy of the dream character because it needs words to judge and to make concepts with. Without words how can you judge anything? The good news is that without a judgement, not much emotion arises either, emotions need judgements to even arise and then they feed on them. Well, feelings still seem to arise, sensations really, but you know even though I may recognize them as being in former categories like pleasurable and unpleasant now there's no reaction to them. They come for a little while and then they go so there's no strength in them. Reaction to anything needs words and an inner dialog. So thinking or thought formations seem to be slowing down. Well, this will hap- pen when there's no longer anybody there to listen to them. This whole drama of word created thoughts needs a listener to keep going, it literally needs some type of interest. That's how the mind works, no reaction, no judgement just shuts it right up. It's nice like this. The thing is the mind needs something to figure out, some plan to come up with, it needs the future, or the past, and what it needs more than anything is a doer. It needs to think there is something that it can do, that it is responsible for something. Once you give up the notion that there is a you that can do something about your life and your situation in it, the mind starts to shut down and something else comes in and quietly takes over. As long as you think there's a you that can do anything about anything you will remain frustrated, because nothing is up to you at all, up to who? There isn't one.

161 Well, what happens when you give up this non-existent you, which is just the dreamed character, it becomes threatened and brings out all the fear tactics in it's ar- senal, to make you think that you are doing something wrong. Not because it wants you to think you are doing something wrong, it's really just all about the thinking that you are doing something. It could be anything but bad dreaming is more emotionally captivating than the other kind. Nothing gets the thoughts regularly flowing more than worry. Once you know it's a dream and that everything that is being seen is really just being imagined from the perspective of the conditioned dream character includ- ing what your particular dream character says and does, that whatever appears to be happening is not only completely unreal, you see that it is actually just not up to you. How can anything be up to you if there isn't one? Here's one that tries to get me every time, there's the appearance of a limited amount of money and my dream character goes out and spends money or says yes to all the things the kids want to spend money on and then comes back and tries to wor- ry about it. It took me awhile to see this one but when I saw it, instead of trying to curb my money spending, I just stopped thinking about it. The money coming in and going out isn't up me anyway. I have no more control over what I do with money than a leaf blowing across the road on a gust of wind does. What's more, just like the leaf I will blow on down the road at whatever speed I'm meant to blow down it and one thing is certain, I can not do anything I'm not meant to do or be where I'm not meant to be. So you know, you just let go. It's not life or death, it's just a dream, you didn't choose the dream and you aren't directing it. All the thoughts you have about anything now be- long to this dream character that you no longer think you are so who cares what hap- pens to it. It's a fiction anyway. The twist is that the conditioning of the dream character you've been stuck play- ing all this time starts to dissolve. Blocks like lack of money, and even health condi-

162 tions resolve themselves over time. I use the word "time" here even though I don't re- ally want to. I should say that the "time" it takes is really in direct proportions to the rate of dissolution. There's a magically quality that arises now that the lenses of the dream character you were looking through has holes in them, or seems to be wearing thinner and thinner. What you thought of as yourself, this smallish, powerless, pathetic shell of memories opens up into something completely different and possibilities for living a different kind of life than the one you thought you were stuck in, start to ap- pear. It may seem like little bits of ideas, places you'd like to go, things you would like to do are suddenly real possibilities and not just hopeful thinking anymore. There's no stress in them, you aren't there to make them happen, you aren't there at all, but something is here, and you like what that is. You like the feel of it and you start to no- tice subtle differences and changes like there doesn't seem to be as many dishes to do or the laundry doesn't pile up, well they may be little things until they are bigger things. It's like if you have been following this thread from the beginning, you might no- tice that my job was mentioned a lot, it was a source of discomfort even, and in the last two months despite the circumstances of how it appeared to happen, out of two months, I've only worked two weeks and yet here I sit writing this, I have food to eat, the bills are paid, and I'm in perfect comfort. Never in a million years, could I have even imagined how this all would have transpired the way it did. What sort of dreaming will happen next? God only knows. If you can imagine it, then you can dream it. Just don't ever mistake what you are with the imagined. In a way, you are the imaginer but you can't know yourself as the imaginer because in or- der to be an imaginer there has to be the imagined and neither of those exist. Well, it's weird. I guess there's no way to say it, except to just dream on and pretend you can.

163 Chapter 21 Well, life seems to go on, it sure does but you know it just isn't so serious any- more. I don't really know how to explain it but there's a lightness to it because little by little the seriousness of it starts unraveling and evaporating. This can take some time because the "idea" that this whole game we were playing was like "life or death" has been hammered into just about every dream character you can come across including yours. I don't know about other countries so much but the culture of the West seems to have it the worst. Here you are either winning or losing and there's nothing in be- tween. You are either a success or a failure in the eyes of the world and if you aren't a success then your whole life is geared to becoming one. If you are a success then your whole life is geared toward maintaining that illusion and it's all so very important don't you know. What you do with your life is like the judgement to end all judgements. There are right ways to live and wrong ways to live and it's important that you adhere to the ideas of what your culture has defined those as. Just hanging out and letting life live through this form that you used to identify with is not going to be seen as worth- while in and of itself. Relaxing itself is only allowed after you have "achieved some big goal" and then its duration should be appropriate to what that was. Relaxation itself is not a virtuous activity in the dream unless you have earned it. So just know that if you are now wondering what will become of "you" now that you just seem to want to relax and to hell with the Jones it's just some left over conditioning creeping in. (you know like I haven't moved the backyard all summer, it's wildly overgrown, there are "weeds" that could pass for small trees and just so what? If it happens that one day I decide to hire someone to mow it because it's beyond the capabilities of my own mower then that will happen) Nothing will become of you because there isn't one. So just relax, it's all been taken care of and whatever arises just arises, even your getting the hang of easily going along with what arises, will arise.

164 Lately, I seem to have two favorite phrases that I say and think a lot and they are just "Oh", and "Oh, well", and I seem to apply these words to all situations and emo- tions that may arise. I'd be tempted to say that I just don't care but that's not it, it's more like an allowing of whatever is because truly it's not even a "what else can you do" or a "what else do you need to do" but a "who the hell would do it? " Life is living itself according to the script of the dreamed character and when the conditioning of the dreamed character wears completely off, then maybe there will be a new dream character, you know one that doesn't out of habit and a conditioned response hit the breaks when she sees a cop and is only going five miles over the speed limit. Maybe, she will hit the gas instead and think, "I dare you to catch me mother fucker”. So you still get up in the morning or the afternoon like I do, you do the dishes or the laundry, go to work, have whatever activities are still arising for you and at the same time nothing is happening but the most insignificant little dream. All of a sud- den when you weren't even noticing, it's like all these things you used to listen to in your head that you thought were "important" have turned to mush and gibberish. When did it happen? You don't even know but now suddenly, you can't believe even a word of what anyone else including sometimes even yourself is saying. It's like the whole thing is bullshit and you know it because whatever you can "think or say" about something isn't it. "All that is", is just all that is. Pretty fucking simple. It's like you are here, and who you thought you were all your life is somewhere else now. You may be around a group of people, bodies appear to be moving, lips actively speaking and to you it's just a great big show where nothing is actually happening. There's no one there, not even you. When you do listen to people talking, it's like the most ridiculous conversations and yes, it's weird because you're the only one who knows the whole thing is just unreal and sometimes it just seems so sad that there seems to be so little joy anymore. There is a definite sense of density that seems to radiate outwards in the

165 circumference of so many of these imaginary figures and if you are within close prox- imity you will actually feel it. In a way it's like they are trying to "hold it together", trying to hold together some sense of importance that they are real and actually doing something or going somewhere. Joy is reserved for special occasions, for hard won victories and holidays but not for the everyday, for the here and now no matter what is appearing. All activities are geared to getting to that place where joy might happen but when it comes if it does come, it never comes in the lasting way it was expected and so on to the next thing that might be required to produce it. When this isn't the activity, then there's the activi- ty of warding off things and situations that seem to produce or be responsible for the opposite of joy, sadness or misfortune. This seems to be the whole of the game being played at all times by everyone. There's a curious attribute of gamblers which as you probably know by now, I'm around a lot. When they win a big hand on blackjack for instance the tendency among most of them is to make the next bet smaller because they think the odds that they will win again have been diminished because they just won the last hand. Except for the exception, they just don't think they can go on winning like even two in a row is out of the question. I guess they think "winning" is a fluke, and not a constant so they brace themselves and "prepare" to lose the next hand. In a similar fashion when they have lost a lot of hands in a row, they tend to make bigger and bigger bets because they think that the odds are good that they will win because of all the ones they lost. This is a good way to lose a lot of money in a hurry. The thinking here is reactionary, and it's actually a "fighting against the situation" of the losing (what's appearing) and it says "eventually I have to win a hand or it's not fair, this shouldn't be happening." Sadly, time and time, they keep on losing and start blaming the dealer or the casino. I can't even tell you how often I see it and it's almost uncanny because they all cry out

166 the same three words in frustration, "This is unreal!" You have no idea how much I just want to say to them then, "Yes, it is. It's unreal. Hurray, this is your wake up call. It really is unreal. Now come on, let's have a good laugh about it" but that would be the last thing they'd want to hear. People who are really good at gambling however continue to bet bigger and big- ger when they are winning and go small when they are losing until they start winning again. When they see a trend or a pattern of winning they ride the wave so to speak and when it's going against them they lay low. One thing seems to hold that the more one is actually opposed to the experience of losing, the more it occurs and those that aren't are likely to find that winning streak they are looking for. What you resist really does persist. For that reason, I've stopped looking and hoping that my life might change. I've accepted that it's possible that I will continue to work at the casino for the next eleven years, five days a week, eight hours a day until the day comes when my retirement commences. And if so, you know so what? There are worse dreams. I don't think that running off and leaving my kids just to be homeless is something that would suit me better after all we seem to get along fine in this silly little dream but if something needs to change, it will do so without any help from me since as we all now know, there isn't one. So yeah, I was just having these thoughts and this dream and to be honest, it got me down a bit. If there is a place that I feel like a fish out of water it's at work. Some- one's mom died this week and I had to take their place on the craps crew for the week and they work four ten hour shifts but I still got five days this week so it was a lot. Plus, I'm not used to working with these guys day in and day out and you know I just felt out of place, like everyone on this crew was so serious and the energy from being around that just felt like walking around with my head in a block of concrete. This week as well

167 the casino temperature was just so cold it was miserable. I have to wear several layers under my uniform just to keep from shivering but this week not even that was working so I had to break out this battery operated heated vest that I bought a couple of years ago and that helped the situation. Sometimes I think if I could fit a down snowsuit un- der my uniform I would try that but it doesn't seem to be an option yet. Not everything that arises is pleasant that's for sure, but I made some great money that was exactly what I needed to pay the bills, of course I did. Everything is taken care of in ways that you just don't even need to know about at all. I got three days off from that hell hole so I'm sitting in my bed all warm now writing this. Of course, it goes without saying that none of that ever happened. Nothing is happening. So who is having this dream? Just the dreamed character, that's the only way it can dream until it starts to dream a different way, which it will, and it's nothing to do with you. The dreaming just dreams itself. At this point, however, you might ask yourself since you now know that the you you thought you were was only a dreamed character and not the real "you" which isn't really a "you" but you know let's go with it since we have to use language here is actu- ally worth playing anymore? Maybe now you have an idea of how the character got created in the first place (basically by believing a bunch of lies) and now you get the idea that you'd like to play a different character, how would that work? Listen, the dreamed character that you thought you were is just that, a thought, and the thoughts you are used to having that defined who you thought you were, were created out of the conditioning of your own unique circumstances so maybe from now on you'd like to pick some of your own ideas about what this body your basically tied to in this life should do from now on. Maybe, the life that was created by the fictional character you thought you were isn't really all that satisfying and you know since you aren't really go-

168 ing to be imagining that you are in a human form for all that long, it might be time to change things up a bit and make the most of it. Just how is this dream really being created anyway is question that is worth asking. It's definitely one that's come up for me recently, in fact, some questions I asked my- self tonight were, "If it's possible that I might work at the casino until I retire at age six- ty five, then what else is possible? If it's a dream, and I know it is, then isn't anything possible? Maybe even the impossible is possible? Who decides what is possible, a stupid dream character working her ass off in a stupid casino because this character for some reason has been led to believe that holding down a good paying job is a good thing to do? Maybe even, the right thing to do? Does the fact that all other dream characters seem to value the "go to work and pay your bills" life or that what's possible in a given situation is based on what others have experienced as possible to date? Who taught you what was possible anyway, other dreamed characters? What could they know? They are only a bunch of walking and talking conditioned thoughts making up rules that everyone must play by? Well, maybe I don't want to play any- more. I don't think I do. Yeah, I don't think I want to settle for what everyone else seems to settle for. I think I might want to have a much better time of it than that. Maybe now I make up my own game with no rules. So I started to dream up those kinds of thoughts except for one thing, "I" wasn't in charge of dreaming them up just this, consciousness likes to dream big, and the more the dreamed character gets out of the way, the better it gets. I have no idea how things are going to go (I don't even need to) but I'd say it's highly unlikely that I will be spending the next eleven years working in a noisy freezing cold casino. Chapter 22

169 Thought will still be there, probably for a good while yet, to try and create the trouble but now it can turn against itself and ask, "Who are you talking to? To whom are you suggesting there is some kind of trouble?" I get this from my own dream character. The thought is that she is tired of working at the casino and that there is no way out. The dream character always insists it knows something that it doesn't." She says, "Your life is miserable in this place but there's no way out. It will take you years just to pay off your debts and eventually your body will wear out from the stress and freezing cold air conditioning by the time your out from under it to enjoy something different." There's a sigh then and some long deep breathes, feelings of fear and despair and exhaustion abound. This character needs some sleep. She's been up all night. "Who is talking? What casino? What debts? Money, job, house, children, all is al- ready taken care of but not by you. You aren't there. All you are, is a thought and not a very nice one. I know exactly why you think the way you do and you know what, it's boring. It's boring and not even believable anymore. As if you were a fortune teller, that's laughable, you haven't predicted a single accurate situation in your entire life. I used to believe what you were always on about but not anymore." Now a different dia- log can arise and that's a good way to put a cork in the mouth of the imaginary dream character. Even when you know that there is no you, that there isn't anyone down here any- where, that you are in fact "it" and that everything you can come in contact with is also "it" in the biggest way imaginable, well that imaginary dream character who has been living your life up till now might need to be taken care of once and for all. Maybe now, you pull out an axe and just cut her down, chop her up into little bits and bury her in a dark deep hole never to rise again or maybe you want to be more gentle and go through the whole cluster fuck and sort out what to keep and what to throw out. Either

170 way, I'd say it's best to get right to it and don't delay, enough time has been wasted in playing this ridiculous charade already. The best possible news about all this is that "you" get to choose. "You" are the creator. Now whatever you learned, whatever you were told about what was possible for your life, is like a bad dream that has finally ended and a surge of exhilaration fills you up instead. So I used to think that I was this person called Sandra Anne and then I found out that I wasn't even a person at all, I was just experiencing life as a person, big differ- ence. How this person we thought we were all this time experiences life is directly de- pendent on what it believes is true about how the world works and what place they have in it. Most of us are not living lives of ease and joy due to the underlying beliefs we were taught about how the world is appearing and the ways in which we are able to manipulate it. For instance, the belief that money is hard to come by, that the only way to get it is to work hard to earn it, that people who went to college or are smarter than others get to have more of it more easily is basically a universal belief that is ham- mered into most people in modern societies. If that were true, then my own dream character would not be making more in a year than the best paid high school teacher in America and all with just a GED. That dream was created by using "The Presence Process." Remember that this dream character Sandra Anne was penniless and home- less not that long ago and then the dream started to change to something more com- fortable at the exact time that a connection with consciousness, what she truly was, started to arise. Once she got a job and did start to earn money, her belief that the more hours she worked and the harder she worked would determine how much money she was able to receive kicked in. It was just another learned belief of the dream character but that's about to be destroyed as well. Even the belief that you have to work to have the money to do the things that you really want to do is a lie. The more money I made, the

171 more I spent so all that time I spent making money really just equated to me now ow- ing even more money to credit cards, car payments, house payments, you name it. Well, that was dumb of me you might say, yeah well, the dream character gets sucked into a game they don't even know they are playing. Well, thank God all that bullshit is out the window now. The very "idea" that there are smart people verses dumb people was never true. There are literally NO PEOPLE anywhere to be found so how could there be a judgement as to the intelligence of something that doesn't even exist. Consciousness is all there is and it's having an ex- perience of being every single living creature in existence and that's all. Just how the experience is being produced whether pleasant or unpleasant isn't of any concern to it, one way isn't better than another, but for our purposes here we want to see how the things that appear for us are being created from the beliefs and thoughts that are de- rived from the beliefs and the feelings or emotions that drive them because you know why not have a good time. I think most of us also have an underlying belief that we don't even deserve to have a lot of money, deep down maybe we once heard even that money was the root of all evil. Just the idea of "evil" anything was a lie. Nothing is actually evil at all but the belief itself that there is something called evil and evil people creates it because we will see and experience the things that we believe are true. So maybe let all the dream characters who believe in evil experience evil but we don't have to believe in it and therefore not have it in our own dream. Back to the money issue, work and money are only related because we have bought into the belief that it is. This is ingrained in the consensual dream world of so many dream characters that we will consistently see it all around us and subsequently believe it is true even though it's not. Remember, no belief is true, so for our own en- joyment let's throw this one out. If we have to work hard to make money so we can

172 use that money to enjoy the things we really want to do, we won't have much time left over for doing the things that we love doing. This is not really even about money, this is about having the best possible experience available to you in the dream. This is about having the freedom to live a life worth living. Remember always that the experi- ence we have as a dream character is directly related to what that dream character be- lieves is true so you tell me, do you really want your dream character to believe that in order to enjoy it's life it will have to throw away countless hours doing things called work that it doesn't like doing? My own dream character is tired as hell from believing that garbage. There are countless other ways that money can come into your life other than do- ing things you'd rather not be doing since money does seem to be an inherent part of the consensual dream world we have to work with so let's look at some of those. I don't know about you but where I live there is something called the lottery where you can buy a ticket for just two bucks and be a fucking millionaire in a matter of hours. I for one have been buying tickets for over twenty years now and have never won shit. Why don't I win? Why do I even continue to buy the tickets when I never win? Could it be that like most dreamers, my own culturally conditioned dreamer, doesn't really be- lieve it could happen? Does she believe that the odds of that happening are so astro- nomical that it probably won't? That it would just be a real stroke of luck if it did hap- pen. Does she believe that it's hard as hell to win the lottery? What if instead she be- lieved it was as easy to win the lottery as it was to wake up and walk to the kitchen and make herself a cup of coffee today? (Well, I just happen to believe one hundred per- cent that there is coffee in the kitchen I dream I have right now.) Would she win then? Who knows but I'd say she'd definitely have a better shot at it. This isn't about the lot- tery, this is about how we go about believing things and at what level we do that be- lieving.

173 Maybe deep down, I don't feel like I deserve to have that kind of money. Maybe, I'm even afraid to have that kind of money. Maybe, my dream character is actually op- posed to having things like that happen. Maybe, I remember how I needed to lay low and stay quiet, and not ask for too much, that as a child things worked better that way. Or here's a good one, the dream character has bought into the idea that this lottery is an actual thing in an actual world and doesn't know that the world is not out there at all anywhere to be found. How about we create a new dream character who knows that she can have whatever she wants to have because she is the creator of it? If the dream character actually believed that, would she even bother going to work for an- other day? This gets really tricky here, because on the one hand you could truly be- lieve that a lottery win will happen and maybe it would except that the dream charac- ter does not have the capacity to believe this. It is more often than not beyond the scope of what it's actually capable of believing in right off the bat so it's best to start smaller and work up the capabilities of the dream character a little more slowly. For my own dream character, I've come up with some new beliefs for her that I think she might be capable of. The first one is that all the money that she needs will become available when she needs it. She doesn't need to know how this will happen only that it will. At the bottom of all beliefs is the feeling that it is true, the feeling that it is true is what makes it manifest. The bottom feeling of this belief is one of complete and utter safety, a feeling that one is loved through and through from top to bottom. It is a belief in the inherent good intentions of consciousness itself to provide you with the best possible outcomes in all situations. This is worded like consciousness is out there but it's not, it's what you are, so give this belief to yourself. You are in fact "it", the only thing in existence, this is the best possible news. This "it" that you are is the most beautiful, most gracious, most forgiving, most loving, non judgmental, all encompass- ing, absolute supreme being. Why dare to have even one derogatory thought against

174 it? Why treat yourself like you were something else? Why act like you are this small thing when you are everything? Most of us have a huge underlying feeling of fear deep down that things are not okay, there are deep emotions hidden in the body that we are somehow inadequate and even wrong somehow. Over the course of our dream, our dream character has had many experiences of not only being let down but of being the one to let others down as well and these have taken their toll. It has shaped what we have dreamed up in many ways but knowing what we really are now, that we are in fact consciousness it- self and not the dreamed character lets us transcend these limitations now. In my own dream character, there is still some underlying sense of guilt. Some deeply hidden sense even that what she is doing here, even with all this "awakening stuff" and break- ing out of what is "normal" is wrong. One thing you have to know is that these feelings of fear and inadequacy must be allowed to arise and be felt in order to dissolve. This is actually a beautiful process that is inherent in the infinite intelligence of conscious- ness itself. When you allow everything to arise without judgement, that is love, what you are, loving itself. Unfortunately, how it works is that circumstances or even just thoughts arise that create feelings that due to conditioning of the dreamed character have now been la- beled as bad and the dreamed character actually automatically tries to avoid feeling them thereby perpetuating them indefinitely. So a process that is actually in place to clear the dream character of the past to make room for bigger more pleasant experi- ences is thwarted. Mental defences like blame and judgements are in place to keep the dream character in line with all the other ones. As long as groups of dream charac- ters can get together and be against something it keeps them all feeling a little safer and they don't have to travel down the slippery slope of taking responsibility for their own damn dreaming.

175 But that's not us, we aren't interested in any of that anymore because we know that we are only dream characters and we want to grow up and experience the best dream possible. Nothing that we can see or feel or experience in the dream is real like we once thought it was or like everyone we come in contact with thinks it is. We don't concern ourselves with what anybody thinks or does anymore. We see that there really isn't even something called time, that even that was just another false idea, so when we see anything or feel anything unpleasant we just stay with it and allow it to be as it is. It won't last, nothing does. We know that now. It's important that we don't interfere with what's arising at all. The mind will try to use thoughts to make itself feel better, it will use these thoughts to try to take some action that will remedy the situation but any actions that are not allowing unpleasant feelings and sensations to be as they are should be avoided. We know it's just like the song says, "it's just a spring clean for the May Queen." Clean away, clear away. Everything that arises is in your absolute best interest at all times. This is a nice be- lief that you can install in your own dream character. For myself, I will still buy lotto tick- ets, but my main new belief for my dream character is that in six months or under my financial difficulties will be gone for good. This is believable for my dream character. How will happen? That's not my business. I just put this intention into the void of mani- festation and allow consciousness to create that in any way it sees fit. I don't even think about it anymore. If I have any activity to do with this whatsoever it is that I do Jed's deep breathing for five minutes then rest in absolute silence and stillness for ten to fif- teen minutes a day. I let my body go into deep relaxation and I feel a sense of safety and sureness in the what I really am. I know no belief is true, but in the dream world believing things like I have to work at a job I don't even like to make money no longer serves the life I'm meant to live. Money is easy to get when you believe it is and I'm just getting started. There is plenty

176 of money to go around so I might as well get me some. Sharing money is even more fun then getting it so I'd rather believe that I have more than I need instead of not enough anymore. Let's see how this works out. I will let you know. Here's some other beliefs that might be helpful for your own dream character. Nothing is ever wrong. All situations turn out for the best. Embrace all that ap- pears at all times, no matter what your mind tells you about them or what they look like. There's nothing I have to do to make things turn out for the best. The best possi- ble outcomes for my dream character are already in the works. I don't need to know how it's working just that it is. All is well. At all times, nothing can ever "go wrong." Things "going wrong" was just a belief. Everyone is always up in arms about what could go wrong. How many times do you hear about what could go right? How many dreamers do you know who go on about that? Whatever appears is right, it can't be any other way, so leave it at that. There's nothing to fear. Nothing can ever touch what you are. Dreaming just hap- pens according to the beliefs of what is possible to the dream character you got sad- dled with. Anything is possible in a dream. Thank god you are only dreaming, now figure out what you really want to experience and create the belief that you can create new be- liefs that will make the dream more fun. Create the belief that you don't need or even want to know how anything will turn out. Thinking you know how something is going is the past on repeat. Not knowing anything, just watching, brings in new experiences. Not knowing is actually like a magic wand.

177 Consciousness is supreme intelligence, more intelligent than any human thinking, it created thinking, and it is what you are. Why would it let you down? The idea of be- ing let down is personal, but consciousness is not personal at all. It gives to all accord- ing to their beliefs of what is possible and nothing more or less. There is no past in consciousness, no judgements whatsoever about what you deserve, whether you are a good person or not, nothing like that, it is all just Maya, appearances being created by beliefs. It works the same for everyone each and every time without deviations. There is a time lapse sometimes however between what you believe and what you see so you have to stick with it and basically have faith and trust it with all your heart. Re- member you can't just say it, because it's the emotion that is generated by truly be- lieving it that causes the manifested world. There is truly nothing to fear. Fear is a control tactic that starts in childhood, the idea that you need to conform to the appearances of those around you or those who seem to be over you. Trust is the opposite of fear. As you go along, your trust will be restored in your own inherent capacity to create anything you want to create. Create the belief that all is well and you will soon see that it is. Whatever you need to do, you will do it. Mistakes are not even possible. Con- sciousness is experiencing life through this form called you, the dream character, it is completely impartial, just creates dreams out of what the character is believing is true. Why not believe some good stuff for a change then? How about the belief that every- thing has already turned out for the best? How about believing that once all your limit- ing beliefs are gone, you will experience your life in the most fantastic way ever? Well, that's what I'm going to do. Who's with me? Chapter 23 It occurred to me this morning, if you can call 12:12 pm, the morning which I can and do, that knowing that all is always in perfect order for one's highest good without

178 having "to do" anything is exactly like walking to the edge of a cliff and throwing your entire life over it's edge. Down below, maybe there is a canyon of jagged rocks, men- acing, sharp, bloody dangers, but instead of being torn up by the fall, every aspect of your life flows neatly and delicately between every obstacle, this way and that way, now avoiding all that devastation all by itself. Now you are like a raindrop which land- ing on the tip of a deadly blade glides effortlessly, bloodlessly down the side onto the handle, and maybe into a pooling puddle below that's stirred by the wind and direct- ed in a downhill trickle that runs into a stream which runs into a mighty river. Well, that might be over the top, you might not be the mighty river just yet but at least now you know there is one, and as your life is falling over the cliff and just about to be stabbed right through the heart, you might still recoil in fear a little bit before you realize that once again, by some sordid twist of fate, it's managed to divert itself to live another rather uneventful day. The pattern, however, that "all is well" is seen again and little by little you start to trust it. The entire fucking delusion was that there was a "you" that had something to do with it but "you" are off the hook now. All your memories of past mistakes and blun- ders, burst open like soap bubbles, disappearing into thin air. It's like you were in a court room your whole life defending yourself against a world of your peers, you were never sure what you were even guilty of, but you were on trial anyway, and the only way to keep from getting convicted was to keep on defending your actions, but now at long last, fifty four long years later maybe the jury is in. And the verdict is, "Inno- cent." (By reason of insanity lol) All of a sudden, it's like you can see the whole mechanism that keeps all the dra- ma, all the hurt and the pain the world over in place and above that, there's the door. You open the door and you walk through it, and when you turn around to have one last look at what you're leaving behind, all you find is a blank slate. The whole thing,

179 your whole life was a dream, a complete and utter fabrication, a mirage, and nothing is there, not even the door. This whole imaginary person wasn't even anything "you" made up, it was only ever a reflection of what everyone else it had ever known had acted like they were seeing. Your whole identity was based on the reactions of those around you and what they told you, you were. Now that you know that they didn't know what they were, that everyone you have ever known or can ever know (except for the free ones) can never tell you anything about yourself or anything else for that matter, who will you be? The whole "who" of you was just a memory and a mistaken one at that, now maybe you will get creative and make a new "who" you can slip in and out of without mistaking it for what you are. I came to work tonight without my head, just left it on the nightstand next to the paper lamp I thought I bought at IKEA last summer. It's a cool lamp but the head is not. The head is just trash, a big collection of memories that don't mean shit.. So tonight I left it at home. I guess I'm finding less and less use for it. Last night, I brought it with me to work and it didn't behave so well. It was a slow night for a Friday, the place was freezing as usual and by the time half my shift was over, I had a total of $12 in my tip box and that's not going to pay the bills. The head was not liking that at all and it was saying things like, "So much for manifesting, you suck at it." That's pretty mild but you know it didn't end there, and all night long I listened to things like "you're life is about to blow up in a massive explosion of utter failure. The children will hate you." About that time, I was walking to put my tip box in the next pit and a friend- ly co-worker, a born again Christian, super religious dude, put his arm around me and asked how my night was going to which my head blurted out suddenly apparently be- yond my control, "I'm just sick of this fucking place." He replied, " I know what you mean."

180 So tonight, I just took it right off and left it. There is no head anyway, except for the reflection in the mirror when have you ever seen it? Once I got to work I went ahead and decapitated the rest of the population to you know, make this dream a little more tolerable. I have a quote by Jed that runs through my thoughts now pretty regularly these days and it goes, "consciousness is real, the content of consciousness is not" and this one thought brings me endless comfort and the ability to endure whatever I'm seeing with a true calm even headless people. Since there isn't anyone home to talk to, I put my headphones in on break as usual and I felt more than a little sad being here all alone. I was just listening to "When Dark- ness Falls" by Secret Garden at full volume over and over again and that was oddly comforting. I often look around at all these people I'm surrounded by all night and I think "Why don't they look", and I wonder how they can settle for this stupid shit. I wonder how they can even stand it, I wonder how anyone can even think that this miraculous thing we call life could ever be reduced to such a monstrosity as this. Well, being in a casino is like that, it's a distinctly time wasting and desperate place, Just the noise level itself, slot machines chiming and dinging endlessly so loud- ly that the music that is piped in from above can't even compete and you can barely make out the words or the tune is all I can hear now. It's weird because I never even noticed it before and now it's just deafening. Some of the people are dressed up like wanna be movie stars, and only a few are so poor they come in whatever clothes they have, there's more life in the truly destitute, the people who have a lot of money are just obnoxious and rude and strut around desperately trying to be somebody which would be truly comical if it wasn't so sad. After my break, I go back and it's a whole table of drunk men in their forties. They seem the professional type and they are celebrating one of their birthdays. (Wait, this is the exact same table I wrote about before, a real dejavu) The first thing one of them

181 says to me is "you are either going to love us or hate us." I just look at him like he's an alien because that's what arises (oops I think I was supposed to laugh at that and when I don't it clearly throws him off his game, my bad) but I can tell this isn't going to be a pleasant experience for either of us and it's not. They start to lose right away and it sucks the drunken "happy" mood right out of them. It's my fault, no doubt, and one of them looks right at me and says, "I feel like the mood has changed" with the distinct implication that I'm the one who changed it. My character doesn't seem to tolerate these type of characters very well anymore so it's best for me to just bite my tongue since I don't have anything to say anyway but you know I'm just thinking, "Well, yeah, that sucks for you", and "it is what it is." I've forgotten that even these characters are just doing the best that they can, even now, with what they got. I seem to be incapable, however, of trying to suck up to anyone anymore just for tips and that doesn't seem to be a profitable development for this career. I'm not try- ing to be mean to anyone, you know the cards come out the way they come out, so if you lose you lose, not anything I can do about that, but making you feel better about it doesn't seem to be something I'm interested in doing much of either. While I can of- ten sympathize with certain people who really "need" to win, my ability to sympathize with this type (the I've got plenty of money and if you're nice to me I might toss you some crumbs from my entitled position) doesn't seem to arise very often. Even so if I could let everyone win, even these guys, I would, what do I care? I'm not opposed to anyone's happiness if that's what it takes. I'd just as well pay everyone anyway since it keeps them quiet but that's not how this one goes down. I don't care for the way they are looking at me like they are sizing me up and I've come up considerably short, a real party pooper maybe but I'm not bothered by it ei- ther. The real problem here is that they are looking at what they think is a blackjack dealer and needing me to reflect back to them what they think they are, someone im-

182 portant and I'm unable to do that. I can only reflect back what they really are and that's much too frightening for these wanna be somebodies. If there's even a small opening they would love it, but this crowd is closed up tight. It's there somewhere but alcohol has a way of hiding it. It's so subtle but the minute I walked up to the table, I could feel their discomfort as they soon realized I wouldn't be playing that role for them like the last twenty something bubbly dealer did. There's a distinctly uncomfortable feeling in my body that's been there all night which now intensifies. If I could turn and walk away without losing my job, I'm sure I would have and this is exactly what I don't like anymore, it's something I've been noticing a lot of lately that has become increasingly intolerable, the fact that the dream is still real enough to make me stay in this job but it is what is so I get through that and on the next two tables I run into some more manageable characters. Tips were shit, for three days in a row running now, and my body is just worn out and tired. Every afternoon lately, I head out the door and jog four or five miles so by the time midnight comes which is just halfway through my shift, I'm physically a little tired and I just don't feel like talking to anyone lately. If the life as I know it is going to explode, it can do so already. Whatever goes down in this dream is just what goes down. For once in my life though it won't be "my fault." It is what it is, even so I know while things don't always appear and certainly don't feel pleasant, it's nothing to do with me. Some dreams are shit, plain and simple, but one thing is certain, everything changes and will come to an end one way or another and I don't have to worry about how or when it does. While there's a painful feeling in this body, I trust that all is in fact well, it's almost like it needs to be felt, and indeed it must or it wouldn't be arising at all. So even though I feel like hell, I'm okay with feeling like hell, whatever needs to arise is invari- ably arising and all for my own damn good of this I am certain. Nothing is out to get

183 me anymore, the universe doesn't hate me, it just really feels like something is taking a hammer to some existing structures, the pounding of Sandra Anne into a fine powder is what hurts but you know what happens with powder, once it's ground down enough it blows away. Going to bed at 5:30 am, I wake up at 9:00 am and I do this writing, then I go back to sleep and wake up close to two pm. It's a turn around day for me which means I have an early shift after a late shift and there's just two hours before it's time to go back to the casino. Laying in bed, having another cup of coffee before I drag out of bed, I go on this website and read exactly what I need to read which takes me to a you tube video where I hear exactly what I need to hear and by the time I'm putting my casino uniform back on, a shift as big as California falling into the ocean occurs. It's like everything I've been writing about here crystallizes somehow and layers upon lay- ers of heaviness drop off and everyone, I mean everyone on this entire planet, even other planets, the planets themselves disappear and only a deep, the deepest ever compassion for those who just don't know remains. I see the error and all its inevitable consequences, the unrelenting forming of personalities and egos. It's like another veil has lifted and I'm miraculously catapulted to a place where absolutely nothing is hap- pening. It's so quiet here, not even the word peaceful can do it justice and when I get to work, I seem to be acutely aware of the fact that everyone around me thinks that something is actually happening when I know it's not. Now when I'm on break, I listen to another song I found a few days ago called "Once Upon a Time in the West" by Harmony Highway and all the pain is gone. I listen to song over and over again and the feeling is just bliss, bliss, and more bliss. Nothing is happening, nothing has ever happened, and nothing ever will.

184 Fuck, when I say "NOTHING IS HAPPENING", I really mean it, I mean to say exactly what I am saying and that is that no where, in any capacity whatsoever, under any cir- cumstances is anything actually happening anywhere at any time. Nothing is happen- ing now nor has anything ever happened. Nothing can happen. It's simply not possi- ble for anything to ever happen. Now if you can get that under your belt somehow, then you can clearly see that if nothing is ever happening, then what could ever be so damn important? What could anything even mean or be but nothing? No importances at all are possible in a place where nothing is happening. This is ultimate relief, you are off the hook, completely ir- reversibly forgiven for whatever situation you can ever possibly imagine yourself in. Everything that you ever "thought" happened never happened and you can throw all your fear about what "might" happen in the toilet, because to be sure, nothing will ever happen. All that's ever going on is dreaming according to your particular condi- tioned imagination and nothing more. Your life, whatever it looks like is not a big deal, but what you really are is. You are the only thing that ever is and it isn't going anywhere. It is everywhere. You are both the whole world and the maker of that world except that none of it exists at all. You are all that exists, anything that you see is a figment of your imagination playing on the screen of what you are. Well, it's damn crazy and you can say I'm crazy but if you do that's just no one say- ing I'm crazy and it never even happened so who cares? Nothing can touch nothing. The feeling right now is like I'm air, and if for some crazy fucking reason some imaginary character swung at me their arm would just pass right through an empty space. Maybe, I'm really gone now or just more pieces. This was a big chunk, feels like I lost a lot of weight, just like that. I guess the next time I feel like hell, my reaction might

185 be "oh good, what else can I get rid of?", instead of "Oh God, not again. What now? How much crap is in there?" My life was crap, not going to lie, and it still is much of the time. Sometimes, I don't even know why anyone comes here to read about it. Well, no one said it would be a walk in the park until it actually is. I feel like I want to build a fort and hang out in this one for awhile, a long while, maybe forever. But it won't last, (it doesn't), nothing does. There are highs and lows in a dream, if you were high all the time eventually that too would become unnoticeable, but know- ing that nothing is ever happening and that all really is well doesn't seem to lose it's affect at all. It is rock solid and you can carry it into a hurricane. Chapter 24 Things are very quiet now, even soft, well, they feel soft like satin or one of those super luxurious blankets that are nice to be wrapped up in when it's chilly. I had noth- ing to do with it, of course, really just came over me and I'm glad it's staying for awhile instead of popping off like it usually does. I am attracted to listening to classical music now which for most of my life, really until now, I had absolutely no appreciation for at all, really if anything it used to repel me. Love songs used to make me feel sad but now I can't stop listening to them either because it is like consciousness singing love unto itself. It's like I'm hearing in a different way now and the beauty of all these songs I find feels like a tremendous gift and not something to be overlooked anymore. In fact, I've come to see that there actually are an astounding number of things in this dream world that simply are so utterly beautiful and amazing that nothing short of the miraculous could have created them. Even work was a joy this week. I found a warm shirt for ten bucks at walmart that after I altered the sleeve length to the required just past quarter length kept me com- fortable for once. It's weird but even though I barely say a word to anyone at work, at the gambling tables, people are kind and even drawn to me. They are just myself even

186 if they don't know it. If I come across a hard and angry character, even they are quiet. It's like they are just little tiny hurt children in a big strange body now. Probably, even they wonder sometimes when they look in the mirror, "Who is that?", and "Where did I go? I can't find myself." Honestly, I was just looking at all of them with the biggest wonder and I was cherishing each and every one of them after all they are all only my- self. Every single thing we see is actually coming out of us so why not love it? Even if I see an angry person, am I not also that angry thing, so you know if I also love that then I"m not resisting what I am and this makes everything very easy. It's easy to see the pain behind the anger now and all that happens now is that you wish you could just wipe it all away and make it all better. I had a young man in his oh maybe late twenties knock on my door a couple weeks ago. He was covered in tattoos, like his arms were completely covered, not an inch uncolored. He had a most endearing face, just a sweetness about him and he was selling some kind of special cleaning soap that works for everything for some reli- gious organization. He started his spiel to me with, "I'm out here trying to redeem my- self", and explained how these people had gotten him off the street because he was homeless and was a "bad" person and he was trying to pay for his sins so on it went for a minute as I stood looking at him with my mouth hanging open in shock and then I spoke. I said, "Listen to me, you have never done a wrong thing in your entire life, not one single thing, nothing has ever been your fault, nothing, not one thing so you don't need to redeem yourself. Who the fuck told you that and why the fuck did you believe them?" And then he told me that he had taken drugs, and stolen, and done bad things and I was like, "So what? Forget about it. Listen if anyone had been born in your

187 exact same spot to your exact situation and had your exact thoughts and feeling reac- tions to your exact experiences they would have had the exact same actions." Well, he was a little disoriented at this point I could tell but he was listening intent- ly like this was some good news for a change. I was astonished myself, like I didn't know where these words were coming from or I wasn't the one saying them. Well, he was very interested in what I had to say for some reason so we talked for awhile. I can't remember what I said now except maybe I told him that it was all okay and he wasn't something bad at all, that maybe if he knew what he really was he would love it with all his heart. Well, he seemed somewhat relieved and thanked me profusely. It ended with me writing down the name of the Jed McKenna books that he needed to read straight away so that he could figure out why he didn't need to go door to door selling soap and redeeming himself for the rest of his life. I gave him my email and phone number if he had any questions later on and told him it was no accident that he knocked on my door and that it was his lucky day, and that "the universe has something better in mind for you than this of that you can be sure." Then we hugged and he left. I didn't buy any soap. The thing is that all of it, your whole life is being seen through the eyes of a vulner- able, frightened child who thinks it is either bad or guilty at the very least. The thinking happens in terms of so called adult scenarios and words now but after all the years, only the pictures have changed but the not the fear of being unloved and wrong that drives everything you see. Now when you know that you aren't what you thought you were and you want to do some nice dreaming while you still can and not all this crap that you were taught was the way things are, you have to go in there and literally in a way, make the child feel safe again. In a way, the emotional energy of the hurt child

188 was the determining factor in just what kind of dreaming was going to appear but now we know that even that was just dreaming. It's been said that "Love conquers all" but I would say it this way, "If love conquers all, it is because it is all." So what you find out is that if you trust love more than any- thing else, you go back to what you have always been but forgot you were. The best feeling in this dream is love and that's the love that comes from not resisting even the slightest thing. Even when your conditioning says things should be different, you trust that love is at work behind the scenes creating more love because it loves itself with it's own love, and not a human kind of love, no, this kind of love is just unfathomable like if you went outside and looked up at the sky and you can't see where it ends. It just goes on forever in all directions. How do we know this? How do we know that consciousness as consciousness is love and it is good? How do we know that we can trust it? Who are we trusting but our very own selves anyway? All our troubles and mischief in this dream were only created by our very own misunderstandings. Now we can clear that all up by looking at what evidence we do have that consciousness when freed from living under the pretence and confusion of the false self loves beautiful things. I mean if you look at things in na- ture that were created by consciousness, you have to admit that consciousness has an impeccable eye for the most unique and exquisite creations. Butterflies for instance are good example, first they are closed up tight in a co- coon, unable to even move at all, and then through some crazy process they emerge with wings to fly about and go where ever they are supposed to go. A quick google search will provide you with access to see just how vibrantly colorful and intricately designed their wings can be. Some are common, and some are very rare, the beautiful ones are rare indeed, just like humans those who love are rare as well. That's just one example, if you don't overlook it, you will find that love and beauty is literally every-

189 where, something lovely hiding in every moment that was always there but you couldn't see it because your mind was off thinking about the past and worrying about the future. So I would say, you just need to pay attention and trust that where ever you are and whatever you see is exactly what you need to be seeing to bring you to whatever circumstances are in line to let you live your best life. For me right now if I find myself back in the casino tonight dealing cards then I have to trust that I'm still meant to be there doing that and I have to bring all the love and acceptance that I can find to that situation. I have to look for the miraculous in even that, just embrace each and every moment as it comes no matter what it seems to look like. Would I rather be living a life where my days are free to do as I please? Of course, but that's not what is appearing for me right now, and to resist what is just keeps it around. Even if you know there is no you and never was there is still the dream and there's no reason not to make the most of it. There were some years when I didn't work at all, when my days really were free and I can tell you at the time I was unable to even enjoy them. In some of my past writing, I made an intention that my financial situation would improve dramatically in six months or less and I wouldn't be living paycheck to pay- check like I do now anymore because I realized that this was "believable" to my dream character. I bought a bracelet that has a mustard seed dangling from it that I wear to work that reminds me to just trust that all is well and working in my favor now to live out this dream in the best way I possibly can. It's not really an "I can" though, it's really just a miracle, relaxing and allowing consciousness (all that is) to dream the best dream. It's a mystery though, we don't seem to have the capacity to see the future at all, so I leave it wide open now. All that is there for us, is really right here already. I'm go-

190 ing to listen to some music now because it never fails to bring me into a feeling of love. If this world wasn't made of love would there even be music or even sound? Would there be flowers? Trees and oxygen? Would there be any hearts beating? Would there be anything to see at all? It's not what we see, hear, and feel but the fact that we do that can inform us of the miracle of life. You are dreaming, so dream with love. It's really all that is worth dreaming about anyway. Then you are dreaming yourself. Oh, by the way, last week without any prompting from me whatsoever, my chil- dren started doing their own dishes. Miracles never cease. Chapter 25 Dear Anyone reading this and wanting to know what my day was like. Well, last night I worked right up until four am at the casino, my last half hour was spent just standing there as there were no customers. After cashing out my tips, making my way downstairs to catch the shuttle to my car and driving home, I got in bed around five am with a plate of leftover French fries and two chicken tenders that I found on two different plates left on the counter, leftovers from all I felt like making the kids that night before I left for work. Well, someone didn't eat their fries so there were enough of them to make a decent late night snack and with a little luck I figured they were still good and wouldn't make me sick after nuking them in the microwave for a minute. I ate those with a left over packet of sauce from Chick-Fil-A (I usually save these for the kids because they love this sauce but I guess I was feeling selfish) and a packet of bar- becue sauce from McDonalds that I found in the kitchen drawer. I ate it while checking out if there were any new posts on the forum on my phone and I think there were so I read those while I ate. When I was done, I went to sleep closer to six, I remember the clock on my phone when I put it on the charger said 5:55 which I thought was fitting, just a little reminder, I'm used to them by now. Then I went to sleep and woke up at

191 7:30 and got up to pee, and I ate a banana because I guess I thought I was still hungry and went back to sleep and woke up at 9 then 9:30 thinking well this sucks, I'm proba- bly going to be tired but I can go back to sleep later and got up and made a cup of coffee and came back to my bed and did some other personal writing that started arising the day a couple days ago. After that, writing for about an hour or so, I thought I'm so tired and I've only had three hours sleep and I have to be back to work at the casino early today, I had to leave the house at four pm to get to work be on the gaming floor by 4:45 so I tried to go back to sleep. I felt hungry but didn't want to eat at the same time so just lay in bed dozing in and out feeling rather uneasy for some unknown reason. My daughter wanted to see the movie "It" with her brother but although she could get in because she's seventeen now he is still only fifteen and needs a parent or legal guardian to see an R rated film. Even so I'm too tired for any of that today, no way I'm going to get through a night of work if I go to a movie, anyway I don't even want to see it, I don't like scary movies, I took them to the first one and hated it, so I was like, not happening this time. So my daughter came into my room and said they were go- ing to try to get in, she was going to buy the tickets and I was like "go for it." Well, it didn't work so she calls me on their way back and says there is a another showing at 12:15, and can I get up and just get them in and sneak out the back door. So I'm like ok, come and get me and then I'm like, "fuck me" and "thanks" so they drive home but then I change my mind because now I'm really just totally exhausted, I've had almost no sleep and I have almost no time to get any more sleep before I have to go back to work. So I say "No, not going to do it. Too tired." Well, she is pissed but I'm like "hate on if you want, just don't give fuck if you do though." And that was that, I went back to sleep and woke up at three, had another cup of coffee and finally got out of bed with a half hour before I had to leave to get back to work. I did not shower, I was like screw

192 it and put some water mist on my face and hair and some body mist on the rest of me. As I got ready for work, I sensed that everyone in the house was pissed off at me, so I just left without saying goodbye not like I usually do. Well, it was never up to me, whatever goes down, I did the best I could with what I had. Nothing to do with me anyway, just a little show on the screen. Most of the time it's nice and fuzzy, but this time, hmmm a little out of the ordinary but you know every- one will live, it is what it is, must be for the best, can't be other than what it is, so I just leave the house and get in my car and start the drive back to work. I'm tired, but not too tired, I'm in a some kind of mood though, that's for sure, I feel it deeply and I when I put my music on, it comes out in it as it. It is deeply moving, I am sensing this pres- ence that I am, that is all I am so completely, tears just fall but you know I'm like full, so full, whatever I am spilling out saturating this face. Gratitude abounds. When I get to work, I'm a bit late, not enough for a warning or anything but Sam of all people has picked the first break for me and my number on the early out list. Sam’s nature is just loving, his physical appearance and personality isn't appreciated by any- one here but me. Sam is my co-worker who is from of all places the the same town that Jed now lives in. He is going there at the end of October and I've told him that I want to go there. If I go at the same time he goes, I'm welcome to stay at a farm house he owns there on his fruit farm, in fact, he's happy to take me around and watch over me at every turn. He keeps asking me if I'm going but all I can say is "I don't know yet." The money for that trip hasn't appeared yet so who can say. Who indeed can say? Just who? Nobody. My first table is the high limit. It's dead (casino slang for no customers) until a guy walks up and asks me if I'm being nice and generous today or whether this empty ta- ble is an indication that I'm taking everyone's money. I tell him, "I'm sorry. Did you say "taking people's money?", not even sure what that is. Is that a thing because if it is I've

193 never heard of it?" Don't ask me, those are just the words that came out. He laughs at it and wins the first 10 hands and is looking at me like I'm some sort of weirdo, like he's stepped into another dimension and of course, he has. He tips me a little while I'm there but he's not the generous type and I get tapped out to move to my next game. He knows something odd was at hand but just can't put his finger on it. The next dealer brings him back to what he's used to and I get the feeling that he's more comfortable there even though when I look over from my next table, I see that he's lost all his money. Well, you know "have a nice day", I think. My next table is uneventful but for some reason, even though they didn't win while I was there everyone throws me a little something at the end of my time. Next is the roulette game, there's a biggish player here (well for our neck of the woods, he would be nothing in Las Vegas) and there's an issue going on. The supervi- sor says he was over paid $500 from the last dealer I'm tapping out. He's not freaking out about it but he wants it in writing that he's giving a $500 chip back and is asking for a free glass of wine for having to do so. ( I don't bother telling him that giving away free alcohol for any reason is against the law in this state, he'll find out soon enough I think.). Even so he's not being a jerk, and I love him already, like I'm able to reach right down into his soul and take his heart in my hands. Your heart, my heart, I smile at him, and a warm peaceful feeling seems to come over both of us. He doesn't even win while I'm there but tips me nicely anyway, well appreciating beauty when you see it and loving it does seem to have it's benefits. Then I take a break and when I come back to get my tip box, I tell my boss who just happens to be standing there (one of them, there are many) that I can't do this early shift anymore. Someone is going to have to stop this late shift, early shift thing I say and they agree with me that eleven hours between shifts is not enough time and I say something like yeah, I'm unable to do it anymore.

194 My next awareness is of the fact that it has gotten cold again. My supervisor is freezing and talking about how she should have worn socks and we have a conversa- tion about the temperature that ends in us both agreeing that it's so fucking cold, it feels almost abusive. Yeah, well, shit is the way it is here but it bothers me enough to be aware of the fact that I'm complaining. On my last table, Baccarat I have a new player, like he doesn't know the game at all. On the last hand the player side had a three card nine and the other two players got very excited because they were playing a side bet that almost won but didn't. I ex- plain this bet to the new guy, how it's a three card nine and a three card eight and pays 200 to one because it's a long shot. I've only seen it about three times total. The next hand though it appears and the guy who is playing it wins $2000 and throws me $50 and I'm reminded of the power of words in this creation we think we see. It's not like it's about believing that something will happen and then it does though, it's more like when you are in touch with your True nature, a word will do it but it's weird because "thinking" itself isn't even present. It's like if you look for something, you can't find it and when you forget what you are looking for all by itself there it is, it magically appears. So anyway, that was basically my night, tips were decent, the last couple I dealt to tipped me nicely, I think she was a hooker and he was her customer but both of them were seriously charming and we laughed a lot. She kept telling me my new name was Char, short for Charlotte which reminded me of Charlottes Web. I got off early be- cause the place was empty. It was my Friday meaning that although it was Sunday, my "weekend" was now upon me. I came home to the news that the kitchen was literally full of ants and a simple in- spection confirmed it, the little bastards were everywhere so at 1:15 am, instead of go- ing to bed, I drove to Walmart to pick up a can of bug spray and a few more food

195 items for the kids because well that's how it went. Then I came home and cleaned up the whole kitchen and sprayed it all down with the bug spray. I put a gate up to block it from the our adorable dog "Luci" and told the kids what I'd done and not to walk in it without shoes. Then I went to my room and wrote to Jed because throughout the day, I realized that "trying" to do anything doesn't seem to even be a "thing" anymore. Actually, if "trying" arises, it is just "trying" arising, like just another concept arising, well all kinds of shit arises, does it not? And nothing to do with you. There isn't one. I wrote "Correct me if I am wrong but I would say that there will come a day when you will realize that complete surrender isn't really an option (like something that you could choose) because it's your only option, (therefore not an option at all like let's say you are 5'5" tall, are there any other height options available for you) and it's also at the same time the best thing that can happen to you." And he came back with basically, "Is even complete surrender up to you as an op- tion?" No, if you can come to a place of complete surrender, that too is just a gift from yours truly to yours truly." I mean think about it, a lot of traditions say just surrender, even Jesus says to "give up your life so that you may have life" but no one under- stands that it isn't something that you can actually "do". All that can happen is that you can see that nothing exactly nothing is even up to you because for the last fucking time, there isn't one. Even seeing that isn't up to you, ok one more time, there isn't one. Like this song that I'm hearing right now, "Love, love changes everything." Well, look it up, look up the words, because that's what played, then look up the next thing I heard which was by Charles Bukowski called "The laughing heart “ and then John Denver "For You". It is like it is itself. It is whatever it wants to be right then, it wants itself but you are itself so it is you wanting yourself. I don't even know how to say it. If it could say it,

196 don't you think it would, and yet it is saying it all the time and just no one hears it, no one can hear what they are. Next song Barbara Streisand with Andrea Bocelli "I still can see your face." You can't find it because you are it. Like you will never see your own face with just your own eyes. This writing just arises in it. You think it's "my writing" and even if I think it's "my writing", no, no one behind the keys that make up the words on the screen of this old IPad. Next song on the playlist, you tube by Chris Rea called even "The Truth", wow, maybe disappear and go into that. My character, Sandra Anne, hmm, so unimportant, I am no one. So who would have a choice in anything? Jed calls the appearances of this world "entertainment" and that it is but you won't be able to see it that way until there is no "you" in it. But if you can, the "entertainment' is unlike anything you have ever experienced. Even the what you used to think of as wrong and sad, there you are and in everything a thread of love, undetectable to most but there nevertheless, like a wreath of whatev- er does happen, whatever you perceive it as happening in a place where nothing can be anything but perfect. Even the most heartbreaking scene is in line with the best that could possibly be seen, like everything is an opportunity to reach out and remem- ber that whatever is seen is you, so love yourself. But again I don't say it right, and not you, like a person you, just love as love itself. Maybe do that, and forget that there is something in it called you. Right now, no matter what you think has ever happened or what or who you think you are. I am that and I love it fiercely, if your eyes have landed here, I love you, no matter anything that you can think of that says I shouldn't.

197 I do. I am the love that you are. That really is all there is. Nothing more. Chapter 26 The culture of the West has its own sickness. The violent nature of any ego can be traced directly to its beginnings, its upbringing, cultural and personal. To kill a terrorist for instance is just revenge, but not on the terrorist. It is literally the suppressed rage of the hurt child, put a lot of hurt little ego's together and you get a nation capable of building a bomb that has the capacity to wipe out a dreamed up planet for a long time. You know you see how it's all working now in the consensual dream, and it might seem troubling because to a large extent you are faced with navigating parts of the dream that have been dreamt up by lunatic egos. So in a way you have to find a way to get around it all and go your own way. Of course, you aren't there to do that, so in the end all you can do is rely on what you are instead of who you are because the who of you is gone now, it never was to begin with and any illusion you had of figuring out the dream went with it. Then you can see that if you're still breathing in and out, it's been taking care of your dream just fine for as long as it's been dreaming and will continue to do so. The troubling part of the dreaming is just the judgements of the character you thought you were, you know love is better than hate, and really in my honest opinion it is, but all anyone can do is to allow the love that they are to arise but that's not even the right way to say it, love just arises on it's own and nothing to do with you because, nope, not going to say it. So another day, the next day maybe, it's not your day off anymore and you are dreaming that you are at the casino again and you find it was just a fluke, the clothes

198 that you thought you had found weren't keeping you warm after all. All along it was just that the temperature in the casino was warmer for a week and now it's not. Now it's colder than ever and your fingers are almost turning blue and numb and you spend eight hours shivering from it. To make it worse, the tables are empty so you aren't moving, just standing, and there is nothing to distract you from the fact that you are freezing your ass off. Off in the distance, in the background is your dream charac- ter, boy is she sad. "Is there no way out of this fucking dream?”, she thinks but it's worse now because now there really isn't a way out, the illusion that all this "work" would accumulate to some nice outcome has been shattered. Now she knows she isn't there anymore to do anything and the appearance that there isn't even any mon- ey being made tonight to aid in her eventual escape adds fuel to the fire. There is no escape, she thinks, fate has not been kind after all. Tonight is the night of her yearly review again (now three years are gone and countless hours wasted here) and she passes will flying colors, she is once again at the top of the model employee ladder all around and it doesn't mean shit. Who the fuck cares? I should be happy I'm wasting my precious time on this earth in this fucking place. Fuck off. Many years ago when I was moving around with my kids, I once happened upon a parenting book and never forgot the line in it that said, "It is no accomplishment to raise children who are well adjusted to a sick society." It then made reference to the German people who were obedient to the Nazi regime. Obedient children or citizens for that matter will go along to get along no matter how ugly it gets, they go to work and pay their bills and follow the rules as just the empty robots that they are and when the plug is pulled you just might realize that your own character was also just another cog in the wheel, but now you see that your character is still stuck in the wheel and there doesn't seem to be anyone home to unstuck you, it feels like a problem because

199 what you thought was there to help you out of this mess is gone, well, there never was ....just not going to say it. I think Ramana Marharshi said it best when he said, "The dream isn't your prob- lem, your problem is you like some parts of the dream and not others." Well, I don't like this part of the dream anymore, in fact, let me say it here once and for all, I hate my fucking job in this dream. I hate the cold and the standing. I hate it that I take peo- ple's money even and that it makes them sad. You know why most people come to a casino? They aren't at home or driving in their car thinking "you know it would feel re- ally great right now if I could unload all this extra cash I have just laying around on to the casino", no they are thinking that they have a chance, that it's worth the risk to lose some money because they think they might win. Most of the people here are in that category and they need a few cocktails to get them to a place where they are brave enough to try it which is why they drink while they are gambling but the odds really are stacked against them. The whole casino scene is also an elaborate hoax with all it's bright flashing lights, the music, the importance of the player's card, how we are sup- posed to use their name when greeting them (like we don't know who the fuck they are we just read it off the fucking card but you know we want to "personalize" the ex- perience of fucking you in the ass). Listen, most of them are addicted because they don't know what's going on, how the culture and brain washing of that culture has completely fucked them. I know, when I was younger, before I had kids I used to gamble too and there were more than a few nights after a big loss that I came close to offing myself. It doesn't take much to see the desperation people feel when they are losing their money, money they had to sell their souls to earn in the first place. People want their lives back, they don't want to spend most of their days slogging away at a job just to survive and the rest of the night recovering from the loss they feel for having had to do that to begin with. And

200 that's why they come to the casino, they see it as a chance to get out from under that, and the illusion that they are in some fancy place where they are "special" helps them forget what their life is really like. Well, let's just face it, the conditioning of all the dream characters has created a most fucked up dream. The only good news in all this is that it is a dream and eventu- ally it all comes to an end for everyone and when that happens it's all okay again. No one is going to hell, death is the escape from hell, the hell that the dream has be- come. But that's not us, we know we are dreaming, and we aim to die before we die, so that we might live while we are here. We also know the dream is in us, but if it is it's also in all the others and since we are one then we have to share in their part of the dream. I might be in my very own dream here in my room but when I leave this house and go to work, I have to enter the dream of other dreamers and when I do that I don't like what I'm seeing. It's been said that at the core of it all, consciousness is completely neutral and while that may be so, it's also true that when one is one with what one is then love aris- es, bliss arises, and forgiveness arises so what's the problem? The problem is that these qualities while producing a state of unconditional love don't mean shit in the dream. For all the empty words of churches and state, these qualities have absolutely no value in the dream you are still forced to live in. In a way, there is almost no place for them here. This explains why guru's have to play the guru role, what other job but to love and guide would suit them? But is it really neutral, I would beg to differ, because consciousness is inherently good, it seeks to comfort not just a chosen few but everyone, all of it. It is merciful in that it forgives all things. When Jesus said, "Forgive them for they know not what they do", he meant that there wasn't anyone there to know what it was they were doing

201 and that's why even he was troubled. That's why even he freaked out in the temple and threw over the tables of the money collectors. He saw how this money thing was going to be a real problem perhaps, that it was going suck the life out of everyone. Maybe he saw that there was going to be a dream where a few crafty fellows would have plenty while almost everyone else would have to give their entire life away toil- ing under miserable life sucking conditions just to survive and eventually there would be no place to go where you would not be impacted by this part of the dream. Just look around, has it not come to pass, the consensual dream is troubling. Even home- lessness, for those truly unwilling to play along to get along, is a crime punishable by imprisonment in my country. Now that you are awake and seeing how it is though all the things that you relied upon to see you through this life have to go. You can not even rely upon yourself be- cause (okay, just one more time) there isn't one. The fact that in my dream character's chosen profession, she does cause harm and suffering to others doesn't suit her anymore. How could it? It may be a dream, it's true but those who know they are dreaming are intrinsically drawn to dreams that are loving to all, without any inclination, without any intent to do so, it just happens as a natural consequence of seeing through the lies. Consciousness itself, what we are, has a natural ability to repel bullshit and seek harmony. It literally enhances all situations within the dream itself. There is no you to understand how this is happening but it is none-the-less of that you can be sure. The only thing left to learn after all the crazy shit you have imagined as your life is truly unreal is to trust that life itself knows what it is doing and to love the fact that it does because that will be all "you" have to go on because there isn't ? Do I have to say it? Probably not.

202 My battery operated heated vest is charged and ready to go so at least this body can be warm while it figures itself out. Until then, nothing is really happening, so time for a nap. Chapter 27 I wonder sometimes if anyone can really grasp the implications of just what we are saying here, like what it would look like if a massive amount of dreamers realized that none of it was real. People might look around and say "Wait a minute" and "You mean?" Then they might think about all the interest rates and how they are paying for their homes over thirty years, paying double even, and just be aghast. Maybe then they would see that there was never even anything called a bank and exclaim, "I don't owe you shit. You can't own the earth. You can't own anything." They would see then that anything that was appearing was a manifestation of consciousness and not some- thing you had to buy. Even car payments would be no more and all that mandatory in- surance that you were paying for all your life would be laughable because no one in their right mind would pay for protection for a time that would never come, that in- deed had never ever arrived or been seen in all eternity. Well, let's just say, the gig would be up. Maybe, who knows, there'd even be mass celebrations, large gatherings with huge bonfires where everyone would come with all their bills in hand, doctors bills, electric bills, credit card bills, all of them and in some type of joyous ceremony they'd all toss them into the fire to be consumed by the unreality of it all. All the people in prison would demand to be let out immediately, crying out that it was only ever a dream and there was no one responsible for anything. All those courts and judges would just quietly slither away out the back door when they realized that the only one they were punishing all these years were themselves and just a persistent reenactment of the punishment they had

203 been subjected to as children. Or maybe armed with the power of consciousness itself, the prisoners and their loved ones united in that power would blow the prison doors down with only their minds and you know they wouldn't be mad at all, they'd just high five their captors on the way out, laughing and saying things like ,"Can you believe this was just a fucking dream, it seemed so real. You played the role of asshole to a tee, super convincing." And the guards would say, "Oh man, sorry about that. I didn't even know." Policeman and military personnel would all step down when they realized that the only one they were ever fighting against was themselves and the bad guy was only their own reflection, well that would be a shock. All laws would be seen to be unreal as well but also unnecessary as no one who was in contact with their essence would be capable of causing any harm at all. If the ones who had created all the laws and pun- ishments didn't wake up and see the error of their ways, they would later be put in facilities where love overflowed until it cured them of all their self righteous malice. Forgiveness in every imaginable form would spread like wildfire creating an en- tirely new dream, one where all these imaginary beings could live from a place of their highest good. Creativity would probably soar to such heights as had never been seen before creating living conditions that just fostered more of it. The imaginary world of pain and sickness would eventually evaporate as well and the new children that were being born having been born into a world of love and total acceptance would foster a new generation of love makers that might look a little like the hippie movement of the sixties only amplified a thousand times over. No? What's that you say? That it will never happen? Well, I'm a dreamer so I can dream. Every single living entity that comes into a realization of their True Nature has an affect on the whole and not just a tiny one. No, not small at all, think about it this

204 way, in all your life just how many other dreamers do you think you might come in contact with? How many dreamers in total do you think that you have come in contact with so far, to date? What about all those music concerts you attended or the street fairs, or carnivals? Your mind might not be able to comprehend it at all right now, but in the same way that if you were cooking a huge pot of soup and someone dropped even an ounce of poison in it, you wouldn't eat any of it, the whole of it would promptly be poured down the drain, well think of that in reverse, only instead of poison, the culprit is the highest form of unconditional love available, the it of everything, the very power that compels each and every breath being taken from moment to moment the world over, think of that being present and tell me how it would not affect anything. It's actually called the Butterfly effect, how even the smallest change in one place can create a huge one somewhere else. Only it wouldn't be a small thing, you living your whole life from a realization of your True Nature doesn't even compare with the flap of some butterfly wings because you aren't flapping any wings, you are the wings and the power that flaps them combined. It's the idea that even one act of kindness can change the course of an entire dream taken to a level that no human eye can even see, much less understand. There's an author by the name of Alice Miller that I read years ago, in fact, I should probably revisit her books as of all the books that I've ever retained through all my many years of bopping from here to there, her entire collection is in a box in my garage as I write this. Alice Miller was a psychologist and philosopher whose research concluded that all mental illness was the result of the lack of "emotional acceptance of the Truth" in childhood and if you ask me what she really discovered was how the entire dream got to be a gigantic madhouse filled to the brim with lunatics. The point I want to make is that in one of her books she

205 talks about abused children and how if during their childhood even though they were being severely abused, if they had even one person who even briefly reached out to them and validated their existence, just one person who was able to show them some compassion, that was able to empathize with their helpless plight, a person who the child could trust to see them as they really were, unique expressions of the divine, that child would be able to circumvent all the painful dreaming that another abused child who never had anyone would have to live through. A brief encounter was enough to change the course of the entire life. Well, it kind of brings the whole "one act of kindness" to a whole new level and the fact that someone in touch with their True Nature reflecting another's True Nature right back at them is a million times more effective in creating well being then even the most well intentioned, well meaning person asleep in the dream can do because in most instances people aren't really being kind for the sake of being kind, they are doing it in the service of the ego, so the ego can feel like it's something special or better than or even that it's done something good. Egos that feel like they've done something good just get stronger. If and when some- thing pleasant appears in the dream, there isn't anyone doing it, no one to take credit for anything at all. So if you think that just seeing there is no you and you are only dreaming, and that's the end of it, think again, you're not even close. Nothing really ends here at all, no to the contrary this is just the beginning. Now perhaps, you will at long last grow up and be able to live in a way that is befitting of what you are. Nobody can tell you what that looks like because what it looks like for me is not what it will look like for you. This is why you can't follow anyone else's path, it just won't make any sense, my dream won't fit into yours and yours won't fit into mine because it's a dream and dreams don't make sense at all, that's why they are dreams to begin with. Maybe, there will be

206 parallels, signposts perhaps that can be recognized by more then one mind but each mind is so unique it's hard to tell what will cross over and what won't. This is really about the dream itself and not getting out of it all together because while first you get out eventually you have to go back in or just sit in a room alone for the rest of your life and just maybe say “fuck it." Well, sometimes I long for that, definitely not the end of the world if it goes that way because to be sure all really is void and emptiness, and if I wasn't in- vested in my dream at all for instance I had no children, I would have absolutely no qualms about it if that's the way it went. I could be perfectly content with maybe step- ping out of the dream as much as possible and not interacting with it at all. That's not what is arising right now for me but you know you never do know what will arise and you know it's not up to you because, well I don't need to say it anymore. I think though there is a tendency for most to perform some action in the dream that helps others in some way, but maybe that's only because we never hear about the ones that just left it and never came back and maybe there are actually more of them then we know. Maybe those are the majority. Well, whatever does appear in the dream is not up to us anyway. I guess just suffice it that consciousness dreams whatever it wants to and that's the end of it. My bank account went into over drawn today. Something that wasn't supposed to go through, a free trial that never got cancelled blew it up because it's been one of those down to the wire months. I had to get gas on the way to work and everything was declined. I had just enough mileage left to make it there but was a few miles short for the return trip home. Luckily, a guy at work who owes me money was sitting across from me at break. I had long forgotten about the money and had really blown it off since he never has any and his life is a true fiasco. But

207 you know there he was and I finally asked him about it. He said he had $3 to his name if that would help and I said, "That's about all I need" so on the way home I found another dollar in the car and four quarters and put five in the tank. Well, shit happens. I'm still holding out on my intention to leave this job in less than six months since some time has passed since I said that. I am not depressed or angry or fright- ened in the least. I get paid in five days and I can make it till then. My youngest son says he will borrow me his last twenty bucks for gas and I got $62 worth of credit on a credit card I can't find right now but that will turn up if I need it to. Life is finally good for a change. I've got food, a bed, and the lights are on. The in- ternet bill is going to be a little late but not late enough to shut it off. Listen, I have more than my share, literally fucking blessed. You know what I don't have? Fear. I can sleep in peace tonight. Chapter 28 There seems to be a tearing down process in all this, almost like consciousness it- self is taking what you thought you were and wiping that out one experience at a time. It very much seems to me like the precision, the timing even, of every experience, might even have a purpose, a beneficial purpose no doubt of propelling itself into some kind of higher functioning or clearer seeing. Each experience is a push, a bump from behind that says, “Come on, don’t stop here, keep going.” Discomfort, unease, even pain, is the motivator. Fewer and fewer of us move from a place of comfort anymore hence why we might lay in bed as long as possible or stay in a job that is you know “practical” or “good enough.” TV, food, and drink are the comforts in the dream now and they are so pervasive that it seems to have stopped everyone in their tracks, so much so that it simply never even occurs to them at all that there is indeed something strange going on here, and you know what-

208 ever they have going on as their dream is plenty fine the way it is. Well, is there any- thing wrong with that? Maybe, that’s enough for them, you know many people I come across seem satisfied enough or they are darn good at hiding their misery. I don’t know which it is, but I can tell you this much, I have nothing in common with them, re- ally even hard to hold a conversation there. It’s curious to me why I even bothered to tell you about how financially I’m in the red right now, like why say it? It’s true that I’ve always lived pretty close to the edge fi- nancially, one swift kick could land me in the gutter on any given day, and yet years have gone by, how many, twenty even thirty, and yet I have never once not ever been completely devastated or forsaken. I have never ever been truly broken, no matter what dream I dreamed and perhaps I think now that despite my obvious lack of finan- cial finesse, I am exactly right on target, haven’t even missed a beat despite what ego might say to the contrary. A line from a song pops in my head, “you have to lose be- fore you win.” This one obstacle though has been pushing me on though, if I was per- haps financially stable at all I might just stop there because except for this one major distraction, I seem to be at peace with almost anything I can come across anymore, you know there’s just a great pull much of the time to just sit and be quiet. Sometimes even to just completely shut up but then there wouldn’t be this writing. I guess it would stop then except that there’s this feeling that there’s something more indeed much more to be discovered and this writing is the way that happens much of the time. It’s my days off now but before that I was at work and I happened to take an old journal with me. It’s a pretty journal, just one of those cute things you can pick up any- where with lined blank paper. The cover has a design that says “Create Your Own Hap- piness” and I’ve had it probably well over a year or so. Back when it was new I used to take it to work and copy quotes by Jed or Ramana or Nisargadatta in it while I was on

209 break. At the time, I was very focused on my “awakening studies”, I would sit alone, to be true I couldn’t stand all the artificial banter that everyone else seemed to be engaged in, like it hurt my ears even and made my stomach turn so I pulled out of it completely even at the risk of seeming weird or aloof or even anti-social and this notebook was what I focused on instead like it was life or death. I would write a quote down in it from one of my books or wherever I found it and I would read them over and over again. It was very important to me at the time al- most like I couldn’t live without doing this, or waste any spare moment I had on anything but this and then for some reason I stopped taking it and something else took over and it winded up in my bedside night- stand. Anyway, I was getting ready for work a few days ago, and for some reason I see it and I put it in my purse. So I’m at work on my break, and I’m reading what’s in there and it just dawns on me that at the time of writing all those things down, I had no idea what they meant, and now I do. There I was in the break room surrounded by all sorts of people and I’m having the most profound moment, like my eyes just teared up and I had to hold back because of where I was but you know I wasn’t sad, not at all, I just felt like this love had been there all along, had even been holding me and I didn’t even know it. The first quote which is handwritten on the inside cover is by Nisargadatta and it says “All I ask is the little faith needed for making the first step. With experience will come confidence and you will not need me anymore. I know what you are and I am telling you. Trust me for a while.” The next few are by Jed. “Not so much as a hair out of place in the entire universe, as well you know.” “You observe events and you allow the flow of things to do the steering and you go where you go.”

210 “The universe is funny about how it puts us exactly where we need to be to pick up the next piece of the puzzle.” And lastly, “The truth, though, is that nothing is really wrong. Nothing is EVER wrong. It’s not even wrong to believe that something is wrong. Wrong is simply not possible.” So yeah, there I am in my dealer uniform, little notebook in my lap, all these char- acters chatting aimlessly all around me, a TV on the wall has noise from some sporting event, football or some other stupid shit and then there’s just me, some older looking lady from the outside but on the inside something else, over flowing with gratitude at the gift I’ve been given to see beyond this seemingly solid world into something so completely different, something miraculous, magnificent, a perfection even that is actually beyond describing. Well, I guess you had to be there. Then maybe, I have the thought that these quotes, these five par- ticular quotes are still the ones I need to read everyday, especially on days when maybe the dreamed character comes back and tries to tell me something else, like “you’re done for” or “there’s no way out of the dream you dreamed” and “it’s too late for you, the rest of your days will be spent climbing out of this mountain of debt you’ve accrued and you will be working at the casino for the rest of your life, four years to get in, twenty to get out, there isn’t enough time to change the road you’re on after all.” Well, I have thoughts like that, days even where the dream becomes super heavy, where the noise of the casino and all the characters that bombard me there in that dream seem like it’s all just too much, where I go from table to table taking everyone’s money and the character’s keep saying to me, “you’re mean” or just getting so angry like I’m to blame and I just keep dealing and praying quietly for the end of time. Even I know they can’t help it, that there isn’t anyone really there talking to me at all, just

211 dreamed characters playing their roles, it can still wear me down and wear me out be- cause it sometimes still just seems so real like it feels like there are really people there and I’m there as well. It sometimes feels like there’s a real body that didn’t get any sleep and now has to stand in this fucking place. So maybe that’s how it came up for me to pick up that notebook again, something mysterious, something you can’t even see at all, just like a random thought or motion, that makes you pick up what you need to focus on. The words “Just trust me for a little while” being played in the background now. “Just trust me”, “Just trust me” on repeat, being heard over and over again, like a mantra. Some- thing to keep me hanging on, to not turn back, to not believe any part of the dream is real at all, to let me rest, to let me know that all is always well, that it’s all on point and can’t be any other way, can’t ever even go in the wrong direction at all, when you need something like that look around, because it’s looking for you probably right in front of your face chasing you even and trying desperately to hunt you down. I know I talk about love a lot and people are probably sick of hearing about it but it’s not the same love that you might think of, it’s not a love like someone loves you at all. You know I never even had a love like that, I never had a lover relationship type of love, not at all, even though I was married two times, (well I was with two people both for three years and there was that stupid piece of paper) there was nothing that I would call love about those more like a temporary agreement to make life seem a lit- tle less lonely at first but in the end, all that was left was an even deeper feeling of loneliness like there was no one who could be trusted. Actually, I don’t think an ego can be trusted at all, ego’s have themselves as their main focus at all times and in rela- tionship, it’s only how can your ego enhance mine and when it no longer can it breaks down. Both times I dreamed I walked down the isle, I literally had the thought “what the fuck are you doing, this is stupid and it’s not going to work, I don’t even think you

212 want this” but even though I knew it was some bullshit it was too late to back out at that point I guess and both of them were just a big mess. I felt like an imposter in my own life, literally knew I was faking. Looking back, I’m just grateful they did end as quickly as they did, and that I never found anyone else. The whole relationship thing is just a dream dynamic to keep you from escaping the dream, like why would you want to get stuck loving just one person your whole life anyway? I told my kids, getting married is just another way for the government to make money off of you, first they charge you to do it and then if you want to get out, it costs a hell of a lot more. What the fuck does a legal document have to do with love anyway? Like what the fuck is that? There’s a piece of paper that says you are bound by laws to another body? Huh? I tell my kids, you know what, love as many people as you want to, if you find someone you want to stick with fine but you don’t have to fuck- ing commit your entire life to it or have a piece of paper to make it harder for either one of you to move on, as if moving on was a failure. All you are here to do is have fun, so when the funs up, it’s time to walk on down the road. The sad part is that dream characters who never find anyone to spend their lives with think there’s something wrong with them, like they have seriously failed somehow and it makes them very sad like even being alone is a failure. Listen, we are all alone anyway except that we’re not. One, just one and not two, does not make alone a possibility. Well, love in the dream, you find out is just more bullshit. If someone asked me to marry them today you know what I’d say? I’d say “Shut up and don’t be a dumbass”. Marriage is actually based on fear, the fear that without this piece of paper, one of the participants in the game might not keep on playing their role in it. The fact that almost none of the dream characters even know they have been sucked into playing this role and that

213 the love they are really seeking is not going to be found there, that no one else can give you what you are longing for which is just your true Self, all that is, just makes for some more screwed up dreaming but you know it goes how it goes. So the love I’m talking about now is an altogether different kind of love. This is the kind of love that doesn’t care how much money you have or whether you have any. (For real, there isn’t really anything called “money”, even money is an idea but it’s an “idea” that is very pervasive in the dream) There is literally no conditions on it at all. You don’t have to deserve it in any way, nothing at all that you can do to earn it , it cares not in the least of anything that you can do or say, nothing like that in fact I would say almost the opposite, like the less you are anything to do with you, the more you feel it. So it doesn’t matter at all whether your fi- nances are in a mess, or anything at all with any of the moving pictures that are ap- pearing. It’s more of a feeling of trust than anything else, trust that all is well. It’s actual- ly how you can realize that you are completely bankrupted and even that is fine. It’s how when I saw the charge for over a hundred dollars and didn’t know what it was, I wrote a text to all the kids and asked them if they knew what it was and my daughter said she did and it was a trial that turned into a yearly subscription to some totally frivolous Hollywood movie app, something like that, still don’t really know and don’t care. It’s how the first thing I said was “It’s okay, I’m not mad or anything. I’ll try to cancel it and get the money back but if not oh well.” (for three days I thought that was a no go and then poof I call my bank and the money had reappeared...imagine if I had freaked out about it, how I could have just been an ass- hole and broken the trust my daughter has in me to never be against her at all in any way) It’s being able to be like that and to know that nothing is anyone’s fault, that noth- ing anyone does is “on purpose” and knowing that, it’s the ability to not cause suffer- ing. It’s knowing that nothing is ever wrong no matter what it looks like. It’s the abso-

214 lutely gentle way you can conduct yourself now. It’s the way nothing can get under your skin (or at least not for more than five minutes, that seems to be the time frame I’m in right now), it’s knowing no comment, no action, not even your own or anyone else’s is important at all. It’s knowing that nothing is against you at all. It’s knowing that the only thing that can even feel or look like it’s against you is only you so maybe look into that. It’s knowing that you don’t even need to know what the future holds for you at all because at long last there has ceased to be one. It is just this, whatever is, right now completely accepted even if you don’t like it. Well, you know there are a lot of things I don’t like about my fucking dream but I don’t sit here and think it’s real. I don’t sit here and think that I am a person that has done anything to cause it. Listen, there is definitely a clean up phase in all this because you have spent years of your life living it under false pretences and totally wrong ideas about everything. Like all this time you spent thinking the world was “out there” and not just some made up thoughts that you were conditioned to believe is going to take some time to get over. Well, I got my paycheck and paid all the bills. Good for me but you know who cares. I don’t sit here and think I did something. It’s just what seems to happen in this dream of mine. The only thought I had was how was something called a government taking a third of my money and what were they doing with it, trying to build a fucking wall? I’m trying to tear down walls here not build more. I wouldn’t even have any debts if I could just keep what I earn and not have to pay some fictional fucking entity that as far as I can see only does stupid shit in the dream anyway. I can’t for the life of me figure out why all the other dreamers seem to go along with this weird of weirdest fantasies, like it’s just hard for me to understand how anyone can even believe that something called a country that needed to be pro- tected from other countries could ever even exist. Well, the consensual dream runs on

215 fear and preys on fear. It’s fear from top to bottom and is just a misery maker the whole dream world over but that’s another chapter. Things are fine. They might not “look” fine in the dream but they are still fine. This I know. This is the love I know, nothing is out there at all. If it doesn’t look nice out there, there’s only one thing left to do and that’s to clean up what’s inside. It’s always inside projecting outside. This is what’s going on with me now, except that I’m not the one doing this or anything else for that matter, because as we all know by now, I don’t even say it anymore. Chapter 29 Well, you are going to die. Your body is going to get old so fast, way before you even realize what is happening and then the you that you think you are will be gone. For some of us that will be a happy day, we will be so relieved to be set free from that fucking burden it will be like finally we will be able to live except that we won't be- cause we are now dead and there's nothing left to experience like what we have now in this dream world. I'm not saying that even that won't be some kind of fantastic shit but how would I know? Haven't actually been there yet and when I do get there, I doubt I will be able to report back to let anyone know what's in store. Probably, I won't give a fuck about this world I'm in now at all so not going to be sending any mes- sages. Probably I will just know that everything is fine and doesn't need anything so nothing will be appearing from that dimension at all. Well, maybe you are reading this, yeah probably you are if you are, but maybe you are thinking also that I am here and you are there but that's not true, whatever is being written here is being written by you for you and I'm not even here at all. That is closer to it. I'm not even here at all, I know it now all too well, I am zero, whatever, whoever I think I am is zero, non existent, just a phantom, a non entity, nothing special, nothing at all. Everything is just only itself, all is only itself, how could there be anything more

216 special or less special in any of it if it is all just itself? The whole fucking thing is either fantastic or just nothing at all, but maybe just both at the same time. You and me, ex- periencing ourselves, one self, no you, no me, just this whole thing that we are and no appearance in it means anything at all, it doesn't have to, it is just it. It's the most fucked up delusion that we can think that we are separate entities, that there are those who know and those who don't, and those who know are better than those who don't instead of just knowing that whatever doesn't know isn't sup- posed to know and still isn't anything other than what you are. And the whole thing is just you and me and always was and was never anything else, literally couldn't be any- thing else. Who the fuck have we been fighting all this time but our own non existent minds, a fictional entity interacting with other fictional entities that are all only itself? "Oh, God, I'm all alone in this now", the fictional entity cries, "No, I don't want this. I don't want this at all. I want to be somebody. I want to be special. I want to stand apart." That's what it says but what would it stand apart from? Itself? Not going to hap- pen! Listen, anything you see, anything you do, or you "think" you do, it will creep in that there is a you who did it, there isn't. Nothing you do has anything to do with you, there is no you, everything is you, the tree, the rock, the dirty carpet, the dishes, the music, the unkempt lawn, that fabulous meal you just cooked, (yeah, maybe you did, I don't cook, actually fucking hate the whole mess of it, shit maybe I can eat at your house) anything, everything, nothing at all is left out, not even your unshaven legs and rodents running amok in the attic and the walls of your house or mine, I'm a mouse murderer don't you know. Could be anything, you have to see this, the package from Amazon that just showed up, the bills in the mailbox, your mother on the phone, the body who just flipped you off on the freeway for cutting him off by accident or be- cause you fucking like cutting people off, all of it is just you but not the you that you

217 think you are for the last fucking time. It goes the way it goes and you are not there like you think you are, believe me, time is not even there at all, you don't have any time for this, an entire life is like five fucking minutes or less. It is that fucking fast and it is all just a fucking dream, the wool pulled over your eyes, so wake the fuck up al- ready. Maybe then you will finally, at long last, cut yourself a fucking break, that you have done exactly what was expected of you, that nothing that has ever seemed that has happened could have ever seemed it had happened in any other way that it could have seemed it happened, maybe then FUCKING FORGIVE YOURSELF FOR ALL OF IT! How about give that a go? How about really see that there was no "You" in any of it? Whatever past you think you have, whatever action that you currently think you are taking was not ever up to "you" at all? How about seeing that it was all just a fucking joke? The whole mother fucker was a joke and there was never anything, nothing at all, that was ever up to "you"? You know what I'm doing right now? I'm having a glass of wine, probably going to drink the whole fucking bottle and the other bottle I bought a couple of hours ago. I went 8 days without nicotine and now I'm smoking the Marlboro Reds I bought a cou- ple hours ago when I bought the wine with the debit card that is about to be over drawn again when one of my credit card payments gets automatically withdrawn be- fore the next paycheck gets deposited and so fucking what? I don't even like drinking or smoking but it's here now for some stupid reason. Am I worried? NO! Am I sad? NO! Am I blaming myself? NO! There isn't one. I'm not fucking here like that. I am not any of these things. Consciousness is having an experience, it likes to do that, I am that, I'm in my room, writing this, am I? Or is it all doing its thing? I got a buzz and I got my headphones in, the song that appeared, it's not even a song I know, look it up, Scorpions "Still Loving You." Hmm, and all is well .

218 I don't even know this song like I said, wasn't looking for it, didn't even know I was going to be listening to anything five minutes ago. I look up the lyrics and what do I find...lets see... Time, it needs time to win back your love again I will be there, I will be there Love, only love can bring back your love someday I will be there, I will be there Fight, babe, I'll fight to win back your love again I will be there, I will be there Love, only love can bring down the wall someday I will be there, I will be there If we go again all the way from the start I would try to change the things that killed our love Your pride has built a wall, so strong that I can't get through Is there really no chance to start once again? I'm loving you Try, baby, try to trust in my love again I will be there, I will be there Love, our love just shouldn't be thrown away I will be there, I will be there If we'd go again, all the way from the start I would try to change the things that killed our love Your pride has built a wall, so strong that I can't get through Is there really no chance to start once again? If we'd go again, all the way from the start I would try to change the things that killed our love Yes, I've hurt your pride, and I know what you've been through

219 You should give me a chance, this can't be the end I'm still loving you I'm still loving you I'm still loving you I need your love I'm still loving you Still loving you, baby Still loving you I need your love Still loving you I need your love, oh Still loving you I need your love, oh I need your love I need your love... Yes, and that is what I experience right now. It's not a big deal, it's not anything, I'm not anybody, I got nothing here, nothing that the world would ever care about at all, in fact maybe it would laugh at me, mock me, call me a loser, but I am not there. This is what I'm telling you. I'm not in that world, don't care one bit about it, don't even want it. Just want nothing, whatever I see, that's what I want, fading away, no one there to want or not want, just lay it down, what good is holding on, how long can you hold on, I can't do it anymore, it's like lead, if you want to kill me then kill me, take me, I give up. Not going to hold on to anything anymore. Too tired now, does it all not slip through your fingers anyway, can we not see how it is all just slipping away, each mo- ment melting into the next and nothing there at all?

220 Just nothing at all, not even a word, not even a glance that you can hold on to, what can you hold, only the briefest moment of right now and then the next, just a movement out of your hands, no control, all control is just a contraction, a constriction, you have to strain to keep it but even that won't do it, nothing you can do at all to hold on to anything. Letting go, just letting go even if it fails, does it not all fail in the end anyway? What is there that will not fail and fade away? All appearances gone but you, you alone, con- sciousness remain throughout it all, through out time, never ending seeing and noth- ing more. Stop all trying. It does nothing but frustrate and fight against what is, but what will letting go bring, the unknown, and therefore something new? Not even going to try to know. My best effort has got me no where, perhaps be- cause there's no where to go. Wherever you are is just wherever your imagination has allowed you to go, maybe then the trick is to let go of it because maybe your imagina- tion is only filled with what you believe is possible for you and what you believe is only what you've been told by all the other non entities who think they are something knowing something which they don't. The blind leading the blind, maybe that's all your own imagination is capable of holding until you say you don't know shit, until you say, you don't know it and then maybe it can know what it knows without any restric- tions laid upon it by the "you" who doesn't even know it isn't a "You." I'm not saying this is the way it is, how the hell would I know, I'm just putting these fucking words down the way they want to come down so if I'm onto something it's nothing to do with me and yes you guessed it and I'm going to say it after all, don't ask me why, I don't know but "there isn't one." I should warn you, that as wonderful as finding out what you are is, you are only love and compassion, not even the least bit of malice in there, none, that you can kiss

221 the life as you know it goodbye. Don't even for a minute let your mind look to the out- ward appearances for even half a second to judge whether or not you are on any kind of "successful" path. Those dreamers around you are in no position to tell you what you are and whether what you are is worth anything in the world that they dream. Not at all, now my friend, my dearest friend, wherever you find yourself, you are forever on your own, except that maybe you aren't, maybe now you are in the world that really does matter, like whatever forgiveness you can give, no matter how small or insignificant it seems is like the flapping of a butterfly wing creating change in un- known places. Anyway if you are worried at all about what you are doing or where you think "your life" is headed then you aren't there yet because I can tell you right now that anything that you think you do or see is nothing to do with you. You didn't create it and nothing that a "you" can do has any say in creating anything. The only thing the thought that there is a "you" can ever do is just say "yes" to whatever it does see no matter if what it sees is painful or full of joy. Those who take this "you" to be what they are experience it as something that they are responsible for and those that know that they are in fact being lived by life itself just allow life to have its way with them. Unfor- tunately, the conditioning and the energetic connection to what is seen has to be al- lowed to play itself out to its inevitable end but as long as you know there is no you in it to believe it then it will go by rather quickly. Indeed, as long as you don't believe any picture you see it will be most easy. Or it might not be, because the world you see might not look nice at all, actually it might look like its totally against you, I know, even you might think I'm something special because I write here but no, it isn't like that. In my own personal life, I can tell you right now it's no more special than your own life in fact just so hopeless of anything wonderful happening at all that I'm able to sit here and if the whole world comes down on me, condemns me, laughs at me, scorns me, tells me I'm so low down that I'm not even in the running, you know, worthless, my

222 own conditioned mind might still try to sort through the fact that it might not be true. So take my word for it, it’s not. Listen, let me really tell you, from my own heart to yours, that I too am afraid, that I have things that I want to hold on to like my children, my house, and maybe even my job so I can have some money but all these things what are they but only my "hopes" and I've seen first hand that "hopes" are nothing but a wish that you will keep on sur- viving. Yeah, I just let the whole thing go, I can't even say I did that, just sitting here watch- ing it all just be what it is. I'm too tired to hold it, shit was I holding it before, no won- der I was so exhausted, yawning every five minutes, so sleepy, trying to keep my eyes open to deal another hand of blackjack, too sleepy, can't stay awake without the cof- fee, good god where's my bed, let me just get in that for a few days, I can't keep it to- gether. It's all flying apart now, looks like a tornado hit this room, I didn't go to work tonight, no just couldn't find the get up and go, and oh well. I can't even say I did that, not at all, I don't know what's coming next, just let it come. I'm all through planning anything, whatever comes just comes, whatever this body does I guess it does, what- ever words fly then just let them fly. Other than that, I'm still loving you too. Chapter 30 So when I woke up today, something completely new had come up. It was like this feeling of being so small, as small as an ant, like there was suddenly a lot less of me. The night before, I had gotten paid and after paying all the bills, it showed that all we would do for the next two weeks was eat and put gas in the car to go to work. Yeah, like literally there was nothing left over, how had it come to this, well you know tips were down, and bills were up and it was what it was and even that was okay.

223 I was very quiet now, no music playing, just the sound of my breath. The kitchen needed cleaning so I thought well I'll do that. I'll just clean the house today and it was weird because I just had this feeling of getting smaller and smaller, or maybe it was lower and lower, it's hard to explain but it was like there was something there, and it was in a place that was hard to reach, like I had to let everything else, all thoughts of anything else happening or wanting to happen fall away. It's almost like it wanted me to do this, to just get super small and super quiet and just go to this place that was in there, inside somehow, and just find out what it was. Let me tell you, it felt kind of sad in there and very very empty, like all the people and places and goings on, this and that, was over now, that it had all somehow past by already or there had never really been anything there at all. So I cleaned the kitchen, did all the dishes, pots and pans and wiped down the stove and counters and I got a bit of satisfaction from doing that, if that's my available light right now, well I'll take it, deep inside I just said to the universe or consciousness or whoever I was talking to, "I'll take it, I'll just take whatever you give me, and I'll take it gratefully, like just this moment, whatever it brings, I'll just accept it and love it as best I can." I said, "you know, there's nothing I can do, I'm small now, too small now to push it all around anymore, it's just out of my hands, my own hands have failed me, and I can see that they always will, time to let something else step in, you want my life, all of it, now you have it, I step aside." So then, I folded the laundry and I went in my son's room and hung up all his clothes for him. I had said he should do it himself from now on, but I needed to have someone else I could do for now. Nothing it seemed was about me anymore, no it was only about what I could give, that it was always only about what one could give away that made any sense at all. I mean it's a weird thing to see what you see, and you have to get a real sense about it, a very deep understanding even that no one you

224 know can see it at all, and that they are trapped, probably for life, in a game that they can't win, the same game that you yourself played for so long, how frustrating it is to never get anywhere. So there was that, just this laying down of all of it, complete surrendering to what- ever this moment holds, what else is there, what can you do but that when it's not up to you. The sense that there is a "you" in it at all starts to fall away all by itself, all this time it never was, and even now, maybe what starts to happen is that you can clearly see how it was all doomed from the start, and the whole painful thing, well you can just wrap it up and say, "There, there now, it's all okay now, just a little dreaming, now that wasn't so bad", but you know maybe it was, maybe it was awful, well it's no fun to go around thinking you are something you are not. The whole false self is trying its whole life to hold it together, but what is it holding? There wasn't anything to grab a hold of, it was all just passing through, so grasping at straws day after day, of course, you are worn out. The mind has been following one thought after another, trying to chase something down, trying without fail to get to a place that doesn't actually exist, it goes this way and that way, try this, no that doesn't work so now try that, failure again and again, the conflicts, the blame, the utter unfairness of it all, feeling like a real victim and yet, there it was the whole time, right there to be seen at every single turn, of course you have sensed it, all your life it's been right there just out of your grasp but still there nonetheless, dropping hints continuously, the little spaces, the open- ings, what was in the way? "You", you and the conditioned mind, the lies in there, be- liefs, emotions, the history of you, a mind created fantasy, but never the Truth. Well, a little compassion is helpful here, just seeing that it was the best it could be and now it will be something else entirely. It's reaching out it's hand to you and it just says "Trust me" again and again until you can do that. Until you can completely let go of any resemblance of control over anything that you thought you had any control

225 over. It will break you down until this happens, why? Why would it break you down? That doesn't seem right now does it? Listen, it's not to hurt you at all, it just wants you to see that you don't have to struggle and strive anymore, that you can just be free and allow what it is to live right on through that body you feel like you are in. Listen, it knows what it is doing, and it's the only thing that does, you don't have any access at all to what the future holds for you, you're thinking mind is just a memory, so it has to open up and let the sun shine in and the only way to do that is to throw up your hands and give up your entire life to it. It is you anyway. There is such an idea ingrained in the mind that you need to be protected against something, no one really knows what that is, well there are a million little things and they change everyday. Which one your con- ditioned mind will focus on next is anyone's guess but it's not real and never was. Keep in mind now that it is not serious at all. Even if you lose your house, or your job, or even your kids, nothing was ever your fault, I'm not saying that will happen but we don't know so just let go, nothing is really yours anyway. There isn't anything here to own or claim as your own, nothing at all, there really isn't anything even here like you think there is. There is only awareness and the content is not real so you have to let it go and to step into a place of utter not knowing. I don't mean like a little not knowing, like maybe give this little part up here and ok, you can have that part, I mean the whole fucking thing, the whole big fucking mess of it. You see there is this delu- sion here, and what it looks like is that everyone around you is doing fine, they are all happy and their lives are working out perfectly, nothing disturbs them at all, that is what you're mind sees but believe me it is not like that at all for them. It is a strain and a struggle every minute for every single one of them to hold this image they have of themselves together so they can fool you into thinking that they have something you don't. Nobody is having anything, you have to see this, you have to look for the strain in their eyes, the fear that is lurking back there because they don't have any idea what

226 they are and they probably never will. That's not their fault at all but you know whatev- er they say, or do or act like, they had no hand in any of it. It is all completely unreal, all the people are unreal and so are you. Your own body is not even really there, it is all a trick of the mind that there is something solid about anything. So, yeah, just letting go, deep breath in, deep breath out. Letting go, just relaxing, what ever appears just appears, we don't even step into that, just letting it all be the way it is knowing deep down that it is all just fine, it is all okay, it was always just al- ready taken care. So you just take what comes your way, there's really nothing else to do but that, take every little thing, the smallest thing if you have to, just be grateful for the next breath, sometimes it comes down to just that one thing, it might, and that's fine, that's all you really need anyway, what you are, just the next breath, no more try- ing to do anything, it will happen all by itself on it's own anyway. Just what exactly will happen? Nothing, nothing is happening, it is all just an appearance, a show, and none of it means anything to anybody anywhere because the whole thing is just itself, never forget that. It has you because it is you, just not what you thought you were. No it is much more than that little thing, that little person with all the troubles and headaches. It is just love, just love saying, just love this, and only this and that's all that's required of you. I will take care of the rest. Just take that next breath and whatever your body does, let it do so without any concern about how that next breath will happen. It was never up to you at all, sorry it had to be so hard, not sure why it had to be that way, I tried my best to show you, everyday, every moment, I was there just showing you. Maybe now you will see that and let me work my magic with you, but first you have to let go, you have to give it all to me to do with it what I will. A little more about trust in what you are, how are you going to trust if everything is just what and how you want it to be? There's not really any trust in that at all. Listen, things just don't always go your way in a dream because it is after all a dream, and

227 dreams are not predictable at all, if life was predictable it would be beyond boring. I mean do you really want it to go the way you want it to go, what if something much better than you can imagine was destined to happen but instead you have decided that it would be easier and much safer not rock the boat, just keep going the way you always have, you know you might be set up that way, where you can stay for instance safely inside your home and never deviate from your normal routine. Or you can open yourself up to something that is bigger than anything you can ever imagine by stepping out into the unknown and trusting that nothing can actually ever happen to you at all. To do this you will need to have some trust, because the ability to move forward, to move beyond what you have always thought was possible for you actually relies on it. Remember this world, this dream is actually in you and coming from you, so if you are afraid then you will actually be focusing on things that you are afraid of and in a way make those things manifest. Then you will say, "You see, I knew it would turn out this way", never realizing that the reason it did was because of the attention you were giving to that feeling of fear inside of you. The world is really vi- bration so it's imperative to "nice" dreaming that you trust. Implicit in trust itself is the concept of "not knowing" and if you were to truly investigate what you know for sure, you might find out that the answer to that is fucking nothing. All that is ever really hap- pening is that thoughts are appearing from somewhere and you are believing them. It's the same as if I came to your house, rang your front door and said, "You don't know me at all but I know what's best for you so pay attention and believe everything I tell you. Now hand me your wallet." Your own thoughts are as trustworthy as that. Most of them are lies, and they almost always keep you in fear. So really how far fetched is it that what you are has your best interests at heart so you can trust this? Do not all things have as their very nature their very best interests at the center of their activities? It is actually the most natural flow, a completely loving

228 flow, and the only thing in the way of experiencing yourself and your life this way is the false sense of self that was created out of the wrongness of childhood trauma which comes to you in the form of thoughts, conscious and even unconscious, a sense of dis-ease that arises from within the body field. There is trapped energy in there, emo- tions that were suppressed and we need to feel those to release them. Consider this carefully, if the dream is being created out of the energy field that developed during your life, then the only way to alter that is to go to the source of the discomfort, which is the place of distrust, it was the creation of distrust in what you were. So this letting go, is actually a letting go of the past, letting go of the images of the past and the en- ergetic reactions that are associated with them. That's why it's helpful to just sit with your worst fears, like just sit and image that all your worst fears have come to pass, stay in that, and realize deeply here that in the context of time and space, nothing has actually happened to you at all and never will nor ever can. This is just complete non attachment to the dream which you now know was never real to begin with. It's realiz- ing deeply that there was never a "you" in it at all and therefore no "you" to feel bad about anything at all, no one anywhere to blame for anything, the mechanism of con- trol having vanished completely and just compassion arising for the whole misunder- standing. This compassion is for you, yes it will spread out from you once you have it, but first it is for you and let me tell you it goes against the very fabric of how this world of disturbed egos operates, the very tension of being around other beings who are com- pletely absorbed in the distorted mind, is hard to combat, but we are not fighting it now, we are allowing, we must allow all to be as it is, but the energy fields of others might be felt, it might actually come into yours, until yours is so strong that no distor- tion of reality remains for you. This is super confusing at first because no one really tells you about it like you might have this wonderful experience of the divine and then

229 go back to experiencing your life as burdensome and maybe even heavier than be- fore and the mind comes in and tries to get you to dismiss the whole thing. It tells you that this world of troubles is real because it is the most persistent experience so you know you must have missed something. You didn't miss anything, all that's happening is that the delusional mind doesn't want to be annihilated and it wants you to fight what is because that is what it is actually made of, that's what gives it it's feeling of substance. Listen, I don't have any doubt in my mind right now that what I'm going through in my own life isn't right on track, that the loving force of consciousness I'm one hundred percent committed to isn't working non stop to rid me of every trou- bling dream manifestation I currently experience. Part of this whole process for me is to go through it so I can share it with you, it is actually happening the way it is happen- ing so that I can communicate it to you otherwise what would I have to write about? I would just sit here in complete and utter bliss and not move a muscle which I actually suspect will be how I will live out the last of my earthly days just having a great big ball of it down here in dreamland. I found a recorded meditation online that I've started doing daily myself, how did I find it? No idea, whatever I need just seems to come to me so I just find shit, guess that's what I do. Anyway I'd like to share it with you since it seems helpful to me and it puts me into a real state of relaxation where I just seem to melt into the bed I'm laying down listening to it on. We all need this, just this complete letting go, the dream life can be a real fucker, so you know you have to just lay it down sometimes and wander off to a nice place where you can leave the bullshit behind and just be what you are. Here's the link. Enjoy and much love as always. https://youtu.be/0tw_9rmb7_0 Chapter 31

230 Nothing matters at all, listen up, this is important, no not really, I'm just fucking with you, nothing is important at all either but really what matters? Given the fact that your body will be here having a dream for a short time (shorter than you know, shorter than you can even imagine, really your own imagination is not even capable of com- prehending just how little time you actually have, if it did it would freak the fuck out, so that's why it can never even fucking go to that place) what if anything does matter? The only things that matter to you are the things that you have made up in your own fucking mind to matter, that's right, whatever matters to you is made up by you. Most of these "matterful" matterfullings were just dumped on you anyway, they were dumped on you by your particular conditioning and fucking drummed into your thought patterns, and they are all lies, every single fucking one of them because noth- ing actually matters at all. You really have to wrap your head around it, like really explore this, get a picture of yourself, your own body, laying there in the grave dead as a fucking doornail or be- ing thrown carelessly by the undertaker, like a heap of garbage into the incinerator to be burned to a crisp and transformed into a pile of ashes that one or two gusts of wind can easily pick up and swiftly scatter never to be found again by anyone or any- thing. That is really how much things matter. The idea that you are here to do anything "important" at all is just pure bullshit. If there is any purpose to this life at all, or if you need one, then choose the only one worth choosing...yes I'm going to use a word here...probably you don't even know what it means yet, maybe I'll get to that in a minute, okay here's the word in caps....LOVE. This whole world is in you anyway so why not love it? Do you like it when it feels like people or circumstances are against you? No, you don't like it all because it makes you feel like shit, and then in your ignorance you take actions to retaliate or fight against it, causing untold suffering to yourself and others. My fucking God, it is not

231 fucking so hard to see, this is the whole fucking story of the world. This is why there has always been this miserable running theme of us against them, mine and yours, better and worse, good and bad, worthy and unworthy, rich and poor, you name it, the list goes on. You want a purpose for your life, I'll give you one, set a fucking example of uncon- ditional love for whoever comes in contact with you to follow. Let's really get this straight, like really get it down, come up against it, rub our own faces in it, really ce- ment it in and ultimately make it our own, so that we can have the best time available in whatever time we have left. So how do we get there? How do we get to a place where we can just enjoy what- ever arises as it arises? How do we get to a place where we can even enjoy the things in this dream that we once thought were unpleasant? This is really the question be- cause we already know how to enjoy the things we like, the reason we enjoy them is because we do like them but what about all the other shit? First off, let's really under- stand that we don't enjoy unpleasant things because our own minds have actually la- beled them as unpleasant and we have an ingrained association of unpleasant feel- ings that arise at the sight of those things that we have judged as wrong. So we have to really dive into the whole right and wrong issue, we have to grapple with it and see it for what it is. We know the dream is coming out of us and the dream was created out of our own particular conditioning therefore not at all of our own choosing, whatever we did to get to where we are seeing ourselves right now was an automatic unfolding of whatever we were exposed to and we extend this understanding to all the other beings we come in contact with knowing full well that absolutely nothing is happening by way of choice at all. Everyone, yourself included is only capable of what their cur- rent conditioning allows them to be capable of, so forgive, forgive, forgive, and let go of anything that you have been conditioned to see as wrong or unloving.

232 Now you are going to read that last sentence, yes the one right above this and you are going to say, "Yeah, sure, that sounds nice, sounds good, sounds like a great idea", but and this is a big BUT you are not going to be able to implement it. In all like- lihood, it is going to go in one ear and out the other just as fast as you were able to read it. How not why is the question that you need to ask yourself here because given the fact that the dream is coming out of your mind, is it not naturally in your best inter- est for your experience in the dream that you just let go of any and all grievances you have if only to relieve the stress that they cause you? The other reason is that every- thing is just you so what ever you hold on to in the way of negative shit will just repeat ad nauseum, it will show up at the very least as an aggravation and at the very most as a fucking disaster in your daily experience. So in light of the very little time that you ac- tually do have here in this form, I think it just makes sense that maybe if you really do want to make the most of it this is going to be part of it. I've said it before and I'll say it again...love out is love in...or if you prefer it also goes the other way...petty fucking bullshit out...petty fucking bullshit in, your call. So just how do we make this call? Attention...it is all in your attention. It is what you as in your mind (which is not you) is focusing on. Most people are not even knowing that there is such a thing as being able to choose what they are focusing on, no they think they are their thoughts so wherever their thoughts take them that's where they go but that's not us here, we know that our minds are what is in the way of us seeing what is really here (just the Self). So we have to work on this, we have to practice this just like anything else, we have to train our own minds to focus on what is real (which is only the unbiased, nonjudgmental, ever compassionate, all embracing Self) and learn to steer our minds away from focusing on anything else. In a nutshell, isn't our experience just the interpretation of what we are seeing? So if we alter the interpreta- tion, couldn't anything be blissful and peaceful? Could it be that without any interpre-

233 tation at all, without interference from the conditioned mind all that is, is only this bliss- ful and peaceful, all encompassing Self? Could it be that what we are longing for, what we have been seeking all this time has always been right here in plain view except that the conditioned mind has blocked us and everyone else we know from seeing it? Could it be that not only is it what we are seeing all around us at every moment but that it indeed is us as well, the very instrument of being that allows the seeing to even happen? That it is the Self here and now, the Self seeing itself and loving itself for no other reason than that it is the love that it loves? What else could love do? Love is the function of love. Listen, when you get rid of the filtering mind, I can tell you from direct experience that the world you will find yourself in is not the same world. It does not function in the same way that the world the conditioned mind believes is there at all. It is literally not the same place, it is a place transformed by love and not by this "love" that you think you know, not any kind of ordinary human love, no nothing like that at all, it is not like a love that we "think" is happening, it is the whole fucking thing, it isn't just big, it's the biggest, all that is in any direction and it has access to every single movement be- cause it is that, it is every word you hear, every color you see, every sensation you feel, completely all. It is literally the most powerful thing there is because it is all that is. So all you need to focus on is seeing yourself for what you truly are, you need to be very diligent and one pointed in your intention to see this, keeping your attention only on this goal every single minute of every single day. You don't need to worry about or even con- template anything else that you "think" is going on, this activity of focusing on other things is a "mind/ego preserving strategy" of the conditioned mind/ego you are trying to crack open. This does not mean that when you are hungry you don't eat or if you need to work at a job to pay for your lodging you don't go to work but even when you

234 do these things your focus is at least partially focused (as much as possible) on the one and only goal of seeing your True Nature and ridding yourself of the burden of the conditioned mind once and for all. Let's get this straight, very, very, few people actually "wake up", there are many, many more who say they want to wake up but that's as far as it goes, it seems like a great idea, but usually out of reach and not seriously pursued. Mostly here, the mind has come in and said, "you know, don't bother, that shit is weird anyway, just keep dabbling, you don't want to get into something you may regret later, besides people will think you are weird and you don't want that, it's easier to just fit in." So it isn't that it's out of reach. It's not out of reach for anyone who truly wants this but and this is an- other big "BUT", you have to want this ABOVE anything else. What that means is that you have to want it so bad that your every waking hour (outside your most basic re- sponsibilities) is spent on this and this alone. This is really the key, Ramana Maharshi called it "earnestness and an intense desire for Self-realization and purity of mind" well, maybe that sounds like the word "trying", but what it really is is "focused atten- tion" on the "attention." What is attention anyway? The definition I found says "it is the act or state of applying the mind to something" and "selective narrowing or focusing of consciousness." Anyone can do it but the trick is to do it so much that eventually it's all that you do from the early morning dawn till late into the night day in and day out until this becomes your normal state of being. The confusion is just what are you do- ing and here it is...you are focusing your attention on the fact that there is an attention in you that is able to focus like you literally just sit there completely unmoving whenev- er you can and look for that. If and when you find it, when your ego mind shuts up for long enough to leave a gap, that's where you go, into that gap. The more often you go into the gap, the easier it is to find and the longer you can stay there. No worldly ap- pearances matter at all, only this activity matters, it is your only purpose for living.

235 "Well, that doesn't sound right at all", the mind steps in and tells you, "surely I have more pressing issues than this to work on, what about my "education" or "my family" or "my finances" or even "my charity work", those poor people need me." It has been said that the most important thing you can ever do and the most valuable gift you can ever give to not only yourself but for the benefit of every single being is to facilitate your own awakening, I agree, so what could be more pressing than this? Well, that's up to you, whether you believe me or believe what your mind will tell you about what is pressing but I'll just say it right now that this thing isn't nearly as allusive as it seems, that it is open to anyone willing to give up everything for it. Jesus really said it best and you should know by now how much I don’t like quot- ing him, not at all, but here it is anyway. "For whoever wants to save their life will lose it but whoever loses their live for me will find it." This doesn't mean you lose it for some guy named Jesus, some being who lived a long time ago, no there was no guy, never even one person anywhere, only consciousness speaking through that form. So you lose your life for consciousness (yourself) and in that way you find it. The good news is if you do go for it and wind up finding your life, well you have finally got a life worth living and not some arrogant superficial version of life that you currently have now filled to the brim with worry, struggling, and god knows how many untold forms of bullshit. All that goes away, it does take some time as I know all too well to get you out of the mess you dreamed before you knew you were dreaming. Yes, there is a lot to work through, there are layers upon layers of bullshit, lies upon lies, lies that rely on other lies, listen it goes deep, deeper than the deepest depth of the ocean, but it's worth doing. Nothing else is really worth doing at all in my opinion. Actually, from what I un- derstand, this is the purpose of life, to wake up from the conditioned mind/ego and fi- nally be what you are instead of going around pretending to be something you are

236 not. If you don't get it this time around in this body, no problem, you get to have an- other dream and another dream and another until you get down to the only business at hand which is to find out what you are and just be that. Then you don't have to come back and slog through another lifetime of self de- ception and suffering. Shit, that sounds like a pretty good deal to me. I'm sold. Well, however it goes for you, is just how it goes, and even that won’t matter but even if nothing really matters, you can still make the most of your time here by at least filling it to the top with as much love as you can possibly squeeze out of yourself. That’s really all we are doing anyway. Chapter 32 "Distrust your mind and go beyond it." Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj Let's talk about what this means, what does he mean when he says to distrust your mind and go beyond it? First off we have to know what he means by "the mind". The mind is that voice in your head that talks to you all the day long, if you listen even for a minute right now you will notice it. It can say anything so I don't know what yours is saying but when I woke up after just two hours of sleep a few minutes ago, mine said "omg, what are you doing, why don't you sleep like a normal person, if you get up now you are going to be tired, are you sure you really want to stay up, perhaps it would be better to try to at least get another hour or two of sleep." That's how minds talk, usually they are try- ing to figure something out, like what is the best way to go, what to do or something like that. I stayed up anyway, I'm awake now so why sleep more, the only reason would be is if I believed what my mind was telling me about sleep. Listen there are minds upon minds out there who think they know about sleep, they think they know that there is a right way to sleep and a wrong way to sleep, there are even minds out there who think

237 that they have the "truth" about sleep itself, how much at what time of day is best for each age, they even advocate that babies should sleep at night and if they don't then just put them in a room to cry for hours on end until they exhaust themselves and fall to sleep, don't burden yourself at all with their hours of terrified screaming, this is to be ignored, until they are trained to sleep during the "proper" time for the "proper" duration. That's just one example of how minds are completely irrational and idiotic but minds have done this very same thing with every issue you can think of and all that has really transpired is that one mind convinced of the "truth" about anything has con- vinced many minds that it got it right and now everyone calls that the "truth" about something. So the "mind" is the thought mechanism that thinks it "knows" something to be true and it directs the individual to behave in the manner of which it thinks that is. De- pending on what this "mind" deems is true for each situation determines what behav- iors it has and what actions it takes in the dream. Minds are the reason the dream looks like it does about now, yeah well not so pretty and not smart at all. Turn on the news, that will show you exactly what letting the mind run rampant will do to a dream. Only a mother who doesn't have a mind that thinks it is true that babies should sleep at certain hours will follow her heart instead and go to comfort a crying infant or child which is the most compassionate way to raise a child. The truth is only found in the heart, never in the mind. The mind is the voice in the head that was created to make sense of the crazy world the child found itself in when it was developing, and because all the people the child came in contact with had minds and they believed they were their minds, in fact they believed that's all they were the child modelled this and it eventually developed a mind that was always talking and then believed that that was what it was as well and nothing else.

238 Now the child is sent to school to develop the "mind". This is so important that there are actually laws in place to prevent this from not happening because the "mind" which the "mind" thinks is all that it is imposes itself on the next young mind and thinks it must learn to do what all the other minds are doing and the way to do this is to fill the mind with the same useless information that all the other minds are filled with. "Minds" in themselves are fantastic things at the beginning, but get dulled down by being forced to be exactly like all the other minds and not deviate from that. Deviation from following what all the other minds deem to be true results in negative consequences which in turn adds another layer to the mind in the form of negative emotions. So that's a small explanation of how minds are created in the first place, but whatever goes into the creation of any one mind is just anything, whatever circum- stances and experiences are available, and just whatever gets thrown in there from the other "minds" that are around it. So he says "distrust your mind." What does it mean to distrust your mind? It means to stop listening to a word of what it is saying. The mind is literally talking to you all the day long. It is telling you story upon story, it fabricates all kinds of nonsense, that is lit- erally it's function, it is like the biggest bullshit machine ever constructed because the only thing it has in it's memory banks to use to construct these stories are lies. So that's why the first order of business is to stop listening to what this mind that you think is you is saying. It is not you. It only thinks it is you, and you think it is you be- cause it has taken over your being to such an extent that your access to what you real- ly are has been obscured by it. It is as if there was a forest and the forest thinks it is you, deep down it senses that this may not be true but it doesn't know what it is so it watches what all the other forests are doing and it does that, the forest however deep down knows that it is somehow a fraud, somehow it knows it's not really a forest, and it was so afraid of be-

239 ing discovered not to be a forest ( what would the other forests think if they found out it wasn't a forest) so it grew and grew and grew, everyday it grew more leaves and more branches and brambles and became thicker and thicker, so thick that over the years it completely covered the very thing that it was. It has completely forgotten by this time that it even did that, but now the forest wants to know what it is, it's gotten a glimpse again that maybe it's not what it thought it was and now it doesn't like this big mess it's created. The forest is the mind, it's very big by now, meaning it has almost an unlimited amount of lies available to it that can be combined in billions of different combina- tions to distract you from finding out that nothing it can tell you is true. Each mind is unique but they all have one thing in common and that is that they are all terrified of being found out to be nothing at all but a combination of thoughts which are nothing. Thoughts do not exist at all, they are just passing phenomena that the mind has taken to believe are real and therefore the mind thinks it is real so challenging the very be- lief that the mind is a real thing is bound to bring up feelings of terror. Yeah, that's as far as I can go with that one. Suffice it to say that everyone you know thinks they are their mind, they think what they see is real, and that what their mind tells them about what they are is real as well. Listen, if you go this way, and distrust your mind to the point where you see it's unreal you will quickly discover that you are living among millions of beings who don't know what the fuck they are, who think they are something that doesn't even really exist, and it will literally blow your own mind wide open and scatter it in a million pieces never to be put back together again. Well, that should sound like fun, I would stop reading this shit if I were you, if you come this way and find out what you really are it will be the end of the world as you now know it. Literally, who you thought you were will cease to exist the way it did, but

240 the good news is there will still be something here and it will be better than anything all those other ignorant beings told you you were. It will definitely feel better and everything will eventually go back to functioning the way it was meant to function without even an ounce of effort on your part. Being "upset" about anything will be- come a distant memory, never again will you worry about what someone else "thinks" of you, that whole thing will just be so laughable it will be so fucking funny you will never believe how stupid you were to ever even "think" that what someone else "thought" of you ever fucking mattered at all. Yeah, it's going to free up all kinds of shit, not to mention all kinds of time and money. Like I remember how "important" it was to have the right clothes and the right shoes and now I just wear what I want. I don't give a hoot what I look like to you at all. You aren't even there anymore, if you were there you wouldn't care what I looked like anyway, so it all works out perfectly. Well, don't worry about it, consciousness does what it wants with itself, and it's loving beyond any loving you think you have ever known, so you’re in good hands. Even if you figure out you are not a mind, you are still going to have a thought producing mechanism available to you to use at your own discretion. There has to be some way to function and "think" about some things but now it won't be cluttered up with useless trash that belongs in the dumpster. It will take some years for it to be thor- oughly cleansed of the bullshit it was exposed to, almost everything will need to be reexamined for functionality and usefulness in light of the new perspective. Many times, it will even try to sneak some stupid shit in on you, but since the believing bull- shit entity has been severely injured and debilitated, it won't take much to shut it off and down. Just a little time without it will show that functioning in the dream flows in- finitely better without it. I'm not going to say that minds haven't been capable of producing some rather amazing things in this dream, airplanes and the internet come to mind, even TV can

241 be an amazing source of entertainment when it's not used as a mind numbing device to stop you from finding out what is really going on. Just for fun though lets look at the truly stupid shit that minds have produced and passed off as important and true. I need to buy new clothes all the time because being seen in the same outfit even once is embarrassing. I need to worry and take into consideration what others may think of me. The more things I have and the nicer and more expensive they are informs me of how well I'm doing in life and therefore if I have to spend almost all my waking hours doing something like work which I don't even enjoy to look like I'm better off than someone else, this is a worthy way to spend my time in this body. Looking good is better than feeling good. If someone insults me I should always take it personally and get very upset about it. If I can retaliate and get back at the perpetrator of the insulting remark, that's a good way to spend my time. Instead of just instantly forgetting about it, I should think about one insulting remark long into the night, the next day, and for many more days after that. I should never forget what someone said or did to me especially if it was un- kind and didn't make me feel good. I need to remember everything even things that remind me of bad times and get me down. I need to plan and always think about the future and what might happen to me. I need to keep striving to get to a place where I can finally feel at home, if I keep work- ing or work harder I may eventually get to that place. Even if it has never appeared that I've been totally and truly satisfied with where I am, I am sure a day will come when that will happen if I just don't give up and I keep trying to better myself and my circumstances. All those examples are stupid mind generated thoughts and those are just some truly mild examples of just how dumb the mind has become. The mind is so dumb

242 these days that most beings have lost the capacity to recognize even the most outra- geously idiotic ideas and beliefs. Jed McKenna says "No belief is true." Nisargadatta says "Distrust the mind and go beyond it." Any fucking takers? I don't know, I just don't get it. I just don't get how so many beings can be so stupid all at once, like never even question the status quo, just be- lieve whatever they fucking hear. Like there are millions of people who worship a God who had to have his own son brutally murdered in order to forgive their sins. They don't even know which sins they were supposed to have committed but hey if you say so, I'm down with worshipping a God who was a father who killed his own son. It was okay that he killed his own son because he did it for you and all the millions of people who needed to be forgiven for something that they didn't even know they did. This God was apparently unable to just forgive for the sake of forgiving. His make up was such that he needed to have a murderous sacrifice go down before he was able to open his heart long and wide enough to bestow forgiveness. Also if you don't bow down and ask for his forgiveness, then fuck you, he will make sure you burn in hell for not following directions. Oh, and by the way you need to give ten percent to the insti- tutions who will keep these ideas alive for you and all the rest of the suckers out there. What kind of dumbass mind believes such shit? Shit if I even knew a person with these qualities you can be sure I'd be as far away from them as possible, not fucking worshipping them and praying for their mercy. Oh and by the way, women aren't al- lowed to hold any positions of power in these institutions, just provide sex and be subservient to their husbands and remain the inferior creatures that they are. Listen, only a dull ignorant terribly fearful mind will be able to carry on this tradition. Meanwhile, the real God, awareness, which is you, which is the life being breathed into every living creature is all around crying out to be seen. It is in every love song

243 ever written and played endlessly all over the world. It is right there where you are right now, as you. It is your very own heart, it is what accepts you exactly as you are in this very instant without asking anything of you at all, nothing, zero. It is the love in your own heart. It has never condemned anything, ever, because if it did, it could only condemn itself and it's literally incapable of judging anything much less "anybody" for anything. All these concepts are ideas in the corrupted mind. Even forgiveness is a concept in the mind that seems to be helpful for a time even in this process but once you get out far enough even that concept goes because you aren't left with anyone to forgive, not even yourself. And that's why you can't trust it and you know, maybe, go beyond it, unless you really like what it tells you, maybe you like this shit, then just stay with it, me, no I'm out, far fucking beyond. I just get further out every day and the further out beyond I get the more beautiful things I see. My only real irritation is that there is some consensual dreaming going on that has become utterly fucking life sucking ridiculous but I'll get around even that. One day, I'll be so far out and away from anything my own mind can tell me that not even that will cause a ripple in my heart. Believe me, that's the way it's taking me. Out, out, and beyond. Further, and further like I'm just being carried along by the tide of the most loving thing, the only thing, the true thing, a true love. I wish everyone could come this way, I really do, then all suffering and sorrow would really cease. It would be no more, the minds that created it would all die, and only love would remain. Just one infinite being loving itself would be all that was left and that would be enough, life would finally be worth it again, not just for some but for everyone. Either way it will all work out. All is well in a dream.

244 Chapter 33 I have to sit here now for a minute in just this. It's the end of my days off now so I'm back to work tonight but I'm drawn to this keyboard for a moment, I'm drawn to sitting in this chair at my desk and feeling the weight of this body on the chair, a deep sigh emerges, all is well, all is just itself, unlimited consciousness, doing it's own dance, nothing for a "me" to do at all, I am not in it at all. The ego, words in the mind, just still playing in the background, "There's almost no money for food now, it's the last day of the next paycheck so whatever you make tonight will determine how the two weeks after you make it through this week will go" or "what's this thing you are doing with all this writing, nobody wants to hear about your silly rambling at all", all just mind generated, thinking that what it sees is solid and real, dire even, and yet it's just a dream. "Fool, your crazy, don't you know it, completely bonkers", it carries on but even these words can't touch me and they slip off and slide to the floor where they disappear, thought formations, the idea that there is something outside that can touch the inside, but it doesn't work anymore, just the weight of my body again, the sensing of a subtle energy, aliveness, itself alone tells a different tale, "nothing to do now, just be what you are, let go of the unreal, I am running the show and my powers are beyond the limited minds comprehension, nothing at all can harm you, what you are is only itself loving itself, you are free to just be, you don't need a word for the fu- ture at all, forget about it, what you are is already here, safe and sound beyond all ap- pearances." Relaxation sets in, a sigh of relief now that's deep, deeper than any imag- inings, and I am just as I am and need nothing more than this, I am this knowing of just knowing with nothing to know, it has all already been done for me, the perfect play now unfolding by it's own will and volition. Then for some reason I remember the bills from the hospital and the surgery I had over the summer, they state they are about to be sent to collections so I remember I

245 have some money on my medical flex plan from work and I call them both and make two payments. The wolves are safely at bay, all the bills are actually paid and that works in the moment, what the future holds is not up to me. I haven't failed at any- thing, even the money situation is just an unfolding of the conditioned dreamed char- acters dream, nothing real in even that at all, no blame, no saying you should have been more responsible with your money, all is just unreal and manifests impartially at all times, nothing to do with any "persons" anywhere, just a facet of consensual reality and another "who cares, and no big deal." There are no more "big" deals. Big and small, both concepts, have dissolved already. Any fear that was involved with the mon- ey aspect of this dream also dissolving. "Don't let the door hit you in the ass on the way out", is a thought that arises and brings a chuckle. So just some more sitting, just being, safe, feeling the presence that I am radiating out in all directions, the only substance to be found is just that, even objects just ap- pear dreamlike, passing images, this IPad, the robe I'm wearing, some glasses and an empty coffee cup, just a passing appearance in this moment. I look at my bookshelf full of wonderful books, many of the books that had in them the directions to where I find myself now and just smile at the wonder, the generosity of it all. Consciousness just taking care of consciousness, at every turn, it knew what I needed and gave it right to me and it won't just stop there. It doesn't say, oh that's all you get, now you're on your own, that's the beauty of the whole journey, you never walk alone again. Alone is a term that has been forever destroyed and replaced with all of it, more than can be imagined. Then I get up and make my son some lunch, pancakes and some eggs, and after that I go take my bath and then make some pancakes for the other two kids which ends the syrup, ok no more pancakes for awhile. Listen, it's not like we could starve, it's just different than what we are used to so don't get me wrong here, there's actually

246 still a big tub of chocolate ice cream in the freezer and plenty of other stuff. I tell the kids before I spend any of the money that's left on food we are going to use what we have and just see how far we can go with it. To my surprise, no one is in objection at all, the place is just calm beyond belief, the entire consensus is "yeah, we'll just make do, not a worry to be found." Well, it's a scaling down as well, I think there was a scarcity issue so we used to buy more food than we needed, more than we could ac- tually even eat and it would go bad and have to be thrown out and be wasted. Now, it feels like a simplicity has come in, just a finding out what is really required, not even in a deprived way at all, there is not a trace of deprivation to be found right now, more like clearing, a decluttering, a simplifying and instead of feeling fearful or bad it feels good. It is itself, just here, taking care of business, but it does it more gracefully than a conditioned mind ever could and the difference is plain to see, it's that obvious. I go to sit outside on a bench I have on the front porch. It's a perfect cloudy day, the temperature just resting at 71 degrees. The clouds from where I'm viewing are just so breathtaking I step back inside to grab my phone to take a picture of them. Lovely, just lovely. And then I gather up the trash and put it in the bin. I take a large tub of organic spinach that I never even opened and is rotten now and throw that in the bag. Why did I even buy that? I don't even like spinach probably I had an idea the it might be good for me to eat but I didn't even touch it. It just reminds me as I look around and think "how much useless shit do we buy" thinking we need it when whatever we need is just already here. Well, I feel the change coming, and it's all purposeful and right in line with the moment. Whatever feelings of lack I had have been replaced with an ap- preciation of what is really here and I see that there are no mistakes in it at all, not even a little blunder, just a perfect unfolding.

247 That night I go to work, it's the last day of the next paycheck so whatever I make tonight will be added to the last eight days (I called in sick on one day, just couldn't find a way to want to go back there I guess) and that will be what we have to live on. So far it looks like I will once again pay all the bills and just have enough money for food and gas, unless tonight makes any big difference. It's slow, super slow, almost empty when I get there but I got no worries, I know what ever is meant to be will be. Toward the end of the night they are closing all the dead tables and asking dealers if they want to just go home early. They ask me and I say no, I just want to stay my whole shift whether I make money or not, there's always my hourly wage anyway. Well, to all outside appearances it doesn't look too promising but I don't seem to care. I'm in my last rotation now and my first table yields nothing, in fact I'm just taking all their money but the first thing a player said to me was, "Now don't take all my money like you al- ways do." If I do always take his money I have no recollection of it, in fact all I really know about him is that his face looks familiar, he's not a real regular, just a now and then-er but other than that I don't have any memory of any times I've dealt to him. Greeting me that way, when I don't even know who the fuck you are and blaming me for always taking your money like it's some action I took to purposely harm you never goes over well. Your wish will be my command, I will kick your ass again, well you get whatever experience you are expecting and I can't change that for you. That's how dreams work, whatever you see in me will be reflected right ass back to you and there's not anything for a "me" to do about it. Hopefully you know what I was going to say here but didn't. Well, there another cocky guy on there, he's playing some big money but he's losing and complaining non-stop. I hear the "this is unreal" phrase out of him because it's a poker game and I can't lose, I get a flush, and then a full house, and then two pair to your one pair, but I just love hearing that phrase and it's hard to hold back and not say, "yes, yes, exactly, it's unreal, all of it, look around, this whole

248 scenario is coming straight out of your mind, the one that's so afraid and resistant to losing, manifesting your fears so perfectly, right here, can't you see, you are creating this picture, not me, I'm not even here." So I tell them I think maybe the energy is off and this guy says he's a chi instructor, he's making fun of me I know, but I don't give two fucks, I just take his money and he huffs off. Well, he doesn't look like he's hurting all that much, he's the well dressed professional yuppie type, interesting that they think somehow that even the cards should favor them or something like that and they want me to feel bad, no thank you and off you go, go get in your BMW and drive back to your posh immaculately decorated little penthouse and lick your wound that some awful dealer lady put a snag in your spending money. I don't know what type of condi- tioning creates an ego like this but it's annoying like you're smart enough to have a college degree and nice paying job but you can't put two and two together that I somehow do not have control over whether you win or lose on the gambling table and you want me to feel ashamed for your blunder. Sorry but fuck off and go some- where you can pretend you are appreciated for acting like an asshole. Well, he thought he was something special and that's why he shouldn't lose but no egos are special and the only ones I like are the ones that have cracks in them, the bigger the gaps the better. My next table is the money table and there are some really generous people on it who are making sure some dealers are going to be able to make the mortgage and then some. I shake that last table off like it never even happened and I just open my- self wide open to fate, no fears at all, whatever wants to happen is fine with me, I am solid as a rock. There are big tippers on this table and they are betting for me so in or- der for me to make money they need to win the hand and I don't care what their cards look like from the get go, when I have a ten up and they have thirteen, I'm open to slapping an eight on it. There's some kind of energy that emerges when the fear isn't

249 there, and it all goes down like clockwork and I literally bust out every hand for the en- tire thirty minutes I'm there and double my next paycheck like I literally made almost as many tips on that one table then I made in the last two weeks. It feels like my faith has paid off, just trusting, accepting, and allowing whatever wants to happen to hap- pen. And that was my last table of the night. "Hold the line, love isn't always on time" maybe not but one thing is for sure it isn't on your fucking time, it was down to the wire, but you know I'm happy I get to pay down some bills and leave a little more cushion then just the barest minimum of food and gas. There's something about gen- erous gambler's too, like the ones on the table who never even thought to tip me all had hands that busted out before I did so they didn't get to share in the wealth. The dream is actually cool like that and that old worn out saying, "to give is to receive" is true in more ways than we really get to know. My son hurt his foot again the day before and so when I get home he's still up and I asked him how his foot is and he like, "not great", so I take a look and notice that's it swollen all to heck. Well, that's it, there's no sleep for the weary, I take a quick nap and we show up at the big bone doctor's place at exactly when they open. Then I'm told that the urgent care doesn't open till eleven which is like three hours away, so I say "oh wow, I've worked all night and haven't even been to sleep yet, are you sure there's no way to squeeze us in." "Let me see, just hold on", the reception says and sure enough fifteen minutes later he's getting x-rayed. It's a fracture, it doesn't need a cast but a boot would be helpful so we go to get the boot thinking that insurance will pay for it. Nope, we haven't met the deductible so it's all out of pocket, how is that even possible, what the fuck do they pay for then? Well, after making those payments to keep the wolves at bay, there isn't enough for the boot. Fuck it we have ankle braces at home anyway, but the mood in the car feels kind of fucked on the drive home. I do

250 not in anyway blame myself at all. Whatever appears is just what appears in the only way it can appear. So we come home, dig out the other ankle brace and I go to sleep and my son goes to the gym because apparently nothing can stop this basketball dream of his. While I'm trying to sleep, I get a text out of the blue from a friend of mine, and I tell her about boot and guess what? She has a boot (also the right foot, well of course it was) that I can just have. Well, you seen one boot you seen em all. So alls well that ends well and nothing to worry about at all anywhere in any direction for any reason whatsoever. That is how it's working whether you know it or not. So just a shout out for any parents out there who are carrying the burden that they might have done some- thing better, it was never up to you, so do everyone a favor and set your self free, what you do from now on will be filled with the love you give yourself. So it's back to work from there, I've had about a total of maybe four hours sleep but I gotta do what I gotta do and off to the casino I go even though I'm hardly in the mood for it. The night isn't magical at all, I'm not feeling so well, the fear is back there lurking in the background again and it says, "so you had a great night, let's see if you can do it again" but it's not up to me at all, I've never done a damn thing. As the night wears on it's nothing to write home about and my feeling as I look around at all the desperation and listen to all the complaining and pleading, "Come on Sandra, let me win. Why are you taking my money?", is that the whole fiasco is just an abomination, just a waste of life in the truest sense of it. Toward the end of the night a fight breaks out on one of the tables, one woman freaks out and goes after some guy screaming at him and trying to kick and hit him. It causes quite the commotion, and when he tries to strike back, more people get in- volved and another guy throws punches at him up against a slot machine where he had retreated to. More people, some trying to break it up and still the woman, break-

251 ing free again and again from the people trying to subdue her, pushes the man again, he pushes back and there's more pushing and shouting, a real mob, about fifteen people now all up in arms. I can see the whole thing from my position on another ta- ble as it's happening right in front of me. From one table over I hear a cocky young guy exclaim, "Wow that was just weak, if you are going to fight at least throw a punch harder than that. That was pathetic." I have no idea what started the whole thing as all the people involved were speak- ing another language but I don't need to know particulars. I just see a woman, an in- nocent being who has reached the limit of her human suffering, like it just could not be contained within the confines of her human form anymore, an inevitable eruption of pain, for sure each one's threshold is different, some can contain the whole thing under wraps for an entire lifetime, but usually it's always spilling over maybe even all day long, a little drop here, another splash there, that's actually much more common, this spilling over so slowly that it's actually unnoticeable but trust me it's there in everyone who isn't wide awake. My own reaction to this whole event is just sorrow, it's not "my sorrow" but just the arising of what ever wants to arise and I feel my heart break and my eyes getting wet, a gulp in my throat, I have to hide what I know and pretend I just don't care but I guess I do, somewhere, somehow. The instigator, the woman who started it, her plight is everyone's plight. It is at all times only itself, in everyone, everywhere, how much longer it can contain itself no one knows, maybe a war will break out somewhere. There's a delicate, oh so delicate balance of pleasure and pain, and when the balance becomes so unbalanced, as it will very soon, as it's been doing for awhile now (re- member twenty or thirty or even a hundred years is just a blink around here) is will ex- plode upon itself to bring everything back into equilibrium. So you know when you come upon a child having the most fantastic temper tantrum, maybe just stand down

252 and let it happen, let it work itself out, your resistance to it indeed to anything at all is just fuel for the fire. Well, I finish this up at work again on another day. God knows I'd love nothing bet- ter to do than to sit here all day writing to you. The love in my heart, your heart, over- flows for just that but until then....all the best. All is well. Chapter 34 So something has come up for me that I want to make clear and elaborate on. I want to talk about why I talk and write the way I do, why I cuss like a sailor and I am just myself however that appears. I realize deeply that many people out there might think that it's not appropriate at all to the subject matter at hand, you know maybe it even detracts from it, if you think I don't realize this you are wrong and I could easily change my ways if I was at all interested in appearing "appropriate" which apparently I'm not. The thing is there are a lot of "appropriate" teachers out there, even good mean- ing ones, but I think there is this "idea" that spiritual awakening is for some holier than thou persons who you know have at least some sort of education and pleasant de- meanor, (and as Jed says, when they talk they pause in all the right places and all that shit) but no. First of all, when I talk here I'm not really interested in being heard by those who even think they are holier than thou, or anyone out there who is concerned about the "appropriateness" of anything but I think that when there are only these teachers out there saying all the "appropriate" words in the "appropriate" way, well it just puts a damper on the whole thing like it creates the illusion that this is only for someone special like they are. Maybe even from that, you get the "idea" that to get to where you want to go (not that you are going anywhere) you need to go about it with that same "appropriate" demeanor but again no. This whole thing is not even like that at all. You are not going

253 to be able to fight this battle with an attitude of any fucking niceness, in fact I'd say get rid of the fucking niceness shit, a battle is a battle, and a battle with the ego is a battle where you are going to have to stoop to whatever fucking means you have available to you, regardless of whether or not they seem to appear "appropriate" in the dream or not. Also, I am not trying to appeal to anyone in the dream world who is having a nice time of it, not at all, people who are having a nice time are not coming this way, they don't even need to, just let them have a nice time, but I do have a heart for those who are really not having a nice go of it. My heart goes out to those beings who are living lives of not "quiet desperation" that's not even strong enough to get you to look this way, but lives that are so completely confusing and fucked up that no amount of "nor- mal" will comfort them at all. The ones I am talking to are the ones who are completely bewildered and are looking at this world and thinking "no this can't be right", or "how can this be', or "what the fuck." People who are so disappointed and disgusted with the whole way the consensual dream is going down these days that they just can't stand it anymore. Only these desperate people are going to have the balls to go all the way and say, "there's got to be a better way" and most importantly "I'll do whatev- er it takes" to wake the fuck up out of this shit. Listen there are probably millions of people out there who are sweetly doing some nice meditation practice year upon year, but as evidence shows it, that does not lead to awakening, all that does is keep you thinking that you are doing something good for "yourself" that makes you a little bit smarter than those who are not. Any- thing that makes you feel like you are getting a leg up on anyone for whatever reason is taking you in the wrong direction. If you are doing it right, if you are making any progress at all, it is not going to feel good, not at all. It is literally going to scare the shit out of the "you" that "you" think "you" are because there isn't one. There is only

254 the thought of a "you" and it does not want to be fucked with, it does not want to be found out, that is the one thing that it has been going around its entire life trying to avoid. It is actually fear itself. The ego isn't just created from fear, it "IS" the fear and unless you are desperate enough to go into battle with it head on, nothing is going to happen. Only those who have really had enough, who have had some truly hard knocks, their suffering is so deep it's unbearable to go on that way, the pressure has built up to a point of near hysteria, nothing makes sense anymore at all, and the futility of life as they've always known it, is upon them like flies on shit are going in this direction. Those who see that in this dream there will be no winning, that see that they can not ever get to any place out there, the chance of that happening is over, maybe time is completely up for becoming the something you wanted to be, yes, only those who are truly hopeless that have already given up a lot already will be willing to give up the rest of whatever they thought they had going on, and surrender to the will of the uni- verse. So I just write the way I write, no idea why it is this way and don't really care. I don't have any plans on becoming some beloved thing out there in the world, I am the beloved anyway, I forget about the world, at the end of this all, there's not going to be a trace of me left in it anyway. All I want out of life now is what it wants to give me, whatever that looks like but to be sure I am not writing here to illuminate any presti- gious egos, I see all types and kinds of so called prestigious egos at the casino I work at and I don't like them at all, neither do I have any use for them at all. They are actual- ly like walking and talking abominations to me, the energy that emanates from them is even toxic to me, and though I know they can't help what they've become it sickens me to be around them because they spread their ugly lies so well it fucks up the

255 dream for those who know what dreaming is for and I don't see any excuse for that at all. To me the downtrodden, the outcasts are the real jewels, give me any one of them, and I can look into their eyes and straight away see what I'm looking for and it has not been tampered with in the least, it shines as bright as the light shines in the eyes of child. It's no wonder that Jesus said "the meek shall inherit the earth.' There's an opening in "meek" because to be meek is to be humble and not full of yourself, so probably what he was saying is that the only way to go this way is to not be attached to the false fictional character, the role, that you play in the world. Enlightenment is ac- tually the complete and utter detachment from who you thought you were so that makes sense to me. The more important you think you are, the harder it will be for you to come this way, so people who don't think they are shit in this world are actually in a better starting position than anyone who thinks that they got it going on. So you know maybe just get fucking poor and say fuck it to that stupid dream world and stop trying to find a way to matter to all the stupid people who have told you nothing but fucking lies all your life that have made you feel like a piece of shit. So I'm not talking to earn any awards or be revered by any so called revered egos, far from it. I'd rather show that anyone regardless of where they are or what they've imagined they've done or gone through can come this way. I'd rather show that you don't need perfect speech or manners or anything at all to come this way, in fact the less you have the easier it will be. I honestly want to break the stereotype of some mild mannered, well behaved, school educated, financially responsible (pretty sure I broke that one, you want to know? I got credit card debt up the ass, and so fucking what) perfect teethed (my teeth are shot if I have a wish at all it's just to get those new fake ones that are called all on four implants so I can eat something besides oatmeal and soup and end the

256 tooth aches but if I don't still don't fucking care). I want to show that the things that you thought were standing in your way of coming here are not really there. I want to show that there is actually no upstanding quality at all that you need to have, that where ever you are, that no matter how far you imagine you have fallen in the eyes of the world that this is for you. I want you to know that the farther you have imagined that you have fallen (maybe you are in prison, double love to you) or if you are out there reading this and thinking you don't matter enough, I want to show that these types of thoughts are a blessing and to your benefit and not a detriment on this path. I want to show that this is the way for everyone because for the last time there are no separate beings anywhere on the planet, you are all only myself and I would welcome you home no matter what. I don't care at all who you think you are but the less you think of yourself the better because (yeah gonna say it) there isn't one. This path is for people who are tired of living a fucking lie and that's all. You don't need nice clothes or nice anything to come this way, all you really need is to be fed the fuck up with all the bullshit that you have been living with and believing all your life. All you really need is just the smallest inkling that life could not in any way possi- ble be the stupid thing that everyone around you seems to think it is, maybe just some type of awareness that everyone you know is full of shit and that this thing called "you and your life" might be something else because the things that you imagine it to be don't seem right, like if this is all life is, the way everyone is experiencing it, who the fuck would even want it? Well, now that's out there, and it matters not in the least, and neither do I but let me tell you this, the love in my heart is bigger than the sky above me and I am crying right now, tears are falling down my face because I know what I am and I don't care at all which way this dream goes. This world can not even touch me, what ever happens now happens without any story and I am happier than I have ever been in all my life.

257 I am the love that loves itself unconditionally. Maybe, if you look at me you see a person, an older lady, but that is only an illusion. I am not here at all because I am everywhere and everything, everything is only myself. I don't come and I don't go, I have always been all that's been but you know you have to come and see it for your- self, just don't ever think that there is anything in your way like you are not good enough, or nice enough or you don't have the right background or some other stupid shit. Nothing can keep you from this if you really want it. Chapter 35 So I got this silly thing that's come over me now. It started when I was making my son something to eat, was making him some steak fries in the deep fryer we got to go with some buffalo chicken nuggets I was making in the oven for him. So I'm looking in the freezer for these steak fries and I find a bag which is already opened and when I look in it there are only three fries in there, and I don't know, I just went hysterical laughing, like do I bother cooking three fries? Who leaves three fries anyway? Oh dear, I'm just laughing so hard and then I remember there's another bag so I cook those three fries along with some other ones. Then I go into my son’s room where he’s hanging out with his sister and I tell them why I’m laughing, and my daughter says she’s the one who left the three fries in the bag and she says, “I don’t know why I did that”, and for some reason, we all just start laughing uncontrollably, like the absurdity of this life we live can not be contained any longer. It is just not serious though, this is what everyone needs to really know, the whole thing is just an elaborate set up to get you to see that nothing can happen to you at all. The dream itself is just for enjoying yourself, to make the most of each and every glorious moment you have so graciously been granted to kick around in. Really, just need to lift that heavy burden off of you, the whole mind created illusion, that there was a you who needed to do something, to prove something like you are worthy to be

258 here. Take my word for it, you are, if you are breathing you are worthy of everything, not a thing against you in any direction, the whole thing is just you loving you, always just trying it’s best to get you to see this and any ugliness you think will happen or is happening is just your fictional mind still dreaming in the way it was used to dreaming before you realised that it was a dream. Just a deep sigh here, deep breaths, more deep breaths, and maybe some more and then there, all gone now, first your mind knows it and then your body follows, it seems to take the body longer to correct itself so just hold on, it will. Whatever the conditioned mind wants to tell you, don't listen, that mind knows nothing at all, be- lieve me that mind doesn't have a fucking clue where you are going or what's in store for you or even what is going on at all which of course isn’t anything so there's really nothing to think about. Whatever appears will just appear so take it all in the way it was meant to be taken in, as if it was just some comical ridiculous drama, like one of those absurd shows you can find on TV where one silly scene leads to another and then another and don't buy into this whole seriousness thing that everyone else you know is into. There is nothing happening, the whole thing was just a made up fiction from start to finish. It's like when I was at work the other night and the people were crying I was taking their money and this one guy kept using my name "Sandra, Sandra, Sandra, why are you doing this?" I swear I was so close to saying it out loud, something like, "Fool, who the fuck are you talking to? There is no Sandra, you are talking to yourself. Is that the way you talk to yourself, always pleading for some other outcome, well I guess it is, you must annoy the hell out of yourself, but I am not here like you think I am so you don't have to bother with it now because there is no one here to give a fuck what you are on about. You are talking to the wind.” Yeah, but no one says it, just looking and an involuntary shaking of the head, like you know the whole thing is just so mo-

259 notonous my next thought is “Have an original thought already, fuck!” But can’t say that either, maybe I’ll try this next time, “Listen, what ever happens here is just the will of the universe and nothing to with me or you. The best advice I can give you is to just surrender to what that looks like, things tend to flow in a nicer direction that way and if they don’t then it won’t even bother you.” I seem to remember Nisargadatta throwing people out of his flat when he was holding his groups, well just goes to show that annoyance with ignorance is pretty common and nothing to worry about. I never know how much tolerance I’ll have in this dream, I don’t control that either. This was confusing to me at first, like I thought at every moment from now on something super sweet and loving should arise but ap- parently not, whatever arises just does and nothing to do with me. Well, maybe you live in a peaceful little ashram so you don't have to deal with this stuff, good for you, if I ever get to one you can believe I will be appreciative of the dra- ma free lifestyle they offer. On the other hand, if you are from an ashram and woke up there, don't leave, you may be shocked at what you will find beyond those doors and it might not come so easily to brush it off. As for myself, I get a lesson in brushing shit off about every five minutes at the place I work so when I'm done with this part of the dream, life is going to be real cakewalk for me. Just the other day, I clicked on this Facebook thing and a post came into my awareness from our neighbourhood group that was questioning why we had to pay the homeowner's dues again this year $200 when it was supposed to be dissolved when the last house was built two years ago. Then in the comments it said it was still in effect because someone mowed the grass too close to a little pond in our care and this was of a real concern to the government, you know it showed a real lack of re- sponsibility on the part of the residents or some shit. Well, apparently I just couldn't contain, just in a feisty mood in that moment I guess so I wrote my own comment

260 which said, "Nobody out there is caring about any pond or any mowing. Hopefully, you can see that there is an entity out there that likes collecting $200 from over 500 people and they don't want it stop. Follow the money trail and it will probably lead you to the guy who decided how close someone should mow to a stupid little pond and maybe even the one who mowed it." God, dreamers are so gullible these days, like not a shred of fucking sense left I guess. Then I wrote, "How about we all agree not to pay? They can't sue us all." And someone wrote back that if you don't pay they will put a lien on your house but if you don't ever plan on selling your good to go. Well, I can just imagine the fines that are attached to a lien on your house, I'm sure there are nice imaginary idiotic forms out there that are designed to make a super nice profit on even that and all because the grass was cut the "wrong" way. Listen, it's not a big deal but it is stupid so I wrote back that my only point was that I hoped people could see it was not about some stupid pond in some stupid little neighbourhood and I guess someone got up in arms about me calling the neighbourhood stupid, and said, "This is not a stupid neighbourhood. Do you even live here?", like I'm sorry are there smart neighbourhoods? I was about to write back, "No, not really, don't live anywhere but I do sometimes visit Mars and up here the ponds ask us to mow the grass as close to the shoreline as possible because you know grass grows back and it gives them something to do, just thought you should know so maybe you can take your ass down to the pond and ask it how it likes to be mowed instead of taking somebody's word who stands to make a substantial profit" but good thing, someone had deleted the thread by then. Do I even care about this? No, not at all, I was just having some fun, entertaining myself really, maybe I’ll pay the dues, maybe I won’t, just have to see but it's not like I give it another thought and let it bother me.

261 Things are so beyond ridiculous now in the dream that it just blows me away that nobody sees it like everyone gladly gives up a third of their paychecks so they can be protected from invaders and keep their precious freedom that they love to talk about so much, and none of them are free at all. They are just going around and around in that little tiny mind of theirs zooming in on one serious issue after another like think- ing, and imagining one catastrophe after another and that there are people “out there” who are out to get them and all the while taking it to be real and very impor- tant. Shit happens and nothing is a big deal like everyone wants you to think it is. Se- riousness is a sickness in the dream, and it is actually making people sick, yes, all that energy just piles up upon itself in the body and creates an ailment, what else can it do, it has no where to go. That's why maybe just let go, let go of all of it, you are not driving the car anyway, so maybe just take a chance here, take a risk and close your eyes for a week or two (you know maybe start small), take your hands off the wheel and maybe just relax, re- ally relax instead of sitting there all freaked out and tense and bracing for impact. Maybe, now there you are in the car terrified that you aren't in control anymore but willing to give it a go and you know it's scary, a part of you is still waiting for the bomb to drop, and waiting, and waiting, and still waiting, until maybe you open your eyes and see the car has turned down a lovely country road lined with daffodils and is cruising along just fine without any driver whatsoever. The speed is just right, the sights are pleasant enough, the music is playing, the windows are open letting the breezes blow on through and nothing is happening. The crash that you have been trying to steer clear of your whole life, that deep inner dread that if you don't get it to- gether and straighten it all out, that horrible fear of what might happen to you might actually just go away. Maybe even, you will find out that you just imagined the whole

262 thing anyway, that this fear and anything else you were afraid of and you thought was real and out there, was only in you. Or not, it makes no difference to anything which way you want to play it. All I'm really saying here is you got one life with a set amount of moments in it and you can either live them or spend your whole life in fear like the rest of the stupid population, you know glued to the nightly news thinking, “Oh my God, look at all the people try- ing to cross the border and get into our country, we’ve got to stop that, the govern- ment needs to crack down and build a wall”, can it get anymore stupid than that? Can it get anymore stupid than holding children and families in holding cells or gunning people down for any reason or however they impose their shitty dreaming on some- one else’s dreaming? Listen if I was dreaming that dream, I’d be standing down at the border with open arms saying something like “Welcome, come on in, I doubt you will find what you are looking for but you know it never hurts to try, personally, I’m looking to get the fuck out of this dumb place but maybe it will look different to you, maybe you will find something to appreciate here, I hope you do, all the best to you, this home is your home, it’s all just one big home anyway.” Yeah, I’m probably going to pay my homeowner dues because you can’t sell your house if there’s a lien on it and I’m just not feeling like I’m going to be staying here forever. My dreaming seems to be going in another direction even if I can’t see into the next minute at all and it’s really just a hunch. I seem to remember a time when I thought I didn’t have enough gas money to drive on down the lane, but look now, I left that lane years ago. A few days later, I’m at work again and I’m following this dealer who is like a real ham, super entertaining guy, he’s inauthentic as shit (well, who isn’t really), just does and says anything to suck the next tip out of whoever he is dealing to, well he’s good at his job, good for him but you know he’s a hard act to follow. In the past, I’ve always had the feeling that after being with him, the players are not going to like me at all,

263 and a feeling of being something no one is going to appreciate at all might have gripped me, but not anymore. It’s the big money table as well, so you know things go- ing well is to my financial benefit so I tap in and the first thing one of the player’s says to me is, “You’ve got some big shoes to fill”, something which used to make my skin crawl but my dreamt character is changing so what comes out of my mouth is foreign even to me and it goes like this. “Shoes to fill? What is that? I am not going to be filling any shoes, I am the maker of shoes.” Yeah, that threw them all for a fucking loop, and the whole table was taken aback and I got some “oohs and ahhh” and then the whole thing went down without a hitch and I made some nice tips and when I left I heard them telling the next dealer, “you’ve got some big shoes to fill”, as if there was some- thing as stupid as that. How the fuck do you even get in someone else’s shoes, aren’t they wearing them? The dream itself is many things, just many moments, a real variety of moments and each one appears as if it requires something different from you but it’s not really work- ing with any “you” in it at all. Once, the “you” is removed from the picture, all manner of lovely moments arise, and your ability to appreciate them increases all on its own and in direct proportion to the absence of this “you”. For instance, just last night I was dealing to this lady who has a heart that just shines right out of her chest, that’s how clearly I can see it, she’s somewhat of a regu- lar, well, I’ve dealt to her more than a few times and we like each other a lot even though we are literally strangers in the dream. She’s a character who obviously has a lot of money in the dream but she’s always concerned with making you something as well like I don’t know what her circumstances in the dream are at all but there’s some- thing just fantastically soft and loving about her. Well, last night she wasn’t really win- ning and I could just see the suffering in her, and it might seem totally out of context for the time and the place, but when she said to me, “I really want to make you some

264 money”, I just said, “I know, but whatever happens, I love you either way” and she looked into my eyes and said, “I know you do.” See, for most dealers, the value of a player is just in direct proportion of what they can do for you, but without the pres- ence of a “you” much lovelier things are able to enter even in a cold hard place like a casino. How is that? It is coming out of your mind, so without the “you” in there, it just goes to show that the natural functioning of the dreamer is to dream up some love no matter where it finds itself. Listen, the love is just there in your heart and it cares nothing at all for what you think is going on. It is actually there all the time because it is all that is there and even- tually you see that. It is even bound to happen that this “seeing” of love and beauty is going to arise in you. It is like a magnet to itself, love being pulled toward love even though there isn’t a “you” to know anything about it. It is pulling you into itself through anything and everything that arises and trying to get you to see that, that no matter what you are seeing it is going to be fine, that it’s just a crazy, comical dream. It is in every moment trying to get you to see that what it is, is love and it will find itself in any landscape whatsoever. That is the only movement that is ever available to it even when you don’t know it, perhaps things seem so bleak, your mind says that it’s not even possible, but what I’m telling you is that it’s the only thing that is possible. Noth- ing else can even happen, nothing, only the mind is telling you lies, but here there are no lies at all. There’s nothing else here at all, just emptiness, a void, but in that void the possibility of love exists to be seen in anything. Well, you can clearly see that this character of mine dreams up some crazy shit so I’m sure yours does as well but you don’t have to believe it’s real. Love feels real to me now, so you know I’ll look for that however I can in whatever’s available to see it in. Yeah, I just don’t think I really know how to say it. Sorry about that, I love you. Chapter 36

265 So that was it, well it wasn’t it, it wasn’t anything but I thought it was something for a little while. Even so, I knew what I knew and I knew what I couldn’t know which was a lot more than the first. So I just sat there for awhile, because that’s what it did, this what I was just sat there and it thought, “Well, now what?”, but the question itself didn’t make sense anymore, so it just sat some more and it felt very quiet. It was like sudden- ly being aware of the silence that all the other sounds were coming into instead of the other way around. Suddenly, I was also very aware now that there was nothing to do, indeed there had never been anything “I” could do about anything which was weird to say the least. The whole life had simply never even happened. How was it even possi- ble that this glaringly huge facet of human life had been overlooked by fucking every- one? It seemed so obvious now. How was it even possible that all the psychologists and psychiatrists, all the experts in human development put together had missed the fact that nothing that you had ever experienced was around anymore, that in fact, in the very next moment it was gone forever, that literally everything disappeared into thin air as quickly as it came? Just thoughts floating by, your attention going here, then going there, in an endless stream of changing themes and none of it real at all. And yet all the dream characters, the whole conversation from morning till night is “I did this” and “He did that” or “and then this happened”, just story after story making the whole thing seem very real and plausible, never mind that the whole thing has slipped into nothingness, well the whole thing is built on memories which is just another mind created illusion. A hundred people looking at the exact same picture will produce a hundred different memories, sometimes similar and sometimes completely different. Which one is real? So I saw that I was the knowing that was knowing and not a something that was knowing something else. There wasn’t anything to know anyway, what would you know? A picture was being seen, was being momentarily known, but beyond that

266 nothing. All it ever was, was this knowing of some appearance that was going to be gone very soon. It’s like you could be sitting there staring at a candle, well you might sit there for awhile just staring but eventually you look in another direction and now you aren’t looking at a candle anymore, was the candle even there, is it there now, well that’s that the old if a tree falls in the forest would it make a sound, but you know that’s really a stupid question anyway, because who gives a fuck if it does or not? Just the one who thinks it needs to have an answer, the one who thinks it needs to know something, you can’t know it, that’s the whole fucking point of it. There is no one there to know anything. All the knowing is the bullshit, from start to finish. It’s al- ways what you think you know that is telling you some lies and that’s all and out of all those little and big lies a picture is created, and the feelings about the picture are cre- ated in a dream that has absolutely no substance to it at all. It has no significance whatsoever, none of it, the only significance anything can have is what you give it but that’s not what you’ve been doing your whole life, you have just taken what every one else in the dream has told you is “significant” or “normal” (now there’s a stupid word, have you seen “normal” lately, it’s even “normal” to spank little children, to hit them, to strike them, to punish them, to yell at them, to put them in a fucking corner and tell them they’ve been bad, yeah, don’t get me started about fucking “normal”, I don’t like this “normal” shit at all) and judged yourself and every thing else by some imaginary standard that doesn’t even exist, that was a total fantasy to begin with and not even your own. All that you have been seeing is tainted with the fantasy of the bad dream- ing and imaginary judgements of the culture and society you grew up with and live in. Well, when you see that, and you see that all your suffering has been created out of this ignorance, you might want to go stand on a mountain top and scream, “What the fuck?”, from the top of your lungs.

267 I went to work the other night and I was scheduled to work on the craps crew, now we all work together and share in the profits, meaning at the end of the night all the tips we made are shared equally among us. So one of the other dealers, a young man in his twenties says to me, “I want to make a ton of money tonight so we are all going to have to “work hard’ and I need you on board with that.” Guess he doesn’t think I “work hard enough” so he had to tell me. Yeah, well, my first response was “you can take this “working hard” idea of yours and shove it up your ass.” What he really means by “working hard” is to go over the top and out of the way to kiss everyone’s ass, not just like pay the bets and deal the game. Sorry, not going to happen, I don’t stroke egos at all anymore, not going to knock myself out or anything like that so maybe you’ll throw me a bone, this kind of shit has completely stopped arising, you know the whole fucking people pleasing thing flies right out the window when you realise there isn’t anyone fucking home to please anyway. Consciousness will please itself in what- ever way it wants to without “you” doing anything. Listen, I don’t mean you go around hating on people, or being rude, not at all, no you love them, you even admire them, but you don’t try to manipulate anyone into giving you anything. You are not here to get anything from anyone, and if you think you are then when you don’t get it, resentment arises, but no one owes you anything in this dream at all, not even the time of day. The only one you can ever come in con- tact with is yourself anyway, so if you do get something, that was just you giving it to yourself, accept your gift. Well, this kid had obviously bought into the idea hook, line, and sinker that the only way to be happy in this life is to “work hard so you can have a lot of money” and what’s worse is that he actually believes this is a virtuous way to be like his very value depends on it. This for sure is a common assumption in the dream and it’s how many egos are strengthened to the point that those who aren’t on board with the idea are

268 losers who should be shunned and looked down upon. (Ha, I was probably one of them) Of course, it is all just another misguided idea and a fantasy. No amount of work, hard or otherwise can make you something that you are not, the idea that it will rise you above the rest and put you in a position above anyone else is about as fuck- ing stupid as it gets as well. Nothing that you can ever do is going to make you better than anyone else, (there isn’t anyone else) all it can do is make you “think” you are bet- ter than someone else, which just makes your dream character arrogant and vain and basically, I’ll say it, “an asshole.” Have fun with that and all your endless hours of “work- ing hard as fuck” but don’t expect me to respect you for it. I have no respect for any egos whatsoever, not going to happen at all anymore. The only respect I have is for the light that somehow is still able to slip through the cracks of that structure you’ve built. The only “virtuous” activity in this life if there even is one is to find out what you are and when that happens, if it does, you will quickly realise that no amount of work will get you anywhere because you aren’t going anywhere and there’s no where to “get to” like literally you will never arrive. All that is ever happening from one day to the next is that you are having an experience and nothing more. That being said if you be- lieve that this life is for struggle and hard work then you will experience just that and miss your whole life and the whole point of your existence right along with it. All dream characters with big self important egos are really just terrified little shits. Any activity or idea of working your way up any ladders or being smarter or better than anyone else is just a response to the underlying fear that there isn’t anyone home like they think there is. The more terrified it is of finding this out, the more it is con- vinced that it needs to protect itself and that’s how there are big terrified guys with guns who build armies that police the dream world. Even this strategy doesn’t work though so that’s how the guns get bigger and the rule list gets longer and in the end

269 probably they just blow the place up and that’s the end of life as we know it now, but not to worry nothing can ever end life at all. That’s not even small potatoes to con- sciousness, like it wouldn’t even register on the Richter scale, even that would be a no- thing, what we are is beyond any appearance whatsoever. So I told this guy that “I know you think we have a job to do here, but I’m not even working right now. I don’t have any jobs to do at all. A little heads up to you though, if you think that you even “need” more money all you will do is drive it away because you are affirming that it isn’t already here, so it won’t be.” Well, he didn’t like that at all, and he immediately said he disagreed with me and defended the “work hard” idea as a means to an end and I said, “That’s exactly what I expected you say.” Listen, this same kid came up to me over a year ago and asked me how he could avoid being burned out by this job and I wrote down the name of Jed’s first book for him. He never read it and he never will. Just the way it is in this dream, he will work hard his whole life and miss the entire fucking point. We did not make the kind of money he was look- ing for and he didn’t seem too happy about it (probably he thought it was my fault even though I made more tips than I actually got to collect by just chilling out and en- joying the show) but I was, it was fine for me, I don’t have to give a damn how it goes anymore, neither do I need to try or exert myself at anything, the life is just living itself and things actually work out better that way, go figure, it’s been ass backward all along. Another thing is that I’m well aware that this reads like there was a “me” who was talking to this “kid” but no, it was all just myself dealing with my own attachment to some stupid idea that I needed to keep working hard or even keep working at all. It is a dream, but it is a most intelligent one, that’s why it can bring up whatever you need to look at or maybe just giving something to talk about here, something that needed to be covered. Yeah, I don’t need to know because I’m not here to do that. Suffice it to

270 say, you didn’t come here to spend your whole life working to get money to get things you don’t even need so you can be happy, that’s not going to do it, not at all. If that was working, the whole dream world would be fucking happy as shit by now. Hmmm. Yeah, I’m not seeing that. Sometimes I used to wonder why this character of mine still goes along with the whole work thing and shows up to her job for five days a week but not anymore. Jed recently talked about how your character still has to have some skin in the game, some reason for still continuing to play along at all and I know what mine is, it was de- signed perfectly for me. I do it for my children. I don’t see any reason to abandon them since I actually derive pleasure from them every day, and it was actually my love for them that spurred me on this whole time. Even if I didn’t have them, I don’t think I’m at the point where I might wander off into a forest or walk into the ocean as Jed suggests would happen when all your skin in the game is completely gone but the thought of just buying a tent, a sleeping bag and a backpack and making my way to some place warm has crossed my mind more than a few times. I remember how Ra- mana Maharshi just wandered into a room in some temple and just sat there oblivious to even having a body, and he would have died there if it had not been his fate that consciousness sent someone to find him and nurse him back to health. Well, fate isn’t up to us so why worry about it, eventually we all wind up in the same place anyway. I’m definitely less concerned with this body lately. My ability to plan for sleep or even food has diminished considerably but it’s not a problem. If I get tired enough I sleep and if I get hungry enough I eat. I don’t fuss over my hair before going to work anymore, just throw it up haphazardly, well it actually seems to look better that way, at least to me which is all that matters anyway, and as far as possessions go anything I used to buy to make me look better to someone else “out there” has been left behind. Who’s gonna see me? Even so, I have more than I actually need in that department. I

271 muse now that I have probably bought my last new car, (yeah, five more years of pay- ments on that, my credit was low so to lower the payment I got a seven year loan, well that will keep me in chains for awhile, just how they like it, probably before then I just say here, you can have it back, I don’t want it anymore) maybe I’ll eventually move to where all I will ever need is a bicycle. Being someone important in this dream has ab- solutely no appeal to me at all. No one is important anyway. What a hassle to even think you are! I do enjoy this writing thing and just a lot of quiet moments just looking in wonder at what arises. The formation of birds flying in the sky is actually more plea- surable to me than shopping for anything. I have to shop for food, (mostly for the kids, if it was just me I might just buy a big bag of rice or a couple of my favourite foods in bulk just to avoid the whole thing) but for some reason the idea of needing anything so I can look like I’m something special has gone away. If I keep myself “presentable” at all it is only because I prefer it and not because I am seeking attention from any- thing “out there.” That whole “out there” was only “in here” anyway. Well, it’s my days off right now. Things are quiet in the house. I have a space heater in my room so I don’t sweat everyone else out and it’s on 82 degrees. I like the nights, I always have, just seem to feel more at home here and you know that’s about it. It is what it is, and what is isn’t so bad, not bad at all when the mind isn’t busy think- ing it should be some other way. No, it isn’t some other way, it is just this, just knowing without knowing something. Simple., very, very simple but I’m not there yet, still fur- ther. Chapter 37 Well my internet went out the other day sometime in the morning while I was still asleep, I noticed it when I went to look something up on my computer and nothing was happening and then I looked at my phone and read a text from my son that con- firmed it and said, “Y the internet not working.” Well, maybe it was a sign but nothing

272 arose in me at all, literally no emotion whatsoever, all that happened was I looked up the phone number to the internet company and called them to see what was up, you know maybe there was an outage in the area or something but no it was just me. I wasn’t mad, or ruffled at all, didn’t feel like “why is this happening to me” or “fuck me” or even “good god what now”, nope absolutely nothing like that came up at all. I was just light heartedly chatting even joking around with the people on the phone, asking what could be done and all that, the kids weren’t freaking out at all either like not a peep out of any of them which was a little surprising, just like a totally whatever expe- rience. Well, at first they told me it would be ten days before anyone could come out to fix it, that for some strange reason they were all backed up in my area, and even though I was at the top of the list because I had no service at all, it was going to be awhile. I was still not having any reaction to this at all, I was just laughing, and in the most congenial voice ever just said, “ Wow, well that seems a little over the top, like maybe even a bit unreal, are you sure it’s really going to take that long?” And I’m liter- ally not having any negative emotion at all, nothing, so we get a little more into it and we find out that it won’t really be that long, it’s just four days now, so I’m like “Ok cool, that’s all good, but I’m going to have to call around to see if I can get anyone else out here sooner so might have to drop you. Nothing personal just the way it goes” and the guys like “I totally understand but if we are so backed up I doubt you will be able to find anyone sooner”, and I’m like “yeah, I don’t know either, but hey thanks so much, have a great day.” So like there’s none of that “How can this be? Or what the hell is wrong with you guys? Nobody goes without internet for four fucking days. That is just bullshit. What the fuck kind of company are you?”, no nothing like that is arising at all. None of these people are in control of any of it so why get mad at them, all they are doing is just sitting there dreaming up their own stupid job and trying to do it, get

273 along in it as best they can and they don’t need some jerk to blame them when the in- ternet goes down or some equipment goes belly up. So I call the last company that I had and I find out that since the cable is still in my house from them all I have to do is drive on down and pick up the modem, I can self install and be back online in about an hour. I switched companies when their prices went up, but now they want me back so it’s gone back down. So as we are talking, you know they need all my details again and we have to go through all that, I walk to the kitchen and pour myself another cup of coffee. I’ve got my him in my Airbuds but be- cause I’m holding my phone when I go to get the milk out of the fridge for my coffee, for some reason the whole shelf, you know those shelves that are on the side of most refrigerators, well the whole shelf falls out and everything that was on it hits the floor including a glass bottle of organic (yeah I’m like that, well I was) lemon juice which when it hits the tile shatters splatting green glass and juice everywhere, and once again, nothing, no emotion, zero annoyance, nothing, I think I said, “Oh shit, oh wow, hold on a second, I just broke something” and he’s like “everything okay?”, and I’m like “oh yeah, everything’s great just a little mess here, startled me but no big deal.” So we finish up our business and I put a gate up so the dog can’t go in the kitchen and tell the children what happened and that I’ll clean it up after I run down to get what we need to get back online. Well, I’m not really sure it will work because you know I don’t know what went wrong with the other box, maybe the problem is outside somewhere but it’s worth a try, I still have a cable running into the house from that company, and all I have to do is connect a wire. So I go down and get the box, and I come back, plug it in, “Is it going to work? Could it be this easy?”, there’s a moment of doubt as I’m waiting for the light on the modem to turn green, and when it doesn’t light up right away, I’m like hmm, then for some reason I turn away and when I look back there’s a white light, this one

274 doesn’t turn green, it turns white and we are back in business. So now I can go clean up the mess in the kitchen, and it’s all like “No big deal.” So that’s how things are working on the home front, it’s my days off now so we all just hang out and take it easy for the next two days. Nothing really to write home about there, just quiet here, the kids are all in their own little worlds and I’m in mine. It isn’t until I go back to work on Wednesday which is my Monday in the world of work that things start to get dicey again. Tips aren’t great but they aren’t terrible either, they have definitely been a lot worse, but there’s this feeling that I just don’t want to be dealing with this shit anymore. Yeah, a feeling of unease and discontent seemed to arise as soon as I entered the building and as the night wears on, it gets more notice- able, I’m unhappy, just can’t seem to bring myself to appreciate being there at all and toward the end of the night I encounter the same old song and dance from the play- ers and it goes, “You are killing me!”, because I’m back to winning every hand and they are back to losing every hand and that’s not good for tips, not at all. Many times if it’s slow we have the option of leaving early, like after just five hours because another shift comes in then and tables are closing as well, so usually there are too many of us and some of us go home, we don’t have to go home though like we aren’t forced out at all, if we want to stay the full eight hours we are welcome to do so. So my boss asks me if I want to go but my character says, “No, not yet.” Apparently, she thinks she needs to try to make more money, she doesn’t have enough in her box yet, you know she’s thinking about all that credit card debt and how she needs to pay it down and all that, so I stay another hour or so and I don’t make another penny. It’s so dead now that when they ask me again if I’m ready to go this time I say yes and I end up leaving early after all. That’s enough for one night, there’s always tomorrow, and the next night comes and it’s exactly like the last one, like exactly, same shit differ-

275 ent day, same feelings arising, fear and discontent, well this isn’t how I thought it would go or is it? Well, here we are stuck in this dream and there doesn’t seem to be any way out of it. There doesn’t seem to be anything any “I” can do to make it more pleasurable at all, it’s just depressing, the whole life just spent going to work and paying the bills like all the rest of the zombies on the planet, the only difference now being that the character who got herself into this mess is no longer there to get herself out of it. Just how is this whole thing working anyway, is a question that never stops arising. So maybe, let’s try to look at that and see what that really looks like. So here we are, sitting or doing whatever it is that we are doing, seeing whatever it is we are seeing. By this time, hopefully, we know for sure, that there is no body here at all, that all that’s really going on is that we are perceiving that we have a body that we are inside of and the reason we are perceiving ourselves this way is because we have believed it for so long it’s just an automatic response by now and everyone we know is onboard with acting like this is how it’s working and we are all alone in know- ing that what is actually happening is that we are imagining it all, there’s no one really here, no separate beings, no physical things at all, all just concepts and ideas and a dream (or nightmare) created out of a mind that believed these things to be real, ex- cept now it doesn’t. Well, just because you know this doesn’t necessarily stop the appearance from ap- pearing the same way it’s always appeared, no it doesn’t, that idea is locked away so deep in the bottom of the mind, it’s caked in like mud that has hardened to the point that only a jack hammer will loosen it, and after a good long session of pummelling it, only a piece of a corner comes loose at a time, it feels and appears that solid even if it really isn’t. It’s like trying to rototill a garden spot, except that you live in an area where the rocks are bigger than you are, not going to be easy, when you were a baby, you

276 were just fertile soil but not anymore, now you are dealing with something closer to granite. Now you are trying to plant seeds in that and they don’t grow, that’s not the environment for it, the nutrients aren’t readily available anymore, so getting some- thing to sprout is going to take a little time and a lot of patience, but keep your eyes open because even in the most impossible and most unlikely spots, you’ve seen it, a flower grows. People take pictures of it all the time, you know it’s inspirational as hell, there in a barren desert, a lone flower, just sprouts out of nothing. Your own life might be just like that, indeed it must be, or you would not even be able to read these words, that’s how unlikely it is for this thing called “you”, one of millions, no, one of bil- lions now, to even have an interest in anything of this nature at all. Look around you everyday, and tell me, who do you know that’s even talked about this waking up shit even once? Go ahead and spend the day asking people if they have ever even heard of Ramana Maharshi or Adyashanti (he’s pretty popular) for that matter. They won’t have a clue. Most likely if you do know some people this has arose in, it’s because you sought them out but in all likelihood even those people aren’t going all the way, prob- ably they just think you know it’s cool or something to be used to enhance who they think they are but following it to it’s end is not something they are likely to take seri- ously with the all or nothing, wake up or bust attitude that’s required here but if this in- terest arises in you like that, and you have had enough of the lies and bullshit, then you are just like that flower with an urge to bloom that will not be denied. At the beginning of summer I threw a bunch of packets of flower seeds in the front planter, it’s a space of about six feet by three feet, and out of all that what hap- pened was that mostly all these green vines took over with a few flowers here and there but really it just looked like a big mess, not manicured at all, just total wildness from one end to the other. I let it grow that way, not caring at all how it looked to the neighbourhood, probably they were appalled, my bad, until eventually it just started

277 to take over the walkway and I pulled some of it out trying to leave just the flowers which were far and few between and some of them were just so enmeshed with the vines that there was no saving them. Then when I hired a guy to help me with my over grown lawn, I had him clean it up as well since there was only one flower left which we stood outside admiring for a few minutes and I told him, you know, try to work around it. Anyway, it lasted awhile, and then it dried up and died as well, just like everything is doing. Well, it’s cold now and raining, fall came upon us super fast with only a few days of moderate weather, like it went from being hot to cold almost overnight but I was sitting out front for just a minute and what do I see, a single pink flower just now starting to bloom all by itself. I guess it was a late bloomer and it doesn’t mind the cold. It’s not there yet, just a little more than halfway open, everyday I check on it and see that it’s still opening, no idea if it will make it or not, if it does you can be sure I’ll take a picture of it so you can see it with your own eyes. I don’t even know if I’ll make it yet, some days are still dark and no chucks of mud are loosening but I keep at it any- way. Well, what’s that they say, “it’s darkest before the dawn.” If someone would have told me even a year ago that I was going to be doing some writing, any writing at all, I probably would have said, “I doubt it. That sounds nice and I’ve always wanted to but I can’t write worth shit. I’ve tried and it doesn’t work, I guess I don’t have anything to say, nothing anyone else would want to read at all, definitely not anything that I’d even let anyone look at, that’s how gross it is.” Well, we just don’t ever know, do we? We don’t know at all what consciousness will want to do with us once we let it in the door. I’m as surprised as ever, even now, that these words come out as easily as they do, and even more surprised that anyone else would want to read them, no idea how it is even happening at all but you know if I do any- thing, if anything at all is up to the “little me”, I just keep knocking at the door, for how- ever long it takes I will knock, just knock, knock, knocking away at this stubborn door

278 and maybe one day it will swing wide open and the dream will truly be worth dream- ing. Well, I went to work last night and it wasn’t the same place at all, even though there were lights blinking everywhere, a mad crowd of stumbling semi-intoxicated fig- ures screaming and carrying on, all manners of chaos, people upset and acting out, yeah, a real mess I’d say, and all these figures seemingly trying to make sense of it, try- ing maybe to just get a foothold of some sense of rightness or security or trying des- perately to escape, to forget, to have a moment where they could forget this solid per- son that all day long they are convinced that they are, to shed the heaviness of that burden, throwing in every last bet they can before the dice land again, chips flying into other chips, “dice are out, no more bets” gets called and still they try to throw in more which gets a “no bet”, and everyone else on the other side, the workers, trying to do a job, trying to hold it all together and follow all the rules, trying to get this chaos under control to a manageable level, “watch your hands, the dice are out”, or “if you throw the dice off the table one more time, that’s it, your roll is over”, well he did, both dice this time bounced up and out “sorry, next”, oh he didn’t like that at all, almost got thrown out, total mayhem, and a big argument ensued, and there I am in the mist of even all that, just watching in wonder at the madness, calm as can be, not a worry on the horizon, let it be, everything just playing itself out as it must, and knowing one hundred percent that it’s all just one big fantastic show, and not an ounce of serious- ness in any of it. Next, I go to the high limit blackjack table that is part of the craps rotation, and it’s big tips for me there, everyone is talking about how much they love me, how I’m the sweetest dealer ever and I’m not even needing that, I’m not needing anything. A play- er asks me, “Did I tip you?”, and I say, “Don’t worry about me at all, you don’t have to worry about me” because what I’ve realised is that I don’t have to worry about me, and

279 that nothing but this tremendous unfathomable love that is everywhere in every direc- tion is the only thing that actually exists at all. There was never a chance of falling, or failing, no, there was never even any money, whatever I ever thought I lacked was be- ing withheld by my own mind, but that’s not how this mind was working now, it was clear as day how absolutely everything was being held in love and only love, and that whatever I required would be provided by it in a measure above and beyond anything the “thinking” mind could even imagine, it had been there all along doing just that, like it took whatever thoughts and feelings I gave it to work with, and twisted that into the best possible scenario. There are no people anywhere, there is no such thing as a casino, there is only the mind created fantasy being held in Truth, and the only thing Truth is ever doing from morning till night is saying, “Let go of all that other stuff and choose me” and even “You will like it better over here, just give me a chance, you’ll see.” Then all those things that you thought were real slip away, and this “you” that you thought you were goes right along with it, and with that goes the feeling and all ideas that you ever needed anything or that you ever had to do anything, the very idea that anything was being withheld at all is gone and the life you were meant to live unfolds all by itself. You can let go completely now, and just let it be because all the troubles I still thought I had was still only just the mind, still trying to hold onto something that wasn’t even there. It was never there at all. Now let’s see what this dream turns into. Chapter 38 My character, that person I thought I was all my life, took a turn for the worst this weekend, well she’d been in critical condition for a while now so it was bound to go that way. She had been having some trouble living for some months now so in desper- ation she’d been put on life support. Well, I wish I could say that I pulled the plug on her, but no, as fate would have it another storm in the area caused the power to go

280 out. She had me call to see when it would be back on so I did, she looked so pitiful you know, I just couldn’t deny her this last wish but it became quickly apparent that she wouldn’t get what she wanted this time. They told me that all the previous storms had weakened the power stations to the point where the system just finally collapsed in on itself and they feared the worst. The whole system they said appeared to be be- yond repair and so restoration was out and a whole new system would need to be de- veloped and that would take much much longer than the few hours she could survive without it. Well, she struggled for a bit, grasping for air or at straws, and then she was gone, out like a light or so I thought. I pulled the covers over her head and called for the undertaker to take this heap of flesh away. He came right away and asked me if I was sure she was dead. I said, “well, she looks dead to me” and asked, “How can we be sure?” He winked at me and put his fingers to his mouth to indicate that I shouldn’t say anything and said, “Okay, where’s the body?”, so I pointed to the room she had been living in and once inside he said, “This service isn’t free anymore and she has to pay up front, the dead bury the dead and all that.” Well, that did it, up she bounced right out of her coma and she started to haggle with him, yeah, like she was dead one minute and alive the next. She was like “Are you fucking kidding me? That’s way too much. How much more do you want to suck out of me?”, and he said, “Just give me everything you’ve got. That’s as low as it goes and for that price we get rid of the whole fucking thing and everything that went with it. Trust me, it’s a good deal, you won’t even know what happened” and with that before she could resist he popped her firmly on the head and put her out of her misery. Then he looked at me and said, “That’s how you can tell. Just bring up money, if there’s anything left in there it always pops out with the mention of it” and with that he scooped up her remains and carted her out the door but before he left he said, “These type of entities can be a real pain in the ass, you know sometimes they hang

281 on for awhile, and you just have to keep disposing of them again and again but my service is actually free so don’t hesitate to call me anytime night or day if she some- how resurrects herself. I have some fire bombs in my arsenal I’ve been dying to set off. The explosions from those are a real joy to watch so if you need some you’d be doing me a favor” Well, I thanked him for his assistance and carried on with the day. Listen, I hope you don’t misunderstand this above story, I am not talking about any type of person here, I am talking about the false sense of I that most people seem to think they are. This “I” is vicious and afraid. It is the cause of all suffering and trouble in all the dream world, many people call it the “ego” but it is not even that, it is that which thinks it has an “ego.” It thinks it has something that can be improved upon, that is separate from all the things that it thinks it can see and it isn’t real. This is the liar you need to get rid of, the liar that tells you all kinds of stupid shit all day long, like your clothes aren’t right, or that thing that you dreamed you did twenty years ago, how you took the wrong turns, didn’t work hard enough, were selfish or uncaring, this entity that brings up anything it can against you to convince you that you aren’t good enough right now. It’s the thing that makes you do all kinds of stupid things because they are “important” to the future. It’s the very thing that prevents you from knowing what you are and enjoying your life, no matter what it looks like right now. It’s a cun- ning thief and it is stealing away your very life every minute of the day. There is noth- ing it won’t use against you, it uses your feelings to make you frustrated, tired, sad, and angry all day long. It tells you it’s not going to work out and brings up all types of scenarios to keep you focused on that instead of being focused on finding out what you are. It tells you things need to change before you can be what you were meant to be, that you aren’t already what you are, awareness, being, all that is. It is a life sucking parasite that steals away so much happiness and contentment if that were a crime it would be locked away for all eternity. It’s cunning and ruthless because it knows it is a

282 fucking lie so whatever thought it can get its hands on to turn you against this and turn you back around toward that thing you call the “world”, it will gladly use, no qualms about it. It does not care about you at all, all it wants to do is stay in hiding and to that end it will tell you anything. It will tell you to do anything except this, clean out your closet, buy some new running shoes, go on a diet, get a new job, buy all kinds of shit, fix up your hair, and even move locations. The last thing it wants is for you to sit still and figure this out. “Be still and know that I am God”, yeah it has a real sour spot with that one and it’s like fuck that, there are more important things to do and think about today, who has time for that. No activity or subject is off limits, it will bring up your dead relatives, that time you got drunk and made a complete fool of yourself, even your ass, it’s the thing that makes you want to check out your own ass when you get out of the tub to see if it’s good enough today, if it’s going to work or not or you know pick up the hand mirror, let’s see how this hair looks like from the back, how are other people going to judge the back of my head. It’s completely stupid though and you can easily see this if you want to. Maybe it tells you your nose isn’t right. Did you have a hand in creating your nose? How can it not be right then? What ever is is right but don’t believe me, just go see for yourself. Go see that things are not going to work out sometime when and over there, see that it doesn’t work like that, see that whatever you ever thought would happen almost never does, and if it does it bares absolutely no resemblance at all to what you were thinking and most of the time it’s completely the opposite, that all those things that were weighing so heavy on you, keeping you up at night feeling all that fear, never fucking occurs at all. See that this fear is the thing that is actually behind almost everything you do all day long. Please, all I’m saying is you don’t have to live this way. There’s a story that I read years ago by Adyashanti, he’d been at this spiritual re- treat and for some reason became uncomfortable with the scene and went home.

283 Once home, he went to some meditation hut he had in his backyard (okay, that’s some funny dreaming there, well even he probably had a good laugh over that one) and while sitting there the whole awakening thing dawned on him. Anyway after that, he went back to the retreat which was still going on and the first thing someone said to him when he was going back in through the door was, “You shouldn’t have come back”, yeah, you know like how fucking rude is that, right, and he started laughing be- cause he saw that it was a trick of his own mind, and that the thing that would have re- acted to that, gotten angry or hurt, was not a real thing. Here’s the thing, all that’s going on is a dream, and in this dream is the dreamed character, the you that you think you are, and from one moment to the next this char- acter is flitting back and forth between one “important” thing after another, like literal- ly that is all it ever does. It can not face the fact that nothing is going on and no one is home. This character is made up of pre-programmed thoughts and the reactions to those thoughts and the survival tactic it uses from morning till night to keep from be- ing found out, is to make you believe that you and your life and other people and what you do, what you did, and what you will do are real and very important. Just wait for someone to insult you and you can see it, nothing brings it up and out in the open faster than being insulted, you know it’s like “How dare you?”, and “Do you know who I am?”, like it is such a little and terrified thing because it knows it is fucking false, that it is a lie. There is nothing anywhere that needs to be defended at all, if it does or acts like it does you can be sure it’s a lie and part of the false mother fucking no thing that you are not but thinks it is. I woke up this morning after a couple hours sleep and went to the basketball gym with my son. I had the music playing in my headphones and all I was doing was chas- ing down a ball and moving to the music. I felt like a rag doll, the body just moving the way it was always meant to move, not a tension in it, just complete and utter relax-

284 ation. It feels like being in heaven. The natural state of existence is just to watch and feel what the body does from the reference point of not even being one. Any thought that arises in it at all is unreal. Anything it does is unreal. The whole thing is not real. Nisargadatta said it best when he said, “Don’t pretend to be what you are not, don’t refuse to be what you are. ” Listen, when you get to this place, a feeling like no other feeling you are used to will fill you up to the top, and your thoughts even though they may still be able to be heard are like the leaves blowing across the lawn on a windy autumn day. Have you ever seen a lawn in autumn covered with leaves that are just blowing around, blowing into the road, blowing up against something else, some- times swirling up in the air and no one cares where they go or what they do at all? That’s how it’s happening now, your body is in a different state now, like it’s more pli- able, can wrap itself around anything, whatever appears to it it just says yes to now, it just says sure, why not. There is literally nothing that needs to happen and nothing that you need at all because now you know what you are and nothing is happening to you, it is really all just for you. You are all, all that ever was or ever will be and it doesn’t stop there, not at all, there is like no end to it. I don’t even know how far it goes yet, proba- bly I never will because it just keep going, deeper and wider everyday. Everyday an- other space inside me opens up, and I’m like oops what’s that, there’s more, yes, there is more, and the more it opens the more the light shines in. God, universe, love, con- sciousness, awareness, whatever you want to call it creates another pathway, another moment to experience life in the way it was meant to be experienced and it’s lovely, it’s beyond even that, it’s beyond any word that we even know. All I’m trying to do here is to show you this, but there is no “I’ here, no “I” doing anything. Chapter 39

285 I came to work one night and you know I wasn't all that happy to be there, who cares, my teeth were hurting and I was a bit tired so a feeling of bliss wasn’t really aris- ing but I knew I was supposed to be seeing this place again because that’s what I was seeing. Anyway, my first table is empty and this player walks by and stops and asks me "Did you miss me?" I have to tell you, I'm sitting there looking at him, like I'm actually giving it some thought and after I do I say quite sincerely, "No", and I can't help it but I just start laughing like this is really funny and he hesitantly laughs along as well. Then he looked at me like I was more than a bit off, I mean I recognise the guy and have dealt to him more than a few times but so what, do I have to miss you? Why the fuck would I miss you? I don't think of you at all, to be honest the guy has won a lot of mon- ey with me and he never tips, never shares a dime, his character is such that he thinks he’s someone important so double reason not to fucking miss you if I needed one which I don’t. I don’t have time for entertaining or being subservient to some obnox- ious arrogant fucking dream character, go ahead now, move along. Whatever arises, just arises and these characters in my dream have gotten pretty stupid lately, like you think I come here for fun just to hang out with the likes of you? Think again buddy, you’re just not that special. So then he says, "Don't they train you to say yes when someone asks you that?", and I say “Not that I remember but listen don't take it per- sonally, I'm not missing anyone, ever, at any time" Well, the Truth is the Truth and there is just no reason at all to miss anyone and once you know that you are not going to be able to do it, who would you miss, just yourself? The whole thing is not even real at all like that. I feel like I want to impress upon you that consciousness is all that is, but the dream it dreams sometimes has to really be taken with a grain of salt. There is a rea- son that people used to go off and live in caves for years before they were able to tol- erate the silly shenanigans of all the dreamed up characters they would later have to

286 come in contact with. After that, if they did exit the cave, they probably had the good sense not to get a job where they would have to appease these characters to make a living for themselves, yeah, that wasn’t happening at all, and if hunger and even death ensued as a result of that, that was probably preferable to sucking up to something they knew wasn’t even there. Well, what can I say, my dream is definitely a weird one, but this ability to suck up and say shit so I can get something out of you like money is going out the window fast. Actually, just whatever role you think you are playing in the dream is all bullshit anyway but in order to go back into the dream and play the game, you are going to have to make up somebody to play. Once you know this character you used to call “me” isn’t real at all, probably it will dawn on you to change it up a bit. Listen, my own dreamt character isn’t important because it isn’t anything, well that’s the price you pay, but you don’t mind paying it after you are gone, not at all and there’s a real freedom in knowing that you aren’t even here like that at all. The only real attachment I have left is to my children, I don’t have to have it though but I don’t mind it, we seem to be made for each other but when they grow up and move on, I doubt I will be missing them. I’ll just enjoy them when I see them, but you know out of sight out of mind. I can tell you I won’t be worrying about them either, there’s nothing to worry about, totally pointless activity, whatever is is and whatever isn’t isn’t and noth- ing can be other than that so why worry about it. Worrying is really just your mind making shit up anyway, totally unreal just like everything else including this so called mind. Well, it’s hard to explain, life isn’t working at all like everyone thinks it is and the thoughts that arise now aren’t what they used to be, not at all. I can tell you that any- one who is walking around playing the role of “I’m important so treat me like I am” be- comes a real source of entertainment and the impulse to take them down a notch is never far away, that’s how laughable it is, just the way they walk is a dead giveaway, like “Oh God, here comes another one.”

287 Children and the destitute, or anyone this dreamed up world has shit on to the point that they have given up even trying to be something that they’re not, seem more real to me than anybody else. I see them at work sometimes like I’ll be on craps sur- rounded by all these well off characters throwing hundred dollar bills down and there will be this one guy who looks like he may be homeless who cashes in a ten to try to better his situation, he’s standing there all alone, with no friends and no hope, and you know he’s timid, he’s out of place in this place. It’s like his false sense of self had been so battered, so beaten down that it’s wearing super thin now, and in that you see your own reflection. It’s like light is attracted to light and they always look up at you, you can make direct eye contact with them, and you smile at them as if to say “welcome” and they smile back and their smiles are more genuine then all the ones with the beautiful teeth and all that shit. And no one else gives them the time of day but you know what they are. It was my mother's 77th birthday this week and although I couldn't be there on the day of it because of work we decided to make the five hour drive on my days off to go see her. All the kids came with me this time, even my oldest son who never does because she never treated him all that well and he hated her for that. About 77 miles out, my son says he wants to drive because he's bored and he wants something to do. The drive from that point is a twisty turning mountainous road so at first I decline his request. I'm super tired from lack of sleep but he's only been driving for four months and I'm thinking 'yeah, better not", and I tell him he can drive when we get past this part. Well, he's immediately put off I can tell, I don't trust him that's what that is, I'm telling him that I have no faith in his ability to carry us safely to our destination so all of a sudden I tell him I'm not feeling well, dizzy don't you know, "Actually, I need you to drive, I think I'm sick" and all that so he does. I remember I'm not even here like I think I am and since he's obviously driving now, it can't be any other way than the way it is,

288 meant to be if you will, and I just completely relax, don't even look at the road at all. If I die right now none of us are going anywhere anyway and none of that is of any conse- quence at all, things go the way they go, nothing any "me" can do about it, one last time, "there isn't one." It's weird but I've driven this road many times in the past and it's always been this tedious long stretch and when you get down off the mountain it was always like "whew, made it again" but this time I don't even notice any time at all and it feels like only a few minutes have gone by at most before we are out of it. Stran- ge indeed. So we get safely to Mom's house and we come bearing gifts, a cake, and even a balloon because you know it just makes sense to be like that from now on. It's a pleas- ant visit, no drama at all, no animosity at all, barely a memory of how it used to be, any emotions from the past no where to be found. My mom doesn't bring up any sensitive issues like she used to at all, like why don't the kids have jobs yet or any criticisms at all. That makes sense, my dream doesn't go that way anymore and if it did, I wouldn't even care. Well, when you know how things really are you see there's nothing about you in any of it anyway, just enjoying whatever is there to enjoy. A little later in the day, we are sitting in the kitchen, my mom's cooking a super early Thanksgiving dinner for us, big turkey and all the trimmings, that's nice, cooking isn't my thing, so the kids can just think we already did Thanksgiving and when that day comes, it can be like any other day. The whole "special day" thing isn't really a thing anyway, just more bullshit to keep you busy thinking you have to put on some fucking show for the sake of what? Normalcy? Sorry, but fuck that. I don't even like turkey all that much, really can't say I give much shit about food in general, I seem to eat, what more do you want? It works. So we are sitting there chatting about the past because really what else is there to talk about, it's either that or some plan you have for the future, but I don't have any plans for the future and neither does she, her future is getting shorter by the year, and she's

289 lost her ability to walk now, so she scoots around the house on a little chair that has wheels. It's some strange condition that's come upon her in the last two years, very painful and there doesn't seem to be much anyone can do for it so you know her fu- ture consists of making it through the day and that’s about it. Anyway, she's asking me if there's anyone I want to see while I'm up here but I only really had one friend the whole time I lived here and I haven't heard from him at all in a few years even though I've tried a couple things a couple times to get a hold of him again. No one has seen him around at all, so we think you know maybe he died. For some reason, it comes up that I can check his Facebook and see if he's posted anything lately and that's when it's confirmed, he's dead actually died three years ago. My daughter has my phone and she's reading aloud a sort of announcement his son wrote to inform everyone, it's touching and sad, and tears roll quietly down my cheeks for this loss. Well, I wouldn't have minded seeing him again. He was a good friend to me, probably the best one I ever had in my whole life up till that point. The first time I met him was right after we moved to this place, like I think we'd only been moved in for a week or two, we had seen some big smoke coming from just around the corner from us and walked over to see what was going on. It was winter and very cold but it got warmer as we walked up his driveway toward this big fire, there were a lot of people gathered around it, even fireman but no one was really do- ing anything, his house could not be saved at all, so I stood there with this guy and his son and watched his house and everything he ever had burn to the ground. My mom was there too and for some reason, some compassion arose in her for her new neigh- bor or maybe she just wanted to secure her place in this new community as some- thing special (yeah that would never happen) but for some reason much to my sur- prise at the time since our new house was quite big, she offered this man and his son a place to stay for the night or until they could find another place to live so with noth-

290 ing left to do or even carry, we rather solemnly walked back to our house with our two newly homeless friends. Back at the house, after we'd eaten and sent his son and my kids off to bed for school the next day, we sat with my mom and had some conversation, and something strong to drink. Mom got drunk rather quickly that night and since he seemed to have more to talk about with me than with her, she became irritated and eventually got a bit off but thankfully went to bed and left us alone. He was older than me by about fifteen years, and physically his form was not compatible with mine but our minds seemed to be on the same page and we stayed up late that night drinking and listening and shar- ing our love for Beatles songs. The next day he offered to cook dinner for us you know in our kitchen which he did, but my mom said his food sucked and became irritated that I had actually paid for the food he wanted to cook us. Well, the guy didn’t have much to begin with except this small but well built log house up on the hill and now that was gone. While he lived up there, he was just barely getting by as it was. He had been a photographer and now all his equipment was up in smoke as well. Anyway, they stayed over one more night and the next day mom tells him he “needs to get the hell out”, yeah like it was so fucking cold and rude it was embarrassing. What it was is that she just could not stand the fact that I was becoming friends with him and she wasn’t, well he was a loser anyway, so fuck him, she had no time for people without money. So I was like don’t take it personally she doesn’t really like me either as he would soon find out. At any rate, some people put them up for free in some cabins in town and after that ran out, a friend of his gave him this tiny ass trailer that you pull with a truck and they put it behind the spot where the charred remains of the house were and since we were neighbours again we started to hang out. If you read any of the first chapters, you’ll remember that my relationship with mom and my time on the fucking farm was not a dream made in heaven, but the hell of all hells so on days

291 when I’d had enough of my moms hateful attitude with me I would sometimes escape to live with him. Seriously in this trailer that was half the size of a small bedroom, he took me and my three kids who were still very young in. To eat we would use my food stamps or go to food banks or whatever we had to do since neither of us had a fuck- ing dime and what little we did have we’d spend on cigarettes and the occasional bot- tle of booze even though he wasn’t a big drinker but I still was, maybe not as bad as mom, I didn’t drink to pass out but to listen to music and have a good time. We would never stay that long and always go back to our home but it was always there as an es- cape hatch if and when shit hit the fan. Anyway, why I’m telling you all this, is that he was the first friend I ever had who I could be myself with, where I didn’t feel I had to pretend at all that I was something I wasn’t. It was like in front of him I could sing badly, dance badly, and even get drunk and do all kinds of crazy shit, cry and scream, or however it went and literally just wake up and know that even that was okay. It was what it was. We were both at the bottom of the barrel anyway so you know what the hell, might as well make the most of it. There was an opening in him, he was kind to me to a fault, cooked for me and my kids, brought me a cup of coffee or made me a drink, and literally talked about any subject I wanted to bring up including the metaphysical out there stuff. He wasn’t actually from the area, and he, like me, saw that there was some crazy shit going on not only there but in the world at large and we had lengthy conversations about how fucked up the world was and why that might be. Although, we were only ever friends to a tee, we were an unlikely pair of friends and people of the town gossiped about us con- stantly because often we would go everywhere together. Our forms were that different in that he was an overweight sloppy dressed often unkempt ageing man and I was a model slim well kept still pretty then girl from the city. We just laughed at them though

292 thinking they were stupid, shallow, fucking people and that our friendship no matter how bizarre it might seem to anybody else was our business and nobody else’s. He was the only one in the whole town who was on board with me when I started my campaign against the school’s policy of using corporal punishment and helped me with photographs that supported my cause. He treated his own son with the ut- most respect as well and had homeschooled him until it became apparent that they could use the school to get the kid where he needed to go. They had problems with the school as well at times but he was better at compromising than I was and although he was an outsider to some degree, he couldn’t go all the way like I did. Maybe it was because he was sick and was physically limited by a debilitating heart condition that he felt he had to keep some standing in the community while I on the other hand was hell bent on getting out of that fucking place. He was the love I needed when I need- ed it and nothing else, just myself. Eventually we did lose touch when I moved away for good but I heard him say hello to me on the ride home, was never here at all and hasn’t gone anywhere. So what’s happening here is all these memories come up for me while I’m on this trip, and I’m able to let them all go. I’m okay with the whole way it went down, see that even that was perfect, even in the midst of madness is perfection. So anyway, we stay at mom’s for just one night this time. I don’t have any problems with her and she doesn’t have any problems with me. Right before dinner her boyfriend, who used to also be a neighbour, dropped a bowl on the floor, and you could just see the distress of it wash over him like dropping a fucking bowl was some kind of catastrophe so I had to step in you know and say “Let’s get this straight, it’s a bowl and that’s all. Everything is just fine.” Then I swept it up while they got dinner on the table. The story with this boyfriend is when we first moved there he tried to go out with me since he is actually closer to my age than my moms but that was a no go. One night in a drunken stupor he drove up to our front porch on his four wheeler and tried

293 to get me to go for a ride with him and when I said no several times to his request he asked me if I was wearing any panties. Well, my kids were all with me when he said it and there were some small rocks they collected on the porch so when they heard that they picked them up and started throwing them at him and screamed at him to get the fuck off our property, you know sometimes that’s how it goes, I remember he said something like, “You’re actually going to let your kids throw rocks at me” like this was so disrespectful it was unheard of and I was like, “It does look that way.” Well, that did it and he was so drunk he just left the four wheeler parked where it was and stumbled back to his house I guess. Probably it was a really tough thing to come pick it up the next day and all that, even tougher when he got with my mom and no one was giving him much of a reception at all until you know things went this way for me. He’s a dream character to me now, and it’s sad the way it goes, but some of them have a real- ly rough go of it, well don’t I know, but you know I see now that none of that was ever even real at all, there was never anyone there doing anything to anyone else. If you had had his conditioning in exactly the same dose, you’d be asking about somebod- ies panties too on some drunken night. Both these characters are wearing thin now, even on these guys, I can feel little holes in even them where the light shines through. Where once I was like, if mom dies he isn’t getting shit (they’ve been together like five years now and trust me he’s had to put up with a lot with her), now I’m like, as far as I’m concerned he can stay in that house until he dies too. Compassion seems to arise for the ones with holes and not the other ones, interesting. Actually on the way home I said, “You know, since Oma can’t really walk now, just barely, if he dies before her, she’s not going to be able to take care of herself.” Well, I’m able to see now that he was actually a blessing put in place to get me off the hook so I could go where I need- ed to go.

294 One time when we moved away for a short time we found a stray dog and named it Lucky that we had and brought it back to her house except that when we left again we left it there with her. It’s his dog now, has been for years, like they are inseparable. Apparently, the dog was looking for him all along. The real reason I go into all this dream stuff history is that eventually you see that it was all actually very well executed from day one and planned out to bring you to a place where you can see what you need to see and where before you thought it was all either something you did or even random, now you know it’s doing that, has always been doing that, that this is actually how the dream is working. Over lunch, the topic of conversation was how there was a new sheriff in town (no joke) and they built a new prison so they double patrol the streets now, pull you over for just anything so it’s full already and they plan to keep it that way in that little town. There’s a big crack down on all the people doing drugs there as well which is rampant in that area, well given all the childhood beatings at home and at school, it’s no won- der. The thing I saw about that is that you know I hated those child beating school principles with a passion, but now nothing. There’s a mechanism going on in that place, and others, where a line is crossed, call it the point of no return, where a switch in the brain is literally turned off for the course of that dream characters life and noth- ing can ever turn it back on. No amount of evidence or convincing can bring that be- ing back to sanity, like when it’s off its off, and it has absolutely no choice but to live out the rest of its days functioning from its programmed state. This is almost everyone you will ever meet in your day to day functioning in this dream world. You are literally walking among the living dead. There’s a density to certain parts of this dream world. None of the kids felt happy at all in that place, even though nothing was really happening. Maybe all the fearful emotions of their childhoods there was playing somewhere in the subconscious as

295 well, I don’t know. My boys didn’t get along and decided on this trip that they were done with each other for good. The mood in the car was very heavy on the drive home. This whole story was forming in my mind during it and couldn’t wait to be writ- ten it seemed. Life plays itself out the way it wants to and that’s all there is to it, so might as well play along. There’s everything you can ever imagine in this dream of dreams, the so called good, bad, and just the downright ugly but rest assured it is all working in the only way it can work and there’s no judgement at all from that side of the fence, not for anything. I took off my headphones and put them back in toward the end of the drive and heard this… “Let the dream begin, let your darker side give in, to the power of the music, that I write, the power of the music of the night. You alone can make my song take flight, Help me make the music of the night.” Well you find the song and tell me what you think it’s talking about. I don’t write these words, I am not the writer of the song, just the trick is listen hard, and you may hear it playing. Chapter 40 The dream of separation from the source creates a broken heart. It is literally so painful that a character is created to shield the organism from feeling that pain, like the pain is that deep, it’s actually a survival mechanism because think about it, you have been taken away from what you are by suddenly arriving in a world of ignorant insanity. Well, that sucks for sure, one minute there you are, all that is, in a state of utter nirvana, knowing I am myself, I am that I am and the next minute you open something called your eyes, and you’re somewhere else, and you know you are like terrified maybe thinking something like, “Oh my God, this doesn’t seem like the right place,

296 the energy here feels very off, something very strange going on here.” So, yeah, you look around some more, and at first you think “Shit, this can’t be good”, and you seem to be in this little body called a baby, so you start crying, and you just cry round the clock, “Where the fuck am I? This doesn’t feel like Kansas anymore.” So maybe if you’re lucky, your parents or somebody tries to comfort you, tries to convey to you that it’s not all that bad or it will be all right, you’ll see, this is just a fun little trip you’re on, not a big deal at all, so you calm down a bit. Or maybe not, maybe your caregivers are assholes and just throw you in this little dungeon called a crib and say “Fuck it, let it cry, I don’t have time to deal with this shit, it’ll pass out and shut up eventually, they all do”, or you know just super ignorant, they’ve read some books written by other ig- norant dream characters that say the best way to “train a baby to sleep through the night” (thereby making it easier to deal with) is to leave it in the crib to cry itself to sleep until it doesn’t anymore. Either way, you somehow come to terms with the situa- tion and remember you haven’t gone anywhere and think well might as well make the best of this little ordeal. Well, it’s a whole crazy thing that has happened, but somehow you have landed in a place where no one knows what they are, as a child you try to tell them, you are like “look into my eyes and see what I see” or maybe you reach out your hand tenderly to all these lunatics you seem to be surrounded by now as if to say, “Come now, I think you are a bit confused about this whole thing, let’s just sit awhile and play and that way you’ll understand where you really are.” So you try that for awhile and in the be- ginning, hopefully, it seems to work, you wake up each day and just play around, but slowly more and more, these crazy people start acting more and more crazy, they start yelling at you, saying you can’t do this and you can’t do that. They even ask you “Why did you make that mess?” And you know they are just angry mother fuckers, but still you try to be cool about the whole thing and try to explain yourself saying something

297 like, “I don’t know, what mess? What’s a mess anyway? I’m not seeing anything called a mess, now calm down, let’s just have some more fun here” in whatever childish words you have at your disposal and just try to keep doing whatever it is you are doing. However, it goes though, slowly they bring you over to their crazy way of thinking, they make and put all these demands on you that seem utterly ridiculous to you but terribly serious to them so you know maybe you start crying again, you seem to cry a lot, but you try your best to go along with the situation, however that happens, you don’t feel like you are the cause of anything like they say you are, you don’t feel like you are even in control of this thing that they think you are, but eventually you come over to their side, you go along to get along, and you develop this idea that you have something in you called “trying” and you imagine like they do after awhile that if you use thing called “trying” hard enough it will all work out, except that it doesn’t, the whole “trying” thing is either not working properly or it’s somehow inadequate to the tasks at hand. So you fail at things and when you do, you are now confronted with an- other idea called blame, whenever you fail you get blamed for it, so you take that in and eventually learn how do some nice blaming yourself. The more they blame you for things, the better you get at blaming yourself, and the better you get at “taking re- sponsibility” and blaming yourself the better you get at blaming others as well. It’s a game, don’t you know, and the object of the game is to make things work out and everyone happy along the way except if that happens the game is over and that’s not a very good game. That’s a good dynamic to be aware of, of course, the crazy part is that to blame anyone else is still just blaming yourself. That dream you see, that per- son you think you see is only you so it’s a stupid fucking game to begin with but you know there it is so maybe get out and stop playing it. Playing this game is a total waste of time anyway.

298 Well, it goes however it goes but it was still just a little dream and now years later, many years later, you wake up, for whatever reason, you remember what you are, and you just take a deep sigh of relief as you look back over this dream you thought was real for so long, and realise that it was all just a big joke, that you never needed to do anything because there was never a you to begin with and you haven’t left home after all, never moved even an inch. Now you see that you have mistaken yourself for some- thing small within something much smaller called a body, and you still experience having a body to move around in but what this body does is all just some form of en- tertainment and nothing else. What happens to this so called body is not up you and of no significance whatsoever, it moves on it’s own and sees what it wants to see and you are just along for the ride. Everything it sees is just a manifestation of what you are, well it’s nice to see something, that’s part of the fun, but as once before you were going around judging what you were seeing as either good or bad in whatever way you were conditioned to judge things, now you are just seeing, plain and simple, just taking in the sights. Part of waking up is dealing with this “broken heart” you seem to have acquired over the years. Rumi is quoted as saying, “You have to keep breaking your heart until it opens.” Of course, nobody really knows what that means, just the word “heart” has been contaminated to the point where all anyone really thinks it is anymore is that lit- tle red or pink symbol, that’s all that comes up in the mind these days, we use this symbol constantly as a sign of love except that we don’t know what that word means anymore either, childhood memories of love (hopefully we at least had some) are buried so deep now, buried under so many painful lies now, it’s hard to get at. Every- one you see these days, all activities even are actually geared toward reclaiming this love that we think we’ve lost, it’s the lifelong search to find a place where we can be ourselves again, which is love, just not the word “love.” Anyone you can see who isn’t

299 acting lovingly, is actually just re-enacting how they felt when their own love, what they were, was rejected or regarded as worthless, well they were angry as hell and hurt be- yond hurt, we all were, and we either took that out on ourselves or others, whichever role we were programmed to play. That’s all that’s going on there. Of course, there are no others out there like we are programmed to think there are, I’m just using language in the limited way it can be used and because I’m dreaming right now that there is someone outside of me that is reading this but in Truth I can only ever talk to myself. Well, this love seems to enjoy doing that these days. So it’s easy to see that everyone you know if they haven’t found a love interest, or aren’t satisfied with the one they have, is hoping that this romantic thing between peo- ple, sex, and all that will get them where they need to go, back to the heart, the heart seems to be missing now, there’s a longing there, it’s incomplete somehow, well it’s not, it’s just your awareness of it is not in your awareness. It can’t actually go anywhere, it’s what you are, without it you wouldn’t even exist, it is actually awareness itself, but the conditioned mind now directs the attention toward getting things that it thinks will gain it access to this heart, if only I had that situation, or that person, I would feel loved again, but it never realises that it is already what it is searching for. Well, it’s a weird dream for sure, so much suffering, so much pretending to be something else other than what we are, but you can be sure it all started with a broken heart and the mecha- nism created to shield itself from any further battering. This longing for love though is everywhere. It’s on the wave lengths, the internet, the streets, in the bars, anywhere you look you can find it but this longing is a mistaken longing, the longing is consciousness tugging at your heart, even in this way, it’s al- ways tugging and you just keep looking in the wrong direction. You keep thinking it’s out there in the world to be found, through some other person, or some good money, or whatever and you never realise that the thought that arises in you that tells you you

300 are missing out, missing some vital part of your very existence is awareness itself. Awareness is in every thought of longing and incompleteness calling to you all day and all night long and it’s saying turn around, stop looking out there, I’m already here in your heart. So once again, that word “heart” comes up. What is a heart? The dictio- nary says it is the “central or innermost part of something”, well let’s face it, it’s just a word and no word will get you there. Even to say consciousness is “in” your heart is off because it’s not in anything, it is everything, I’d even say you don’t have a heart, you are the heart, so heart is really synonymous with consciousness, it’s the all the same thing, everywhere you look in any direction you can only ever see the same thing. It is all just itself, the moving picture is consciousness just playing around with itself. If you could just drop every story you ever heard, you would immediately see it. It is like an innocent child at play. I had what “I thought” were some off days, some pain was there, some fear, that that I’d be stuck in this dream I dreamed and never escape it. Of course, I didn’t buy into that at all, just watched it really as it passed by and ultimately brought me down deep again into what I am, ever reminding me that I don’t need to ever worry about what the outside looks like as long as I know where the inside is. Well, I was over worked from the job and exhausted from a lack of sleep, and on my second day off, I let the children do their thing and I took to myself. I spent the next twenty four hours on a dry fast, not bothering with food or drink, took a hot bath, listened to music, and read some Rumi. I was in and out of sleep, anytime it came, I closed my eyes and napped. I did some beautiful meditations and the next day found me right back where I’d always been, completely at home and at peace with what was right now. The dream world is a tremendous drain if you take any part of it to be real and al- most all the ideas that you find there are counter-productive to being at peace in this moment. They are all fear based and actually create the problems that you might want

301 to avoid, so yeah taking anything you see seriously is like cutting off your arm to save your finger, that being said, it’s not like you have to like everything you see, or fucking love it, most of it is so fucking stupid and ignorant, no one in their “right” mind would like it at all. How do you get to a point where you’re able to tolerate so much bullshit much less like it? Maybe, look into that. Let’s face it the consensual dream is a fucking insane asylum, where dream charac- ters who think they are fucking real never stop moving from morning till night. That any of them go along with it is a wonder, that almost all of them go along with it is even stranger but that most of them of them seem to think this is an acceptable and worthy way to live the one fucking life you have been so graciously granted is just fucking mind blowing. If I was a man living in India 100 years ago, I’m sure that I would just have left all behind and roamed the countryside and I would have quite pleasantly been able to survive this way, but nowadays no such option even exists in dreamland. No, I have to somehow physically survive while somewhat abiding by the rules of the game that everyone in dreamworld has somehow learned to live by. I have to go work and pay my bills. I need money to buy food and pay for the place I rest my head. I think I’ve said it before, but if it wasn’t for my children I’m quite certain I’d be homeless by now. I would have just packed some essential outdoor living supplies and said “fuck this shit.” Except that nothing is up to me, like I’m not deciding to stay in this messy dream like you probably believe, the very idea that there is a you who is decid- ing anything is part of the fucking illusion. So that being said the body/mind just keeps doing what it’s always done until it does something else. God knows that’s how it’s always been working, shit read the fucking story and figure out what the fuck you are already. Oops, this conditioned dream character seems to be getting a little impa- tient these days.

302 Well, the body/mind is getting tired here. It’s getting tired of all the stupid shit everyone in their complete and utter ignorance is dreaming up these days. How the fuck is it you are even able to believe that some fictional fucking entity called a gov- ernment who goes around with guns killing people under the justification of protect- ing this “you” and this fictional thing called a country? How the fuck can anyone actu- ally believe that they need to pay this murderous fictional entity a third of all the mon- ey they have to waste their life making so they can be safe? You are already fucking safe, you are so fucking safe it doesn’t make one ounce of difference whether you die today or tomorrow, because the whole thing is a fucking hallucination and you have never ever fucking gone anywhere nor will you ever. Quite awhile ago now in the dream, when we were trying to get on our feet back when we first left my mother’s house, I had to apply for food stamps and I had to spend my days going to this mandatory work program where they help you look for jobs and all that shit. Well, one day we watched a movie there called “God grew tired of us” about this group of boys in the Sudan who having fled an incredible distance on foot the wars in their area ended up in a refugee camp where they lived together for many years in heart breaking poverty and yet how they lived there together in ten- der harmony with each other with an almost perfect love and caring for the whole is an example worthy of following. Of course, the United States of America might have sent supples like food and some nice mattresses or shared some modern pleasantries with them and left them just where they were, but no in it’s arrogance of thinking that a better life would be had here in this country it instead brought some of them over to give them a chance at what they call “the good life.” Oh yeah, the United States, did it to look good, you know their motivation was to be seen in some charitable light, everyone would rather live in a apartment and work three jobs to afford food and bills, that’s a better fucking life for sure, now they can show they did something worth do-

303 ing, going up in the world and all that nonsense instead of spending the day in rela- tive peace, playing games, cooking and eating what little food they had in utter pover- ty, yes this is preferable, now you won’t have time to talk to anyone, just listen for the alarm, jump out of bed, catch the bus, mutter can I take your order incessantly and on command all day long, get off work, so exhausted, mentally the mind shuts down, it has to, the monotonous cold atmosphere of the day, what are you doing, don’t stand still, make that order now, clean that floor, your life is not your own anymore. Well, many of them actually went crazy, but let me ask you this, who are the crazy ones? Is it better to have money and nice things, spend all your time geared toward that or an actual life where you have time to be with those you love being around and not look- ing to enhance any so called future? I’m not saying that there doesn’t have to any working down here in dreamland ob- viously the way it’s running now, it’s nice to have someone to hook up your water or your internet but you shouldn’t have to work non stop to just barely get by. The physi- cal organism wasn’t made for that and can’t tolerate it at all I’d say, that’s how now there are millions of sick and depressed people, the body just can’t withstand the pressure of the culture and society of the dream it finds itself in. Everyone comes home from their jobs and sits and eats in front of the TV to get away from the night- mare of the day never realising that the whole dream of their life is coming straight out of a mind that was conditioned by a sick and unhealthy society. The judgements that are heaped upon them as well cause untold fears to ruminate from morning till night as well until eventually a cancer or an accident comes to save them from this stu- pid agony and the ones who die, well that’s consciousness right there saying fuck this shit, I’m out, going home now. I’m guessing they let all of us welfare recipients watch that movie as some sort of inspiration, but I saw it clearly even then, the madness of the world I was dealing with.

304 God hadn’t forgotten those boys at all, it had spared them. Well, the dream itself is coming straight out of your imagination and I don’t like it one bit that my life has to be impacted at all by all the sick imaginations out there. I imagine that if a massive amount of dreamers, say 10 or 20 million of them got together and spent just ten fucking weeks doing “The Presence Process”, like literally just took an hour out of their day to connect their breathing and read the text, much less time than they spend in front of the fucking TV each day, this stupid shitty dream would miraculously fall apart, all the government and armies would topple, and something beautiful and worthy of having an experience of being in a body would take it’s place. Honestly, just that one thing, such a minor so called “inconvenience” to the day, would have such beautiful effects in dreamland, that eventually some beautiful dream would manifest and hearts around the world would be transformed to such a degree that no one anywhere would ever be able to believe that it was real ever again. Well, Maya (the world of illusion) is strong right now, but sometimes I imagine that I just call her out and go face to face with her and I think to myself, “Bitch, I’m taking you down!” Please do not make the mistake when you are reading this writing to think that there is someone here writing this which this “you” that you think you are will in- evitably do. There is only what you are and the rest of it, what you are seeing as this so called “you” including these very words is a fiction. The dream character itself is hav- ing a dream within the confines of a consensual dream so all I’m saying here is why not end this mass suffering and make the dream truly worth dreaming? Listen there are a handful of dream characters who are actually enjoying their dream, but they are doing it at the expense of ruining the dream for almost all the other dreamers and al- most all the dream characters just blindly accept this and all I’m saying here is it doesn’t have be this way.

305 End of fucking rant. Chapter 41 As I was driving to work this week, music blaring as usual, this character singing at the top of her lungs to this Scorpion’s song I love so much “Still loving you”, just know- ing it’s does need time, feeling so much love, knowing only love can bring back all my love some day, remove every last damn obstacle to living the life I was meant to live, telling me to fight against every last stubborn lie left in there that gets in the way of ex- periencing this life all the way, not one judgment left, and it’s saying “I will be there”. It’s telling me it’s fighting there for me, “your pride has built a wall so strong, that I can’t get through, “drop all pride in anything, every last drop”, this means even any last fear that even here through this writing that I will be seen by the world as a complete lunatic, of course I will, and so what? I’m not even the writer so let the whole world laugh, call me crazy, or whatever. As Marichelle said so well in Jed Talks #1 in the Yolanda Periwinkle piece, “You can’t agree with this but I don’t let that stop me from saying it” actually, I do hope the world does laugh, laughter is what this dream world is for anyway, the louder the better. It’s like I’m sitting here and my attention goes to the words of another song, the song has been playing on my phone but it hasn’t been at the foreground of my aware- ness because I’ve been focused on this writing, and now it shifts to these words in this moment, “You will remember when this is blown over and everything’s all by the way, when I grow older, I will be there at your side to remind you how I still love you.” (Love of my life by Queen). There it is again, I’m not even surrounded by it, or in it, I am it, most of the time I’m aware of this but still sometimes I’m not. Sometimes I can still look at the mess of my life, the seemingly solid astronomical pile up of bills to be paid and what I can still somewhat imagine are the time bound circumstances there to rise above and the life I lead because of these shackles, not feeling free to move, but let

306 me tell you something else I’m absolutely certain of “there is no difficulty of order” and at any minute of any day, a miracle can step in and take right over. I’ve already seen this again and again. Patience and an unfaltering unending belief in this one truth is diligently required to overcome any obstacle no matter how large and solid it seems in the dream world, it is not. The dream itself has it’s own intelligence that is be- yond anything the small thinking mind can fathom or think up. So no need to think at all, it is doing all the thinking and working out of every little detail for you at all times. LET GO COMPLETELY INTO THAT! It isn’t in you it is you and your highest good at all times is it’s only concern. All you really are doing is being aware of being inside what you are again, again, again, feeling the utter bliss to be had there, being aware of your very being and eventually never leaving it by any worldly distraction, never letting the mind ponder even the slightest insecurity, no place for that to enter, the places for those to enter are closing all on their own by a power that loves to know itself as itself for all time, infinity. ….. This is the process that is processing itself. So I’m driving and it’s a right hand yield but I thought I saw the truck in front of me go and I’m looking left to see when I can, not realising that there is still this truck 10 or 15 feet in front of me and I hit the gas but when I look up, there it is and I hit the brakes but too late, and bam, I slam into the back of him. Well, oh shit, I turn the car off and I’m about to get out but I see this guy has pulled up and over so I start it up again and follow him, parking behind him, jump out of my car and walk right up to his win- dow. Well, he’s not overly friendly, well let’s face it he’s had a bit of a shock, not exactly what he was expecting by any stretch of the imagination, but he seems decent enough and there’s a lady in the passenger side who looks at me disapprovingly like I’m crazy or something, lol, well she got that right. So I rapidly blurt out, “Omg, I’m so sorry. Please forgive me. For some reason I thought you’d already gone”, and then I say, “Well, I’ll just go get my insurance card”, but before I can he gets out and walks

307 over to look for any damage and he's like, "Actually I don't think you hurt my truck but why don't you turn your lights on so we can see what happened to yours." So I'm like "Oh, it’s fine, I don't care about this car at all" but I go turn on the lights so I can take a look at his. He is driving a truck and on the back of it is like this long metal hitch to pull stuff with so that's all I hit, so we look at my car and from what we can tell, there's not a scratch on it that we can see in the dark. It’s not broken at all from what we can tell. Pretty strange since it was more than just a little tap more like a good thump. Anyway, he says he's good and I get to work on time even. Well, I got back in my car and just laughed, nothing fucking happening, but it like gave me a bit of a jolt, exactly what I needed, like a little pop or something and the rest of my night at work was spent in some kind of state of bliss, just the feeling itself was like a good fucking drug, like the universe, consciousness just grabbed me by the shoulders and shook me and said, “Listen up all the way now. I got you. I got your back at all times and I’ll use whatever I have to use to get this through to you. I am running the show now and everything in it, even the cars. Nothing can ever happen to you because nothing is fucking happening so you can just go ahead and let go of that last bit now, anything left in there that’s tied to any belief or fear that this isn’t the magical place that you know it is.” Well, I knew that through my thoughts except for some slight lingerings, some al- most undetectable doubts deep down that were still holding on somehow so I didn’t always “feel” that and there’s a big difference between the two. Even the smallest, however slight, internal misgiving about the uncertain future is enough to keep this deep underlying anxiety that everyone is living with alive and prevent you from going into round the clock non stop relaxation. Well, this seemingly solid world that every- one around you is acting like they are in, just everyone you can come in contact with in your daily duties, tries like hell to hold on, and it’s just a menace if you believe any part of it and let it fill you with any doubts whatsoever. The outside consensual dream

308 world actually tries to mirror this to you at every turn but its Maya, and you can’t be- lieve anything she says or thinks at all. Now you know how things are working, and that’s not it, that’s what all the other dream characters are stuck in, like it’s their cross to bear, but there was never a cross, the whole cross story, burdens, responsibility, strug- gle, was just a story and it was an ugly one at that. Nothing is ever wrong, or lost, or fails at all, all is just the perfect unfolding, and it is completely beyond your control and anything the thinking mind can tell you about this world you think you are in is a lie. Ramana Maharshi said it best when he said, “If you have surrendered, you must be able to abide by the will of God and not make a grievance of what may not please you.” I mean if you think about it, what possible good can come from wanting this mo- ment to be other than it is. So what I see now, through all the circumstances of every facet of my entire life, is the tender loving care with which I’ve actually been held and what that is, is what I am. So you know, I’m all good and I get to work like it’s any other day. How I still go there is anyone’s guess but I do and I’m seeing the appearance of bodies talking animately all around me, I don’t listen to the words so much at all, words are basically nothing anyway, but I like to watch the movements, what makes the faces smile or laugh or cringe, it’s a real banquet, lots of activity, anxiety does that, everyone trying to put on a show to cover up the fact that they want to have a good profitable night and not come across too many angry and sad customers. Every night holds some real promise in this place but it also holds it’s opposite as all opposites do. So I just stand there quietly like I always do, I know I’m not even there to “do” anything. My money is already all worked out for me before the night even starts. Conscious- ness has revealed this little trick to me already, like it already knows and has orches- trated this whole little dream right down to its last fifty cents. There’s no one there ac- tually doing anything, not even an actual place at all like we thought there was, pretty

309 weird I know, a real trip if I do say so myself, which apparently I do, fucking unreal down to the very last drop. There’s a song that came into my awareness many years ago now, even before I went to that meditation where I disappeared and saw what I saw, it was during a time of some really bad dreaming, well of course I thought it was real at the time, anyway, it came on the radio while I was driving alone at night down a dark highway, on just one of the lowest days of my life, and for some reason it just grabbed me. So I found out what it was and you know I got a copy of it somehow and played it a lot. Well, I didn’t know what it was then, just thought it was a beautiful song that I liked listening to. Then I forgot about it for many years until just recently, I found it again and put it on one of my playlists so I heard it every so often, well it’s nice to listen to. It wasn’t until recently however that the full meaning of this song came to me, you know in this dream I dream, I get a lot of songs that tell me things that I need to know to get me back to the beginning. Yeah, well, music comes up a lot for most dreamers who come this way and here’s how, the last words of the song sum it up so perfectly I doubt any- one could ever say it better and it goes like this. “Yeah, and even if the whole world has forgotten, the song remembers when.” So you know recently I looked up the history of this song, and it’s based on a poem by Anne Sexton called “The music swims back to me” and even in that poem there are a few lines that stand out to me, the first is “Wait Mister. Which way is home?”, and later “Music pours over the sense and in a funny way music sees more than I.” The last line is “The night I came I danced a circle and was not afraid.” Well, if what I’ve been trying to say here all along is true and we are all in fact dreaming, who then is the creator of the dream? If there is nothing here at all called a you doing anything, who is the doer? Who is it that writes the songs and the poetry? Who grows the grass, who flies the birds, who animates the characters you see all day

310 long including your own? The thing is that if there is only consciousness, awareness, and nothing else, then it is also the creator, and just one look at the intricacies of the human body, or how about the weather, will tell you that the intelligence of it is be- yond measure. Well, it’s been brought to my attention before as a few have asked me, well if it is the creator then why create pain and suffering and here’s my answer to that. Pain and suffering is created by the dreamt character only, not consciousness, there is no pain and suffering in consciousness at all, as anyone who is completely and utterly self realised will attest to, in the final and complete dissolution of the false sense of self, suffering is no more. Dreamt characters while only dreaming anyway, have dreamt it all up, the conditioned dreamer can only dream to it’s conditioned ca- pacity for dreaming, and since it starts off on a misunderstanding of it’s very nature, everything down the road is also misperceived and misunderstood, creating havoc in the dream, but not in consciousness. Creative endeavours such as music and poetry, is a movement in the dream that has had access to the heart of consciousness itself, for whatever reason the dreamt character has an opening that has bridged a gap and crossed over into the divine and while they think they are the ones writing it they are not, they have just dreamed they are and therefore, consciousness is able to speak through it to touch the hearts of those who listen to it. Well, the first time I heard that song my dream character was probably wearing a little thin and probably I was feeling like this life I thought I was in had utterly defeated me, maybe I was even thinking of driving straight off the road and into the canyon below never to be seen again. I can’t really remember now if I was or not, but that song, that one song was consciousness way of trying to tell me that my life wasn’t real, that there was not any way to fail at any- thing, and that nothing was my fault at all. In Truth nothing is anyone’s fault, because it’s not really happening anyway, and no one there to make anything happen. The whole fiasco is just some imaginary drama created by imaginary dreamers who are

311 locked into following the only script they can, the one the conditioned mind projects onto the screen. It is my feeling that while some say that consciousness is void, nothing at all, im- partial to a tee, the heart of creation is perfect divine love and nothing less. Ignorant of what life is and is for, dreamt characters in the form of desire while really desiring to know what they are, missing the mark, will use anything to fill the hole that they can’t help but feel but they don’t know what it is. Of course, at the bottom of the big black hole is the fact that what they think they are is not, doesn’t even exist, never has and never will. The mind itself (Maya, illusion) has been covering up this fact since the be- ginning of man, since it’s entire existence (appearance, experiencing having or being in a body) relies on keeping this one big lie under wraps because to uncover it is re- experience (and of course, resolve) the unfathomable pain of childhood. All that hurt, all the untold sorrow, that has been festering all these years, and of course, the ulti- mate disappointment that who you think you are is a big fat zero and there’s nothing “you’ can do about it, “you” aren’t doing anything, one last time, there isn’t one. The very idea that your particular life has meaning is hard to get past but once you face the facts that no matter what you think you have or could accomplish in the dream means absolutely nothing, that everything, all dream activities, all dreamt char- acters dissolve over time, in time nothing at all remains so seeing this clearly makes it easier to let go of what you thought you were. If anything ever gets carried over at all I like to imagine that unconditional love in the form of a completely anonymous energy form floats forward somehow, laying traces of this love in clues scattered about and only shattered broken hearts are able to find them, to bring them back briefly into form somehow, leaving clues for the next lonely traveler. Well, it’s no secret that dream characters are drawn to music universally, it speaks to us, moves the emotions, it’s comforting or motivating or inspiring. That’s why there

312 are concerts where enormous amounts of dream characters gather together to hear it, but could there be more to it than just the enjoyment of it? Could music actually be a vehicle for consciousness to impart wisdom to its dreamers? It’s like if you really dis- sect A Stairway to Heaven you will easily find a parallel to awakening in many of the words if you are so inclined, and yet the writer of the song wasn’t even aware of it at all, had no idea the words or the music weren’t coming from him at all like he thought they were. Even the fact that the song is known almost around the world for decades to come is hardly an accident at all. I once heard it played in a small resort town out- side of Bogota, Colombia at an outdoor disco more than twenty years ago and hardly anyone even spoke English there. Well, just take a small step down the rabbit hole, and you can see that you aren’t the creator of any you, (did you create your body?) so why think you are the creator of your own thoughts or actions? Well, everything is be- ing dreamed up by just one infinite limitless incalculable intelligence and to imagine that there is anything that it can’t do anytime it is so inclined is just really a barrier in your thinking, some part of you is walled off because whatever created you is you and that’s no small thing, it is everything. So just maybe whatever songs you like to listen to are itself talking to itself. Knowing this, I’d say maybe give them another listen, and try to figure out how it is you are hearing something to begin with and just what that might be. Chapter 42 So now it feels like something is dying down all of a sudden, my excitement over this dreamworld seems to have faded lately, well, it's not a big deal, just another pass- ing phase, things come and then they go. What that will be for this body/mind isn't up to this body/mind at all, that's a relief, a real load off I'd say, now if something needs to change I know it will, not that anything real could ever change. Maybe something in what's appearing will change, or not, nothing is ever really changing except the pic-

313 tures anyway. Whatever the universe wants to do with this imaginary body/mind it can do, it can have this body/mind, all of it, no objections here, it's not like it's actually go- ing somewhere or doing anything anymore, well that's nice, maybe, or maybe not, de- pends on who you ask, nice according to the parameters of the dream and the stan- dards of the dreamt characters, may or may not be in store for this particular dreamt character, who would know, nobody, nobody home. You know the mind likes to think about how something might go, I forget about it, I like to listen to music the most, I might just stay here in this music till the end of it, that would be a pretty good ending I'd say. It's very nice here in this, better than any- thing else I've ever had, so relaxing, beyond peaceful. The whole idea that we needed to do something, anything, was nothing more than a big fat lie. Where would we do it? In the ether? Ridiculous! Complete foolishness! We will however have an experience of doing, well I'm not going to just lay down and die am I? No, that’s not possible, body/minds aren’t actually programmed that way, there’s a survival instinct embedded in them that you know drives them to at least eat and drink occasionally and mine has a definite aversion to being cold so it’s always either dressing warm or turning up the heat. My character, the me that I thought I was, also has an aversion to the job that it has in the dream, but she seems to tolerate it well enough on most days. The hours that used seem long now pass by so quickly it’s like being there for five minutes and any reactions to other dream characters that were still occurring to this dreamed char- acter I thought I was are now subsiding rapidly. I’m not going to say this is some pleas- ant dreaming but reactions to anything out there like getting upset with anyone for anything is just a no go now. No one doing anything, not even you, you aren’t even here like that anymore. Somehow this job is also tied to a survival mechanism, you gotta keep the lights on and the heater running.

314 Actually, any reaction to anything seems to be falling away more and more every- day. Well, it’s weird for sure, because there comes a time when it’s seen so clearly, can’t be retracted at all anymore, that one is not really here, does not exist in the nor- mal context of things existing and not even time is the same thing, not even sure now what that is, I think maybe there never was any. The body does seem to age in the dream but how long that takes from start to finish is anyone’s guess. I’d say it’s not nearly as long as we think it is. Not sure about that one. So then there was that, just everyday it shows up, and shows up, something completely out of the ordinary, and somehow even then the mind wants to dismiss it until you know maybe it just can’t anymore. Well, you’ve been watching the tricks of the mind for more than a few years now, how it likes to throw just the smallest barely detectable trace of doubt in there if it can to maybe throw you off, but now its antics don’t go anywhere like the distance between an antic and some unsettling feeling (you must be going crazy) gets shorter and shorter until I guess there isn’t any. I mean you’ve seen it so what are you going to do except that even that question hits a wall, well I think after you have seen what you’ve seen the last part to go is the idea that there was a “you” who saw it and not a dream character who saw it but now there’s nothing there to hold to even that. Consciousness is arising just continuously as it’s always done, everywhere, like a little movie or some big fat drama, it’s more like that these dream days, super heavy in the hearts of these dreamt characters, dire times they all seem to think, well it’s easy to feel that from any one of them, the strug- gle is real like they are fond of saying, you know don’t slow down or you’ll be swal- lowed up by it, sink like a stone, paddle, paddle, paddle not gently down the stream at all anymore, it’s all uphill from here they seem to dream. It’s frantic as hell, don’t you know, every detail has to be reined in, the characters need to stay in their roles like

315 good little children and stop upsetting all these mind created fictional plans, and you know they don’t. Consciousness doesn’t seem to be playing the same game at all. So there’s that, up is no longer up, and down is no longer down, neither is there this and not that, or now and then, he and she, us and them, dead and alive, here and there, day and night, awake and asleep, well the list could on and on because the con- text in which they were all held is just not there. It is gone or going except that some- thing being here and having gone are also not. Neti, neti, that was a good pointer. Well, it gets really hard to say anything at all because anything that can be said is com- pletely out of context, it can only be said in the dream, but nothing at all can be said outside of that, except that inside and outside are gone as well, silence. Complete and utter stillness, not any word, and no sound, no thought at all, emptiness except not emptiness, not even that, that doesn’t cut it, how about fullness, except full of what, full of emptiness maybe but again no, not really. How about being? That comes closer, closer to what, how close, wrong words again. All that is, and everything seen is not, the seer is not, no seer, seeing with no seer and nothing seen, or no seeing over here, seeing happening within the context of the dream, otherwise back to emptiness. But again, not emptiness, empty of what, another concept, doesn’t say it. Not empty at all, the opposite of emptiness then, all that is, except what is seen what is experienced is not, back to the word being without the word being. “In the beginning was the word” the word was the beginning of the dream, but now no word, can’t use words because can’t use thoughts. A couple days ago now I had some errands to do. I had to send back the modem from the old internet company, it had to be dropped off at a Fedex location. It had been sitting on my desk for three weeks or so and they give you a month to return it but for some reason it just felt like going out of my way but now I was running out of time before they would charge me something crazy for it so I resolve to drop the

316 damn thing off. This puts me in a part of town I don’t usually go to so while I’m there, I go to a grocery store in that area that has good prices. After that, I have to stop at Wal- mart to pick up some of these disposable little packets that heat up. It’s been warm enough at work but the other day when it was cold in there, my friend gave me one and I put it in my arm sleeve and it kept me much warmer. At any rate, since I’m in a different area I go to a Walmart that’s on my way home but not the one I always go to which is close to my house. My youngest sixteen year old son is with me as well and he needs some cleaning wipes for his glasses too so that’s what we look for first. So there we are walking around in circles because for some reason we can’t find them so that takes a minute until we finally do find his stuff and after we do we walk past the pharmacy and that’s when I see this dog. Well, it’s unusual to see someone walking around Walmart with a dog, unless it’s a service dog, I’m pretty sure they are not even allowed in there like that but here is this older man standing in line for his medicine and next to him is what looks like a tiny little all white puppy, well the dog is like 7lbs at most so it looks like a baby to me, and on some other day I might have just walked by, but on this day, I’m just taken with the little creature so I go to say hello. I say, “OMG, how cute is that”, and I walk over and drop down to pet it and it’s just super friendly and the man is friendly so I’m like talking to the dog saying something like “how cute are you, you are just too cute” and then I jokingly look up at the man and say “Can I have him?” Well, I was a bit taken aback, had to take a moment to think about it when he said, “Yes, actually you can. This dog needs a home. I was actually hoping I’d see someone in here who would take him. Someone gave him to me and I already have three dogs so I can’t keep in. You want him?” And it you know it throws me, my daughter and I were talking about how we wanted a little dog like this, the next addition and all that, so I’m thinking, wow how is this lining up. My son however is totally against it and he’s saying “No mom, this is crazy, you don’t just take some dog

317 from a random guy in Walmart, we don’t need another dog”, well he doesn’t like look- ing after the dog we have sometimes and maybe he feels this will be another burden on him. So now I’m like well I just don’t know, let me think about it and I call my daugh- ter and get her on FaceTime and show her the dog. The man has gotten his prescrip- tion and is walking around now so we are walking along with him, well I am, my son is trying to go in another direction. Well, he’s dead ass against it but I’m like you know what, where’s your sense of fucking adventure, and I ignore him thinking this isn’t about you and short story not quite as long, I walk out of the store with this tiny bun- dle in my arms. The story that I got out of the man is that some one found him wandering around the mall parking lot and after driving around it, unsuccessfully trying to find someone to claim it, then gave it to him. He’s taken it to the pound to see if they could help find the owner, it was discovered that the dog had a microchip but the people at the pound said the chip was not active and so no information could be found there. I guess you have to pay to keep the chip working, well that makes sense to me (except it doesn’t) fuck is there nothing you have to keep paying for in this dream these days. So we take the dog home and my daughter instantly likes it though it’s going to be “my dog” and all that, well you know that whole silly thing of yours and mine that chil- dren and everyone else think is a real thing. So anyway my daughter is playing with it and finds a flea on it so we wash it in flea shampoo and I make an appointment to get this little guy checked out and put on the flea pill because whatever you do, you don’t want any flea manifestations to come into your dream, fuck that dream. So I go to work and my daughter helps to settle it down with our other dog and all that. The dog is so sweet it just cuddles and sleeps right on your lap so when I get home my daughter says, “This has got to be someone’s dog. We should try to find out if it is”, so that got me thinking and before I head off to bed, I go on craigslist to the lost dog section to

318 see if there’s anything there. Well, I find an ad about a lost dog that looks a little like this one, same breed, we think it’s a Maltese, but I’m not sure, I mean the faces are very similar but the hair, well the hair can grow, so I resolve to call them in the morning just in case, it’s like four am and I go to bed with my new friend, who just jumps right up and curls up next to me. After about four hours sleep, for some reason I just pop up awake and immediate- ly think to call these people. No one answers so I leave a text with a picture of the dog I have, and in just a few minutes time I get a phone call from the husband. Well, we talk a bit and he says his wife will call me, so she does and you know she’s emotional, she can’t tell from the picture if it is her dog either, and she’s at work so she can’t leave. We are on the phone for quite a bit, she has me looking for markings but I don’t see any so I’m thinking this is probably not her dog but I’m willing to try to find out and she wants to know if we can get together when she gets off, well my heart went out to her, so out of the blue I just say, “you know what, why I don’t I just drive this dog over to you right now so you can have a look, I don’t think you are going to have a nice day if you have to go through the whole thing all wondering like this. Can you pop out and take a look if I do, I mean is your job accommodating like that?”, and she’s says she can and is just thanking me so much. So I’m tired as hell but my daughter and I drive down there, and we find out, it’s not her dog. So we sit there, now we are way across town, and our appointment with the vet is in two hours, so while we are debating whether it’s worth it to drive home and then go back out or not, my daughter says “Well why don’t we get a smoothie” so I say ok and I google a smoothie shop on my phone and head that way. Here’s where the story gets interesting, as we are driving I notice a new restaurant and it’s called “Tacos4life.” Well, we are just driving now but I look up at that and for some reason it just strikes me and I say to my daughter, “Tacos4life? Really? I mean I like tacos, their pretty tasty and

319 all but that name doesn’t work, that’s just over the top, like what would you do just eat tacos and nothing else for the rest of your life.” Anyway, so we have a bit of a laugh there, like you know shit has just gotten way to weird lately. Fucking people are just crazy and all that. Well, we get our smoothie and now it’s about an hour till the doggie appointment so I just drive over to the place thinking well maybe we can get in sooner or something otherwise guess we will just wait there. So this vet is in a store and I go in and ask if there’s anything sooner but the guy working there acts like I just asked him if he wouldn’t mind just handing over his whole pay check to me or something, like yeah just sort of went off about it saying “No, the vet has appointments, there are appointments before you and it’s on schedule and blah, blah, blah”, so I’m like shit calm the fuck down, all I was doing is asking, not a big deal at all, whatever crawled up your ass, maybe go take a dump already. So anyway, I decide to look around to see if I need to buy anything else for this lit- tle dog I got with me and my daughter comes in and says my son has called and he wants to go back to the gym so since she doesn’t want to wait she’s just going to leave me there, pick him up and then come back for me, so I say okay. I’m not to pleased about waiting in this store with these uptights but you know fuck them, I just do what I do. So she leaves and I look around and buy a few things, a little water and food bowl, a leash that matches the new tiny collar we already bought and then I decide to ask them to scan the microchip. I’ve got some time now so I just want to double check the guys story and make sure there really isn’t anyone on the other end of it. So they get the number of the chip and give me the number to call about it. There are other guys working here as well and they aren’t super friendly but they are helpful and nice enough, so I find a place to sit down on this shelf that’s near to the ground because the place has like no chairs, and I make the call. Well, the company tells me it isn’t their chip but gives me the number I need to call so I call them and give them the number

320 and what do you know? The chip isn’t inactive at all. There’s an owner to this dog and this dog has a name, it’s name is, wait for it…Taco. Yeah, well it all just came together for me right there. The whole restaurant thing and all you know, just made perfect sense and I was like sitting there in some kind of awe. Well, the chip had just been re- newed about a month ago, and there are two numbers on file for it, so she puts me on hold and if she gets someone she is going to connect us but no one answers either one, so she leaves them my contact information and says when they get it, they will get back to me. Well, I’m still not knowing if they will, you know maybe they didn’t want the dog, what do I know, so now the appointment is up and they are calling me to come back but I don’t know what to do, if this is someones dog, then it probably al- ready has shots and all that, so I go back and talk to the vet and she is super nice and says you know I think probably it’s best for you to wait, why spend all that money too, and I’m like sorry for the inconvenience and all and she’s like “it’s all good.” So I call my kids to tell them the news and I have to wait a bit for them to pick me up, but it’s not too long and while we are driving home my phone rings and it’s Taco’s owner on the line. He is beside himself as Taco has been missing for almost a month. Well, he’s at work and doesn’t get off till five but he’s excited as hell and I give him my address. So we go home and there’s still time for a nap before I have to go to work myself so Taco and I lay down for one last cuddle and I fall asleep immediately. I’m exhausted. When the owners come into my house, it’s a young couple in their middle twen- ties, Taco runs to the guy, like literally I think this is the happiest dog I’ve ever seen in my entire life. It is like going crazy and the boy is holding in his own tears and so am I. Now I know, how it was, that this dog found me so I could help him get home. That’s some good dreaming right there. I guess some tacos are for life after all. So back at work, forget about this place, the appearance in the dream of a lot of people, they talk a lot in this dream and never say anything, I can't even have that con-

321 versation, these imaginary things don't make any sense, just a lot of rambling going on, saying nothing, well the conditioning is to talk a lot now, about zero, everyone here is trying to say some pleasantries, trying to keep the big black at hole safely at bay, all the activities geared toward not noticing anything worth noticing, well that's how it is in a dreamed up place like this, that's why the dreamt characters flock here in the first place, oh well, just smile, not my favorite movie but you know that's what's playing, can't fight what is, it is except that it isn't. Put the headphones on, music again, just staying in the music, I can have a conversation there, or just listen, mostly listening, there's wisdom in the music, it's my favorite place to be now. Tonight I seem to be wanting to be done with this part of the dream, just can't seem to get with these dream characters, I'm tired of this part of the dream again but I don't seem to have a way out of it. I need a miracle. That's the only way out of this kind of dreaming. The pain is intense, suicide crosses my mind briefly, oops where did that come from, but it is not considered at all, no one to even do that even if the dream doesn’t feel like it’s worth dreaming at all right now. “Whoever brought me here will have to take me home”, Rumi. How or when that gets dreamed is not up to me. I don't seem to have the ability to take any part of this dream seriously, not even this. There's just no reality to it. So just sitting in the pain of this dream characters life, having some compassion for her predicament, well if only she’d known but she didn’t. Just forgiving whatever role she still thinks she played, whatever thoughts are there, there was just no chance, it could only have ever gone the way it went. So that arises, whatever arises always just arising. Nothing, no one home, to do anything about it. If any action is to be taken it will be taken, resting in that is the only place to rest. The body will wear out soon enough, maybe sooner than later the way it’s going, oh well, just don’t seem to care, motivation to care about this at all is not arising right now, if it should ever arise again then it will.

322 I went back to smoking recently and I’m smoking a lot now. I was at work tonight and some dealers were sitting next to me and one of them said, “I’ve never seen you smoke. Why are you smoking?”, to which I answered, “Why not?” Well, I seem to like it right now, seem to enjoy it and it is what it is. Not trying to stick around any longer than I have to in this physical form. When the physical form goes, I’ll just wake up and see that I’ve never actually been anywhere anyway. So that’s what’s arising and I just don’t even care about that either. The dream this body seems to be stuck in isn’t all that enjoyable so why prolong it, anyway it’s not up to me, for all I know next week some other dream might arise but right now the body is just tired of it all. If a solution is meant to arise, I’m sure it will, otherwise it is what it is. I have complete and utter faith that what’s meant to be will be, always the perfect unfolding even if that unfold- ing looks or is judged to be undesirable in the dream. Well, it’s only a dream so you know, so what, anything that wants to arise will arise, even sadness, tears, and it’s all just fine, nothing wrong with any of it. The deepest sorrow is also beautiful and a song to go with that. https://youtu.be/eq4HF6cWK1A Chapter 43 So that’s how it was going in the dream, some dream character called Sandra Anne lost some imaginary thing called hope. Besides survival, this concept in the dream called hope is what keeps everyone moving. Whatever you do, don’t lose hope they say, never give up, don’t quit, buckle down even harder, step up all your striving, see that carrot over there, it can be yours if you work hard and long enough and it’s all just more bullshit, just some more conditioned fantasy to keep the wheels of the all the little rats in their cages turning, spinning, from morning till night, well some of them just drop dead, one minute their eyes are on the goal and the next, the wheels are turning so fast it just flings them right out and they fly across the room, hit a wall

323 and just go splat. Game over. Oh, this is called failure in the dream, so fucking sad, they struggled their whole life and just couldn’t cut it, poor saps, inferior beings, just not smart enough I guess, or maybe now they go into psychotherapy so they can get with someone who also being inside the wheel, running non-stop, tries to convince them to get back in the wheel, someone who tries to talk some sense into them, well they seem to be in some kind of depression, can’t let them stay there, if everyone was allowed to stay in their depression and see the futility of the game the whole society would collapse and the economy, all those benefitting from the demise and fantastic struggling of the masses might fall off the top rung, must keep this desperation at bay, so a whole army of mental health professionals are employed to deal with this type of rogue character, this rebel that doesn’t want to play, to convince them that something is wrong with them for not wanting to play along, and that’s big business these days, mental illness and physical sickness, that’s caused by going to fast and flying off the wheel. The blame must fall on the individual and not the game, to keep everyone safe- ly obeying the rules of the game, too many characters getting off the wheel must be avoided at all costs, why do you think school is mandatory for your children, school it- self is big business, don’t want all those colleges and government loans to go under, that would be a huge loss of revenue, besides the fact that once you put your children into the school system they have the better part of the developing years to take them over and convince them that it’s actually in their best interest to play along with the game, they won’t actually be happy at all, no one is happy when someone else is telling them what they should do and how to do it, the mechanism in place to resist this has to beaten or punished out of the organism in the first place. Can’t just let little Johnny play, that would be unproductive, irresponsible and criminal even. “Be still and know that I am God”, well it takes more than five minute to realise that, maybe if you spent the eight or nine hours you spent at work to just sit in silence, you

324 might have time to figure it out and see it but probably not. I run into retired people all the time who tell me they got a job again because they were bored. The condition- ing is so thick that even when people can finally afford some peace and quiet, staying still is interpreted as boredom or they can’t get the must do something productive idea like make money out of their head, not doing something is equated with being worthless and unneeded. I mean it’s crazy, do they not realise how little time they have left, do they not ever contemplate that they might want to know not who they are but what they are so that when death does come they aren’t laying there in some kind of terror? Yeah, well, I guess not, all the dream characters you can come across are deep inside the coma of their own conditioning. Well, you know it’s weird now and there’s just nothing you can do about this or anything else for that matter since there’s no you here to be doing anything. Maybe things are meant to fall apart in your dream, maybe there will come a time when it seems it’s no longer possible to even create any nice dreaming at all, maybe the con- ditioning of the character that you got stuck with dreamed up a life that seems it is im- possible to get out of, you know just working until the body falls apart and not much else. It’s completely possible that as far as the dream goes it will continue in this way. There’s just no way of knowing any of it but there’s something very, very, deep and subtle here to be aware of and that is if it does goes this way, it doesn’t matter and it is not your fault, whatever mess you seem to be in at all, and whatever feeble or even noble attempts you might make to change it up are not anything “you” are doing or not doing. The dream character is always just doing the best it can do, it’s doing it’s best possible dreaming at all times, so you know all you can really do is let it off the hook and see what it does in each moment, how it navigates whatever it has to work with now, the navigation is bound to change, since the the conditioning of the dreamed character will change, it will let go, it has to when it sees completely that

325 there is absolutely nothing to hold onto at all down here in this dream not even itself, it was never the dreamer. Whatever dreams you think you are dreaming are not even your dreams, not this you that you thought you were, and there’s a great pain in there, to think that this is the best it’s going to get in the dream, it’s very very deep, you must get rid of the whole fantasy, some hopeful expectation at all that keeps you out of this moment and hoping for some thing better. There isn’t anything better out there, there is only ever awareness and nothing else so just crush this hope completely, this mind generated mechanism that keeps the mind in chains, keeps it from being where you are right now, it keeps telling you that this isn’t already it, that it will arrive at some oth- er time when things in the dream are easier, when maybe you’ve created some life where you don’t have to work any more and you found someone to stay in bed with and make love with all day long, not a single hassle in the dream, just go hiking, drink nice coffee concoctions, don’t worry about any survival issues at all like rent or clothes or how you might be able to go there and do this. Ramana Maharshi said it best when he said, “Whatever is destined not to happen will not happen try hard as you may. Whatever is destined to happen will happen do what you may to prevent it. This is certain. The best course, therefore is to remain silent.” The bottom line is you have no way of knowing anything about any so called fu- ture, not even the next moment because really think about it, what can you ever know about a dream. It’s just like if you have a dream while you are asleep in your bed, well usually they are weird and wild and they don’t look anything at all like the so called normal life you think is happening. No, in this type of dreaming it’s doing all kinds of strange and usually so called impossible things, flying over mountains or walking through doors or whatever. How is it even dreaming this stuff up you might wonder? Well, it’s free of this so called self and it’s conditioned mind generated constraints of

326 thinking that things are solid and working the way everyone you know thinks they are working. Nothing is working the way you think they are working at all, not even close. Surely you’ve seen it more than once that what could be classified as a disaster has sometimes been a blessing in disguise. Anytime you think you know anything about anything, you are actually confining the dreaming to what you think you know (your unique conditioning) and you know maybe take a look around at all the characters who are living this way, and see that all this so called knowing of things just creates some super shitty dreaming. Take a good look or pick up any history book of this so called world and you will quickly see that this one basic misconception of life has been going on since the beginning of the dream creating wars and just one suffering after another. So you know, there’s just nothing you can do, if you are meant to do something whatever that is, it will happen. Well, however it goes, it is what it is so just really have to accept that whatever is going down in your dream is all that can go down even if it seems like it is sad. From the perspective of the dreamt character my dream looks sad as hell right now, the body is just wearing out, okay so then just let it wear out if that’s what it wants to do, maybe my days of dreaming are coming to an end, feels like they might be sometimes well that’s fine too. Maybe the organism wants to self destruct now, maybe it’s time for that, maybe not but maybe it is, let’s say for the sake of argu- ment that it is time for this character’s physical form to end. Is there any problem with that? I don’t see that there is. My children might not like it so much but you know they’d get by, they’d learn to live whatever life they were meant to live. Maybe my death is the best scenario, if it happened that way, then it must be so. It must be the best possible scenario for the good of the whole because it’s not about any “me”. Last time, (probably not), there isn’t one.

327 I know you probably don’t like all this talk of death, how you might really think I’m crazy now, or that there’s this person here that is depressed and needs some type of counselling, but I can assure you that even if sadness arises for this dreamed character in this dream, what I am is sitting here in some kind of state of utter bliss and complete contentment. I am literally just loving all that is, and the dream has no importance at all, I’m in complete acceptance of any turn it wants to take, even if that turn is to end now, or soon, or whenever. I have nothing more to do with it. I’m free. You know I still seem to be here, that’s all that you ever get, but it is everything. It is beyond any future outcome, it doesn’t need one anymore and that my friend is true freedom. It is the peace that passeth all understanding. Now let’s see what wants to be eaten for dinner. A bowl of lentil soup seems to be calling me. Apparently, my cup runneth over… Chapter 44 So anyway life goes on pretty much the way it always has, except that this state of anxiety you seemed to always have been in before goes away, you don’t feel wrong about things at all, somehow whatever arises is just what arises and you are just know- ing that the whole thing is completely unreal. It’s like my son signed up for some sixty day free trial for his computer, I wasn’t going to buy the program but you know I was okay with him using my debit card to try the thing out. Well, he isn’t using the thing ei- ther but he forgot to cancel it before the free trial was over and it charged my card like $49.99 and I didn’t know what it was until I looked it up and then I remembered so I told him about it and he immediately felt bad somehow, so I was like, “There’s no rea- son to feel bad, you forgot, it’s fine, I’ll call them to see if I can get the money back and whatever happens with that, happens with that, either way it’s no big deal, even big deals are not a big deal,” so you know he relaxed and I called and I got my money back. I don’t always look at my bank stuff but for some reason I did and then I knew

328 why, I caught it on the same day it was charged so the refund was easy to get but I wasn’t on the phone saying something like, “your product is shit, nobody needs it or uses it so you better refund my money or else”, no I was just knowing that it was going to be whatever it was going to be so I just explained the situation and said, “If you are able to refund the money that’d be great and if not, well then I understand that as well.” Well, the whole thing took about twenty minutes and then we went and played some cards and had some fun because now whenever I can fit in the fun I go for it. You’d be surprised how well this works, not taking anything seriously at all, it’s amaz- ing, everyone around you is totally relaxed knowing you will do what you can when you can and they can count on you not to get upset no matter what shows up. What- ever light that shows up to work with, you just work with that. If my son wants to sign up for another trial for something, I’m not going to say, “Oh hell no, remember how you forgot to cancel the last one and all that crap I had to go through, I can’t trust you”, no, I’ll just say “Sure, why not, go for it”, and then I’ll probably ask to know what date it needs to be canceled by and put a reminder in my phone so I can remind him of when that is. Not a big deal. Nothing is happening anyway. It took me a long time to figure out the whole money thing but eventually I saw that there wasn’t money either, that I was just still believing that there was which is weird because I got over believing that there were solid entities called people on something called an earth quicker than I got over believing that there was something called money but now I know that even money was just an idea in my head that I had learned. This one thing kept coming up for me again and again because it was still causing me some pain, some suffering, I couldn’t let it go at all. It didn’t help at all that my job in the dream revolved around this imaginary dream stuff called money and that in that place the winning and losing of it was so emotionally charged, you know wild excitement over winning and then it’s opposite, violent angry outbursts on losing

329 it are so common place there it’s unusual to come across anyone who is unattached to it, so consciousness in its infinite wisdom kept playing with my tips at work, trying with- out fail to show me that it had even this, that there was no “me” here to do anything about it, that not even this aspect of the dream was real at all. If I’m meant to do some- thing that costs money in the dream, this thing called money will appear for that to be experienced and if not, then it isn’t meant to be but there’s no thing called “me” here to do it and no thing called “money” to get. Anything this character does or has ever done has been orchestrated by consciousness, the mastermind behind it all, which is way beyond anything the little human mind can fathom. It’s like it tries to show you that by bringing things to your “attention”, like the whole Taco restaurant thing, or here was a good one I had. A girl emailed me and asked me about this seeing the time al- ways as something like 2:22 or 5:55 and I wrote back explaining what it was like for me and that very night I go to work and at the end, after accepting every conceivable amount of tips from an uncountable amount of players, bets winning, bets losing, I go to cash out and it’s a good night $??? (three digits all the same number) and you have to see that it took some kind of intelligence way beyond any human thinking to have that show up, well it’s a dream, so anything goes there, its calculations are beyond be- lief. Day by day, all that is going on is you are seeing that everything that you can see is somehow all just one thing, if there is a person any person appearing as a person in front of you, that is also you, just not you as in person you, you as in all that is you, the whole shebang stretching out in all directions with nothing to separate any of it, no barriers at all no walls between anything, well you can see that how the characters are talking and acting that consciousness has some how created this character to play from the materials (experiences of the conditioning) but it’s still only the one thing playing, what you are, and beneath any, underneath this conditioned ethereal outline

330 of what looks like what you have been calling another person for your whole life up till now is not that. These characters while unreal are masters at covering up their true identity, some of them act like they don’t even want you to see it, it makes the false character very uncomfortable for you to be seeing it in its true form of consciousness, it’s vulnerable and insecure and very very frightened, it’s been trying to be something it is not it’s whole life, but while the character is unreal, what they are isn’t. They are awareness, plain and simple, the only thing there has ever been anywhere. That underlying feeling I always had that I had somehow completely screwed up my life is gone as well because I know that it was only my conditioning that caused me to make some so called bad choices in the dream so that gnawing underlying feeling of guilt I lived with for so long is gone as well. I did exactly what any fictional character with my exact conditioning would have done, there were never any choices at all so you know I’m at peace now with the way it all went. Any bad feelings I ever harboured about anyone are totally gone as well, can’t blame myself or anyone else for anything because I know one hundred percent that nothing is up to anyone, there isn’t anyone here. Now if something appears out of order in the dream, I know it isn’t. I can’t ever feel like I’m being slighted or used or abused, things like that don’t even come up anymore because the characters themselves are not real and can only appear the way they are appearing but not actually doing anything. When I don’t like what they are doing, I just don’t play along but I don’t take it personally because I don’t see anyone there to be choosing anything. Likewise, I’m not choosing whether or not to play along, sometimes I do, sometimes I don’t. If I say no or I say yes, whatever choice I make about anything has to be the right one because however it goes down is the only way it can go down and anyway once you know you are just having a dream why worry about anything. Now I see that if I get up and go to work tonight that that is the only way the dream could still go at this point, right now that’s what is arising but I got

331 over my depression about the job when I let go of thinking that I knew something about the next minute or hour or day or month or years, all that stuff I thought I knew, I didn’t know at all, it was still just some stubborn thoughts playing around in there that I was believing were true. Listen, we can’t know anything past whatever is arising, whatever it is we are aware of when we are aware of it and that’s as far as it goes. At the end of the day, there isn’t really anything here in the way of material things or ac- complishments or anyone doing anything. The whole thing is just some kind of fantas- tic show of total absurdity, entertainment, something to dream up, to have fun with and now all that’s going on is that consciousness is dreaming that it knows it is dream- ing. When this happens though the beauty of so many things you took for granted are seen for what they are, some fantastic miracle, the outpouring of consciousness mani- festing in a continuous stream of forms and experiences and even feelings of sadness can arise that feel positively inspiring, well you can feel, what if you couldn’t, what would that be like, not much fun at all, I’d say. Now you can really hear as well, it’s easy to hear what consciousness is saying now if you really listen. Well, you weren’t even lis- tening before to what was actually here/hear to be heard in this moment, no most of the time you were off in your head listening to the repetitive thoughts of the past or caught up in some fearful imaginary future scenario that was always grabbing your at- tention and not allowing the attention to focus on what was actually here right now. Al- ways you were looking at things and judging them in some imaginary context of good and bad, instead of no context, well the mind calms down when you learn to just stay here and it’s seen through that anything the mind can tell you about anything isn’t true. So I was at work tonight in this dream and I have to tell you that you have to come to terms with the fact that you are literally Consciousness dreaming up some kind of

332 weird dream world where all the other characters you come across think they are real. It’s like you are looking at them and knowing that they are you except that they don’t know it, not this person you but just all that is. Listen, once you do know it’s all just a transient radiant dream, how can you possi- bly look around at the often horrific consensual dream going on all around you and not be troubled by it? It’s like this is an unbelievable waste of what could be some ut- terly non stop euphoric dreaming, total freedom to experience something more than just going around day after day in a state of constant anxiety, just half a step ahead of some imaginary fear that threatens to bring you down at any moment, always en- gaged in some futile activity to prove your worthy to exist, running non stop, out of breath, trying to get to some imaginary place where you can finally relax that’s been alluding you for as long as you’ve been alive. The parents of all these children couldn’t find it but maybe their children can so let’s push them even harder than we ever were, keep them on the course we somehow fell off of, crack the whip to keep them on- board with this imaginary goal of being important in the eyes of the world and getting to that place of happiness and contentment our own dreamt character could never find. Well, it doesn’t work, all we do is create a world full of either heartless ruthless dream characters who will barrel over anything in their way to get to the top of the imaginary hill completely disregarding the well being of the whole or it’s opposite, sad desperate defeated characters who live their entire lives struggling to get by, and hating their lives and themselves so much all they can do to have a little comfort at the end of the day is crack open a beer and a bag of chips and zone out in front of their favorite TV shows. They secretly dream of love and make millions of dollars for the dating sites because they think what they need is out there in the form of another dream character but even if they do find one, all they have now is someone to share the struggle with, and after the magic wears off, when they realise that this isn’t going

333 to do it for them either, they blame it on whatever dreamt character they found, think- ing they just aren’t acting right, if they were they would feel loved and secure and all that, but I tell you if they did find someone who was just so totally loving toward them, they’d dump them like a sack of hot bricks, they’d make even that wrong somehow, even be repelled by it because the problem isn’t out there in the dream, it’s in you. What you are always looking for is just yourself, and nothing else can fill that void, nothing. So you know here you are now, just knowing you are dreaming, well it’s very new to you since you’ve been operating from a completely different viewpoint since day one, and now you find that you are somehow still in the world but not of it. It’s like what are you going to do now? Maybe, your dream character is like mine, stuck in an imaginary dream, with a shitty imaginary job that makes enough to pay the bills but not enough to get you out from under them, you don’t know how the money part is even working in the dream but you know one hundred percent that it’s all, the whole dream is shooting straight out of your own mind and onto some type of imaginary picture show. Surely, if it’s in you, as you, everything is you, there must be a way to change it up into something worth viewing, but really you still aren’t knowing too much about that because anything this “you” can know is still just coming out of this conditioned mind structure that still seems to be in operating mode in this dream you dream because anything a “you” can know about anything is not it and is not real. Not even the bills are real though these notices that keep jamming up some other annoy- ing thing you dreamed up called a mailbox, maybe just work on eliminating that first, I don’t know, probably there are places in this dream where there aren’t any mail carri- ers so no mailboxes either. The thing is you are kind of in a dilemma now, because there isn’t any so called “you” to do anything about anything, the “you” doesn’t exist and neither does this so

334 called “dilemma”. The life which has always been lived by the life that you actually are, is still just living but anything this remaining “you” can know about what’s in store for it, can only come from the conditioning which you now know is all just lies. Anything this you thought was there isn’t really there and neither is the “you” that thought it was. Well, shit, how is that going to work now that there’s nothing actually there to be work- ing? Well, yeah, that’s kind of the gist of it, just like let go and free fall into the un- known, whatever you know isn’t true anyway, and well it doesn’t take much to see that anything you thought you knew wasn’t worth a shit anyway, wasn’t very good at creat- ing anything easy to live with at all. Well, the picture has actually improved in a lot of ways, since knowing it is all unreal, your resistance to anything happening falls away a little more with each passing day and you’ve heard it enough times by now that what you resist persists so it just makes sense not to resist anything at all unless of course you are up for more of the same well if it was something pleasant why would you be resisting it in the first place, so you know back to the letting go place. The body just feels kind of heavier now but like the weight of it is being supported by the ground below it almost like all this time it was frantically trying to fight gravity and now it gives in to it. This feeling is like no other that you are used to, it’s as if you’ve been standing up against a fierce wind trying to keep upright your whole life and then suddenly you let go and instead of being afraid of anything, you now go with the wind, the wind is your own movement and it’s traveling at high speeds, crossing completely unknown territory and you are just like wow, you are seeing things that you’ve never seen be- fore, didn’t even know existed, feeling things in a way you didn’t even know you could feel them, some kind of natural ecstasy, not holding onto to anything, well you might hit a snag, oops what’s that, get out the imaginary scissors and cut that tie, and off you go again. Well, shit nobody told you about this part, what the hell, why aren’t the skies filled up to the brim with all these free floating beings, all of sudden you realise that

335 you were made for this, just like the birds in the sky that you’ve seen your whole life, now you are like them, riding the wind. And it dawns on you as well that that’s why the birds are even there, they are a clue, have been for all time, that’s why they are every- where, saying look how it’s down, this is what life is for. A song pops into my mind as I write this, I’ve loved it for a long time, can hear the words, know them by heart and it goes like this, “Set down your chains, till only faith remains, set down your chains and lend your voices only to the sounds of freedom, no longer lend your strength to that which you wish to be free from, set down your chains. Fill your lives with love and bravery, and we shall live a life uncommon.” Well, that’s close. ( A life uncommon by Jewel ) So I’m sitting here, tears, a release, and my son knocks on the door, asks if he can come in, and you say yes, so he comes in and you are just crying so he asks if you are okay and you say yes, then he gets up and just hugs you for like five minutes and now you are crying even harder because you get to dream you are the mother of a 16 year old boy who knows how to hug his mother, this gift is overwhelming, just the tender- ness of a child’s simple hug, then he asks if something is bothering you and you say no, tears of joy, just tears of joy darling. Then he leaves and you go to play some cards with him in his room. You take your phone and the speaker to play the music while you do, so he’s shuffling and you open your phone to get to the music app, and you notice the time, it’s 2:22, well of course it is and that sign tells you that “all is well.” You are right where you were always meant to be. Here’s the song https://youtu.be/Wro_EMYSfFk Chapter 45

336 So now I’m here, where is that? Nobody knows and nobody cares, all of a sudden things just got very very relaxed, probably the pendulum has swung back, way back and it will take some time to settle down in the middle somewhere but this place seems to be as good as any other. It’s like physically I’m a bit tired but in a good way, just want to take a good long rest now, well that’s been a long time coming, way too long, time to take it easy. I spent the day with my oldest son, just playing some cards, watching a basketball game, and then a movie, nothing to write home about it as far as any of this doing stuff is concerned but a quiet anything goes and just pleasant be- yond pleasant. The other two kids went out to the movies again to see Frozen 2 for the second time, guess they really like that movie, so it was just us two which has been long overdue, mother and son, just living it. There was a discussion about Christmas that went like this. Son: What’s Christmas look like this year? Me: No idea, not looking too great so far but you never know. Anything could happen. Son: Yeah, that’s cool, whatever, how much for each one of us right now? Me: Not even sure at this point, I got one more day on the pay check so you just never know. Why do you need something? Son: Nah, I’m good whatever it is. Me: Yeah, just however it goes. There was not a trace of anxiety in any of it, no thought that anyone was going to miss out on anything, be sad or disappointed, or even that anything was wrong with the picture at all, no guilt whatsoever. No matter what that day brings it will be just fine and I can tell you I have never ever approached the holiday like this on any other year, not even when the kids were too small to know any better. No, even then I might have just felt like I was missing out on something, probably feeling sorry for myself, you

337 know wishing that I had some kind of family that you see in the movies, that whole normal shit thing that everyone you know is trying to live up to but can’t, you know deep down they are all trying their best to act like it’s better than it really is, that’s why there is always booze at Christmas parties, it seems to make the pretending a little bit easier. All these expectations that build up for the whole ten minutes of this gift un- wrapping, and then it’s over and it’s back to business as usual, leaving you wondering, what the fuck was that? What was that even all about? I’ll tell you what it was, just some bullshit in the dream. A big todo about nothing. There’s no such thing as Christmas, no baby being born in a manger or anywhere else for that matter, even if you think it’s a nice time to get together with your loved ones and all that, let me pose you this question, why not do that everyday all day long? Why wait for one day out of the whole fucking year? Why just make one day special when you can make them all that way, or you know at least as many as you possibly can, that doesn’t even out at all. I don’t know it feels kind of sad to me that it’s like we have only one allotted day to show our love and appreciation of each others dreamt characters like that’s some su- per small amount of nice dreaming, a pinprick really, some people won’t even make it to that day. You might not make it through next week for all you know, so really why wait for some culturally sanctioned day to show how much you love this life. Well, most don’t love this life at all because they’ve forgotten what it is, that’s the problem, so that’s why we have this one day where we can pull out all the stops and everyone can pretend they love everyone else and cover up the fact that they are completely and utterly confused about just what they are doing here. Four years ago at this time, I got a phone call from my sister asking me if I could come to her house with my kids and spend Christmas with her family and my Dad. At first I thought, wow, well that’s super nice for the invite because I didn’t think she really liked me all that much, but I had to work and unless someone dies you are not getting

338 out of it in my business. The only way to get Christmas or any major holiday off is if they happen to fall on your regularly scheduled days off which comes around like once every five years or something like that. So I was like “Wish we could but no.” That’s when I heard the real news, the real reason she was inviting us, someone was dying and it was one of his last requests to bring us back together as sisters somehow. On Thanksgiving, a couple weeks before my dad had been diagnosed with ALS, and apparently it wasn’t going too well, progressing much faster than anyone could ever imagine. I’d seen him last at the end of September when he drove up for my son’s birthday, he knew he was sick, that something was wrong but you know the doctor’s were trying to figure it out and we all figured they would fix him right up when they did. He was 72, was still running his own landscaping business, had been in good health his whole life, so you know how bad could it be? We were hardly concerned about it, not like that anyway. Well, it’d only been a couple months since we’d seen him but my sister delivered the bad news when she said he’d dropped like fifty pounds since then and could barely walk, talk or eat now. She said, “it’s probably going to be the last Christmas”, you know something like that that rips your heart right out of you. I said I’d call my boss. Well, even that doesn’t get you the holiday off, no they actually have to be dead already, but I got the four days off right before Christmas Eve. (This was at my last job, if it happened at the one I have now I actually think I might have gotten it off.) My dad paid the airfare because we were still broke and I hadn’t been saving for any last minute trips. I was fine up until the time the plane took off and then it hit me hard and I literally cried the whole plane trip, quietly of course, as wave after wave hit me, one right after the other, and big huge teardrops ran down my face faster than I could wipe them up. No idea why I’m even telling this story right now but guess I am.

339 My dad was actually my step dad, my first one was some half Native American guy who took off right after I was born, and became a vagabond, guess he couldn’t play the game either, maybe that’s where I got it from, but my dad adopted me and had been around since I was like two so he was the only dad I ever knew and well, he was my dad in the dream. Anyway, the whole life with him was trouble after his real child my sister was born when I was nine, then suddenly I got left in the cold or perceived it that way, my parents marriage was a match made in hell, that’s for sure, so you know who knows what he was going through that whole time. He worked a lot but he pro- vided pretty well in the money department, and the rest of the family life growing up was just fighting non stop really between everyone. It wasn’t until the last year of his life that I actually started to really like my dad, and that was before we knew he was about to die, so you know I guess I missed out, most people do. Well, what can I say, it was a damn sad Christmas, the kids were super quiet the whole time, they loved my dad, despite the bad times and differences between us, he used to take care of them a lot when they were little to help me out so somehow there was a bond there, but you know the atmosphere was unlike one I had ever been in be- fore, when death is looming so close in the room, you feel it. The ending of a life puts a new spin on things to be sure but to have it come upon you out of the blue like this really brings it home that you don’t ever know. Of course, we were all researching some stem cell, or vitamin regiment that would save him, nope, not going to just face it, this can’t be happening like this, we had always thought we had time, and lots of it. He was going to be at least 85 or even 90 before that was going to happen giving us plenty of time to prepare, but it was not meant to be. Before we got there he had dissolved his business and moved in with my sister. Everything that he had left that he owned was now in a storage unit just a few miles away. He took me and my kids there alone one day, opened it up and said “Go

340 through it and see if there’s anything you want to have in there”, so we did as he asked. I found the box of pictures and we all looked at them together as we went through boxes and old furniture drawers reminiscing saying things like “oh, look re- member this.” I took my grandmother’s rosary and an old necklace, some tools, well I might need some tools, one of my son’s found an old time piece and took that, and another one found some signed baseballs but all in all there wasn’t much we really wanted, just a bunch of junk really. Well, in the end sometimes that’s all it looks like. Back at the house we celebrated Christmas a day early on the 23rd. We had a for- mal dinner even though he could hardly eat anything, but you know it looked super nice and all that. My sister has a beautiful home well they got the cash, so my own kids were feeling out of sorts about that, probably thinking they didn’t even know how good they had it, normal home, stay at home mom and a dad, and all the nice trim- mings. Her kids had a lot more presents under the tree well the whole thing was pretty last minute and she tried but I could tell my kids were down and out on that one. One night I gave my father a full body massage, with this special oil he bought in Morocco the year before, you know maybe it was magical, it was supposed to have some spe- cial qualities, his muscle cells were literally moving underneath the skin, eating them- selves, you could see them doing it, so I tried to give what comfort I could and he seemed to appreciate it because he always loved massages. I’d gone to massage school once as an attempt to get out of the casino business, never graduated because I broke my ankle half way through but I still knew what I was doing, it was a very inten- sive school, was supposed to last a whole year. At night, me and my sister and her husband drank, and they tried to talk to me about my homeschooling and all that and I tried in vain to explain my views to them until we finally agreed to disagree somehow respecting my dad’s wishes that we get along. We flew out at noon on Christmas Eve because I had to be back at work that

341 night. I said good bye to my dad for the last time in the garage as we were getting in the car. He didn’t come to the airport as that would have been too much for him. When we got back to town, I drove around trying to find the kids some dinner but everything was closed. I didn’t know everything closed on Christmas Eve but I guess it does, except Sonic so we ate there and I was like “just anything you want, anything.” Well, it was sad times for sure, in our haste to go on the trip, we didn’t get around to getting a Christmas tree set up or gifts, just nothing but this tiny one foot tree I picked up at the dollar store that had like half a string of lights and five ornaments on it. Well, we weren’t planning on any of this, but in the end we had each other and we lived through it. After Christmas was over, my dad flew to Germany to see his sister like he did every year, had done so for like the last fifteen years. My sister had to arrange trans- port between planes but he got there. About a week into his visit, he started having trouble breathing so a doctor was called for a house call which is how it’s sometimes done over there but they said there wasn’t much they could do. I guess they don’t freak out about death over there like they do here. My sister immediately went to work to try to get him home so she could put him in a hospital but there was no way to fly him in that condition, so her husband who just happened to be going there on busi- ness was supposed to find a way. I called my Aunt in Germany to talk to my dad even though I knew he could barely form words anymore from the break room of the casi- no at like two in the morning just an hour into my shift which was graveyard on Jan- uary 8th. I was the first to know as she had just found him that morning, he had died in his sleep. Well, now that he was dead, I was able to leave work immediately and got the next few days off as well. He was cremated and his ashes were laid down between the graves of his parents just outside of Munich. I think there was a small funeral but none of his children could make it that far.

342 As soon as I got home I told the children and we all cried and then as I was sitting in my daughter’s room, the space heater she had in there just suddenly came on right in front of our eyes, and we were like, “Omg, that’s Opa.” Then we looked at a random word generator on my phone and said, “if that’s you Opa, put a word in here that will let us know it is.” I can’t remember the word now but it was there, I think it was the name of some lake in Germany close by where he grew up, so you know close enough. Later that night, I got in bed and found a YouTube meditation to do that lets you communicate with your deceased loved ones, the voice on it was lovely, like some fe- male French accent, super loving. I must of dozed off during it but I woke up with a fright when I heard the sound of a great wind. This sound woke me right up because it was very loud like something that usually only happened outside was now happening inside and my first thought was like, “OMG, holy fuck, what is this?” I was in the bottom bunk of the bunkbed with my youngest son, which is who I always slept with because I was the one without a bedroom and he didn’t seem to mind. The bottom part of the bunk was a full size and on it was a down comforter covered with a duvet which when I looked down at the bottom of the bed was rippling wildly from the wind, then some- thing came out of this wind, this wild commotion or whatever it was and came at me as if to touch me at which point I recoiled in terror and with that reaction, the whole thing just vanished in an instant. If that was my dad, shit it didn’t feel like it. Maybe it was my dead ex-husband I thought and with that I wrapped my arms tightly around my sleeping son who had slept soundly through it, pulled the covers completely over my head, went to sleep, and never wanted to try that again. Probably best to just leave that world alone, but my sister was all about using this ghost communicator app and so I couldn’t resist either and we both imagined that our dad was still out there talking to us from where ever he was now and we’d screenshot messages that we were sure

343 was him back and forth to each other over the next few months. She was seeing him as a ghost in her house and would text sometimes saying, “Dad was here today.” Well, like I said, no idea why this came up at all, maybe just to say that you know you really do have to make the most of your time in the dream. My dad was cruel to me on many occasions. My sister told me that while he was getting sicker he told her he beat me so badly once that he was horrified at himself for being capable of that. I can remember a few times he hit me, but I have no memory of anything that severe. My mom always insisted that he was a cold hearted man and still hates him to this day. Well, I don’t have any idea what life was like for him, from my perspective growing up it just seemed like a lot of work and one frustration after another. After him and mom split up he had a casual girlfriend for about a year but from what I’ve heard he was never able to please her either as word has it she just complained about everything. I never met the lady but his car which was brand new and paid for was parked at her house and after he died my sister who was in charge of settling the last of his things went to go get it and the lady wouldn’t give her the keys, saying something like she had no right to it. Well, it just goes to show he couldn’t really pick them. My sister had to go to court and get a court order to get the car which was some fucked up shit if you ask me after all the lady had just lost a boyfriend but she had lost a father. So you know who knows what goes through anybody else’s mind out there in the dream. They all are as they are, just living off whatever conditioning they got, trying to get by in whatever way comes up for them to do that. In the last year of his life after he helped us move closer to where he lived he drove up to see us first and while he was with us, he left and forgot his watch by the bathroom sink. The next time I saw him was when we drove down to see him on my birthday, you know for some reason I just wanted to be close to him and when we were together it was like I finally after all these years realised how much I really loved this guy and the kids couldn’t wait to see him,

344 like he was really something special to them. Anyway, I meant to return his watch to him on that trip but it slipped my mind probably because I didn’t even know where it was anymore, then when he came up next, well nobody was even thinking about any watch by then. So after he died when all was said and done, he left just enough mon- ey for me to buy my own house, pay off debts, get my credit up, down payment and all that. I guess he told my sister since she was always the responsible one to make sure it got done, that he wanted me to have a place to call my own for some reason. So about ten months later, I closed on my home and I moved in that very day. I rented a truck and hired some guys to move the big stuff and a friend from work helped me as well. Except for the heavy things, everything was packed up by me and ready to go as soon as I had the keys in my hand. So that’s how it all went, my friend drove the truck over and the big guys came to help unload it. Afterwards, when it was all said and done, we returned the truck and I dropped my friend back to his car which was at the old place, then we came home. Well, the way the house is laid out is there is a liv- ing room and a long counter that separates the kitchen from it. The whole house was of course in shambles with boxes and furniture everywhere but the counter was com- pletely empty except for one thing, sitting there in plain sight was my dad’s watch. At first, I thought maybe one of the workers had lost their watch, didn’t even recognise it, but then I got the kids and we all just stood there looking at each other in utter disbe- lief. To this day, nobody who was helping us move that day says they ever saw it, like you know I asked “Did you find this watch and put it there?” Well, it’s a dream, sometimes lovely and sometimes sad, things come and then they go, but maybe one thing does remain for all eternity. Maybe, I just dream it but love does seem to grow in the strangest places and even out of nothing at all, like it just somehow appears out of nowhere. More likely, it’s

345 there all along and we just don’t see it, but very often it does seem to save the day when nothing else can. Probably, it’s the only thing you can ever truly count on. As a note … this piece was hard to write, super sad for me. During the writing I consulted the ghost communicator while writing it and it said “Resolve.” It seems that there’s a function in consciousness that goes about clearing out the past of the dreamt character. Of course, no one ever died because no one was ever born, my dad was a manifestation of Consciousness as are all dreamt characters. If I’d have known how it was I would however spent more time with him and not judged him the way I did and I would have seen the beauty that lived in him as him. I would have made his life easier instead of harder, made good times instead of conflicts but you know, we’re good now. I love you. Chapter 46 Well, my conditioned mind wanted to tell me that Christmas was off again this year, not really, but the whole gift giving thing seemed out the window completely, well things are still that tight around here, sorry kids, just the way it is. My last night at work for the last pay check that would come before Christmas was the worst night for tips even though I stayed my full 8 hours with not even a player in sight, well someone might show up, what do I know about it, so well, something just had me dreaming to stay but it was super slow and it was what it was. If I didn’t dream I had children I would have left hours ago but what can I say, I seem to operate with them in mind, just always want to give them something nice, just wanting to make this dream seem okay for them if I can but if consciousness has other plans then you just have to go with that and you will only suffer if the conditioned mind comes in and tries to tell you what they are which it can never do because it doesn’t know shit about shit and it’s truly best as far as the dream goes not to believe a word of it.

346 The good news is that all my days around here are pretty darn good, except for the annoyance of the job and the bills, I imagine life is a lot like Christmas everyday around here at least it is for me. Honestly I feel like I got the gift that just keeps giving and what do you know, it’s free, no amount of money can even buy it. I don’t need a special day to enjoy it at all, I am it. It is literally the only gift there is worth having, no material thing means anything next to this, now well you can enjoy material things if they are there but you don’t need them or look to them to fill the void, just the arising of your own breath in every moment is gift enough. Of course, children don’t know this having grown up in a culture and been saturated with the idea that what you have defines what you are so there’s some natural inclination in me to put them first still as much as I can, always just wanting to create some environment that they will feel good in so they don’t feel like they are missing out on something. Of course, at the end of the day, I know that whatever arises just arises and I’m not here to do anything about it so I just rest in the knowledge that whatever arises is for the best. If the world seems to let me down still, that is still the old conditioning of the dreamt character imagining that something is solid and working the way she was taught it was. The dream world, Maya, is insidious in the way it tries to pull you back into thinking the dream is real and that you are real, but take heart, the only thing real is consciousness and it is good, so just stay with that, no matter what you think you see. Even so there are some things I really do like about this Christmas tradition that is culturally part of the dream, all religious meanings aside, completely gone, I do think it can sometimes bring out or activate the more loving side of some dream characters but unfortunately most of them are only becoming more generous and giving be- cause they want to be seen that way, want to feel they are better than the other ones who aren’t so nice and giving and that is just an ego strengthening tactic, always there is still us and them and some need to be seen by the others in a favorable light. If

347 whoever they were loving toward or generous with doesn’t appreciate it or somehow doesn’t act the way they want them to now or later on they will come back and say something like “look at all the things I did for you, I deserve to be treated better than this.” Or maybe even, you know, the old “you owe me” so now you should do what I think you should do and if you don’t (because you know maybe the infinite Intelli- gence has other plans) then I’ll be angry with you and try to make you feel guilty about it. As long as there are two and not one, there will be the false idea that some- thing is outside you that can see you or that can do something for or against you. Of course once you come this way, you see there isn’t anyone out there to see you but you. It is all you so the only one you can ever love is just yourself, probably you should try this, you know just love the character you’ve been stuck playing right now and see that no matter what is arising in the way of material things or circumstances in the dream are exactly the only way they ever could be, anything that manifests or has failed to manifest is not real anyway so drop the good and bad function of the false self and let it be as it is, and just get through whatever the day brings with as much ac- ceptance as you can possible muster up, definitely just try to relax, just be the loving witness to the fact that something, some show is still there to see at all, and don’t wor- ry about what it looks like, it isn’t real anyway, and one day sooner than you think it will be over, so enjoy it while it lasts, all of it, whatever it is. Mostly what I like about Christmas are the lights and the decorations. I like looking at a Christmas tree in my house every night when I have one, just turn all the other lights off and looking at that, it doesn’t just seem like some kind of magical show of light and colors, you know it actually is a miracle this seeing of things. I like the smells of Christmas as well, the smell of a pine tree, or cinnamon. The senses of the body seem to come to life at the contact with them, almost as if trying to say “Wake up, re- member, remember what you are” like there’s some kind of memory there that it’s try-

348 ing to get to, maybe it stirs up the way you used to feel when you were a child when you still knew what you were. Well, this dream is magical once you get rid of the con- ditioning that tells you it isn’t. Very small children who haven’t been taken over yet still know this, that’s why there is this thing called delight, this excitement, that you can see in their eyes and the way they carry on. If you don’t have small children around you, maybe go to YouTube and search up some videos of laughing babies and watch those and see if it doesn’t bring something up in you. Maybe, you will remember how this whole thing is just some fantastic silliness, how you knew this, you know before the heaviness of all the ignorant lies came in and bogged you down. The thing I really don’t like about Christmas is the idea of Santa Claus and how the children are told that he is watching them all year long and judging their actions as good or bad. First of all, the idea that something much less someone who has imagi- nary access to your whole life is judging your every action is and should be terribly frightening and troubling to a child. Probably, this is just another way that the ego learns not only to judge itself but others as well. The very idea that there is someone watching you, is central to the ego anyway, it’s why it does almost all the things it does, so it can be seen as worthwhile by something it imagines is outside itself. This insidi- ous idea is hard to shake even after you know there is no ego, no one home any- where, the fear that lives inside the body regarding whether it will accepted or shamed in the eyes of the world runs very deep and the emotions associated with it are deeply unpleasant. The hardest thing for me to come to terms with was the fact that my own children were just imaginary characters operating at the level of their own conditioning. It took me a long while to realise that I was even judging myself by what I thought was their judgement of me, remember the false self is like an actor on a stage but it needs an audience to play to and if that audience isn’t open and accepting then it modifies it’s

349 behavior to be seen in a better light. My own children I eventually noticed are judge- mental as hell when it comes to me, perhaps they picked that up from watching my own mother degrade me, but while there are open moments of loving kindness there still often remain moments of total rejection and my character’s tendency was to cater to their every whim to avoid it. Not only that but my character wanted to hold onto some idea that she had treated her children better than the other parents out there, you know done it better and all that. Well, you know the whole judging thing is a big fat lie as well, and it’s something I’ve been reading up on lately, just don’t even want to mess with doing it at all anymore. There is no good or bad anything, not people or cir- cumstances. There are not even any so called “bad choices” at all, just a dream flying out from the base conditioning (which is highly complex, consisting of just every sin- gle experience of every moment of your entire life and it’s subsequent perceived imaginary meanings and the emotions that are unconsciously activated as well) of the dreamt character. This conditioning does remain even after you realise that no is home, that “you” as in “you” is not, has never been, and you might want to go in there and change it up a bit, you know maybe even rewrite the story. Well if you do then that’s just what is arising as well, it seems to be arising here sometimes lately but my conditioning has led me to put it on the back burner until you know the new condi- tioning no longer allows the old conditioning to have the upper hand. At the end of the day, eventually you realise that there’s no one here to do any- thing at all, that not one decision is being made by something called “you”. Nothing could have been any different, the conditioning just runs the character and that’s the end of it. The character was never real, not your own and not anyone else’s and you are just back to whatever arises just arises, including any reactions that might still be arising, or even feelings of guilt. No one is guilty because no one is here at all to be guilty of anything. I know that’s hard to believe, but there’s a real detachment of this

350 fictional world of imaginary meanings and untold imaginary wrongs and rights. The only way things go is the only way they can go and even your own children might turn against you. Well, they are probably not waking up, no one you know is waking up ei- ther, it isn’t going to happen because neither are “you” waking up, no one is waking up at all, because there isn’t anyone here to do that. All that’s really going on here is that awareness is aware that it is aware of a dream going on in which all the other characters are behaving and speaking as if there was something important happening here that was real but it knows it isn’t. Nothing is actually happening. Let me tell you your own dream character might just say “fuck it” at this point, maybe not right away, it takes awhile but eventually it might happen that some total rejection of the dream and what constitutes “normal functioning” in it might be seen to be just too insane to go along with, you know all of a sudden this character that you thought you were your whole life, that you thought you knew even, might start acting in a totally new way. If that’s what arises, then that too is just what arises. I don’t feel like I’m saying any of this right, (see the judgement right there, right verses wrong) but something is arising in me lately, first was just some sense that I wanted to just get out of the dream, well that’s not going to happen until you die, but lately I’ve been in what felt like some kind of downward spiral, you know I started smoking again, drinking just tons of coffee, anything to get me through another day. Well, I was just having an atti- tude of you know just let everything go, there’s nothing to do about it, no one to do it, and all that which of course is absolutely true, there isn’t, it’s just if something else aris- es now, like maybe we want to clean it up a bit, than that is just what is arising. All just some weird little phases I seem to pass through. Well, something else is arising now. I’ll let you know what it is when it gets here but I feel it coming and it almost feels like what’s about to arise is going to prepare me for accepting the next stage of the game in the dream. And it’s all good, (no judgement there at all lol) just some conditioning

351 that wants to go bye bye and I’m all for that, just wiping the lenses clean to see even more clearly. Nothing wrong (judgement) with that. (As a side note, someone sent me a huge donation, the day after that last day at work, I went on break a few minutes after 1:00 am, got my purse out of my locker, went to the bathroom, got a cup of coffee, sat down, got my phone out and noticed first the email telling me of the donation, yeah just was shocked by generosity of it (thank you again) and then noticed the time was 1:11, of course it was, Consciousness telling me, hang in there baby, you don’t know anything at all, but go ahead and cele- brate yourself some Christmas. You’ll get better at this dreaming thing eventually.) Chapter 47 So I woke up today, that was pretty nice, not everyone gets to do that, shit, felt kind of lucky for a change, just you know was happy to be here, so I went into my son’s room and we played a few games of rummy and you know he was happy because he won the two out of three that we played and I was loving the sound of his laughter, and his endearing pride in his accomplishment. Well, I’m a card dealer so it’s hard to beat me. Then I go make some breakfast for the kids and just know about making that and knowing about whatever song pops up when I hit shuffle on the playlist, who knew it could be this easy. There’s nothing else here right now, and yet it is all here, just taking it all in whatever there is to take in. Well, shit, you just turn around and won- der how this all had to seem so hard, how it all seemed so complicated in the first place, and you just let out a big sigh of relief and there’s nothing to do about any of anything at all, just be what you are. After breakfast, my other son comes out and brings me his leftover pancakes, I don’t know why but I don’t eat any pancakes unless I get them as leftovers, guess I’m just fucking weird like that, like I want to taste some pancakes but I don’t want a whole one. Sitting down and eating a whole plate of pancakes would just gross me out,

352 probably my body would want to puke or something. I can’t tolerate a whole plate of any food anymore, just enough here and there, don’t want to go into a food coma I guess, well that’s been going on for awhile now. I can’t seem to get with this whole food and drink fascination that’s going on everywhere in this dream like going out to an expensive dinner is some kind of accomplishment or something. How is stuffing up your body to the point that all it wants to do is pass out and go to sleep a treat or re- ward, seems more like some kind of punishment to me. Now that this holiday Thanksgiving is upon us, I can just imagine how all these groups of dream characters are going to force themselves to hang out with their en- tire family for an entire day, some of whom they probably don’t even want to be around anymore, and spend the day pretending that they are thankful for the shitty shallow life they are getting to live everyday, well we can afford a turkey and some nice potatoes and stuffing, how lucky are we. Then they all sit down and try to act like they like each other for a few moments, but probably half of them have to get drunk to tolerate the situation, you know follow the rules, and act like they are some beauti- ful decent family, like those wonderful adds you see on TV, the picture perfect house- hold and all that. The kids know better and are squirming in their seats, probably thinking “Oh God, please don’t make me sit through the whole thing, just let me eat and then I’m done with it” and the teenagers are just rolling up their eyes as everyone talks and rattles off about their latest accomplishment and how well they are doing, how hard they are working and how they got the promotion at their job or whatever bullshit they got going on, you know don’t anybody come right out and say that you actually hate the way you have to muster up some serious resolve to get out of bed every morning to slog through another day of this pretentious dream. Everyone’s just trying to put on some pretty face, pass me the potatoes, yes of course, seconds on that turkey and the gravy, just focus on the eating, wow, this is delicious, you really out

353 did yourself this year they say to the cook. Then the men go over and all sit their stuffed bellies down in front of the football game, this is the life for sure, and go get me another beer, who brought the beer, more sedation. I wonder how many heart at- tacks happen on this day, how many over stuffed bodies go into overload and die and if any of them get too drunk the real shit will come out, alcohol has a way of bringing the pain to the surface but you know let’s blame it on the alcohol and not the pain, well, he’s an alcoholic, he has a disease, it’s nothing to do with this stupid dream he finds himself trying to fit in everyday if only we could get him sober they think, never realising that all this food they are shovelling down their throats is just a slightly differ- ent coping mechanism. It just doesn’t get recognised as much unless someone be- comes grossly overweight because this eating thing is so widely accepted and even romanticised in the dream. Then I also wonder about all the people who are spending the holiday alone maybe feeling sad and sorry that they don’t have any family left or maybe they are es- tranged or whatever never realising the whole thing is bullshit from end to end and getting depressed and thinking instead that this is some kind of failure on their part, that they just couldn’t measure up. Well, I almost always have to work on this holiday but there’s no depression going on in my house, the kids just hang out and have fun like any other day and they always talk about how the holiday itself has a rather grue- some origin, you know all the slaughtering of the Native American people and now all the turkeys going under the knife, what is this some kind of reenactment, can’t kill people anymore so just kill turkeys instead, the aggression of the dream character al- ways just lurking underneath the surface, and well you know why not, living a lie sucks some ass for sure, no wonder everyone is angry as hell these days. Somewhere deep down inside they know that this flimsy character they feel the need to parade around is not all that great and the whole life is spent trying to get it to the point where it can

354 tolerate the lie it lives with, trying to be seen as worthwhile in the dream, but always knowing there’s some doubt in there, some feeling of insecurity that just gnaws on them every moment of every day keeping them in the perpetual loop of seeking out the thing that might make that go away, Well, that’s how I see it, the dream has pretty much toppled over the edge just not the right one. Too bad, but you know it is what it is, can’t even begin to describe to you the gratitude I feel for being out of it, like the gift of this could never be contained to a single day out of the year, not even, it’s aris- ing continuously all day long everyday. Listen, I don’t know if you have noticed or not but my character is just weird as hell as far as this dream goes but just loving even that. I’m just going around loving all this weirdness, whatever you want to throw at me, I won’t judge you at all just accepting this weird ass dream in all its beautiful weirdness. So my other son sits down and starts talking about sports with me, how this team sucks and the coaches don’t have a fuck- ing clue what they are doing, and you know he says it’s all just so funny to him and I’m just sitting there thinking, “I know exactly what you mean.” So anyway, he is just kicking it with me, talking about all the absurdities like how his basketball team isn’t going to the playoffs this year because half of them are injured and he’s just laughing about the whole thing because you know, how does that even happen, do they hold the record for injuries? Then he tells me that he knows even before a game is played how it’s go- ing to go, but somehow he drops what he knows and can get mad when he is watch- ing the game because it’s going exactly the way he thought it would, you know his team is losing or whatever, and then he says afterwards he just has to laugh at himself for it because he always realises it after it’s happened, you know again. So I’m thinking, yeah well that’s awesome, it’s good to always laugh at the absurdity of this thing you call yourself. Who, what character, isn’t completely absurd? We are all just jokesters,

355 every one of us, just so totally full of shit, it’s a wonder we aren’t all fucking laughing, this dream is a fucking comedy, well if it isn’t it should be. I mean can you even imagine it that anyone thinks they know something, it makes no fucking sense at all, just a little investigation will reveal you don’t know how any- thing is going to go at all, all you know is how you think or want it to go but how many times does that line up in this so called future? No one anywhere has ever seen a fu- ture at all and yet they think they know what’s happening there, where? Where the fuck is this place called the future? Well, we all buy it, I bought it hook, line, and sinker, been looking for this fucking place my whole life as well, because you know that’s where I think my happiness is until I finally figure out there is no such place, no such thing. What the fuck? Yeah, well finally, finally, now I am laughing, I am laughing so hard, you know god damn, how simple is it and nobody, the whole fucking civilisation, how many people have there been on the earth so far, and not even one in a million figured this out, and what about now, all the colleges and shit, higher fucking learning and all this shit, schools for acquiring knowledge on almost every fucking corner, and none of them ever figured out that there was no such thing as a fucking future? Shouldn’t that be knowledge 101 or something? And you know millions of lives spending almost every minute of everyday thinking about it, preparing for it, working their ass off for it and it never fucking dawns on them that this thing they are living their whole life for isn’t even there, is not a fucking thing? Like it’s just hard to fucking believe, that so many fucking people could have missed it. How does that even hap- pen, and you know the answer is it doesn’t, nothing has ever happened. Oh, God, and well that’s just the beginning of it. The clues that this is a dream is all around us, all day long, it’s in everything we are seeing. Last night I went to the movies with my two youngest children because they both love the movie Frozen and so we saw Frozen 2. I can tell that even my children

356 have been permanently affected by this thing called Presence because have you ever known two siblings, a boy and a girl, ages 16 and 17 who are literally best friends and want to go see what most people consider a little child’s movie with their mother of all people? Well, you know what the bottom message of this movie is, it goes like this “only love can heal a frozen heart” and it clearly shows that fear is the root cause of the frozen, unloving heart to begin with. There’s a clue to unfreezing yourself from the coma of this unloving heart in the second movie. It’s said in the movie that the river re- members some unloving events that took place years ago that caused a mist to form over the land, a spell that couldn’t be broken, until the events of the past were made right, not by the unloving hearts that caused them but by the descendants of them, like it just gets passed on from one generation to the next. The water remembers is a theme that is brought up several times throughout. It’s interesting because when I walk around I see a mist, a coma, a fog over all the characters that I can see and this hardened state that keeps everyone taking the dream to be so real and believing all these lies that keep the characters in constant conflict with each other continuously. It’s like now the organism itself, has been so enmeshed into this and doesn’t even want to get out, there’s a wall there now, nothing gets in and nothing gets out just like in the movie. Well, they bring this up in the movie that if the water remembers, then everyone drinking water that has passed through other beings, could be bringing whatever energies and traumas from the first people who drank it to the next, and by now water itself is recycled so many times there’s no telling how many organisms it’s gone through before it gets to you, and not only this but the cells of the body which as we know are made up of mostly water, could be carrying the traumas of god knows how many atrocities carried out over the centuries so you know maybe it’s not even just the pain of childhood at all, because even those with nice loving childhoods are in the mist of not knowing what they are. Maybe the pain is just all the pain, it’s all the

357 hurts bundled up, and the only way to deal with them is to pretend you are something that you are not, can’t even look in that direction anymore or you’d just be consumed and keel over with the first breath you took. Maybe that explains that whole Sids syn- drome, the baby got a hold of some water that had passed through some other or- ganism that had a memory of some huge unloving trauma and it was too much for the little thing, it’s body had no mechanism in place to keep that kind of pain from killing it and taking it’s breath away. Just look too at the kind of violence that dreamt characters are capable of when the food and water go missing, like they can’t stand it because all the trauma contained in their cells, all that fear, could get released at once and that would just be way too terrifying. There’s a type of fasting now which is called dry fasting, where no food or water is taken over a short period of time, and evidence in the dream seems to indicate that those who undergo this type of fasting are actually improving the quality of their dream by just this one activity and many of them are waking up or at least drawn to the idea that we are in fact dreaming. It’s like it sucks some of the trauma out of the cells by forcing the cells to use the water contained in them to keep the body alive. Well, it’s curious that all of a sudden it’s now recommended that we drink as much wa- ter throughout the day as we can possibly stand, but look around and you will see that the madness of the dream is getting more intense everyday, so could it be that all this water we are supposed to be drinking is actually bringing more trauma into the body and therefore into the dream itself. I mean it’s easy to see now that food and drink are like a focal point for every culture and society the world over. Almost all celebrations revolve around the food and everywhere you go, almost any place you can land in the dream you will see food and drink being sold everywhere at all times, no shortage at all of supermarkets, fast food, mini marts, and new restaurants popping up all over. The glamorization of this food thing is truly astonishing, cooking shows, cooking com-

358 petitions, organic non organic, diet and recipe books on almost every shelf, a new food or drink being marketed almost every day, like we live to eat and drink and that’s it. If that’s not the focus then there’s the focus of trying to remedy what all this bodily consuming is creating in the way of sickness and disease like one is directly feeding the other. Put this all together with the even more astonishing fact that no one seems to be aware that there’s more to life than this cycle of eating and drinking, like you can even present them with blatant evidence that something is amiss here and it doesn’t go in at all, doesn’t even get considered, well could this blindness actually be caused by the body and what it’s being fed? I think back to my days of youth when I was starv- ing myself, and then I had an epiphany, could it be that awareness broke through in whatever small opening it found there, an opening caused by refraining from eating and drinking, a break from the mind numbing effects of this food and drink gluttony that seems to be going on and that’s how all this stuff was allowed to arise in this dreamt character to begin with? Well, doesn’t even this Jesus guy talk about fasting for forty days and all that, it’s no secret that fasting itself is some type of spiritual prac- tice. Well, it gets harder and harder to fast when you have to keep the body moving all day long with the job or all these errands we are saddled with now, not to mention that almost anything you can do, turn on the computer and see an ad for some type of food or drink, or the TV you know forget about it, half the time that’s all it’s doing, one stupid food or drink commercial after another. We pay to have the commercials taken out, well we don’t have cable just internet TV so we can do that. The point is that one is literally being bombarded from every direction to focus on this food and drink thing in this dream and just maybe it’s worth looking into for yourself to see if there’s a con- nection there for you that maybe holds you back, or slows you down from going just further. Well, even Jed said once that there was all this shit in you and however you needed to get it out, just get it out so maybe this dry fasting is one way.

359 That being said I find it rather easier to do dry fasting than to do water fasting, like the hunger itself goes out the window pretty quick but I can only do it when I have the day to completely relax and not do anything else, not even dishes and definitely not any cooking. The most extreme dry fast involves not even touching any water and the longest I was able to stay on that so far was 40 hours, missing my goal of two days. Well it makes sense to me in the context of dreaming that if the dream itself is coming out of your own imagination then cleaning up the body is a good way to go in clean- ing up the dream. My body always goes into a real high after a dry fast and my experi- ence of this dream seems to go from dull to a heightened sense of aliveness as well. That first taste of water after going without is heavenly, though I think it’s time for me to get out my water distiller and start up with that again. I have a big water filter on the house but don’t even really trust that for all it cost me, probably should have stuck with the do it yourself plan of purifying my own water. Listen, I’m not saying don’t get together and enjoy being with the ones you love, obviously cherish every moment you can with the ones you love, love as hard as you possibly can, I’d say, but this is a good time to become of aware of the whole eat/drink cycle that might have a great big part to play in dumbing everyone down in this dream. And that’s my rant for now. Is it true? Of course not but whatever comes out here just comes out, just some more dreaming. In the end you have to find out for yourself. Chapter 48 Well, what are you going to do, you’ve been seeing things, just everything, from the mad insane, worldly perspective for so long, just your whole life, no big deal, and now you know that it isn’t anything like that at all. Well, shit, that’s stupid as hell, you can see that very clearly, you know turn on the news again, won’t take much now, just a minute or two, turn it off. So just how is this world appearing to you anyway, now

360 there’s a pretty good question to ask, so maybe ask it, and see if you can find out. You know maybe try a few things out here and there, just what ever arises for you to try out, I’d say, it will come believe me, it’s been there all along just waiting for you take notice of it. Well, there’s this one thing I do, and that is just to feel, feel safe, very very safe, on your feet or sitting with your butt on the ground, like really get into it, what you are is everything, nothing outside you at all, any problem you think you have has come out of some limiting belief that got stuck in your mind and so now you are going to have to go in there and find out what it is and put it to rest, maybe wrangle with it, uproot it, stomp on it, see that it isn’t true and make up some other beliefs that will make for a better time. Or you might just rest in the void, that’s fine too but you will get bored there, eventually, consciousness does like to move around and have a good time of it, so I’d say get with that. Probably have to get in there and uproot the seriousness that everyone seems to be infected with these days. You got a life, it isn’t going to last that long, it will end in death, so what could be that fucking serious. You are not actually doing anything here at all but having a little dream, so got to lighten up and get with it. Of course, there is the rather smallish obstacle of doing that in the company of the serious ones which is just pretty much everyone, so you know might need to be a bit of a loner until you get to a place where you can manifest an easy situation to live from. I am obviously still working on that one. My own kids are serious as hell but you know one day I think they too will see the cosmic joke of this whole thing. Well, just however it goes, don’t even worry about it, it’s not up to you anyway, but you know maybe these thoughts arise, I got my own to work on that’s for sure. So yeah, like I just sit there and know that it’s all just already taken care of, all the circumstances are lining up for the best possible scenario to manifest up so I can real- ly live the life I came to live. Sure as shit, I did not come here to get what I got so far,

361 well that was what it took to get me to see that something was really fucked up with the life everyone else’s mind is in. Thanks but no thanks on that now, I can’t get with that type of reality, like can you even believe that people get upset if you cut them off on the freeway or you know dinner gets burned, hell that happened to me so many times we just call burned food “on the crispy side” over here. That and I try not to cook when I might be distracted or there’s a pot I use, forget what it’s called but it doesn’t burn things, like it’s almost impossible to burn stuff in it. Or like what about the whole insulting thing, like you know maybe someone calls you an asshole, my God, to most out there you would think the whole fucking world stopped rotating, listen up I doubt you can even get through this life without coming across someone who calls you that. Just you know say, “Thanks for the expression, have a wonderful day” and move on over it. These things are not even issues, almost nothing is an issue like you think it is. As long as you have it in your mind that you have a problem, no matter what the prob- lem is big or small, it stays right there in that little “problem compartment” so it can be revisited again and again so it can stay exactly the way it is. So yeah, just whatever arises from the problem place, let it go, offer it up, there is no you there to fix it anyway, as long as you think there is a you to fix it, there will be a you to hold onto it as well, and that’s much more likely because trying to fix something is exactly the same as resisting it. Well, you are saying you don’t like it or that things should not be this way and that is exactly how you get things to persist in the first place. There is just literally no one here but you so the only reason you have any prob- lem at all is because you believed in problems to begin with, well that’s the first thing you learn how to do when you get here, you learn to solve these problems all day long, math problems, spelling problems, relationship problems, money problems, add anything you want here, but just remember that solving a problem has to begin with having one. You have to believe that there are problems, that problems actually

362 exist as real things otherwise why would you go to the trouble of trying to solve it? Honestly, your whole thinking structure has to be restructured. I’d say get on this one fast, that’s what I’m doing, not really, but it’s arising, thank you very much, infinite intel- ligence is infinitely intelligent. Any upset, like that whole thing I just went through, free floating through the fear that you have lived with your whole life, you absolutely must not fight what is arising, do not fight anything, this is the most ass backward approach to living, it is literally the cause of all the stupid shit that you can ever come across, to- tal, unending non judgement is the only format you need to live a life worth living be- cause you don’t know what the infinite intelligence has in store for you, it is bigger than anything you are used to so don’t even try to understand it, you will understand it when you are supposed to understand, that too will arise. It’s not even like you are trusting the universe, like that would still be like trusting something that you have some concept that is outside of you. Nothing is outside you at all, it is all in this whole thinking thing, and even that is you as you, just not you as in really you, the system is corrupted with a virus of so many lies, and they are all tangled up into such an intri- cate maze that unraveling it is going to be like putting together a 50,000 piece jigsaw puzzle so you know start with the corners and work out from there. That’s really what this all comes down to in the end, just making things as nice as you possibly can for yourself and any one else you ever come in contact with. Every single thing you see is either an expression of love or a cry for it and that’s it in a nut- shell but first answer your own wounded cry for love, and then maybe like Jed says you can double back and help someone else answer theirs, either way it is all you as you in you, the whole thing streaming right out of your own mind and whatever got thrown in there to believe was true. So it’s time to change your mind about all the things you thought were true for you and figure out what you want to put in there in- stead. Well, you know be patient with yourself on this one, it’s not going to happen

363 overnight unless it does, which it could but chances are there is going to be a real learning curve going on, maybe even wild ups and downs, well there’s no telling, but I can tell you this and I will quote Charles Bukowski to do it, “It’s the only good fight there is”, except you know don’t actually fight it. Chapter 49 I think it’s important to know, well not really important, nothing is like that, so let’s just say helpful, helpful to know about the so called “bad” emotions, you know the ones that for whatever reason just don’t feel so good. Probably, you thought you were going to be completely out of that whole mess, but you know not so quick I’d say. Let me tell you right now, there are still some sensations that I get that just don’t feel so good. Well, I think I’ve been over this before, but you know maybe let’s go into it a bit deeper. The body is like some imaginary machine and I’ll tell you right now, I don’t have a clue what it’s up to most of the time. Sometimes there’s a nice surge of energy, and at other times, like when I walk through the doors of my job, there’s something else that comes up, some kind of quietness then that just makes the whole thing want to lay low and just go with the flow, you know like it automatically knows it needs to go into triple full acceptance mode to get on with that whole deal. When I’m at home, I am usually just totally relaxed, unless I’m doing the bills, I still seem to hate that activity, so I always just do that in one sitting, just get the whole thing over with all at once, out of site out of mind. Other than that time which usually happens twice a month on payday, just whatever needs to be paid between this pay check and the next gets paid and whatever is leftover is just leftover. I can never count on what that is because most of my money is in tips and there’s no telling what they will be, so I’m in a unique situation where embracing insecurity is all I can do because there isn’t anything else, well there’s no looking into the future anyway. So after I get that whole business out of the way, it’s not real but there’s some heaviness there still. I

364 had to do it last night so probably how I’m even mentioning it well it’s a universal theme in the dream for almost anyone anymore but this energy came up that wasn’t pleasant at all so you know just let that come up and feel that. I think it has something to do with just seeing how stupid the consensual dream has become like how every- one thinks this money thing says something or is going to make them better than someone else. The stupidity of it just seems a damn shame but you know it is what it is, until maybe it isn’t. So just feeling that pain, not trying to push it away or say it’s not right. What ever arises must be for the best always just knowing that. The emotional body, all these feelings that arise for whatever reason, also have an intelligence of their own, and it’s nothing you need to do anything about at all. You are not in the business of trying to fix anything anymore, just see that’s its working perfect- ly without any you at all, and always for your highest good, always has been and al- ways will. If it’s there it’s there for a good reason, not something to be avoided like al- most everyone thinks, you don’t need to take a pill to make it go away, or sit down with a box of donuts or a stiff drink in front of the television to shift the focus away from it, or worst of all, get the mind involved in finding a solution to it, well just go on- line, even the whole spiritual enlightenment community is on about that one, listen anything that promises to or even implies there is something this “you” can do to be a better “you” is full of shit. Neither can they give you anything like “enlightenment” where you will undoubtedly they claim reside in an unending state of bliss forever more, well they have to sell it, but just no one is even here to give that to anything called “you” that isn’t even here either. Geez, the bullshit is that thick. Other than this, at that time, some type of feeling like a letting go seems to be the norm now, just seeing what the day brings. I don’t seem to care what I eat at all, lately that whole eating thing is just more like try to eat something, don’t care at all what it is, might eat the same thing all day long, or all week long. For some reason the whole

365 food thing is lost on me lately, it’s like I just take little snacks, anything called a whole meal is not going to go down at all, not even sure how anyone does that anymore but my kids seem to eat a lot and it doesn’t bother them at all. Probably if I didn’t have children my food bill would be something like $30 a month tops, maybe not even that. Going out to eat, I don’t know, just don’t ever feel like bothering with it, like before I used to be jealous that some people could afford to go to nice restaurants and dress up and all that and now I’m like, just don’t even want to touch that scene. If I use a restaurant at all it’s just for convenience to get food for the kids. I did go to one with some friends the other day, some place that had spent like $80,000 on Christmas dec- orations that they wanted to see, so I was like okay cool, and it was dazzling. We just all shared some tasty appetisers there to cut the cost, but in the end, I couldn’t help thinking that it was all just decadence, so much money spent on that when probably right outside the door or down the street was someone who was sleeping without a bed or something so there was that but you know to each his own. I got a nice Christmas tree today, the lovely smell of it just took over as soon as we put it in the car, but I seem to be over the whole Christmas thing and go figure none of the kids are concerned about it at all. I just told them what the sensible amount would be for each one of them according to the current budget and they all said they would just take the cash and save it for whatever they needed or wanted down the road so I was like cool definitely no one around here needs more useless shit. It’s like the gift giving thing is some attempt to show your love but the gifts themselves are as useless as this gesture. It’s so easy to just go out and buy a gift, but try loving someone unconditionally accepting every single thing they do or have ever done, every single thing they say whether for or against you, as the perfect unfolding in consciousness even if it feels or looks detrimental to your own well being? This whole gift giving thing seems to be a cover-up, almost like a big “I’m sorry” for not giving you what you

366 really needed from me. The gifts themselves are quickly forgotten as well, just tossed aside whether within a day, a week, or a month, no material thing can ever make up for or give what you always wanted to give in the first place, your time. Well, no one has the time anymore in this mad dream, all the parents down here are busy working and when they aren’t they think their job is to push their children into some type of worldly achievement so even when they are with them, there’s this ulterior motive to do something useful with the time , instead of just being. Well, the being itself has been buried so deep in these worldly affairs that no one can find it anymore, every- thing they do has to have some purpose, except that no one seeing it, that is the fuck- ing purpose, it is the only purpose, just to be, to see that being is what you are and no amount of worldly success or tree full of gifts will ever even come close to being as good as that, no it will fail miserably every time and you know it’s sad, because time is all you will ever get from this place, and the normal thing to do now in the dream is to throw it in the trash and exchange it for the idea that the accumulation of things is worth it’s expenditure so more of anything that comes from this so called world isn’t better at all, it’s actually less, like settling for a crumb instead of eating the whole pie, well this is what I see. As for myself, there is literally no gift that I would need or even want, in fact it’s just the opposite, I have too much stuff, like you know there is some clutter, and it’s just a mess, just gets in the way, can’t even remember why I bought the shit in the first place. Well, it seems really stupid now. I mean it’s weird but once you realize there isn’t any- one out there to see you at all why would you need more than two or three or four at most sets of clothes, like why even bother? I don’t even know how many different out- fits I can throw together right now but it’s a hell of a lot more than that, well what for, it just seems heavy, like dead weight, like there are the essential things for living and the rest of it, this excess is just a fucking drain. Well, it’s like maybe you like earrings, I like

367 earrings, you know I wear them to work and occasionally I wear them at other times, but I don’t need more than one or two pairs of them, no then they all just get bunched together in a big box and you can’t even find the ones that go together anymore. Well, the whole material thing just starts to look really stupid from over here. It’s like I have a total of ten or fifteen clothes items and they are all either black, grey, or white or a mixture of those, and this is almost always what I wear anyway no matter where I’m going. All of them are very comfortable, no silly dresses, or anything that’s binding at all, just has to either be some stretchy material or baggy sweats, and that’s it. For shoes, for walking or exercises I have a pair of tennis shoes but for everyday, I just wear some old slides that I got from my son when he outgrew them, just love those with a pair of black, grey, or white socks. Well, it’s very simple and no one “out there” has ever said a word about it except my mother, she’s like “Why do you always wear black? It’s so morbid. You should add some color to your wardrobe,” but I just couldn’t even pay it any mind at all and just said, “Whatever.” I guess you know at the end of the day, really just have to throw on something so you don’t go around naked and get arrested or to stay warm, well just saying, if I had all the money back that I ever spent on clothes in my lifetime up till now, I might be in pretty good shape. If there was someone “out there” who didn’t want to talk to me because of what I was wearing, I doubt very much that they would be capable of holding a conversation with me that was worth it to me to have anyway. Come to think about it, it reminds me of how monks just get the one cloth, I guess they have seen through the illusion of ego that the whole clothing industry is based on vanity and nothing else. Then again, I seem to like dirndls, the traditional German costume, and if I were ever to find myself in Germany at the Octoberfest where it would be normal fun to wear one, I’d probably go with that just for fun, but it would be strictly for fun and not because I wanted to be seen as something special at all. When I was growing up, my

368 Oma always made sure I had a pair of real authentic German clogs, so maybe some- day I might want to get those again, well the slides are getting worn to the bone. I think maybe the feet don’t actually like being in regular shoes at all (or high heels, come again, what the fuck are those, I don’t have any but if I did I wouldn’t even give them away would just toss those right in the bin) like maybe they weren’t even made for that just like to be free like the rest of the body somehow, maybe even this wearing of shoes is like somehow tied to the fact that almost no one comes up with even the thought that something might be amiss, like all these closed up feet which are chock full of pressure points has somehow choked the sense out of the thinking, maybe the shoe does that to it. Well, off with your shoes then! So before this whole Christmas thing was worked out and my conditioning had me thinking it was going to be a downer for the kids again, I was sitting in my room, right where I am now, and I was remembering all the times when we were homeless and maybe had lost everything again or had to leave our things behind or whatever and I was remembering how some of these shelters had like a room where the people could go look for clothes or whatnot in and it was all just completely free. Well, I was remembering what it was like to go in there and maybe find something nice, that didn’t look like old worn out crap, like it was finding a treasure during a time when it didn’t seem like there were any. Well, before this we have given away stuff to these so called charity places, but what they do is turn around and sell them. I don’t know what they do with the money they get from selling all your old stuff, but probably most of it goes to just maintaining a place and way to sell it in the first place and there’s always someone at the top who is taking a nice big chunk so I was like not going to do that this time and I looked up a women and children’s shelter and gave them a call to see if they had a room like the one I remembered. Well, they said they did so I told the chil-

369 dren about it and asked them to go through their stuff and just give me what they didn’t want or need anymore. So I get home from work the other night, and my daughter had not only cleaned the whole house, right down to the kitchen floor, but in her room was a great big pile of clothes, some of them brand new, that either didn’t fit anymore or just didn’t fit her style and I was like this is great. We went through it and got rid of anything that looked worn out because the last thing you want to find if you are in a place like that is more crap, you’ve been through enough crap in the dream already to have to encounter any more in whatever form it takes. So this Christmas instead of buying anything, we are just going to get rid of all the things we don’t need, listen all these things, you are always having to clean them up, find room for them, organize them, and they are just in the way, even having to look at them seems to take up space in your mind that you could be using for something else, something worthwhile, like maybe just standing there. Listen, I’m not telling you this to say that we are some nice people here, giving people, or any good people at all, that isn’t the point of it, forget it, forget that, there aren’t even any people here like that at all like you might think there are. All I’m really trying to say is there is nothing material at all to even get out of this dream world, zero, nothing, there isn’t anything even here like you think there is in the way of material things or achievements or anything like that. The whole thing is a complete and utter illusion but you know there are like basic needs that beings have down here and beyond that, it’s just baggage, well have you ever seen anyone trying to like travel with more than one suitcase, like ever seen someone trying to pull a bunch of crap through the airport or wherever, it’s sad, it’s like this stuff is somehow very important, that’s why they are literally carrying it around with them, even though it’s super heavy, but still desperately trying to hold onto it like it’s not just all they have but all they are.

370 So back to the pain thing, these emotional pains that continue to haunt you are actually trying to escape, like there is an intelligence at work that wants you to just sit in them so they don’t have to keep repeating themselves for the rest of your life bring- ing up one painful situation after another, maybe even one more painful than the last, so they can get your full attention, you know you have to feel them, like really feel them to dissolve them so you can let go of them once and for all, and it isn’t a nice thing to do, your mind is always in the way telling you to avoid doing that, telling you there’s something else you need to be doing instead, telling you that there is some- thing wrong with you, well everyone else seems to be putting on a happy show, why can’t you, but that’s the thing, it’s all a show and some beings who are even more de- luded than you are, are the ones who pull it off the best, well maybe they even have something to gain from you going around thinking the way this whole dream world is going is conducive to living a good life but it isn’t. It’s bullshit. There is no reason at all anywhere for anyone to think that they should be happy about having to walk around all day pretending to be something they are not but you don’t need to be like that at all. Yes, your basic needs need to be met but beyond that, there is nothing at all to get here, wanting and needing are not the same thing at all. What you need will be provided naturally, no “you” doing anything at all to even make anything happen, even the experiences that are coming up for you, every single one, the unpleasant and pleasant ones, are actually being provided for you, nothing at all is ever happen- ing to you, but for you, so you can see where you have this emotional attachment to something in the dream that is causing you to live in some painful way. These experi- ences are actually provided so you can rid yourself of the shit once and for all, but no- body either knows that or has the courage to go in and face whatever sickening feel- ing is at the root of it. Of course, it doesn’t help that you doing it is a real threat to

371 someone else’s delusional happy mask, you know can’t just be sad for awhile or angry, now there’s a big no no, that’s not very productive at all, well you might even quit your job if it got too bad, you seeing the inauthentic nature of how life is being lived right now almost everywhere is not in line with the materialistic competitive culture at all. So unless your leg is broken, or you have some other serious physical ailment, stay clear of doctors, phycologists, psychiatrists, consolers or anyone else who is in the business of fixing people up, you are not fucking broken. Your so called brokenness and unwill- ingness to play the game everyone else is pretending they like playing, (and believe me they are pretending, just a little investigation behind the scenes of any of these happy fucking faces will tell another story of that you can be sure) is your one way tick- et out and be sure of this, it is the only way out. The only way out is in. Right now, the game is playing you, later on when you are out of the game you can go back in and play to your hearts content, and really enjoy your fucking life. Listen, there really is a lot to enjoy here in the dream, wonderful magical existence and much much more but it’s only enjoyable when you are choosing to play for the sheer sake of playing, not when you have to. Right now, for instance, I feel like I am stuck in this job, like literally it is the only thing right now that stops me from enjoying every minute of every day. It’s not even that I’m worried about the money or the bills anymore, like you know if they get paid, they get paid, and if they don’t, oh well, it’s not like I was ever even in charge of that. The only real headache is that this body for some reason keeps getting in the car and driving to some a place called a casino, like the character, what’s left of her, hasn’t found a way to live without doing that yet and having seen the stupidity of the whole rat race can’t seem to just accept that this is all life is for and it seems like a lowly way to spend the time I have left here breathing. So it’s not you know that I keep doing it because I care about having a nicer house now, or a nicer car, or any kind of material

372 shit at all, or anything that will move me up some imaginary scale in this ignorant dream world, so I can be somebody, who would I be, that doesn’t even register here at all anymore. So there’s still some very unpleasant feeling going on around that but I also know whatever is arising is the best that can possibly arise even if it’s painful and it’s still nothing to do with me, well I guess I just can’t stop saying it but there isn’t one. I walked into my son’s room yesterday and asked him what he’d been doing. He said he’d been listening to Disney songs on You Tube so I asked him what his favorite song was and he said it was from that movie Frozen 2 that he likes so much and has seen two times now. It’s called All is Found and when he played it for me, I knew in- stinctively that it was exactly what I needed to hear, well it must be because that’s what I was hearing. You really have to learn to pay more attention now. So first off, the tune itself was just so soothing it just pulled me right in, just wanted to get right inside the song somehow, so I did. It’s not just a song, it seemed to be a message and part of it goes like this. “Where the north wind meets the sea, there’s a river full of memory”. And “In her waters, deep and true, lie the answers and a path for you.” And “She will sing to those who hear, and in her song all magic flows” And “Can you brave what you most fear?” (How about your whole life was based on a lie?) And “Until the rivers finally crossed, you’ll never feel the solid ground, you have to get a little lost, on your way to being found.”

373 And the ending… “Come, my darling, homeward bound, for all is lost, then all is found.” I have a dear friend who lives in another part of the world (no not really, we are just one) that I write to almost every day, and he sent me this excerpt from one of Jed’s books just the other day that I think should be highlighted, maybe written in all caps or bold font, so the attention can actually understand what it is saying. Well, here it is… “The process of awakening looks like it’s about destroying ego, but that’s not real- ly accurate. You never completely rid yourself of ego…the false self…as long as you are alive, and it’s not important that you do. What matters is the emotional tethers that anchor us to the dream state, that hold us in place and make us feel that we’re a part of something real. We send out energetic tendrils from the nexus of ego like roots to attach ourselves to the dream state, and to detach from it we must sever them. The en- ergy of an emotion is our lifeforce, and the amount of life-force determines the power of the emotion. Withdraw energy from an emotion and what’s left? A sterile thought. A husk. In this sense, freeing ourselves from attachment is indeed the process of awak- ening but such attachments aren’t what we have, they’re what we ARE.” Jed Mckenna Spiritually Incorrect Enlightenment So in the case of this ego called Sandra Anne, somehow the job itself still seems real, there’s an attachment there, an emotional tether that somehow links the financial sustainability of it with what I am and that’s why it’s still painful to dream that dream. So that’s coming up for me, just dissolving the power of the emotion wrapped up in the thought that there is even an actual job, that this part of the dream is real and you know it hurts, it’s like extremely painful, and there’s anger, anger arising, well why shouldn’t anger be arising, a better question is how is it that so many are able to con- tain the anger at having been sold all these stupid and insanely life sucking lies, a powerful life denying strategy must be employed to keep them at bay to go along

374 with the consensual dream, hence all the eating and stuffing of emotions in every con- ceivable way must be consistently maintained to keep it all under wraps but the or- ganism itself gets weak and sick from the terrible exertion required to keep the truth buried from itself. But she is singing to me, and I hear the song, so beautiful, just still crossing the riv- er, and it’s all already taken care of, just need to lose this last thing so the real path can unfold. Once fully ignited the urge to get to the bottom of things can’t actually be stopped, there is no “you” even in it, doing it, it does it to itself so just know that it knows what’s doing and where it’s going even if this so called “you” doesn’t. It’s like the strain of the job tries to infringe on the natural flow of this writing, but the writing itself can not even be contained at all, no job or lack of sleep from the hours spent there, like just nothing can silence it, well it’s out of my hands, I am not having any- thing called hands anymore. Just allowing another picture to appear where I can just be what I am and do what I was originally made to do. Just being. As a note, there are some people who have written to me who say they are just not getting it, you know how come they haven’t achieved this so called “state of en- lightenment” and I know it’s troubling, but I can assure of this, anyone who is even drawn here, is more awake then they realize and it will have it’s way with you whether you like it or not. So you know just welcome the pain and be eternally grateful that you haven’t lost the capacity to feel it like the rest of the dreamers out there because… “For all is lost, then all is found.” And here’s the song… https://youtu.be/e1amXdBJQJY Chapter 50

375 Well, there doesn’t seem to be anything left to say once you’ve seen how it really is. Those who speak don’t ever say anything anyway, all the words that you think you know, anything that you might say are just part of the dream, totally meaningless. I guess you can try to see how the dream is working but if you do that isn’t even you doing something like that, first of all the “you” isn’t here like that again there isn’t one and what you are isn’t the doer, the conditioning directs the body in activities but this activity while it appears it is happening, is experienced as happening isn’t really hap- pening and there’s nothing there but the conditioning to create the illusion of it, noth- ing you have ever done, or imagined you’ve done has ever happened anywhere but in a dream and likewise, any thought of doing anything now is also not your own and only appears in a dream and none of the dreams were dreamed by the “you that you thought/think you are, but in spite of it. Dreams in the waking state aren’t any different than in the sleeping state, they are mysterious, they are fabricated, pieced together by an imagination far greater than any imagination that you can even imagine that you have, like you can never know it, it’s too big, too complex, and too unpredictable to even comprehend with the limited capacity available in this form. It is all just imagina- tion, you are that which imagines but not anything that is imagined, and even if you are the imaginer, and not the imagined, what you imagine is just what your condi- tioned mind is capable of imagining. I would say that this capacity to imagine can widen, open up like the blooming of a flower, which blooms for a moment and then dies. As ego or the conditioned mind grows stronger, the dream state becomes denser, and less and less light is able to stream in until you know maybe it doesn’t anymore, unfortunately that’s the direction I think that it seems to be going. It seems to me that ego rules the dream state so well now that the chances of halting or even reversing this flow, or this tendency to create sufferings in it are all but lost so what even tries,

376 except that consciousness which has wisdom beyond anything I know about might have other plans or maybe I just dream that, but I feel something there. So all this writing that I’ve been doing here, is only about a dream and none of it is real at all. Well, it’s nice to do something in a dream that you dream you enjoy doing. On a personal note, however, at the end of the day, at the end of the line something about this writing started to feel very heavy here, just the empty thought that I had to create in order to do it, to somehow whether consciously or unconsciously fabricate the idea that there was someone outside of me to read or to approve of it even start- ed to make me dream up some anxiety, because no real separate entities are existing anywhere as something tangible and real, once you see that, that’s the thing that you can never forget that you’ve seen. The very idea that something MATTERS (could be anything) is the idea that causes suffering. It is the one idea that fucks up the whole fucking dream, because unless something MATTERS it has no power at all to cause any reaction one way or the other. Ideas that don’t matter have a way of subsiding out of view rather quickly, the attention does not focus on them at all, and so they no longer appear in the dream. It’s like how there was this so called “war on drugs” in the dream, it was that important that a war was called for, and all that did was cause this imaginary angst in the dream, and a whole lot of suffering and it did nothing to elimi- nate anything called drug use at all since the attention was focused on it, it’s appear- ance in the dream just became more pronounced. That is how dreams work, wherever the attention goes, what it becomes fixated on, gets bigger. One thing is sure, there are no problems in a dream precisely because it is a dream. Here’s the deal, please sit down, go ahead and dream up a chair and sit in it. So let me really freak you out, not only is there no “you” to wake up, there is no anything, no world, no car, no Christmas tree to take down now, it isn’t there like you

377 think it is. The whole place is just complete and utter emptiness, not a material thing to actually be found in any of it. Welcome to the Grand Illusion. “The mistaken imagination of illusion is not a reality.” Sri Sankara So just what does this mean? It means you don’t have a body and that there is nothing material at all in existence and never will be. It means you know how you can’t see your own car that you think you just parked in your garage a while ago because now you are in the house or maybe in your bedroom, it isn’t there. Not only is it not there but nothing you are seeing is really there either, like literally you are just imagin- ing it is. Yeah, well, it’s fucking freaky for sure, like when you realize that, you are like, what the hell, you mean this whole time I’ve been worried about shit that isn’t even there, what the fuck! Now, maybe finally, you really can laugh. Maybe, now, you think, who played this fucking joke on me? That is some real bullshit, you mean all this time you had me believing that shit was real, that I was real and nothing was ever even here? I was never here in something called this stupid fucked up world. Well, that’s kind of fucked up if you ask me, not a very nice fucking joke at all, shit. Well, if it wasn’t such good news maybe you’d be a little pissed off, except that it is good news, like now you really can relax, I mean what are you going to worry about? Emptiness? You know how you go to sleep at night, and you are in a dream there, and shit just goes south in it, you’ve fallen out of a plane or maybe even murdered some- one, (yeah I had that dream once when I was a kid and like never fucking forgot it and in it I was like “omg, I can’t believe I did that” and I was like fucking horrified, mortified, literally wanted to die in the dream because of it, like what would people think of me if they knew what I’d done, I didn’t even dream doing it, I dreamed it after the fact, like did I do that? And oh God this is just the worst, I’ve somehow done the worst thing, and I don’t even remember doing it but I think maybe I did, it looks like I did, what if someone finds out, can I even live with myself, shit just fucking kill me now) but you

378 wake up and it takes you a minute but you realize that you were just asleep and are like “oh thank god, it was only a dream and not real at all.” Then you like take a deep breath and you are like oh thank fucking god again, it’s okay, didn’t really happen, everything’s just fine, and it’s all okay again, just some fucking nightmare, well it’s over now, let’s just forget about it, dreams are just weird like that you tell yourself, and you don’t think about it anymore, no you just go about your day, well it’s like that. Nothing matters in nothing including words, all words are not mattering, nothing is mattering. There is no judgement here because nothing is really here. Now that be- ing said, if you want something to matter, then you can purposely and consciously have them matter but are you going to choose what causes suffering to matter to you? Are you going to choose some “mattering” that makes the dream joyous or stressful? It’s all in the attention, once you know it’s just a dream and there’s no “you” and no physical body here to be concerned about at all, maybe focus on something that’s fun to focus on but just be clear that whatever that is, does not actually matter. Trust me as soon as anything “matters” it becomes a burden like instantly. Mattering itself is an idea, and there are no “ideas” at all in emptiness, ideas being created out of words which are themselves completely dream stuff, do not exist. That’s why the whole si- lence thing is so big with enlightened masters, because as soon as you slip a word in there, you create an image in the mind which only happens in a dream and so instead of slipping out of the dream, you’re right back in it. In short, the you that you think you are or thought you were, what you’ve always experienced as you are emotional attachments to things in the dream mostly ideas re- ally, the idea of a body, the idea of success or failure, the idea of love and hate, put all the opposites you want here, and in order to be free, you have to detach from them which is painful because it’s the cracking of the very illusion, somewhere in there is al- ways the idea that you are going to arrive at some type of conclusion, completion, but

379 there isn’t any, which why you can only sit still for so long before it’s on to the next thing that “will do it for you” but that is not the nature of this dream. Nothing is staying around at all, everything is just passing through, thoughts are passing through, feel- ings are passing through, the new house is old now, the body is headed toward death, the vacation is over, the kitchen is dirty again, Christmas is over, everything in this dream is like that, totally transitory. One dynamic in the dream is that the more you try to hold onto anything the faster it slips through your fingers, how is that, could it be that there is nothing to hold to? Thoughts are going by now, feelings are being felt, images are being seen, and none of them mean anything, they won’t last at all, and there was never a “you” re- sponsible for creating any of it, well what you are is dreaming the whole thing, and there’s no purpose at all in it, no agenda whatsoever, nothing to actually do or get or become at all, just without dreaming there’s no experience of anything, and the rea- son for all the suffering is just the ignorant judgements about the content of the dream and the idea that there is someone, or some world out there to judge “your” content which is always just coming up in these thoughts, like the thought that there is a some separate you that is living in something called a world. Well, it makes for some entertainment I’ll give you that, and the whole thing could be just some wondrous magical fun as far as the eye can see (one eye) but I guess it is what it is. It can only work with what it gets, totally non personal manifestations, and well it’s no different now then it was in the beginning, this idea of separateness has always been around stirring the pot. So really, now that you know you are dreaming, it’s just a matter of learning how to enjoy the dream, since why not? Isn’t that what all this seeking was for in the first place?

380 I am dreaming up some super nice stuff lately, stuff that I enjoy tremendously, like it’s just fucking good stuff, and it produces feelings of bliss that I never even knew were possible before I came this way, there are moments like that, I cherish them, and then there are other moments, crap from the conditioning still comes up, manifests in my dream and the old feelings of shame and unworthiness come up right along with them and sometimes those stay for awhile, I might even feel shaky, some fear, well it takes a bit for that old conditioning to dissolve, but then the movement, the pattern is I’m right back to the nice parts. The more you become aware of the pattern, the more you can trust that there’s a greater hand in this than anything you can dream up. Just maybe do some breathing, or be very very quiet, try to hear the quiet nature of things. In the end the body dies and the dreaming stops (well maybe, maybe not, who knows) so this is really your chance to die to all the stupid shit you thought was true about what was going on here and start living. However it arises for you to do that do that? Or don’t, either way it doesn’t matter and it isn’t real but you know why suffer if you don’t have to? Chapter 51 So the dream continues, but things feel different now, very very different, now you are just seeing something super cool, in a way it’s like consciousness itself is speaking to you all the time and now it’s saying the most lovely things. (Well, if not it’s just some- thing else it wants you to see the unreality of and that also is lovely, even if maybe it doesn’t feel like it for a little while) It is speaking through songs, through people who think they are real, well just everything, in every moment. It seems to actually be teach- ing you now how to live, this one thing you’ve been trying to figure out how to do all this time, your whole fucking life. All of a sudden, the thoughts in your head are like, WOW, I still have a lot of time left to enjoy this whole thing. Then there’s this feeling of safety, of things being exactly how they should be every single moment, even the job

381 is fine. The bills are fine. (Well, I’m sure I’ll get them paid off eventually and at the same time, what fucking bills?) The kids are fine. The whole fucking life is fucking fine, well you are in a whole new world now and anything can happen here and you are not car- ing at all what that is, no matter what you are seeing, even if it was something that you previously would have labeled bad or upsetting, someone doesn’t like you or insults you, you just know that even that is still just you, so now you are just like, oh wow, you can be just as you are, not going to judge you at all for that, just going to love every single expression as fucking perfect, the perfect unfolding. Well, you are walking around like maybe you are just so lucky, like you have been so fucking blessed, you can even look back on your whole life, all the pain and suffer- ing and you are just like saying thank you for it like you see that it was all for your own good, it was all just some kind of immeasurable loving that created the suffering in the first place so you could get to where you are now. You see very clearly now how it was pushing you to go beyond, that it in every painful situation was like crying out to you to wake up so you could live your best life. Let me reiterate this loud and clear, there is nothing here to get, NOTHING, no riches, no money, nothing solid, tangible, or anything like that AT ALL. The whole thing is a dream and it is coming out of your own mind. I just want to stress here that the dream is coming out of the conditioning but be sure of this one thing, it is all you, any- one you see is just a vehicle of presence except that they probably don’t know it so the best thing that you can ever do to make some nice dreaming for yourself is to love and tenderly care for whatever crosses your path, because the non judgemental com- passion you extend to that you extend to yourself. It is all just you so maybe start act- ing and thinking accordingly. That’s not even some gift on your part, it’s their gift to you. When anyone comes across your path now, your non judgemental compassion toward them is actually toward you and it is beautiful. Tears are beautiful, and the love

382 that moves you to them is beyond anything you have ever felt before, it is that good, sadness for the predicament that everyone is in thinking they are real, just overwhelms you with gratitude every single passing moment. I like how James Carse called it “outpouring”, this life is outpouring for you right now. It is a gift and anything that you are seeing is a gift, it is actually an opportunity to love what you are even that much more. The more you lose your conditioning, the more you see it and it doesn’t matter what happens in the dream at all, it doesn’t mat- ter if you work in a casino like I do or you don’t work at all. It doesn’t even matter if you have enough to eat, well hopefully you do, but if you didn’t even that would be fine because you are not having anything called a body at all anymore so you do not need to protect it at all, it will take care of that all by itself. Absolutely anything that happens, happens in a dream only and it will be the perfect unfolding because there is no other way, it is itself and you are that. As a final note, I love you, no matter where you dream you are or what kind of life you dream, I hold you in my heart like the pure shining untarnished faultless being that you are. Just a million thanks for reading any of this. And lastly, this song just popped up, not even weird how it can do that anymore, haven’t heard it in I don’t know how long but it seems to fit perfectly. https://youtu.be/pw6_VXPwm6U

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