The Sky is Alight with Fire

 Fire fire in the sky fire fire in the sky! I was thinking about how I think about improving habits I have. How I cringe when I do something I don't like and I focus my will to align it with what I enjoy, my positive feelings. How I wait for a time when it will be aligned and how I feel responsible for what I do that I think is wrong...But...I am not responsible because there is no self...I am not in charge here because I do not exist. There is no one to be making mistakes or to be responsible for these mistakes. I am not responsible for correcting them because I am not here. I did not make them in the first place. I am not tied to what is happening because there is no self for what is happening to be tied too. No responsibility, no guilt, no shame. There is no doer, no center of command, no soul. Nothing there, nothing at all. There is no self at the end of the tunnel. Fucking crazy. Pure fucking emptiness, everything is emptiness. Nothing here at all. No self. No life. No death. Nothing we imagine. No black, no white, absolutely nothing at all. No green, no blue. What do I do with myself? Do I even exist do do things with? How can I resign myself to this reality when I don't even exist. When I am completely out of control. Am I even here at all? It is as if I am emptiness. I am nothingness, and this doesn't mean I have a self. It means that nothingness is the nature of the self. And there never was anyone here to begin with. My life is seamless with all aspects of my environment in every way. I am as inert as the computer and the table upon which I write. As lifeless as the room I write in. I am not alive. There is no such thing as life and death. These are ideas. There is no difference between matter and spirit. These are ideas. There is no difference between anything at all. I have been afraid of the void all my life. It is inescapable. Afraid of darkness. Afraid of death. Afraid of failure. Disappointment, shame, guilt, vulnerability, fear, anger, hate, suffering, hurt, illness, people, my environment, my imagination, society. All of this is inescapable, all of this is inseparable from what we cling to. It is what we cling to. In clinging to life, we cling to death. In clinging to joy we cling to suffering. You cannot have one without the other. Nothing is separate. Nothing is distinct. There is no difference. When you run, you run into fires in the sky. You run into hell. If you wish to avoid death, you must face it. Otherwise it will cling to you like wetness clings to water. You cannot escape death. What is death if death is inseparable from life? What is death if there is no self. Is then death the ceasing of a form? If you do not exist to embody this form, then what is there to fear of death? What harm can it do to one that doesn't exist? Do forms even exist? Or is it simply in our imagination where there is a multitude? Where there is a difference from this and that, where one life is distinct from another. Is there not one body, or no body? To know yourself, you must face your unreality. 

I do not know who I am

 I do not know who I am. I do not know what I am. I don't know if I am. I think this is who I am. Someone who does not know. Someone or something. I do not know what is real. I do not think I need to know. I don't think I exist. I don't think that I am. I don't think any of this is real. Not in the sense that we imagine it to be. We think things are ideas. We think there is a universe full of things. We firmly believe this. Our very life depends on it. Without it we are ruined. I cannot believe such a thing because I do not exist. Not in the sense that others believe they exist. I am not an idea. I am not an image. I am not dependent on explicit definition. You should be worried if you are. Because if you are then you may fall apart. Castles built on sand. Not that it matters anyway. Illusions don't bleed. Nor do they gather dust if not tended to. Who the fuck exists when it seems to me that everyone is a fragile glass frame that they carry around in front of their face with both their hands? We are not our bodies, we are not our thoughts. We are not these images we carry around in anxiety. We are so afraid they they will be cracked, damaged, dropped, broken. When these things cannot happen because the frame is not a real frame, it is an image in the mind that we are utterly convinced is real. "I am so and so. I do this. I like this. I am this. This is my job. This is my family. This is who I am. Don't say this about me, but please say this about me." We are stuck in slivers of our imagination, when who we really are is something completely different. Who we are is not an I. It is not a me. You cannot tie you poor ego to it. You dreams and ambitions. Your narcissism. You cannot grasp it because you truly have no power. You are a fiction. A sprawling empty story. A story that bores me to death. Concealing itself because if it revealed itself it would die and the fun would end. It would mean facing what isn't pleasant. It would mean seeing things at face value. It would mean acknowledging the terrifying uncertainty of your limited awareness and ability. Your probable eventual death. The unknown. I am tired of feeding your ego with flattery. I am tired of being tied to your story. I am tired of being stuck in this persistent and lifeless circus. This world as you know it is a dream. It is an image. It does not exist outside of your imagination. Life is so much more than we think it is. I want to be alive. I want to be free. I want to live my own life without the burdens of chronic insanity. I want to breathe the air, to be alone. I want the world to leave me alone. I want to have the power to leave this world behind and never return to it. I cannot say this is who I am and who we are because you will think I am talking about you, and I am not. 

The absence of self

 When I say there is no self, what do I mean? I think people easily get hung up on the idea of a Self or a soul, or God. Most people can't disentangle the positive aspects of these notions from their egos. So when you talk about them as realities, people associate their ego with them and misunderstand what they are. The image of the separate self is deeply ingrained in the mind of most human beings. People imagine that their separate self will live forever in some kind of paradise, if they can only get to it, or realize it. What they don't see is the negative and horrific side of this ego image. The side which is constantly repressed because it is unpleasant and it doesn't suit the person's fancy. This is the constant warring torment, insecurity, fear, and extreme displeasure and discomfort that the ego creates. We incessantly avoid this reality and wistfully look to a paradise for salvation and fulfillment that does not exist. We cherish our egos even if we walk a spiritual path and claim to deny them, we feel righteous in doing so. The we here is simply the pride of the ego and a feeling of superiority among our fellow human beings that gives us comfort. A part of this righteousness is not egoic perhaps, to greater and lesser extents, and is the awakening of subtler forms within consciousness. 

What we don't realize is that it is our ego which keeps us suffering. We think we realize this, but we simply set the ego on a higher pedestal. We think we have read enough and that we see enough, and know enough for ourselves, but I don't think most of us do. The ego is exposed for what it is as our consciousness deepens. As we awaken. I think it is impossible for us to realize or imagine the extent to which it has penetrated our lives until we have done some serious deep digging. I think much of what we think of as non-egoic aspects of ourself are egoic and not real. The extent to which what we think of as ourself that is illusory is profound. The extent to which we die to ourselves in awakening is also profound. To wake up, we have to let go of our entire self. Our entire way of perceiving things and looking at the world. This is like being a tooth in a mouth and telling the dentist to pull you out with pliers and discard you into the trash bin. The whole enchilada. I think as we awaken we romanticize what enlightenment means and is. We lovingly cling to who we are and strive to save ourselves for this great liberation of our suffering where we can be ourselves without restraint. We don't realize that much of what we hope to take with us to nirvana is what keeps us in samsara. We don't see the extent to which we are not who or what we think we are. We don't see the profundity of a thing like nirvana. Or the self-lessness of One taste. We imagine it is me there with God as God in paradise when so much of this me is less than paper thin and when seen clearly is entirely undesirable. So much of waking up is waking up to the trans-personal. The beyond personal. This is exactly what it sounds like. Beyond the person. Beyond who we think we are. It's not some immortal hero. Its bodies and currents of selfless energy and being that exist beyond the scope of the egoic mind. You can't get one without the other. You can't wake up without dying to who you think you are, which in most cases is entirely who you think you are. This is why I say, there is no self. 

stuff

 Plants have roots that take in water and minerals from the soil. Through the process of photosynthesis plant cells convert sunlight into chemical energy which is then used to combine carbon dioxide and water into glucose which is used for growth. Human beings are organisms that live on this planet. These creatures eat plants among other things and convert the sugars from what they consume into energy. These creatures possess consciousness. As consciousness develops the thought arises that the creature is separate from it's environment. This thought is that the creature is an I. That it is different and the world is different from it. As consciousness continues to develop this thought ceases to arise. 

What is there if there is no space and time? What is there if there is no self? What if there are no thoughts? No distance. Who do we become when we cease to exist? Who are we if we never existed at all? Who am I if I don't exist? Feeling? Being? What do these mean? What if there is no self? What if there is just openness, expansiveness and this is what we are. What if there is no end to being? What if there is no difference between death and life? Between who I am and who I am not? Between delusion and reality? What if there is no difference between anything? Because what we imagine and perceive is not as we imagine it to be. Because we imagine differences between and among things, when there in fact is no difference? What we imagine is true is no different from what is false because the two were never two too begin with. We imagine there is a difference, a distinction only because we are ignorant. If we could see clearly we wouldn't have words for true and false. There would be no distinction to make. No confusion. As we see it, both are imperfect, and both are only fully understood when they are united and seamless with the other. In a sense, when they cease to exist. 

Ideas of real and not real are both imagined and thus they do not perfectly point to what is. What is is a combination of what they are and what they are not. In totally denying them we are simply giving into the thought of unreal. In totally accepting them we are giving into the idea that they are real. As long as we have notions of separateness between real and not real we will not see clearly. As long as our consciousness is tied to these notions of separateness we will be blinded. The answer is the full illumination of the mind, if such a thing is possible. To completely dissolve the notion of separateness and to complete uproot the mind from thinking. In a way that is a complete transcendence and dissolution of thinking. As long as there is thinking, there is delusion. Thought is inherently limited and composed of ego nature, which is deluded and unreal. At least the root of the ego must be completely withdrawn from the mind. 

Striving for what?

There is no self. There has never been a self. There is only God. God is empty of form. God does not exist. There is no self. Who are you? What is you? Do you find that you are? Can you see between the clouds in a way in which you becomes two wings on a silver bird in the night's sky? Falling away into nothingness. Does the sky still move you, does it shift. Do you know your name? You. You. Do you know what you are? Do you know what it means to die to your self? You feed on slime. You are unaware of God. You. Priceless you. So much weight for something without weight. You do not exist. There is only God. God is the dirt, the worms, and the sky. God is famine. God is plague. God is death. God is terror and sickness. God does not limit himself to paradise. God enjoys all the pains of the world. For God is without self. God is unaffected by grief, illness, and despair. God is uninterrupted. God is free. Because God does not exist. God is light on the wind because God does not have wings. God sinks deep into the ocean because God is the ocean. God doesn't know his name because God doesn't have a soul. God doesn't have a soul because God was never born with one. God was never born with anything. Their is no self. 

I do not write to anyone as I write this, because there is no one to write to. And because there is no one writing this in the first place. There is no writing. There is no working. There is no doing. There is no seeing. There is no loving. There is no being. There is no one here at all. There is no time. There is no space. There is no matter. There is no body. There are no feelings. There are no thoughts. There is no hurt. There is no suffering. There is no soul. There is no sky. There is no Earth. There is no light. There is no darkness. There are no angels. There are no spirits. There is no heaven. There is no sun. There are no stars. Wind blows through the branches of Winter trees. Spring is coming. Where are you to be found?

The Death of Me

We are so attached to being something. To being someone. When we meet new people, it's best if we can tell them that we are something which is socially considered good. Until we find something that fits in this category we may find ourselves anxious and uncomfortable. Many of us devote most of our energy to creating a life that fits into this category of what we socially perceive is good. We have mostly stopped questioning whether or not it is good. We feel lost if without this identity and when we encounter a situation where this identity doesn't fit we feel anxious don't know how to behave. We are slaves to these ideas of who I am. We are so consumed by fulfilling this identity that we scarcely realize how much torment we constantly endure. How anxious we always are even when we have the job, the career, the home, the life that we were told to have and that we think we need to have. We live in ideas of who we think we are and what we think is good when we don't know who we are or what is good. How do you think this affects the world? Are these ideas that we are thinking real? Are they who we really are? 

I think most of us barely live at all. Maybe I am deluded. I think most of us are so caught up in ideas of who we are and what is real that we don't really experience what is happening to us. We aren't really an us because we are so divided within ourself in our mind. We are so disconnected from our experience. From our senses and our feelings. We experience slivers and glimmers of what is happening. We consciously perceive of slivers of what is happening. Dismal. Obviously not everyone is like this and we don't not experience life this much equally throughout our day or behavior. But this tendency is very real, very common, and seems to be spreading throughout the world. 

Who am I? What is real? Is what I think real? Is what I think about myself real? Am I these thoughts about myself and my life? Do you really want slimers and glimmers of life? Do you want to be the idea of a man or a woman, or do you want to be a living breathing human being? I can't take it anymore. I can't stand festering in these diseased shells that we call our lives. I am not who you think I am. I do not belong in "this" world. This "world" we live in is not a world at all. It's an idea, mostly painful idea, that doesn't exist. Do you know that ideas are not real? Everything you think about yourself is made up. Not real. You are not the way you imagine yourself to be. The "world" we live in is a complete fucking fantasy. I do not exist. 

Short and Sweet

 The unfolding of the self. How often when we are "being spiritual" do we cling to the ideas presented to us? How often do we read and behave to support our ego? Our delusions? How much of our searching is an attempt to achieve immortality? How can we be immortal if we don't even exist? If we never were ever. Your striving to understand, isn't yours. It doesn't belong to you because you don't exist. And it doesn't belong to anyone else because no one else exists. There is no need to feel bad about your ego because you don't have one. You don't have a self to feel bad or to suffer. To make mistakes. To achieve something. You aren't the person trying to wake up because you aren't a person at all. You imagine you are navigating through life and through waking up, but you are not because you don't exist. Who you think does all this stuff isn't real. It's a play of images in the mind. It doesn't touch on anything. It is a fantasy. There is no one else you can be because there is no one else that you are. There is no one for you to be. You can't miss the point of awakening because you do not exist. There is no separate self. 

Coffee break

 Not that I drink coffee, but what the hell! 

Is Zen an idea? What is Zen? Is it a culture or a tool? Is it a way of life? It seems to me to be a way of life and a way of realizing the truth. Cool. What else is it? Zen. What is this way of looking at the world? Is it tied to certain practice? Does it require a particular constitution of self? Is it dependent on certain states of mind or outlooks? Is it also simply the truth? It's longer name is Zen Buddhism. It is a branch of Buddhism. When I have experiences that feel Zen to me, they seem to have a certain unique composition. It feels like I am participating in a particular culture of truth seeing with its own flavor.

 I get this same feeling with other traditions I am intimate with. They each have particular strengths that I enjoy. Strengths that point to very real dimensions of human experience and truth. Dimensions that in many ways can be difficult to integrate together. For example, how do we make sense of being both God in a completely personal sense and God in a completely objective sense? Is God both of these and God exists in many ways on a spectrum that seamlessly blends together? Or are our experiences of God as completely objective completely personal both two aspects of one undifferentiated whole that we fail to realize in our ignorance? *I just realized that when you force yourself to stay awake and it gets easier after awhile, it's because your body is pumping itself full of chemicals that keep you awake. Sweet. Go body. 
As I have become more awake, the two have become much more seamless, but not altogether one. In experiencing their non-divisiveness I have truer experiences of them as unique aspects of myself. Which give way to a greater sense of the non-duality of the universe. 

I think that personality and objectivity are ideas which have real aspects of truth in them, but are perhaps irreparably limited in scope because they are contrived. I have spent so much time trying to figure out how they are different and how they are the same. Perhaps now it would be helpful to try to fit them into the world and into eachother. As contrivances, perhaps it is impossible for them to fit together. It would seem that as long as there are two distinct words, the words will have different meanings, and this will obstruct one from seeing what is real if one is attempting to see reality through them. Perhaps we can drop them altogether, at least for the moment and look in a way that is not using what may be an innately limited tool which is the thinking and reasoning mind. *And yes, McDonalds is an Irish name, the McDonalds were two Irish immigrants. It's quite odd and funny saying, "McDonalds", the fast food franchise, with an Irish accent and imagining that the business is still somehow tied to its roots.  

The I AM  content that comes from alleged Ascended Masters may be for myself the closest culture to what what feels like Truth. I feel that they come closest to communicating and embodying universal truth and universal truths in distilled ways. I often feel that my destiny and the destiny of all human beings and all life comes from the heart that they illuminate. They seem to be at a heart of human destiny and Universal destiny that transcends culture and tradition, in a way that I find is partly obscured by any of the many wisdom traditions I have encountered. Perhaps this is simply because I have yet to delve deep enough into them. They seem like the many branches that extend from the Tree of Universal Wisdom. It seems like the Tree itself is embodied by the Ascended Masters. Personally I find identifying with one of it's branches to be a limiting imposition. Why call myself a Zen Buddhist when I am simply a human being? It just seems limited and kind of outdated honestly. Like, it would get in the way of the kind of integration I see humans coming to. Like it's a filter that is very good, but just isn't quite what is desired. It seems to me that Universal Love and Universal Wisdom alone are sufficient and will be sufficient for humanity. Not that these traditions don't serve a purpose. I just don't see them being as relevant as more and more human beings realize divinity and Universality in a very clear way. It seems like these wisdom traditions are the vessels which brought us to Truth and that once this truth is distilled the many paths will become more or less one way and their individuality will lose meaning and relevancy. So much of what gives these traditions their power and draw is how they give unique ways to reach God. We are attracted to them for their individual strengths. Once we have taken these strengths from many traditions we come to a synthesized or distilled Truth and the traditions seem to have less to offer. At least in the way in which we feel the need to be identified with them. At this point it seems like Universality becomes the dominant theme simply because it becomes who we are. We are someone and something that transcends the traditions. This things does not need the traditions to see. It sees with it's own faculties. Wisdom traditions help us see these, but they are not exclusively them. We are simply God, more so than we are Christians or Buddhists or whatever. These are ideas anyway and not real outside of the fact that they point to real and unique behaviors of human beings. Calling yourself one doesn't make you one outside of socially accepted beliefs. You can't be a Christian because you don't have a separate self. Sorry. 

Only the bestest

 Swaggin up on a Wednesday afternoon. Feel the groove of a Saturday beat bumpin my mood. Swaggery swag McSwaggerson. Swooooogle. Swaaaaaaaaaaaaaagacity. Here's the deal. It goes like this: 
The sky veils the starlight while the sun travels above. The moon holds the light of the Sun and reflects it to the Earth during the night. The blue of the sky fades as the sun passes beyond the horizon. During the day we can see mountains and trees at a distance During the day we see the Earth. If there are not clouds we see the sun overhead. It is yellow and also red. During the day we see rivers flowing from high up to low. The rivers flow into the ocean. Water collects in pools that are often full of fish and other life. Plants grow out of the ground. Animals eat these plants to survive. Other animals eat those animals to survive. Some animals crawl, some animals walk, other animals fly. Birds have wings. They use these wings to fly through the sky. Plants and animals are born, they live, and they die. Then more plants and animals are born and they live and then they die. The sun goes up and the sun passes through the sky, sometimes higher and sometimes lower, then sets behind the Earth. The moon rises and travels through the sky as well. Sometimes in the sky when the Sun is also in the sky. It sets as well. The stars shift during the night as well. The Earth travels around the sun as do other planets and bodies in our solar system. Everything we see has movement. Everything we see was made of other things before it became what it is now. Everything comes into being, moves around for a while, and then ceases to exist. It passes on changing into something else, almost as if it never was anything to begin with. If you look closely, things are changing all the time. Shifting and reorganizing. We imagine that life is fixed, that form is fixed. That things have substance. We imagine that we can grasp the Universe. That we can grasp life. That life is unchanging. That we are selves are unchanging. We imagine that we are something. We think we are something, someone. I wonder if we are anything or anyone at all. I wonder if we even exist as we think we do. I wonder if anything that we see exists as we think it does. I think that how it is, is beyond understanding. And any structure we impose on it is in a way worthless and obfuscates what really is going on right now. I do not think we can understand this world or even understand ourselves. I think this may be impossible. Is impossible and irrelevant. I think our imagination, our perception is illusory and not real. Yet it is all we have. The world that we see when we look out with our eyes, our thoughts, our feelings, and our senses is all we have whether or not it is real. What we do with what we perceive is up to us, and I think we are hopelessly limited because we are human beings. I think we cannot avoid trouble or suffering and that there is no legitimate reason why we should feel the need to do so. These are simply our existence. We do not need a utopia or a paradise. We really don't need anything at all. At least in the ultimate sense. There is no ultimate sense.  What we need are the things that human beings are in need of. Physical security, socialization. That's about it. Perhaps understanding our place in the universe. Which seems to be what I am aiming towards right now. It appears as though we are self-conscious and that we are sensitive. We have an interface through which we see the world. This interface is apparently complex and yet it is flawed. We do not often see things as they are. This is simply how human beings function. We feel the need to overcome this because we are afraid of suffering. We are afraid of death. Because of this fear, we feel we need to arrive at a place where suffering and death cannot touch us. We imagine that this is a real place and we give artificial importance to arriving at this place. But we do not need to arrive at this place, we never possessed the inferiority that we imagine keeps us from being there. We never had or never can be lacking in any real sense that keeps us from being whole or complete. Lack is contrived. All ideas are contrived, that is why they are ideas. Our whole attempt to become better, to become complete or fulfilled is completely imaginary and in doing so we are taking steps that ultimately lead to nowhere, because ultimately does not exist. Perfection does not exist. The self that we imagine can lead us permanently away from suffering does not exist. We cannot see that we are hallucinating because we are so afraid and so sure of ourselves, that we never stop to see if what we are trying to do can even be done, or if it truly meaningful in any way. We don't realize that we are completely missing the point and that we are lost in our own imagination. In a world that doesn't exist. All we have is our experience right now. This is what is real. It is real because it simply is. All our believing, all our fixed views are religious and non-real. They are contrived and most of humanity is lost in them. This idea of I and me and mine. And you and her and this and that. This way, that way, not this way, not that way. Clouds in the mind. And also apart of the landscape we inhabit. 
Can we escape suffering? Can we perfect ourselves? Does I even exist? What's the point of doing anything if we as an imagined separate self do not exist to begin with? There is no point. There is no purpose, there is no way. Because we can't change who we are because we never existed to begin with. 

Running into walls.

 Pain. Pain again. Life goes on. The challenge continues. As does the confusion and the fear and the worry. Disoriented. Lost. Beyond rage at recovering again. Terror at the thought of losing what I had. Sadness. Upset. Mentally ill. Pain and fear. Pain and fear. The pain might be the worst. Feeling severed from life. Burned in the mind. Feeling weak and helpless. Vulnerable. Wanting to open up. Trapped inside myself. At odds with the world. Relationships suffer, heartache. Economic insecurity. Bitterness. 
Violence. Venom. Fatigue. Apathy. Depression. Do I have the heart to carry on? I kind of fucking hate everything right now. I hate the fucking world. I hate my life. I fucking hate this place. I hate myself. I feel so weak and fucked up. Just exhausted from this. Tired of bleeding. My mind is fucked. I can't trust how I feel. I just want to be strong and safe. Capable and in control. Able to deal with my feelings in a healthy way. But I don't think I often am right now. Derailed. nailed to the floor. Agony.                           My feelings dominate my life. They overwhelm my ability to function and be sane. They are often out of control and I am out of control because of them. The way I relate to them. They way I let them into my life. I need to establish better boundaries. Get my priorities straight. I need to take better care of myself. I need to be a hellofa lot smarter. A hellofa lot more engaged. Start asking the right questions and find the right answers. Maybe get some help. Find a way to get some help. I'm really unstable. I have to deal with all of these loose ends or they will continue to suffocate me. I can't do things the way everyone else does. I have to be different. I am different. I have special needs. I doubt if I can do this by myself. As much as I may want to. I get so stupid when I feel good. It fucking sucks. I don't know if I'm capable of staying balanced. Figuring things out by myself. And yet I am such an independent person and I love figuring things out by myself. I don't want anyone interfering. I don't know if this is healthy..I love it just being me and the world, but when I lose control this is terrifying. I love following my own inner compass, but I am afraid it will destroy me. When I feel confident I feel like nothing can stop me. I can do literally anything, achieve anything. Be anyone. I have these weak spots which sneak up on me constantly and topple my castle. Drugs, women. Insecurities. Illness. Do I double down or do I change my ways?                                                                                                                                   From my perspective now, there is so much that threatens my well-being. So much that I don't have a good hold of. But, I already feel stronger just writing everything in this post up to this point. Before I crashed, my feelings were telling me that this is it. This is the last hoorah, the last push before I get my shit together. That I was on top of it and in the zone. I felt like I was becoming a new person. I changed my name inspired from a place of such deep truth, the deepest truth I have encountered thus far in this life. There was so little doubt and the feeling I had of the righteousness of my actions was perfect if not nearly perfect. The kind of surety that comes from divine inspiration, from fulfilling one's destiny. But then my heart broke. It broke again. It's almost spring and I don't know if I can pick myself up again. I don't know if I can do this again. Side note, I absolutely love tobacco. When my heart broke it brought up feelings that were lost to me when I was 20 years old. I think it opened up a doorway to my old life. Before everything broke down. Maybe it touched my soul that I lost then. That I have lived without for 8 years. That has been buried within my mind scratching and clawing to get out. It has felt like I haven't been able to breath, let alone see. Like I haven't been myself and I haven't been able to do anything with my life. I have felt terrible and terrorized. Lost and broken. Confused, disturbed, ill and seriously injured. I felt like I haven't been able to get help. So terrified. Nearly stricken with terror. Stuck in my own mind. Trapped in my own self. Alone in an alien universe. Cold and distant. Out of reach. Stuck on the fringe. So cold. So alone. Yet it has been wonderful as well. Far out with nothing in between me and anything else. In places I cannot describe. So incredible and different and interesting. Who this has made me, the life it has shown me. The depth of my feelings and sense of self. The distance I have covered. The universe I have witnessed. The vastness of the universe and so much of which isn't touched by most people in the way I have touched it. The things I have seen. The places I have been. The things I have done. They mark me and make me so different. So strange and in my eyes so wonderful. I carry the pattern of distant lands in the way I hold myself. In the way I speak and move through the world. This is so valuable to me. This vastness of knowledge and experience. How it shapes me and how it shapes the world now that it is apart of who I am. I understand how things work with such great detail. I have such a profound sense of right and wrong. I see how things are held together and I am learning how to make things whole. With sheer will and vision. How the world is held together. How it is broken and how to mend it. How to love and how to be loved. That we are Love itself. That everything is Love. Forgetting this is the terror of the world. Faith. Faith is all that is asked of us by God.