Well, I got my butt out of the house and voted today. It�s odd, but each year it becomes more and more a must do sort of thing. I feel somewhat like it�s both an honor and an obligation. I still find that I don�t really care all that much who wins, but I know I have a preference. I guess it just seems way out of my personal control. And I think I made it clear last month how I feel about trying to control outside/external influences. But, I am a part of this society and though mine is but a single voice in a choir of millions, it still should be counted I suppose.
I actually enjoy watching the election coverage but find myself hopping back and forth to it since it is still fairly early. It is just after 9pm here and still a couple of hours at least before all the votes will be gathered and counted in the country. In the meantime I have one of my three+ 80�s music videos tapes in the VCR which is a combined total of somewhere between ten and fourteen hours of playtime.
It�s a funny thing, but watching these old music videos brings a great deal of underlying emotion out in me. And it�s such a mix of emotions as well. Not that they overtake me or anything, but I feel their influence none the less. There is a giddy sense of joy because the music of the 80�s is just so awesome and liberating, but there is also a sense of all the depression and sorrow I felt back in those times which seem irrevocably linked to that very music I love so much. I guess this is so because the music was a sort of an escape from those troubled times. Music touches the soul and lets it soar, letting us escape ourselves for a while even as it speaks by a universal sense of connection that the singer or musician knows how you think or feel when the lyrics or notes are right. I mean, how many times have you heard a song and thought to yourself, �I could have written that!�
I guess the most troubling thing about these feelings is that it takes me back to that old feeling in those days that the world is just too much to bear. Not the natural world, but the world of man. I love nature and could very well see myself living happily alone on some deserted island somewhere, but I often feel that the pressures and expectations of society are just so overwhelming. Not that I have any trouble fitting into society, but it just seems at times to be so complicated and daunting. Pay the bills, mow the lawn, fix the things that break, save for the future, call your mother and friends, balance your budget, dust, clean, hope the car doesn�t break down, wait for the call, help those in need, check the mail, put out the trash, update your software, wash clothes & the dishes, shave, brush your teeth, answer the phone, go shopping, go out and vote, etc. etc. etc.
It�s all so very exhausting sometimes. And that�s just the physical obligations. There are also all the emotional issues to address with myself and others. A friend is upset or depressed because of some trivial matter which will be forgotten next week, but there is so much drama anyway. And so few seem to really make change or learn and grow from the challenges. I include myself in this of course since I still find myself trying after all these years to deal with my own sense of dissatisfaction with the way many things are in this world which is unlikely to ever change. And it�s not that I�m stupid or anything. I know that it is my own perspective I battle with which needs amending. And it is this knowledge which justifies my need to be humble and not judge others for their difficulties and struggles in dealing with such trivial matters. But that of course doesn�t mean I have to ignore my own feelings. I think it is possible to dislike or complain about something without making a judgment about it. It is the seemingly diametric opposition between intellect and emotion. But this format is MY soapbox, and anyone not wanting to hear about it doesn�t have to read it anyway.
I guess that I mostly record these things for my own sake. While I am more than willing to share my thoughts and feelings with anyone interested in hearing about them, I record my thoughts and feeling more to be able to track the evolution of my own life�s journey. It is far too easy to forget the things we have learned in the past and fall back into old habits. And we often forget or take for granted the personal achievements we have made along the way. So I write this journal for myself and have simply decided to open the option for anyone else to view it as well. I wouldn�t expect anyone else to be riveted by it, they have their own lives to lead. But just as I have learned much from the experiences and examples of others, I wish to at least offer the possibility for others to learn something from my experiences.
I�m sure that I will never know in most cases how I have influenced other�s lives, just as others are often unaware of how they have affected mine. But it has been a goal of mine to make sure that those who have are aware of the benefits they have brought to my life. There are some examples in this journal of my own effort to go back and tell them personally. But for every one I have shared with, there are at least a few I have not had the opportunity to tell. But that trend is changing since I now make it a point to tell those in my life just how much they mean to me. Even when they do drive me crazy! :-)
Tuesday November 30th, 2004: Divine Madness.
I think I understand now. Since my last entry earlier this month a lot has happened within my personal dynamic. Emotion has raged in me these last few weeks. A symptom of this greater vision I have witnessed recently. Call it an epiphany of sorts. It begins long ago with the very change of my life from those early, depressive times of my youth and the feeling that there is something greater within all of us and in this world. That elusive yet insistent panging that there is greater Truth than this mere mortal perception. Never congealing fully to rational thought, but following me through the course of this lifetime, and constantly on the verge of discovery.
I can�t say that full understanding has arrived, and there is still a great deal of mystery surrounding this whispering of my soul from an intellectual perspective, but events recently have given me a greater degree of insight to the questions which have plagued my spirit for decades now. I have found that there will always be some layers of the enigma which will never be revealed. It is so, and it must be so. This new discovery begins with yet again a sense of lucidity in those times of sleep. Those moments of lucidity seem to function as a channel of sorts between mind and spirit and in a way it allows God�s Holy Spirit to impart deeper significance to my intellect.
It started on Thursday the 18th. I woke up around 11am and went through my day as usual. I have this terrible habit of getting on the computer to play games and I never seem to want to stop. Perhaps it is a sort of �escape� for me. As in times past I found myself still battling monsters on the screen as the sun began to rise in the eastern sky. I decided not to work of course because I was already feeling a bit loopy from being up so long. I finally forced myself to shut the game off and chose to try to stay up as long as I could in an effort to re-balance my sleep schedule. If I could make it until 6pm I would be satisfied by sleeping well and getting up the next morning sometime, effectively restoring my equilibrium. After a few punchy moments I found myself back at the computer taking care of a few matters of finance and such. As I sat staring at the screen I began to notice strange, ethereal motions in my peripheral vision. These motions however were intangible and I could not see them by staring directly at them. Mostly they were sort of �between and meshed all around� matter and I could �feel� them as much as see them. It was as if there was some sort of energy which seemed alive, squirming around and between material things. A few moments after I began seeing this, I noticed the motion below my face. It was a beautiful swirling motion and I can only relate it as the very motion of the air around me. It was like watching the billowing motion of smoke or fog, only there was nothing more than air there and I could somehow still see this motion presumably caused by my breath.
It was an amazing thing to witness and I began to look at everything with this sense of awareness. I could see/sense the subtle, slow, vibratory motion of static objects and the violent yet beautiful swirling of matter in play of objects not at rest. It was as if this energy weaved it�s way through all the things that it touched, showing the subtle influences on it�s surroundings. I felt from this what I know to be true, that all things are indeed connected. Strangely enough, though I was fascinated with this, this sensory revelation subsided after a while and the day went on.
I ended up staying awake until 5pm, so I had been up for a total of 30 hours. I can�t recall the point where I was more asleep than awake, but I kept a sense of intellectual awareness the entire time I slept, which ended up being 18 hours since I got out of bed around 11am on Saturday. Those 18 hours seem to have no real sense of temporal motion. They seemed to be all �in the now�. It was as though my body and intellect were in a way disconnected, but still connected for function�s sake. I was aware of my physical form yet free from it in a way, reminiscent of the experience as described in �The Great Journey� in this journal. In this stretch of time I was just as aware of that part of my being I dub spirit. It directed visions to my mind much like common dreams, yet much more substantial. As if they were as real as anything I could experience in the material world. It felt in a way like being what we might define as a ghost or disembodied consciousness.
There, I could visit all the places in my dreams that I spoke of before which I have dreamt of over the years. Those dozen plus places that do not fundamentally change, yet evolve just as any other real world environment would. I still have no idea if they might be actual physical locations in the real world, but they are real in the realm of my mind. As real as anyplace in reality. I could move between them with some degree of control, but rather allowed them to come to me more than forcing an invitation. In each of them I felt completely at home.
Once I felt satisfied from my visits to these old familiar and beloved places I found myself focusing more on questions I have always had. Inquiries concerning the meaning of life, the mysteries of God�s plan for us and the revelation of his will for me and the world around me. Oddly enough, I found that the insights I received were linked somehow to my physical body. As I �slept� in this state I directed my body to turn to the left. It was here that I began �seeing� things from a mostly spiritual view. Images and insights outside of worldly views began flooding my awareness. Here there were no words to convey the visions. I still cannot think of any. It is simply a �knowing� which defies language. If anything it was merely concepts which held utmost and complete solidity. Peace, Beauty, Confidence, Certainty, Harmony. There was absolutely no sense of triviality, just an overwhelming and certain sense of Infinity of those states. It WAS being in that state of �all is as it should be�. The very essence of Absolute Truth.
Then, still in this state of lucidity and somehow at the crossroads of two worlds, I consciously shifted my body to face to the right. My awareness changed. I found myself at the level of Perspective Truth. The place where we view that which we define as reality from a physical standpoint. But, just as I was intellectually aware of the spiritual side, here in the physical realm I was equally aware spiritually. Oddly enough, this awareness was sort of a reversal. It was my spirit which was viewing something from a viewpoint it knew intimately, but viewing it from a �confined� perspective. It felt like being �trapped� and though somewhat displeasing and disorienting, it was not overwhelmingly so. I guess I could relate it as how energy, which is free and mobile, must feel when it is absorbed by matter and contained within it. If energy could actually �feel� anything that is.
This was very different than how my intellect felt within the realm of spirit. One of the things I realized intellectually is that even though it is amazing and powerful, there is no possible way it can even begin to grasp all the mysteries of eternity and God. As evolved and advanced as the human mind is, it would be driven completely mad if it tried to absorb God�s being and relate it in a physical sense. Of this I am certain. I began to feel that madness rise up within my fragile mass of neurons the more I tried to label and identify in relatable terms that which I was observing. Oddly enough, that madness was strangely appealing. It was as if my intellect �wanted� to lose itself within the realm of eternity. The fact is that I am still feeling disoriented by that event, even almost two weeks later. This is where emotion comes in.
As I shifted my body to a central position it was as if there was a violent collision of these two states of being. Emotion seemed to dominate here. It felt terrifying, yet exhilarating. I wanted to flee in utmost panic and fear, and yet, wanted to completely embrace the utter chaos going on in my awareness. So confusing, such structured abstractedness, such infinite moments, joyful sorrow, heavenly hell, bitter and sweet. All things of opposite extremes congealed, defined as separate concepts, yet inseparable. It was/is that which we define as life.
And so here I am. Stuck somewhere in the middle for now, sliding from one end of the scale to the other. Having the resources of both mind and spirit. Sometimes more toward the side of intellect and worldly existence, other times �outside� of it all and not so strongly connected to this world, but of the eternal essence. I am altered. I don�t think I am capable any longer of being surprised. All possibility has shifted into the realm of acceptability to me. It doesn�t change the fact that choices will be made however. There is still cause and effect in the physical realm of existence. But all possibilities are forever present and real. Life is both set and definite, and yet oddly deterministic and a matter of choice. It�s maddening I tell you, but what�s an awareness to do?
