It's time to change again.

I will be 38 this year.  That is, in and of itself, an accomplishment.   I've defied a fair number of odds getting to this point.  I am still defying them right now.

 

Remember that we are all sending out… energy?   Most with religious upbringing understand it as prayer, but what they don't understand is that prayer has nothing to do with some made up god.  It has to do with your body sending energy out into the universe and the universe responding to that energy.  Just like children have an affinity for their mother, we as a species have an infinity for ours, which happens to be the universe itself.  It is the source of our existence in the same exact way in which a mother is the source of her child's existence.   We are made of the same stuff the universe is made of, the exact same way a child is made of her mother.  

We are all connected to the universe just like a child to her mother.  The baby does not know it is connected to it's mother, it just is.  We are all sending and receiving information perpetually whether or not we have any awareness of it while it is happening.  Even modern physicist cannot explain 99% of the universe.  It is invisible to us.  When you use the word pray it just means you are focusing your energy on one specific idea.  In reality you are just focusing your thoughts.  Sending is a weird word, but it gives a general idea of what is happening.  We all pray all the time, like I said, perpetually.  Some of us know we are doing it, while even fewer are aware of what exactly it is they are sending out into the universe.  Ultimately it is all one in the same.  You get back what you send out.  They are one in the same.

Our actions are prayers.  Thoughts turned into reality.  A thought goes out of the brain, the universe complies.   It is proof of the power of proximity.  The body being the closest thing to you, it is the thing you have the most control over in the universe.  The further away, the less control, the less influence.   Think about how little some people have of themselves.   Truly great people have the most influence.  They have the most awareness.

I've spent the past almost eight years now working on this idea of prayer.  I believe this to be how one changes the world.  I am pretty much solely focused on attaining awareness of this phenomenon.  My ultimate goal is to heal people.  It would be cool to take it a step further and be so fucking bright that anyone in my field doesn't need healing because simply being in proximity to me does it automatically.  Even if it were only a ten foot radius, that would be epic.  I do not know if I will have enough time in this life to achieve that goal though.  I always dream big, big as I can.

Obviously I cannot teach someone something if I do not possess it myself. How can I heal someone else if I have not healed myself? This proves the old saying that the only way to change the world is to change one's self.  Realizing this, my entire focus went into this goal; self-improvement.   When I was younger I self-improved so I would not be like those that brought me into the world.  That was all I cared about.  Once I achieved that goal, I was lost.  What now? I had to move on to loftier goals.  I figured if I can do it, anyone can.  Having done it myself, I can help others.  It's more than that.  I have a responsibility to help others.  Karmicly in life I have for the most part repaid my debts.  I have opened the eyes of quite a few now.  But being true to myself requires that I take it as far as I possibly can. 

I did something that few seem to do.  I think this is why so many are stuck.  I did it my own way, and they don't seem to.  Other people always seem to be listening to what someone else tells them to do.  I didn't find some one person, some one method, some one any thing, that was the way.  I don't believe anything anyone says honestly.  Not anymore.  I took in as much information as I could from as many sources as I could, and honestly I have never stopped.  I didn't just read books, I applied them to my life, used them as tools to improve my understanding of reality, and threw out the trash.  I put their ideas to work in my life to see what was what.  I am still doing it right now. 

For instance, this writing.  I have never done this before in my life and I already know it is healing me in ways I never dreamed of.  Can you see how knowing this one little piece of information sets one apart from the majority in this society.  The telling of this story will be a testament to the work I have done.  How many are just doing what others do without ever really thinking about it?   Most go to school, believing they are educated, and yet, they did nothing more than take multiple choice tests, and because of this spend their entire lives disconnected from their true self.   They have opinions with no substance behind them. 

I cannot help it that everything I do, I do it to the fullest.  I just can't do it any other way.  Even if what I am doing is not good for me, if I think it is what I need to do, I will do it to the fullest.  I tell people all the time when they complain about how intense I am, to be glad they did not know me in my twenties.   As you can tell from my childhood I don't operate on the same level as most.  Not many people liked me in my twenties.  I don't blame them.  I didn't like me either.  Nothing has harmed me in life more than my inability to calm down.

I've been drinking hard for over two years now.  Drinking to the fullest.  As always, I have been attempting to do it like none other.  Doing it the best I can. Defying odds.  Society tells us it is bad to drink and get drunk, but luckily for me I do not really listen to anything society says.  I had good drunks. Life changing drunks.  You see drugs are like guns.  Give them to an idiot and something stupid is going to happen.  Give them to someone fucked up and fuckedupedness is what you will get.  Believe it or not though, I was healing myself.

I couldn’t read self-help books any longer.  They annoyed me.  They all say the same thing in a different way, so it was like reading the same book over and over again.  None of them had the answer.  I was out of books to read.  Something had to happen.  I looked and looked for an answer.  I would have died to have an intelligent conversation with anyone who had an understanding of what was going on.   I was doing everything I could to learn something new to help me solve the puzzle.  I prayed for this constantly for most of my life, and yet it never happened.  I read and applied, read and applied.  The problem was still there.  I was still eating myself alive on the inside.  I still felt like something was wrong with me when I was doing everything that I was supposed to be doing.  I compiled as much information as I could from the wisest men who wrote books.  I was doing everything I possibly could.  I was too old for this to still be happening.  It had to stop.  When I was going to MU I was teaching myself to be highly social and this energy was greatly hindering my ability to progress.  It is noticeable after all.  It can be sensed by those in close proximity.

While going to MU I broke down and made arrangements to talk to someone on campus.  I talked to a few people actually.  I was very discreet about this.  Asking for help on this level is no small thing.  It walks a fine line with shame.   I had to seek someone with an understanding.  This is the place where they are supposed to understand after all. I felt like I had looked everywhere else. I was conquering huge personal boundaries just being at MU.  I was defying the odds.  Manic would not be the word.  I was living my life to the fullest.  I was pushing myself in all ways.  I was growing on the inside like champ.  I've changed my worldviews more than anyone I know. I was so alive from all of the spiritual activity in my life that this issue absolutely had to be dealt with.  It had to be dealt with or I was going to burn up.  It would not be odd defying to go down in flames. 

I used the campus people because it was free for students.  Seeking "professional" help is expensive, and it is also like gambling.  Who freaking knows who that person with a degree is going to be.  I’ve met more than a few counselors in a bar drunk.  They were just as crazy as anyone else.  As one counselor at MU told me, some of the most screwed up kids come from wealthy homes.   MU has no shortage of wealthy kids.  She knows this from first hand experience.  In my mind I did not have high hopes on the understanding level of the staff because of their being public educated. 

Someone there actually understood.  I was surprised.   She had seen enough to know what was going on to have understanding.  She didn’t have the look of being one of us, but all I know of her was her sitting in a chair.  Either way, she helped me out a lot.  It was very validating.  She let me know I was doing it right, but that it simply takes a long time.  This is very powerful stuff for those who always feel alone, to sense in another true understanding.  However brief these encounters seem to be, their impact usually lasts forever.  And hers did.  Most people tell me to do this, or that.  Tell me I should be like this, or this is how it is.  Rare is the person who looks me in my eyes and knows why I am the way I am.  

The truth of the matter is just like she said; some things simply do not heal quickly.  Some things are a long drawn out process.  Sometimes very long.  Like a calculus problem that takes three pages to solve.  One of these long drawn out processes happens to be life.  I had banged my head against that imaginary wall in my mind long enough.  No answer ever came.  No answer was coming either.  So I started drinking.  My soul was telling me to get drunk.  So that is exactly what I did.

It's not that I didn't drink before this.  I just only drank socially.  I hated hang overs.  I hated to not have full control of myself at all times.  I didn’t get drunk much in the years prior to this time in my life.  I drank a lot in my twenties at times, true, but I had been working out constantly in my thirties, and never drank at all for long periods.  It is pointless to work out really hard if all you are going to do is get wasted drunk.  That lifestyle came to an end, it all changed.  True to my nature, it changed in a hurry.  I kept the majority of my drinking to myself. 

Now if you go to a counselor they are going to tell you something so radically different than what I am about to say that I imagine most people will simply disregard what I say and discredit me in some way.  So be it.  They can say whatever they wish and use whatever label they learned in public school any way they want.  Means nothing to the truth what they think.   I know for a fact those employed by the state will definitely disagree.  Their paycheck depends on them disagreeing.  Prison rates depend on them being right.  For them to admit that they are wrong would cause them to immediately realize they are being cruel to people; they simply cannot bring themselves to do that.  Despite what anyone says, I've lived this shit and know what is up.  They are wrong.

If you go to a sober person, a person who has lived a good life seeking help, but you were raised like me, I do not see how they will ever be able to help you out.  It is a universe of infinite possibility, so anything is possible I suppose.  From my own experience though they were absolutely useless.  There are obviously exceptions.  Generally speaking though, they are little more than opinions without substance. Who can convey what it is to see a mountain to a person who has never seen one?  The majority of so called professional counselors simply say what they were told to say.  Any moron can do that.  It would be like asking someone who does not know there is a China, to teach you Chinese.  Generally speaking those not abused are terribly apathetic and they have no clue that they are.  Do not do what I did when I was younger and allow these people to make you feel like there is something wrong with you.  There is not, and never has been.  Stay true to yourself and hold out that you will find the way.  It takes a long time.

I couldn't explain in words the feelings.  I never could.  They were without thought or images.  They just were.  All my life it has been there.  It is still there, just different now.  I have no memory of where they came from.  These feelings created/create tremendous energy within me.  They are just feelings, after all, and even though I am aware of them, they did not go away by my being aware of them.  I was not even able to label them.  I could not express them.  It wasn’t like realizing why one is actually angry and then not being angry about it anymore.  It was something different.  I knew why, but without memory of why. In my mind I likened it to the trauma, but what trauma?  Which event?  The rage was coming from nowhere, yet it was everywhere.  It never got dealt with so it just stayed within me always creating energy.  Always. Always. Always.  I could only contain it, never extinguish it.

I found that I could get it out drunk. Not buzzed.  Drunk.   If I got drunk enough I could literally radiate it out of me.  Drunk out of my mind, I could rage, but the rage was out of my mind.  It was like it made it safe for the world.  Who could even think of such a thing sober?   It’s weird too, because I had to learn other things to get to this point.  It's not like I just woke up one day and could do this.  The one who rages drunk and has not learned to control their mind will ultimately go to prison.  It happens to people every day.   I had to go through a lot of tough life lessons, so to speak, in order to get it out drunk.  It was hard work getting to the point of being able to do things in my mind, beyond my body, really, really, drunk.  Just getting mature enough to handle being drunk that much, for that long took a lot of work.

That is a crazy way to talk about what is going on.  I would get really drunk and really emotional and I would handle shit.  When I put my mind to it,  I could feel things I could not feel sober.  I could go places I could never have gone to before.  The trick is being good, that is to say, strong minded about being drunk.  Strong enough to focus the drunk on what I wanted instead of the drunk focusing me.  I wasn’t getting drunk to forget my problems.  I wasn’t getting drunk because I can’t handle life.  I was getting drunk to get the bullshit out.  It is a matter of degrees.  It is like the difference between a fifteen year old getting drunk, a twenty three year old, and a fifty year old getting drunk.

I did this is my mid thirties.  This is what makes it that long process.  I could never have done it in my twenties.  If I drank in my twenties like I did this past couple of years someone would have died and it probably would have been me.  It is possible to be drunk maturely.  Not driving.  Not doing ignorant things.  Still handling business in life.   Not that crazy things never happened, but I don't need to be drunk to do crazy things. 

Sometimes I would talk about it.  Those things deep inside.  Sometimes I would share with people I trusted.  Sometimes I would cry alone.  Sometimes I would just be as social as I could be for weeks on end.  Living the life.  But I was always getting it out.  Find me a counselor who recommends this.  Yet, it saved me.  I had so many healing moments roaring drunk that I could never have experienced sober.  Never. 

Sitting here sober right now, remembering those nights, I cannot imagine feeling the way I did any other way.  I will forever be grateful to those I shared those times with.  They helped me and I could not have done it without them.  There was no other way to evoke it.  There was no memory to evoke it.  No way for me to get there.  There was a vast gap between my mind and the source of that energy.  A gap I worked most of my life to build.  I made it so wide I couldn't get back to it.  Drunk though, the barriers in my mind could be bypassed and the bullshit could all come out.  It’s not possible to speak of the workings of the mind in 3D language.  Maybe a better way to say it is, that learning to do it drunk has taught me how to radiate it out sober.  I couldn't figure it out sober.  I was trapped in what society imprinted on me.  All the people trying to tell me how to get it out were sober people.  It seems being sober is not the way for some of us.  I just think there is no one way that works all of the time. 

I couldn't do it any other way.  I tried and tried.  I begged and pleaded.  I put the whole of my will into it.   Nothing worked.  I could not evoke the emotions, I couldn’t heal, I couldn’t release what I had kept inside without being wasted drunk.  Just a plain and simple fact.  It took a while, years actually, but it worked.  I couldn't simply undo over a decade of habituation in a mere week or two.  I was annoying and dreadful at times being so drunk, no doubt.  But it worked.  I think there were times too, when I was quite loveable. 

Now it has to stop.  It is over.  I cannot sustain it any longer.  I’ve even asked my friends to pray for me.  I cannot socially drink either because I have been drinking solid for too long now.  I need to heal my body.  Whether it worked or not I was also killing myself, my physical body anyways.  I was habituating my mind to a deadly habit.  While alcohol can be freeing for the soul, it can be terminal to the body.  The worst of addictions are those cultivated by time.  Had I listened to society I would still be banging my head on the wall unable to find a way out.  I would still be thinking there was something wrong with me.   Luckily for me I read books written by wise people and I took their advice.  I did my own thing.  I busted through the wall even though people thought they were showing me a door.  I made my own way.  Becoming another step closer to the greatest possible me.

There is no one way.

I’ve mentioned before that quite often in my life, right after learning a major spiritual lesson I find a book perfectly describing the lesson.  It’s as if the universe is congratulating me for discovering a truth.  The book is called Care of the Soul by Thomas Moore.  If you are wondering who you are, if you are still learning about yourself, this book will change your life forever.  The life work of a man condensed in a book.  I cannot think of anything more powerful than that.  Maybe though, it is the thought, the realization, of a spiritual truth that brings it about in reality.  For me it just happens to express itself through books.  In my life books are the single greatest material objects that I relate to.

There are infinite ways to see the truth.

I'd say it is time to handle business now, but that is exactly what I have been doing.  I'm just doing it differently now.  Changing once again. Changed once again.  Better today than I was yesterday.  There are no barriers, only lessons. 

No one knows what will happen next.