And I went to the grocery store–I forget the chain–and I looked at a parking lot full of empty spaces, and wondered how many were filled with Fundamentalist Christians who feel drinking is wrong.
I was annoyed at the stupidity of carding gray haired people–or me–and wondering if it might have roots in the fundamental antipathy of Christians to the means we heathens use to calm down and relax. With no good means to reach a conclusion, that is my operative hypothesis.
So I’m sitting there in the lot thinking that a lot of the people I have defended–Christians–really are assholes. I say this as someone raised as one, who knows well how they think, and how they interpret the Bible.
.
And I’m sitting there, thinking:shit, I like to argue. Then I’m sitting there thinking, shit, judging other people is hard work. I have judged the judgers, and judged those who judge them.
And I think: simple split: consumer society/thoughtful society. I of course am a thinker, and they of course are not.
Then: fuck.
Growth as a spiritual being is expansion. It is increased clarity of spirit, getting rid of all the clouds in your Ku, your being in space.
Every time I say I am this or that, I simultaneously say I am not that or this. I bring a wall into the universe as I see it. Oh, I go up to there, but then I stop. It’s likely fucking dragons on the other side.
So I made the only logical conclusions I could, which were to buy a six pack of Mickey’s Big Mouth, which I got carded for, and then went and had a bean burrito, and some meaty something at Taco Bell.
And I’m in Taco Bell, thinking oh I am so superior to these people, but I really do like some of those hot sauce packs, and then: goddamn it, if I am here, and they are there, I have deluded myself again. I fucking fell off the path of non-duality.
Spirituality is quiet, I think. It is not having thoughts pushing in on you saying accept this and reject that. You maybe feel reactions, but the world is not forcing itself on you, forcing you to swing one way then the other, forcing you to choose one way of being or the other, relative to freedom, which is the only honest, only good way to be.
And I think: how can there be words to express non-duality? There can’t, of course. Then I think: why is there so fucking much Buddhist “theology”/philosophy/words spilled on Dharma and related concepts?
And it seems to me that non-duality is a state you phase in to, and phase out of. You can go there, but not live there, not stay there. You visit, and it is a vacation from the troubles of life. Enough is as good as a feast.
What the Dharma does, ideally, and I am not blind to the fact that much of Buddhism is corrupted by tradition and habit, is create a space in which what is valuable, is in fact valued, is in fact sought, is in fact made an ideal, and that ideal placed within a space where every intellect can find itself amused and occupied.
Perhaps self evidently, I drank all six Mickey’s, while watching 2 Person of Interest episodes. I kind of like that show.
I will add, though, that this sort of drinking is foreign to me. A six pack of beer is not even remotelyi close enough to get me drunk. By and large, I can’t get drunk on beer period. It doesn’t take affect fast enough.
So this is a new phase. A little something is enough. I don’t have to kill my pain with alcohol. I am increasingly able to access, and watch blow out in billows of smoke the rage within me while I do my Kum Nye. This energy is so thick it is almost tangible. I can almost see it. I can certainly feel it strongly. I feel my so-called Third Eye when it activates. I feel energy fields flowing out of my body. I feel this Nye, as they call it, activate, and start to move energy within me.
Good things are happening. I am getting more and more moments of absolute pleasure in existence. This has long been the goal. When I can conjure them often and sustain them, then I will be useful.