jjer94

hypocrisy and honesty. Welcome folks to our brand-new show, Hypocrisy and Honesty, where we get to tear apart self-deceptions like some old tax returns! Our first contestant...well, our only contestant thus far...is a timid fellow. We had to badger him repeatedly to join the show, but we're glad to have him here. Please welcome...JJ! Uhh, hiya. Hey there, chimp! Ready to bare it all? I'm not sure what you mean by "all," but okay. Try me! Allllllllll rightey then. First stop...hypocrisy! Let's see if we can bring one into the light... *injects truth serum* Ow! I forgot how much needles can hurt. Does this shit have mercury in it? Because...I...I...I say I'm mostly vegan and a minimalist and care about the environment...even though I flush the toilet seven times per day, take a shower every other day, drive a car, support organic monocrop agriculture, still eat a few animal products, use the washing machine, wear merino wool, produce two bags of trash per week, and drink reverse osmosis water. Oh, and I've thought about having kids twenty years down the line. How's that for environmentally friendly? Ohhhh MAN! Now there's some hypocrisy, folks! Just look at the genius-level deceptions this JJ fellow makes! Focus on veganism and minimalism for those special identities...even though you do a million-and-one other unsustainable environmental practices that cause suffering nonetheless! Wow-wee! This is some Illuminati-level shit here! It seems like no matter how hard I try to minimize suffering, no matter how hard I try to be sustainable... I will never be perfect. The "suffering-free" vegetables I ate were grown in the soil of dead decaying animals and plants. The shelter in which I live relies on the fuel of dead dinosaurs. It's all connected. Wherever I take a step, I make a carbon footprint. I can minimize the footprint, but I can't get rid of it completely. If I could, I may as well be dead. D'aww. That one's gotta hurt. Okay, onwards to some honesty. Let's get some more in there... *injects truth serum* Ow! Would you be a little gentler! I...I...I say I want the Truth with a capital "T." I say enlightenment is my end goal. I think that's the most important thing for my life. And yet, when I wake up in the morning, I usually dread the Kriya Yoga practice. I usually dread meditation. I kind of like yoga, but I dread it sometimes too. Even after the practices, I'm frustrated. Sometimes, I just go through the motions, you know? Like, if I could just prolong my stay here...if I could just keep things as they are...then I wouldn't have to feel so much pain. I could pretend as though I'm getting somewhere, even though I have yet to set the intention to truly move forward in my practice. The spiritual practices mean nothing without the deep commitment to change. And lately, I haven't felt it. I don't know where it went. Maybe I need another near-death experience. What have you been up to lately? Well...wasting time until time wastes me. Not making decisions on where I want to go, and instead using the excuse of the Universe to guide me. I'm addicted to Youtube, to vanity, to keeping things as they are. I'm afraid of change. I'm afraid to die. Based on my behaviors lately, I'd rather domesticate myself than face myself. Whenever I get the "gist" of something, I move on to something else. I can't seem to stick with anything. My brain's reward systems are fried. I don't really know what I want, and I subconsciously don't even think I deserve to get what I want. Whoa-ho-ho-ho! Now there's some honesty, folks! He can't handle the Truth! Look at the slumping shoulders! Look at the self-doubt! This poor guy's a poster child for those cheesy coming-of-age movies! Aww, JJ, it's okay to feel this way. I'm glad we helped you bring it to the light. Maybe some crying would do you some good. Or perhaps a nice long walk. Or maybe some more truth serum--- Nah, I'm good on the truth serum. Alllllllll rightey then, folks! That concludes this week's edition of Hypocrisy and Honesty! Tune in next week for another tussle with self-deception! Are we off the air now? Phew, okay. This wool sweater was making me hot. I'm hungry. Throw that porterhouse on the grill, would ya? And get my Hummer ready for the return trip. You may need to fill it up with a few more gallons of premium. Now excuse me, I'm going to take a nice long cold shower.

ignorance.

uh. Uhhhhhhhhhhhh......... Uhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh.......... No, not a zombie. In fact, quite the opposite. TOO MUCH energy. The more I trust my body, the more energy I have. The more I follow my cravings...the more I crave myself? Uhhhhhh........#nonsense So I checked off another few bits of the list from the first post, and I've acquired new information from the practices of self-and-body awareness. Here's what I got: A new friend! Wooooohooo! And a fellow INFP. I haven't gone out of my way to initiate a "hang out" per se, but we get along swimmingly whenever we're together. Our small talk only consists of a couple sentences, and then we delve straight into topics such as our emotional hang-ups and the psychological implications of technological advancement. Straight to the point. I like it. I like... Joy. JOY. After a long six-month winter, the sun finally says, "Welp, guess I should get to melting this snow, huh?" THANK YOU, SUN. You are my light and love. Even if you give me the cold shoulder for more than half the year, I still love you. But hot dayum, without you, I am as depressed as an overfed dog. At least I'm... Letting go of my internal pressure cooker. You know, the one that says, "Butlifepurposewhatyagonnnadoyoulazypieceofshitlookateveryoneelsebecausesurelythey'rehappierthanyoursadass...." The anxiety is leaving my body, and I'm starting to enjoy the day-by-day a little bit more. I'm easing up on life purpose, as I expect the Universe will help me uncover it in due time. In the meantime... Jorrrrrb. I applied. I plan to stay here for the summer and work. That'll be good practice for me, since I suspect I'll be doing lots of odd jobs in the future, given my flighty nature. I have ideas for online work, but they're simmering alongside the... Oats. Motha fuckin' oats. I found a way to make them so that I don't get brain fog: Soak them overnight with a dash of apple cider vinegar and a small amount of buckwheat flakes. Adding in wild blueberries, cinnamon, hemp seeds = God mode. Eating them this morning was like hugging a long-lost friend. The texture, the add-ons, the pure energy...MMM! I've also been doing morning smoothies, which are excellent as well. They are my new... Addiction. Still plenty of backsliding. Currently addicted to Youtube and the Internet in general. My attention span is worse than a monkey's. Wait, what's that? Kind of looks like a...

@Danielle Thank you for sharing. I know that one - the feeling that you were born into the wrong family. But I suppose we had to go through those hellish times yesterday in order to become who we are today. You're a brave soul <3 Life: the school of hard knocks; where in order to live it, you have to die. Repeatedly.

the self.

@zenjen Welcome back. We're all cheering for ya!

Whoa.

This. So much this. I know this was just my interpretation, but the way Leo presents the concept of "Life Purpose" makes it seem as though there is some ultimate destiny we have to fulfill, some huge impact we have to make on the world. For me, life purpose had this extreme sense of duty - I HAD to uncover this supposed life purpose, else my life would amount to nothing. I had to choose that ONE THING - and stick to it for ten thousand hours so I could become world-class at it and everyone could love me and I could meet the Dalai Llama and get twenty million Youtube views and be featured on Oprah. Then I'd be fulfilled. Just another ego game. Wanting to control outcomes, wanting to be someone. Truth is, all of life amounts to nothing, and any supposed "impact" never lasts. As Jed McKenna says, the universe can be ours only when we become no one in particular. Like you described, I discovered that life purpose is really a process that unfolds organically as you remove that which is inauthentic to you - old beliefs, traumas, attachments, etc. This takes awhile. But when you continually remove the inauthentic self, what emerges is the joyful authentic self - and that authentic self will naturally be inspired to do something, anything, no matter the fact that the sun will explode one day. The authentic self is so happy that it wants to express its happiness in some form. Like @electroBeam said, it doesn't have to be "spiritual guru." Your life purpose could be trash collecting, bird watching, or board game collecting. (And for folks with ADHD like me, it definitely won't be "one thing" .) Impact comes as a side effect of being your authentic self... and authenticity cannot be forced, only uncovered.

Well said. @BobbyLowell "NO ONE UNDERSTANDS ME" -----> "People should understand me." A great opportunity to do The Work.

hatha yoga: a six-month review. Six months? Really?! As I wrote in my previous review, hatha yoga has been the single best decision I've made over the past twelve months (along with taking LSD, of course ). Words cannot describe all of the changes that have occurred from a daily hatha yoga practice... but I'll do my best. For starters: Anxiety. Around 80% gone. I still get it in social situations sometimes, but otherwise, I'm as cool as a sweaty-ass cucumber. That don't make much sense. Depression. Greatly reduced. My mood is generally more stable. I won't put a percentage because I've found that depression is mostly diet-related. Energy. Through the fucking roof. I don't get the dreaded "afternoon slump" anymore. No coffee, no uppers, no nothing. Digestion... Uhhm, maybe too much information... But let's just say that the digestive highway has much less traffic than before. Fewer junk food cravings. I never thought I'd crave vegetables! Due to cultivating body awareness, I can tell the difference between a bodily craving and a psychological craving. I am also more aware of satiation and don't overeat as much. Strength. A different kind of strength compared to lifting weights. Yoga strength is a full-body strength. I'm stronger because my body is more like one unit rather than separate muscles. I'm stronger also because I've released tons of body tension, which allows the ch'i/prana/lifeforce to flow through my body unhindered. Speaking of ch'i... I feel it coursing through me all the time. It's fun! Cold hands and feet...are now warm more than 50% of the time. My feet sweat after a flow session. Sweaty feet...Mmmmmm... Anyone have a foot fetish? Emotional reactivity. Reduced around 50% - No joke. This was the most surprising effect of yoga. The quirky shit that people do doesn't really bother me anymore, and anything that does happen to bother me, I notice it right away and see it for what it is: a silly judgment that says more about me than the person I'm judging. I still have daddy issues, but I am triggered much less. Posture. WOW! Much better, but still could use some work. I figure as I continue to build self-esteem, my shoulders will naturally roll down more. Voice. Again, deeper and more resonant. I can tell that whenever my voice gets squeaky, I'm in an anxious state, so I've learned to relax even in mid-conversation. Non-doership. Most of the time feels like the yoga practice is doing me. I've been able to bring that sense of non-doership into casual conversations. Overall happiness. It's a three-for-one package: physical exercise, emotional therapy, and spiritual prayer. How could that not raise overall happiness? Will I continue hatha yoga practice for the foreseeable future? Yes. I recommend it as a supplement to all spiritual practice and inner work - especially for those people who really don't like to exercise. It's also great for meeting like-minded people, since yoga studios are ubiquitous nowadays.

@Leo Gura I don't mean to be dramatic, but I probably wouldn't be on this Earth today if not for your videos (and your book list - Jesus Christ). Thank you dearly for your work. You set a great example for all of us here.

organization mode. This is a stretch, but bear with me; my mind makes ridiculous connections. Upon studying MBTI, I learned that one of the ways INFP's cope with emotional stress is to go into organization mode. They try to organize something or solve an apparent issue until it's juuuuust right, and then they move on to the next problem. This leads to overstimulation, burnout, and ultimately depression. I suppose you can call it a form of perfectionism. Every epoch of my life, I've done this in one form or another: Organizing my bedroom until it was spotless, and then getting butthurt when my brother or dad moved something out of place to tease me. Min/maxing addiction in video games. This was the worst one. In school: completing homework assignments right away; getting projects done way before the deadline; getting straight A's; getting butthurt over "bad" grades (that weren't really bad). Starting out in PD: adhering rigidly to to-do lists, routines, habits, etc., and then getting butthurt when my routine was disrupted. Starting out in music: trying to write a song per week, being self-critical when the song didn't sound good the first time. Starting out in spirituality: trying to stop my thoughts (lol); trying to be the spiritual police; participating in the spiritual olympics. Orthorexia (current issue): planning out every meal; non-stop thinking about food; living to eat; reading a bunch of conflicting books on diet and changing my diet every two days because I want the most optimal diet. Media addiction (current issue): looking for that "perfect" Youtube video to watch, then only watching a couple minutes of it and scrolling down to read the comments instead; always searching to fill the void. Healing addiction (current issue): trying to rush the mind-body healing process by being extremely gung-ho about it; went a bit too far with the psychedelics at one point; insistence on trying Ayahuasca even though I'm probably not ready yet. Decision paralysis (current issue): having a million different ideas of what to do with my life, but can't take action; waiting for the perfect opportunity to come to me; trying to pound a square peg into a round hole. I drew a divination card today that said "Yin" - in other words, be receptive. Seems like the right thing to do for now. I'll continue this media fast and see what comes up. On a side note, I'm also letting go more on my diet. I'm done following any particular diet, especially keto. I'm so sick of planning my fasts and wondering whether I'm in ketosis or not. I'm just going to be intuitive and follow my body's cravings.

cutting and bulking. Last weekend, I celebrated my birthday... even though there is no one to have a birthday, and I was never born. #neoadvaita #stopseeking #butwhyismylifestillshitty #noworries #problemsdontexist In all seriousness, it was rough. I did breathwork earlier in the day (more on that in another post), which stirred the emotional melting pot and brought it to a simmer by dinnertime. My dad asked me a question that made me think about the year in review, and that triggered intense grief. I had to leave the table after cake in order to cry my guts out. This year (April 2017 - April 2018) has probably been the most hellish year of my life. From staying in that moldy studio apartment all alone, to quitting the day job, flopping on that blog thing, to having a not-so-great family trip, to losing twenty-five pounds from an eating disorder, to crashing at the parents' place, to quitting weightlifting, to spending an entire lonely winter in frigid temperatures being the only twenty-something within fifty miles, to having several tussles with suicidal ideation, to being diagnosed with ADHD, to quitting guitar... I have lost so much. On the flipside... From starting kriya and hatha yoga, to reading a shitton of books, to extended meditations, to finding a community of like-minded folk, to discovering new healing modalities, to improving my mental clarity twofold, to gaining back all the weight, to losing ~80% of my reactive tendencies, to reducing depression and anxiety by ~60%, to improving my communication skills, to being more self-honest, to peeling back the layers of self... I have gained so much - mostly intangibles, which is why I tend not to notice how far I've come. The journey has been arduous, but I'm glad that I've persevered. Due to all the loss, I've reached a point where I genuinely cannot find a single way to define "me." Not even as JJ, writer, musician, researcher, awareness, consciousness, "I Am". I look at a picture of myself, and all I see is a body. The person that I used to be is dead. Even the concept of a "person" makes little sense anymore. All I see, is Intelligence. The Intelligence that makes this heart beat and urine flow is the same Intelligence that is moving these fingers on the keyboard, the same Intelligence that is thinking these thoughts, the same Intelligence that is operating in every other human being whether they realize it or not. And it's awe-inspiring.

life.

missing pieces. A subtle agitation simmers my bones on the journey to elsewhere. It gives me falsifiable energy like a sugar high - easy to inspire yet easy to die. Pieces to the puzzle of "me" are missing, and the empty slots scream with covered mouths. In the meantime, I wonder if I am just one of those faulty puzzles that comes with missing pieces.

checking the list. Ahhh. You know that feeling of alignment? Like you're on the iron rails, and the Universe is pushing you along? Like you have unwavering faith that you're going somewhere, even though you have no idea where? I've been feeling that lately. It's a fun feeling. Life feels like an adventure game again - which is my preference, considering my video game addiction in the younger years. Who knows how much those things molded my psyche. A few months ago, I probably would have said that I wish I never picked up that first video game when I was 6, because then my psyche wouldn't be so screwed up. But nowadays, I could care less. Might I say I'm actually grateful? I wouldn't be who I am today if not for all of those supposedly "bad" things from the past. The psyche is an expert at creating narratives, especially ones of victimhood. While surely it's trying to protect itself and maintain psychological homeostasis, wouldn't life be more colorful if it took all of that creative energy and funneled it outwards? Anyway, I already checked off a few of the items from the list in the first post: I found some work that's eerily in line with my values. Although it is volunteer, intuition says it'll lead somewhere. The people there are amazing too. I feel bouts of joy here and there. I haven't had a major depressive spell for several weeks, as you can probably tell from the lack of dramatic soap opera posts. Boohoo! I feel more comfortable being in this body, but I generally feel uncomfortable, because my circumstances are shifting. I figure that's a good thing.

Odd jobs, volunteer work, odds and ends. And yes.

a feast for the eyes. A lonely poet, upon discovering the beauty of the universe, wanted to share her amazement with everyone around her. She called her high school friend, who was now an unemployed couch potato. "Hey! Come to the park with me and we can revel in the beauty of the universe! It's a feast for the eyes!" "I'd rather eat cheetoes, but thanks for the offer," said the monotonous voice from the other line. Click. Somewhat disappointed, the poet decided to go to the park on her lonesome, as she usually does. The beauty of the universe was too much to bring her down. From the massive buildings to the blades of grass, everything was saturated with an overwhelming, otherworldly magnificence. She witnessed the layers of infinity, on all levels, creatively emerging in perfect synchronicity. Still lonely, she approached a businessman on lunch break. "Hi. You don't know me, but I was wondering if I could sit here with you. We can revel in the beauty of the universe! It's a feast for the eyes!" The businessman gave her a skeptical look, and an even more skeptical reply. "Uhh, that's great, but there's no money in beauty. You'll have to ask somebody else. If you're asking me to share my lunch with you, I'm afraid I can't do that. I'm on a budget. Have a nice day." He whipped out his smartphone and proceeded to tune the poet out of his existence. The poet was determined to find someone who could appreciate the beauty as much as she did. At the end of the park field, she approached a campaign rally for a politician. The politician watched the poet with expectant eyes. "Come to next week's district election and vote for me!" He said. "Okay!" replied the poet. "Actually, I was wondering if we could sit together and revel in the beauty of the universe! It's a feast for the eyes!" The politician chuckled. "That would be nice, but I have a campaign to run! Surely the world would be beautiful if not for those dang liberals in office! You have a nice day, okay? And remember to vote! God Bless America!" He exclaimed as the poet waved goodbye. Still not discouraged, the poet approached the swingset. On one of the swings was a little girl, smiling and laughing as she received the head rush of her life. "Hi there! I was wondering if I could join you on the swings and we could revel in the beauty of the universe! It's a feast for the eyes!" The little girl stopped swinging and smirked. "My eyes aren't hungry!" She said and dashed to the slide to meet her peers. The poet was determined. She approached an old chess player on a picnic table, cigar-in-mouth, playing by himself. "Hi. You don't know me, but I was wondering if I could sit here with you. We can revel in the beauty of the universe together! It's a feast for the eyes!" The old man removed the cigar from his mouth and smiled. "Ahh, yes, it is beautiful, is it not? I wish I had that level of appreciation at your age. The sad part is, even with the feast right in front of them, most people are starving to death." The poet's eyes lit up like firecrackers. "Yes!!" She exclaimed, legs giddy with excitement. "Now. Are you going to play or not?" He proceeded to set up the chess pieces for a new game. "Uhhhh...no thanks...have a great day," Replied the poet. The old man nodded and continued to smoke his stogie. With slumped shoulders, she approached a protestor down the block, because surely they are passionate enough to see beauty as she can. "Hi. You don't know me, but I was wondering if you'd like to take a break from protesting and we could revel in the beauty of the universe! It's a feast for the eyes!" Said the poet in hopeful tones. "Hi sweetheart. I would join you, but I'm doing my part to protect the beauty. Because THOSE DAMN CORPORATIONS have been RAPING the EARTH with their CORPORATE GREED!" She turned on her megaphone and began chanting what sounded like jibberish to the poet. The poet waved goodbye, but the protestor didn't notice. Finally discouraged, she gave up the search for a fellow beauty-appreciator and sat on a park bench. A couple minutes later, a stout Asian fellow with a slight smile on his face sat next to her. "Hi," said the poet. "You don't know me--" "Yes I do," he replied. The poet was intrigued. His slight smile looked like the tip of a conspiratorial iceberg. He knew something that she did not, but she could not put her finger on it. "Well, I was wondering if we could revel in the beauty of the universe together. No one around here wanted to join me. Maybe you do? It's a feast for the eyes!" The Asian fellow's slight smile became a toothy grin. He laughed briefly and then stared at her in silence. Normally, such behavior would disturb the poet, but she felt a mysterious pull to be still and see what happens. After what seemed like an eternity, the cheeky Asian fellow spoke. "There is no 'we.' There is only Universe." The poet attained instant enlightenment.

I can't really give advice, but I can give my perspective as a former aspiring researcher. My undergrad major was biology, primarily because I was fascinated with life's deeper questions and thought I could pierce them with science. Classes were miserable, and research was worse. One of my research jobs was in a stem cell lab, where I had to go into lab on the weekends in order to feed the cell cultures. My experiments felt like they were going nowhere, and in fact, the entire lab seemed that way. Weekly meetings consisted of presenting our speculative, may-be-true-but-needs-more-testing data, which made me realize that scientists are just as clueless as the people who dogmatically cling to them for the truth. Then I found out that in order to get funding for my own research project, I had to do four extra years of schooling, spend thousands of dollars, dance with bureaucracy, and choose a study that has pragmatic implications for society. That's when my productivity plummeted, and all science-related work felt Sisyphean. I didn't want to deal with that shit. I realized that I was more interested in the idea of being a world-famous researcher than I was in actually doing the work. So I quit and decided to graduate early to cut my losses. Then I followed my genuine motivations. And whattya know, turns out that life's deeper questions can be explored through other means. I also realized recently that most of my misery comes from having too high expectations of myself. The idea that I have to "impact the world" in some significant way has precisely prevented me from doing so, because I've become too perfectionistic for my future plans and haven't been able to open up to the little synchronistic opportunities that cross my path every day. Okay, an attempt at advice. Put your hand on your heart, and ask it if it loves the work. The answer won't come in words; you'll just know.

addiction friction, part 2: dopey dopamine. Ahh, dopamine. Such a precious resource. How easy it is nowadays to fry the receptors. Yesterday, after waking up with the bytes hangover, I felt a different sense of depression. Not the "I-hate-myself-so-I-should-lie-on-this-bed-and-die" depression, but the "I-don't-feel-like-doing-anything" depression. What a strange feeling; I had zero motivation to do anything. I just wanted to sit and do absolutely nothing. The thought of going to work irritated me. The thought of setting goals made me laugh and groan. To those who have never experienced this lack of motivation before, imagine having the thought that you ought to do something, but your body doesn't have the "juice" to do it. Not the most pleasant feeling in the world. I quickly realized that this lack of motivation was due to the previous night of binge-watching videos. Instant gratification ignites dopamine, the feel-good reward chemical. Too much instant gratification, and the dopamine receptors burn out. The result? #couchpotato. Now I see why school and socializing felt like such a burden in childhood. I spent all of my biochemical-reward-points on video game addiction. I took the lack of motivation for granted. I thought that it was an inherent part of growing up. I thought that in order to truly "make something of myself" in the "real world," I had to "hustle" and "struggle" and "work at it." Everyone around me had that mindset, and they seemed fine (as long as they had their early-morning Starbucks latte with three espresso shots, of course). Every task felt like a burden to overcome; every molehill felt like a mountain. Not so much anymore. This addiction friction has made me aware of how much technology and instant gratification destroys motivation on a psychophysical level. Again, I'm glad I went through it.

addiction friction, part 1: the bytes. I spent the past couple weeks in a major backslide with a magnitude of 6.74 on the Maslow Scale. That shit was worse than diarrhea, but not as bad as the mid-winter depression. After all this self-actualization work, I never expected to go that low again. I wasn't in limbo; I was fuckin' dodging bullets like Neo in The Matrix. Without further ado, let me embarrass myself. One of my favorite past times was to watch Let's Plays on Youtube, so I decided to binge watch an entire Let's Play series of one of my favorite games. That's more than sixty videos, around twenty minutes each... Do the math. Yeah... talk about addiction friction. I'm not upset, though. In fact, I'm glad I went through this mini ordeal. I directly experienced, once and for all, that addiction and clinging is never the path to happiness. I was too unconscious to notice during my video game addiction days, but now with some self-actualization work under my belt, my awareness is too strong to sustain a habit like that. Nowadays, I'm running out of ways to anesthetize myself. It's getting harder to avoid my problems than it is to feel the pain and face them. The climax happened last night. No, not that one. The one where I overdid the video watching and contracted what my friend calls "the bytes." The bytes is the set of symptoms that occur when you stare at a computer screen for too long: nausea, scatterbrainedness, headache/migraine, fatigue, muscle stiffness. Every millenial who reads this will know exactly what I'm talking about. The bytes is no fun, especially when you spend a lot of time in front of the computer or other electronic devices. Is it from the EMFs? The fried dopamine receptors? The LED's? All of the above? Who knows. I woke up this morning with a bytes hangover; the head throb was nasty. Doing volunteer work outside in nature erased it, fortunately.

the "hu" returns to the man. The year is 2148. Forty years after nuclear war ravaged the earth, and nuclear winter has not let up. Dust and silence cover the horizon. The endless expanse of gray has wiped most dualities out of existence. For years, he lived with a rescue group, but the food shortages and riots took away what they were trying to rebuild. Now, the man resides in a cabin of the North, living off of radioactive game that he hunts himself. The temperatures are frigid, regularly dipping well below the sub-zero. The North is fortunately far enough away from the Blast Zones that the boy doesn't need to wear the rescue group mask, but the air is thin nonetheless. The man hasn't seen another soul for over a year, completely unaware of the deleterious effects of long-term isolation on his psyche. He was, however, accustomed to the aloneness. He learned to be fiercely independent from an early age as he grew up in the winterized post-apocalyptia, the bastard son of a runaway marauder. Or so his mother said, before she died of a drug overdose. Most of his days are spent sitting by the wood-burning stove for warmth. The thoughts ran out a long time ago. So did the booze and canned provisions. Now, only an eerie silence within and without - an eerie silence that marks the end of stories. He has two bullets left in his hunting rifle. He never planned for the day that he'd run out of ammo. The cabin seemed to hold an endless supply alongside all the other preps, so worrying about "the next step" was never his priority. But today, reality smacks him square in the face. To this man, life was just about keeping a body alive. No concepts of purpose, virtue, achievement, art, or even sex. At this point, he may as well be more robot than human, certainly no more human than the AI manufactured after the Singularity. And yet, on this momentous occasion, the thoughts return. What now? What the hell am I doing here? What's the point? Where have I been? The "hu" returns to the man as though awakening from hibernation - both a blessing and a curse. On the one hand, there never was a point to his living, and he knows it. The world was over. The human race finished its brief dance on the spinning rock. The man's existence was an uninteresting epilogue to a story with no definitive beginning or ending. He would die as though he never lived. On the other hand, the man rediscovered his innate drive to "see what happens," to explore the expanses of a broken yet indescribably perfect world until there was nothing left to see. And when the going gets tough, he knows that some inkling of...something...will keep him going, regardless of the illogical implications of living. What was that Old World word? He wonders. Oh. Faith. That's it.

a simple conspiracy. I listen to the laughs and laundered hypocrisies of loving hearts in the afternoon. How can I complain? They are a product of the times, not knowing what they don't know - while I know less. Every generation fights change like untame dogs barking at the sky. I hear Nature's lonely footsteps eager to say goodbye. Until then, I celebrate a simple conspiracy with myself. No Gods, no kings - not even Man. Only Consciousness.

got a head full of dust. I realized this morning that I have no role models. In real life, I've felt this way for a few years now. I feel like a needle in a haystack. Maybe this is spiritual ego speaking, but I'm surrounded by people who refuse to take responsibility for their inner space. Psychological maturity is the main quality I admire in a person, and when very few people around me exhibit that quality, I feel lost, frustrated and discouraged. Sure, there's Leo, but I now see him more as a fellow actualizer than a role model. He's on his own unique journey. I don't want to emulate his life because I'm not him. His personality differs from mine, so he has different things to contribute. I'd say I resonate more with Matt Kahn. Even still, I can only watch so many moving pixels of talking heads before I realize how out of place I am. I don't even look up to my therapist. She helps clarify my feelings, but even she is stuck in stage orange. Living in a country bumpkin town doesn't help. Nor does spending time with psychologically underdeveloped parents in a codependent relationship. Ironically, they see me as underdeveloped, because they admire real-world experience (extraverted thinking, in MBTI terms - my achilles heel) over psychological maturity... which is fair enough. They don't want me to venture anywhere outside the state or to live alone again, so until I find roommates I'm here. I feel so stuck and limited. Perhaps I'm not as psychologically mature as I thought I was. I have some ideas of what I want to do next, but I feel this constant gap between point A and point B. Something in me keeps saying, "let's wait before making X decision." I may as well wait till I'm on my death bed, because I don't know what the hell I really want. It changes every day. Scientist, researcher, musician, producer, writer, coach, healer, spiritual practitioner, researcher. What's next? Circus performer? Skydiver? Professional nose picker? This is my story. Nobody can make anything of it, except for myself. I wonder if I can get by without any role models, and instead strive for some ideal in my dusty head.