The weekend before last, I lost the cane that Christian had given me. I left it in the shopping cart at the Super 88 and it was gone.

This past weekend, my serpent staff broke. The cane I can brush off as being spacy when I got in purpleglitter's car, but when something happens to the serpent staff it is generally means I've strayed off course. It broke in an entirely new place than it did before - after I repair it, it will have three different sections. I lost my spiritual path of late, life has overwhelmed me.

Life has overwhelmed me because I've let it overwhelm me. I've become frustrated and impatient with things that don't matter, and have been neglecting things that do. I need to be more mindful of my thoughts, actions, and intents. I need to right my path and fix my staff.

I am thankful for the chance to have seen not just one sunset, but hundreds. To be able to bear witness to some small part of the Glory of the Universe. Sure, sometimes I do ask for more, sometimes I am impatient and even jealous. But, that is my own failing. I must be more mindful of what I have. I have tasted fire and touched wind, what more should I want?

There was a point in my life where I would have taken any drug put in front of me. I didn't care how I felt as long as it was different. And I did lots of drugs, from street to psych and in between

I would smoke pot all day every day I could, drink way too much, take crystal and heroin and cocaine, pop klonopin and seroquel and zyprexa and whatever other nasty thing the psych people gave me. The only reason i never became addicted to heroin or cocaine was that I was never able to attain a steady supply and it is only by the grace of God that I am not an alcoholic. Going through geodon withdrawals was enough to make me very thankful I didn't go through that with anything else.

I am glad I moved on from that place, I know many who didn't. Many who couldn't. Many who never will.

When I fall into these troughs like I've been in the last several days, I must keep mindful of how far I've come. Where I was and where I am. I got through that, I can get through this.

Still going strong.

I made the birds a new mix this morning: beak appétit, mashed organic peas, organic spring salad mix, crumbed Ezekiel 4:9 bread, seed mix, and fruit and veggie mix. Not as fancy as some of my other bird mixes, but they still love it.

mazzycat is always a joy to spend time with, and she seems to prefer the regular scheduled playtimes over the more haphazard playtimes of the past.

I did much cleaning. I did a load of dishes downstairs, took out my air conditioner which hasn't been used for over a month, worked my altar, organized my desk, did some other decorating, and did quite a bit of cleaning and organizing. The octagonal table is now the only one non-floor surface in my room containing anything that shouldn't go there. It has been years since it has been in this state. In fact, my room is rapidly and finally approaching that magic word: CLEAN. If I continue this for the rest of the week, it may just reach that point.

I also hung a sign above the door to my room which reads: "If you find yourself in a hole... STOP DIGGING!". Perhaps some might think it cheesy, but I think it a good message for me to keep mindful of.

Again successful day and my domestic activity was more focused: I concentrated on my room. I did some random pickings up for the first 15 minutes, then I focused on finishing my desk set up and redoing the altar in my room (domestic + spiritual). With myself opening and becoming anew, it is time for the altar to come out of it's state of disrepair and move forward with me. To be a reflecting place, a thought place, a tool of mindfulness again. My slumber is over, but waking up has just begun.

I broke my new cell phone last night.

I guess I'm not up to speed with all this new fangled technology. The phone crashed while I was trying to take a picture of mazzycat. I tried to reset the phone, and couldn't find a reset button. I saw a small hole just wide enough to stick a safety pin in. Thinking this was the reset button that is often found on older electronic devices, I stuck a safety pin in it. However, it was not the reset button, it was the microphone and it was destroyed.

I completely freaked out, and went deep into hating myself. I felt I can't take care of anything. I looped that I lose or break or otherwise damage or taint everything I come in contact with. Escalating all the way.

After a neitherday walk (a slightly creepy one, as neitherday walks on weekends aren't as safe feeling), I realized that I can use an auxiliary microphone. I will superglue it to the phone, as I will need it anytime I use the phone. It will essentially be the main microphone. The phone will be jerryrigged, like everything that is truly me and mine. It is perfect and meant to be.

I need to be more mindful of the fact that obstacles are just part of the plan. They make life interesting and the make life go where life would not otherwise have gone. Keep calm and do not fight the wind.

I've been in a sour mood lately
I'm fighting the demon eyes.
The demon eyes are too easy to retreat into into and so hard to take off.
I do not like the demon eyes
I do not like myself when I wear them.
I must work on not
I must find my center again.

the days are long now
i still drift among the lost
wander still

if i trusted psych people at this point
i might consider checking myself in to a psych ward
i'm doing that badly in my head lately
it is time for me to refocus
to work on bringing myself back to balance
i've lost touch with the big picture
and when that happens i am lost
mindfulness is hard to keep
and i need to go back to that mindspace

I feel very good right now. A lot less dissociated than I have been for a while. I had a cigar then went down to Spy Pond. I sat near the shore and meditated. I have drifted back away from mindfulness in my life, and I have forgotten how wonderful it is to find that place. To look at the amazing that exists all around me.

I do better with short to medium length meditations spread throughout the day than I do with longer ones. No matter how hectic any day is, no matter what else I have to do, no matter where I am, I must do these meditations. They are better than any psych med ever was.

My mind gets lost in loops and I lose the path. I become distanced from myself, those around me, and the Everything. But, it is okay that that happens. It is the way I am. The best I can do is keep to the path as best I can and accept my limits. I am the way I am for a reason, and I must take my problems with my blessings.

When I get overwhelmed by the "hardships" in my life, I need to be mindful that on the whole I've got it pretty damn good. Simply being born a United States citizen in this age and time is having it pretty damn good compared with much of the world. I'm pretty damn lucky.

It is all too easy to get caught up in daily trappings of my life an mind. Too easy to look at what is wrong instead of what is well. This doesn't mean that I should never be depressed or upset, it just means it is important to take care to keep things in perspective.

This is simple concept that is plainly true. There is little effort in knowing these simple truths, the effort is in being mindful of them.

I accidentally banged my staff against the curb, and in the winter's cold it snapped roughly in the same place that it broke last time. It is a reminder to keep mindful and not to take things for granted as this happens again when I am becoming lost.

I will put my staff back together again, as I have put myself back together so many times. I have again used gorilla glue, and it is setting in the playroom clamped with the færie wire. I plan to put a bolt through the fracture in the very near future to better secure it. My staff will then be a merging of the city and the wild. A unity in nature.

The gorilla glue seems to be doing a good job keeping my staff held together. I can even put my weight on it. For a long time I've had a sense that those things around me that I most considered truly mine have been broken and put back together, sometime precariously. I've always felt a connection with such things, because I have put myself back together from the shattered remnants of long ago. I remember when I was around 13 (give or take a year), I had a Commodore 64 and the floppy drive didn't work. I repaired it using rubberbands, and it worked well for many years until I got a 386. I've always felt that I'm running on rubberbands and duct tape. Now my staff is this way too. Perhaps this will serve not only to be more mindful of its care, but also to increase my connection to it and my commitment to understanding the meaning behind it.

There are very many stresses in my life right now. I feel as if I'm being pulled in every direction at once. So many hooks wanting to sink into me. Wanting to pull me apart again. A seemingly endless supply of things to be stressed by. At some point I have to accept that I cannot make everything well. I must simply make the best with what is. Accepting that is something I'm working on, for it's easy to say, it is easy to know, but it not easy to truly accept and be mindful of. Now is an important time to make that effort. To be mindful and stay centered. The winds are howling and change is coming whether I want it or not. If chaos is to rain down, then I must be at peace with the storm. I must not fight the wind, instead I must seek the future.

The is a difference between knowing a thing and living through that knowledge. The difference is mindfulness. For instance, Sunday I was talking to my mom (myenergy) on the phone and didn't realize I should say "Happy birthday" until she said "Isn't there something you want to say to me.". It's not that I didn't know or had forgotten her birthday was February 5^th. I can recall that date from my mental database with ease. The problem was that I was not mindful that February 5^th was her birthday. The knowledge did not influence my thought and action when it should have.

Mindfulness is an important concept I'm become acquainted with. Much of my realizations have come by weaving together many things I have learned over my live so far. Many of these things were filed away in the dust recesses of my brain. But, through mindfulness, they can interact as they could not before, and have merged and grown . Through mindfulness they have changed me, they have given me hope and led me to a dawn I thought would never come. It never came, because I wasn't watching for it.

Learning is the eyes opening. Mindfulness is the eyes staying open. Learning without mindfulness has a place in business and scholastic pursuits. However it is ineffective as a spiritual tool and a tool of living.

I'm very thankful that I ended up in Massachusetts. If I had instead ended up in an AOT state, I'm sure that I would have been forced to keep taking psychiatric medication. I don't think I would have ever gotten to state I am at now if I were on Geodon or Thorazine or whatever other zombiefying medication they'd want to stuff down my throat. My mind needed to be opened, not closed. Even anti-depressants would have hindered the process I've gone through, as their effect is that of a dissociation from sadness. I needed to address the sadnesses, and not feeling them would have prevented me from doing that.

This process is not over. It will never be over. Every day is still challenging. Every day is still hard. But, the hope I have found shines through the difficulty. The brightness has always been there, I simply couldn't or wouldn't let it in. My shell has been cracked, and through those cracks the light now seeps through.

I'm still not ready to hold down a job. I still have to take things in my day to day life slowly. I need to make sure I do my meditational prayers in order to keep myself mindful throughout each day. I didn't keep mindful Saturday, and had a very bad time towards the evening until I went to sleep. I felt a bit Flowers for Algernon that night, but when I woke up Sunday morning I drank coffee and did my meditations. I was able to move back into the place. It is important that I do not lose the path again. The path I am to walk is path I must take, if for no other reason than there currently is no other path that I can take.

I may not ever be able to hold down a "real job" again; but if that is the way it is to be, it is the way is to be. I trust the winds. I am the way I need to be for me to do and see the things I need to do and see. Just as a whale is not able to see the expanse of the ocean from the sky, a gull is not able to see the depths of the whale's realm. Both experiences are gifts and neither the whale nor the gull is the less for what the other can see.

I realize some of my progress, like not freaking out about little things, probably seem easy tasks to many. However, it has never been so simple for me. My mind often latches on to something and doesn't let go. Even if it is little, I can't change my mental focus. Finding ways to do that is important. Breaking the loops has been a problem for me for as long as I can remember. I'm finally doing it. Finally. It is liberating. I feel loosed from those hooks and chains. I must constantly fight them from grabbing hold again. I can feel myself starting to go down those roads again. I have to keep vigilant against that happening. It is not easy, but the effort is worth it. This freedom from myself is an amazing thing.

Trying to organize my pictures in the scrapbook, I accidentally set all my pictures to private, including the one I just posted, which means no one was able to see it for about an hour.

I'm always doing absentminded things like that. Every day, many times a day. For example, I had gotten some optically neutral glasses at the Garment District Saturday. Yesterday, I had placed them on my lap while I was sitting in zarthon's car. When I got up to go into therapy they fell off my lap onto the parking lot and the next car to pull into the space crushed them.

In the past I would have beaten myself up over the glasses for hours. While I was a bit sad about the glasses because I so excited about getting them, However, I got over it quickly. I'm keeping my eyes on the big picture. It's not easy to do. I need to constantly remind myself of my place in relation to the All. Remind myself that they are gone, I didn't really need them. There is nothing more that can be done, I cannot undo it. In the grand scheme of things, it is really not that important. And for what small purpose it had, things are the way they were meant to be.

I would have similarly beaten myself up over the images today. Even though they are also of little importance, I would hate myself for the mistake possibly even to the point of self-injury. But, I've grown past where I was and I can see more clearly the loops that I was caught in. I can see that there was no point to the hours of self-berating that I would have undertaken for making the pictures private or breaking the glasses. Furthermore, I have found a method that lets me get out of those self-berating loops. I accept myself, and that is a good thing.

The world is changing, and I am an important part of that change. However, I am but one of over 6.4 billion people who are also all important parts of that change. Over 6,400,000,000 people. All different, none greater and none less than any other. Imagine a building two hundred stories high, each floor containing thirty rooms, each room containing a thousand boxes, each box containing a thousand lightbulbs. That building, though immense, would not contain as many lightbulbs as there are people on Earth. I have a part and purpose in the awakening that is the Happening, as every person does. I must be mindful of keeping in the part and purpose which was meant for me. No more. No less.

I must learn to focus my energy on what I need to and am meant to focus it on. I must learn to trust the winds with that which it is not my place to change. Trying to move that which I cannot move saps my energy and my focus far more than I would like or can afford. I become so involved and such things end up driving my thoughts. I loop about every misaction and about my failure to move that which I was never meant to move. The loops dissociate me from mindfulness of the presence of the All.

I have been given a different set of tools than most. A set suited to the purpose I am meant for. I am not neurotypical. It does not make me less than anyone else for when I stumble where they do not. Nor does it make me more than anyone else when I do not stumble where they do. It simply makes me me.

I have been doing many meditational prayers throughout the day. I need them to stay in mindfulness of my relation to the All. I am tempted in them for the wisdom and strength to move forward and keep in the Center Path. However, the Universe has provided me with all the wisdom and strength that I need to do that which I was meant to. It is hubris for me to think that I could instruct God on what I need. It is hubris for me to think that the Universe would change Itself based my egocentric requests. The All is so much greater than me that I am simply thankful for those gifts that have been given to me and in awe of what I have been allowed to glimpse a but small part of. I will do my best to keep mindful of the All and there is purpose that It has meant for me.

sophiaserpentia's post on the meaning of oppression triggered a realization for me. I agree with the premise of the post. Oppression is a societal manifestation as opposed to things such as discrimination and exploitation, which are person. While both the oppressed and the oppressors can discriminate and exploit others, there is a strong difference between prejudice and discrimination in word and action committed by a member of an oppressed group toward their oppressor group and prejudice and discrimination in word and action committed by a member of an oppressor group toward those a member of an oppressed group. To paraphrase sophiaserpentia, the difference is that at the end of the day the members of the oppressor group still have the rights, privileges, and entitlements in society that the members of the oppressed group does not.

While the anger members of an oppressed group feel toward their oppressors is real and legitimate, the danger with hateful rhetoric and action of the oppressed toward the oppressor lies not in the now but in the future where the formerly oppressed may have overcome their oppressors. The hateful rhetoric becomes dogma combined with their newfound privilege and power make it all too easy for them to then become oppressors. The old words then become justifications for the new oppressive paradigm.

For example, the early Christians were outcasts from and generally hated by the Jewish community where their religion drew its roots and they were harshly oppressed by the Pagans that ruled the Roman Empire. Their early words against the Jews and the Pagans could not be seen as oppressing either group at that time, because the Christians did not have the power and privilege to oppress. But the words became cannon and when the Christians gained that power and privilege, the words drew blood.

In the past I have not tempered my words against those I see as oppressors because I was not thinking of the future. That is a sort of blindness, as who else is such a struggle for, but for those who will come after? The future is just as real and our actions now will set in motion the events of lives we will never see. Politics that neglect the people in the future, neglect that the politics of now will be what the politics of the future are based upon. And it neglects that those people in that future are just as important as those who are here now.

i felt myself drifting into the unlookingness a bit. i fight it. i got up and walked around and reflected on what is. I went to the window and saw two crows on a tree looking at me. I breathed in and felt the air in my lungs. The All is here. Always has been, always will be, I just have to remember to remind myself to keep looking.

I obsess about little things far too much. I need to be looking at the big picture everyday, but I have not been. I have focused on the small things and ignored the All that is Everywhere. I have ignored the Amazing that has been right before my eyes if I were only to open them.

I have beaten myself down before others. I humbled myself to too many people. I have always felt that I am less. It is true that I am different, but in that I am no less and no more than any other person. I am one of the small in the light of the Big. I need to humble myself to only that which is ought to be humbled to.

I will pray and try to remember my place in the Universe, my place as one of the small. I am as one brick in a great building. I have not felt myself worthy of being part of that great building. But, we are all worthy and all have been chosen to be part of It. No brick is unimportant. Without any one brick the building would be incomplete, but without the building there are no bricks.