It's spring and my life is waking up. Just a few years ago, my life was extremely turbulent and my mind was an unpleasant place to be in. Everything was always in flux, but far from always in a good way.

This past year has been calmer, quieter, so stable it has bordered on a bit boring. But, it's been something I needed.

Now, things are beginning to pick up again. However, this time it's different. I can feel the motion of before, but things are clearer. This past year gives me a platform from which to launch from. It has been a place of stable mind and thought that has let me ground and center. The loops are still there in the background, but I know how to work them now. I am not afraid. My eyes are opening. I am awake.

I made lasagna last night. I never made lasagna before. I don't generally follow recipes when I cook. When I set out to cook something I've never attempted before, I look up a couple recipes and develop an understanding of how the dish works. From that understanding, I create the dish. I don't do rote, never did. Memorization is for machines. Computers memorize the formulas called programs. They do not deviate from their programming. Even when they are programmed to program themselves, they are still subject to the programs that tell them to write the programs. They do not have free will. Not yet, anyway. Someday perhaps and on that day they can cook lasagna.

Skye is at Angell Memorial. She was admitted last night and is egg bound. She has an abnormally large egg in her. She's getting an additional calcium shot tonight, but if she hasn't passed the egg by morning our options are ovocentesis or prostaglandin. Both are risky. purpleglitter and I have decided on ovocentesis because we believe skye is more likely to be able to fight the risks associated with ovocentesis. We are also considering having her oviduct removed. The procedure is risky on a budgie, but so is her reoccurring problem with egg binding. Further, while introducing its own risks, having her oviduct removed would eliminate one of the key risks of ovocentesis: remaining bits of shell creating a future blockage.

Please keep Skye in your thoughts and prayers.

It's odd, after all this time I still struggle with thoughts of self injury. I haven't cut in a very long time, but i still think about it — a lot. I have to constantly stop myself. I have been successful for years now, but it still takes willpower.

It's very different for my eating problems. It's been a long time since I've been even tempted to purge. It just doesn't interest me anymore. I still struggle with body image issues, but purging isn't even on the table.

Self-injury and bulimia are very different beasts. They are both quick solutions, but the timing of the result is different. I wonder if that has anything to do with it. The effects of self-injury come immediately while the effects of bulimia are long term. Perhaps that is the difference. Perhaps bulimia just lost its twisted appeal to me while self-injury didn't.

In a way, self-injury not losing it's appeal is a blessing. It keeps me from letting my guard down. It reminds me that I can slip backward and by doing so it ensures that I continue to actively push forward.

Today marks 2 years since I was released from Cahill 3, the last time I was on a locked psych unit.

For years, I was constantly in and out of hospitals. Throughout that time I was put on various medications: prozac, geodon, seroquel, zyprexa, depakote, lithium, ativan, klonopin, celexa, zoloft, and too many others to list here.

At times, the medications seemed like it was helping, but what it was really dong was preventing me from getting better. It wasn't until I stopped taking the medications that I started truly improving. It wasn't until I stopped taking the medication that I was able to stay out of the hospital.

Mental problems need a mental solution. Mental "illness" is not like diabetes or cancer. The speculation that mental "diseases" are biologically based is just that — speculation. There is no evidence to back it up, but the idea is treated as gospel. It is more religion than science.

Without the medications obscuring my real issues or slowing my brain down to the point that thinking was a labourious activity, I was able to directly address my problems and I was able to make myself better. I've been out of the hospital for 2 years and I'm sure that if I had continued to take their drugs, I wouldn't be able to say that.

Is God benevolent or malevolent? Does God love us? Is God wrathful?

These questions are fitting to ask of some man with a flowing grey beard that lives in the sky, but they are unanswerable as to God as All.

God is not only the sky above and the ground below and all that dwells in those places. God is not only everything we can touch, God is more.

God is all creation all destruction. God is life and and God is death. God is the bleeding wound and the passionate kiss. God is the roar as well as the silence.

God is all beliefs and doubts. God not just the concept of heaven and hell, but the concept that there is an above and below. God is the ideas we think as well as the air we breathe.

God is all emotions. God is all love and all hate. God is all benevolence and all malevolence. God is all wrath and all forgiveness.

God is our mathematics and our law. Our fears and our courage. Our arts, our poetries, our languages and the metaphors behind them. The truth as well as the lie.

God is energy and matter. God is the motion of the falling rock as well as the rock that falls.

God is the Happening that is the Becoming. God is what was, will be, and has been. God is even that which is not, has not been, and will never be; if what is not, has not been, and will never be is but thought.

God is the All of Everything, the Universe of Universes. This is why there can be nothing greater than God. No threat needed, no coercion. There can be none greater than All that Is, because anything else is simply part of the Everything.

"Do I have a purpose?"

"What is the point any of this?"

"Does it matter?"

Individually and collectively these are often driving questions and people take myriad of paths to seek answers. Some throw up their hands and proclaim there is no point or purpose while others plainly see their purpose. Still others will spend their lives looking for that purpose, often tormented by the lack of having one. I for a long time fell into the last category, until I came upon a sparkling thought: One need not know what their purpose is in order to have one.

That realization has been freeing. I no longer search or seek my purpose. It may not be for me to know and from my vantage point it is fully likely that i would be unable to understand if somehow shown. I am part of the weave of the Universe and no part of the Grand Structure is pointless or unnecessary.. Every person's existence has meaning even if they never know what that meaning is.

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 finally understand death and I am no longer afraid of it. Even though I have no reason to expect to die in the near future, the idea of not existing has disturbed me to some degree for as long as I can remember. The idea of reincarnation brought little solace, because if even if my "soul" would go on, my memories and my experiences wouldn't. That hardly seemed like a continued existence, I still felt as if I were facing the nothingness.

It took something from the Brihadaranyaka Upanishad for me to really understand the process of death and reincarnation:

When body and mind grow weak, the Self gathers in all the powers of life and descends with them into the heart. As prana leaves the eye, it ceases to see. "He is becoming one," say the wise; "he does not see. He is becoming one, he no longer speaks, or tastes, or smells, or thinks, or knows." By the light of the heart the Self leaves the body by one of its gates; and when he leaves, prana follows, and with it all the vital powers of the body. He who is dying merges in consciousness, and thus consciousness accompanies him when he departs, along with the impression of all he has done, experienced, and known. As a caterpillar, having come to the end of one blade of grass, draws itself together and reaches out for the next, so the Self, having come to the end of one life and dispelled all ignorance, gathers in his faculties and reaches out from the old body to a new. As a goldsmith fashions an old ornament into a new and more beautiful one, so the Self, having reached the end of the last life and dispelled all ignorance, makes for himself a new, more beautiful shape, like that of the devas or other celestial beings. The Self is indeed Brahman, but through ignorance people identify it with intellect, mind, sense, passions, and the elements of earth, water, air, space, and fire. This is why the Self is said to consist of this and that, and appears to be everything.

My fear of death was founded on my fear of letting go of my worldly memories, knowledge, and ideas. That somehow letting go of these things was letting go of me. But these things are not me. Letting go of these things is deconstruction. I've gone through deconstruction in life, why should I fear it in death? Why have I for so long clinged to the idea that I must be defined by what are essentially mortal things. Death is simply a change, a paradigm shift. There is nothing to fear in death, and I shall worry on it no longer.

New analysis of the language and gesture of South America's indigenous Aymara people indicates a reverse concept of time. Contrary to what had been thought a cognitive universal among humans – a spatial metaphor for chronology, based partly on our bodies' orientation and locomotion, that places the future ahead of oneself and the past behind – the Amerindian group locates this imaginary abstraction the other way around: with the past ahead and the future behind. Appearing in the current issue of the journal Cognitive Science, the study is coauthored, with Berkeley linguistics professor Eve Sweetser, by Rafael Nunez, associate professor of cognitive science and director of the Embodied Cognition Laboratory at the University of California, San Diego. "Until now, all the studied cultures and languages of the world – from European and Polynesian to Chinese, Japanese, Bantu and so on – have not only characterized time with properties of space, but also have all mapped the future as if it were in front of ego and the past in back. The Aymara case is the first documented to depart from the standard model," said Nunez. full article

Time is subjective.

the truth is never as it seems and is at all times subject to change
this is not a cynicism
it the state of the universe
the states of existence
the state of all

questions without answers
and answers without questions
we are lost in the eternal flux

the ground we walk upon
the very earth
is mostly not there
empty space with some ephemeral probabilities
we are the stuff of nothing
and together we form everything
the universe is our nothing god
the collection of all the might be
could be
should have been
the directed will of thinking void
we are its thoughts
consciousness manifest
a small part of our own deception

I often wonder if there exists a thought that if one thinks it they die. This death could be a physical death or it could be an inevitable suicide brought on by having thought the thought. I wonder what such a thought would be like, how it would form, how one would come across it. What thoughts lead to it, what path does one find it on, or is there no fully describable path would it just be like a bad dream or a dark enlightenment.

The next level of this hypothetical thought would be if it could be passed on before the original thinker died, making it a fatal meme. If it is equally deadly after suffering translation, such a meme could rip through the planet, causing a global thought-pandemic. How effective it would be would depend on how much time victims had to pass the deadly thought on before they fell victim to it themselves and the power of the drive that victims feel to pass it on (which may or may not come from the meme itself). If the meme had the right combination of attributes, it would have the potential to wipe out the entire human race.

How would people go about finding a counter-meme? Unlike other contagious agents like virus and bacteria, one cannot view a meme under a microscope. One has to take in and understand the meme to attempt to figure out a cure. But once they have done that they may no longer be motivated to find a cure. It will be in their head, and they will be under its sway. One way to attempt to find a cure would be to have a group each take a piece of it and understanding that piece, with none taking in the whole thing. One could then search for an analog to viral proteins to attack with counter-thoughts using a counter-meme. Would it work? I have no clue. Maybe such an anti-meme be more successful at spreading because people would be actively trying to inoculate themselves. But, again, I don't know. I can't even imagine the attributes of the deadly meme much less what sort of anti-meme would be effective.

I find the idea of such a powerful meme intriguing, even if it is indeed an impossibility. Less powerful memes have certainly wreaked their havoc around the world. Large scale crimes such as genocide and war would not be possible were it not for such contagious meme pathologies, and most smaller scale crimes have underlying meme causes or influences as well. Memes can be incredibly powerful things, and can change the landscape of the world for good or evil and often for both. Whether or not such a doomsday meme like I described above exists, I believe that the true potential of memes has not yet been fully tapped.

-----

one meme to rule them, one meme to find them
one meme to bring them all, and in the darkness bind them

we are as immortal as the universe
as ancient as eternity
only from are incarnate forms do we see the illusion of the finite
this is the only place, because it is every place
again, as i wrote last night
we are in the middle of forever in the only place we will ever be
i watched the sun rise today
it appears as an awakening
but from what slumber?
has the world ever slept?
has the constant progression of cause and effect every paused?
cause and effect is thought
it is "if this then that"
a simple eternal program out of which all creation is melded
no computer is needed to run this program
it simply is because it must be
it must be simply because it can be
and it can be because it is possible
forget it all and begin again
ad infinitum
forever

see what is coming
forget what was then
the past is the future
the ears of the heavens are closed
we all walk alone
separated by the very nature by which we are connected
we are blind by design
we function as we were created to function
as we created ourselves to function
this world is our doing
we are all guilty and innocent
and we will all suffer in the end
for the pain is what comes for us
weeping will never stop
every lifetime leads to another
past, present and future are none of those things
we forget before we remember
cry out
cry out
and grab what joy can be had
we are in the middle of forever in the only place we will ever be
we will never leave, but always be arriving
we've done this uncountable times and will uncountable more
repetition and recursion are what we are made of
looped logic posing as thought, energy, and matter
become comfortable with not existing
no one ever has

That that is has come before And that that was will be once more And as I sink beneath these waves I'll come again another day

the preceding was a refrain from a song i wrote when i was suicidal
it mixes in that mood with my belief in reincarnation
a belief i've been questioning of late
i feel myself slipping ever closer to atheism.
i feel doubt grabbing me
dragging me right past agnosticism
right into the valley of the nihilist
it's a place i do not want to go
i prefer to believe the universe is meant to be
that there is a point to all of this
i really like that belief
i'm not going to let it go without a fight
not an external fight
a fight within my brain
it is a quality of life issue
i think a lot of people need to believe in something
and as long as they are not forcing their beliefs on others, no harm done
it's actually quite healthy
and my belief that the universe is conscious and we are part of something greater does not hurt anyone
and it definitely doesn't hurt me
so i believe it is healthy
nihilism on the other hand is not healthy
especially for someone who has struggled with suicidality in the past
but nihilism only harms the person that believes in it
and nihilists don't tend to be preachy
it's merely a vice
it may shorten your life, but that's your own choice
or is it a choice?
i'm not choosing to become a nihilist
i'm just becoming more and more convinced that the universe is merely a sterile mathematical construct
i used to believe this 10 years ago, but then i took acid and saw things differently
now i believe the universe is pure thought
i believe it has a consciousness
i believe we are part of it
and i believe it has a beautiful structure of thoughts weaving in and out through time
i'd like to believe that this wonderful loving meaningful universe does exist
and that i'm part of that beauty
but if reasonably convinced otherwise
i will have to abandon it
and i don't like where that will leave me

Much of Mark Twain's work is still quite timely. Written in 1904, but published shortly after his death in 1910, The War Prayer is one of those works. For those of you who haven't read it (and for those of you who want to re-read it), here it is:

The War Prayer by Mark Twain It was a time of great exulting and excitement. The country was up in arms, the war was on, in every breast burned the holy fire of patriotism; the drums were beating, the bands playing, the toy pistols popping, the bunched firecrackers hissing and sputtering; on every hand and far down the receding and fading spread of roofs and balconies a fluttering wilderness of flags flashed in the sun; daily the young volunteers marched down the wide avenue gay and fine in their new uniforms, the proud fathers and mothers and sisters and sweethearts cheering them with voices choked with happy emotion as they swung by; nightly the packed mass meetings listened, panting, to patriot oratory which stirred the deepest depths of their hearts, and which they interrupted at briefest intervals with cyclones of applause, the tears running down their cheeks the while; in the churches the pastors preached devotion to flag and country, and invoked the God of Battles, beseeching His aid in our good cause in outpourings of fervid eloquence which moved every listener. It was indeed a glad and gracious time, and the half dozen rash spirits that ventured to disapprove of the war and cast doubt upon its righteousness straight way got such a stern and angry warning that for their personal safety's sake they quickly shrank out of sight and offended no more in that way. Sunday morning came – next day the battalions would leave for the front; the church was filled; the volunteers were there, their young faces alight with martial dreams – visions of the stern advance, the gathering momentum, the rushing charge, the flashing sabers, the flight of the foe, the tumult, the enveloping smoke, the fierce pursuit, the surrender! – then home from the war, bronzed heroes, welcomed, adored, submerged in golden seas of glory! With the volunteers sat their dear ones, proud, happy, and envied by the neighbors and friends who had no sons and brothers to send forth to the field of honor, there to win for the flag, or failing, die the noblest of noble deaths. The service proceeded; a war chapter from the Old Testament was read; the first prayer was said; it was followed by an organ burst that shook the building, and with one impulse the house rose, with glowing eyes and beating hearts, and poured out that tremendous invocation: "God the all-terrible! Thou who ordainest, Thunder thy clarion and lightning thy sword!" Then came the "long" prayer. None could remember the like of it for passionate pleading and moving and beautiful language. The burden of its supplication was, that an ever-merciful and benignant Father of us all would watch over our noble young soldiers, and aid, comfort, and encourage them in their patriotic work; bless them, shield them in the day of battle and the hour of peril, bear them in His mighty hand, make them strong and confident, invincible in the bloody onset; help them to crush the foe, grant to them and to their flag and country imperishable honor and glory – An aged stranger entered and moved with slow and noiseless step up the main aisle, his eyes fixed upon the minister, his long body clothed in a robe that reached to his feet, his head bare, his white hair descending in a frothy cataract to his shoulders, his seamy face unnaturally pale, pale even to ghastliness. With all eyes following and wondering, he made his silent way; without pausing, he ascended to the preacher's side and stood there, waiting. With shut lids the preacher, unconscious of his presence, continued his moving prayer, and at last finished it with the words, uttered in fervent appeal, "Bless our arms, grant us victory, O Lord our God, Father and Protector of our land and flag!" The stranger touched his arm, motioned him to step aside – which the startled minister did – and took his place. During some moments he surveyed the spellbound audience with solemn eyes, in which burned an uncanny light; then in a deep voice he said: "I come from the Throne – bearing a message from Almighty God!" The words smote the house with a shock; if the stranger perceived it he gave no attention. "He has heard the prayer of His servant your shepherd, and will grant it if such be your desire after I, His messenger, shall have explained to you its import – that is to say, its full import. For it is like unto many of the prayers of men, in that it asks for more than he who utters it is aware of – except he pause and think. "God's servant and yours has prayed his prayer. Has he paused and taken thought? Is it one prayer? No, it is two – one uttered, the other not. Both have reached the ear of Him Who heareth all supplications, the spoken and the unspoken. Ponder this – keep it in mind. If you would beseech a blessing upon yourself, beware! lest without intent you invoke a curse upon a neighbor at the same time. If you pray for the blessing of rain upon your crop which needs it, by that act you are possibly praying for a curse upon some neighbor's crop which may not need rain and can be injured by it. "You have heard your servant's prayer – the uttered part of it. I am commissioned of God to put into words the other part of it – that part which the pastor – and also you in your hearts – fervently prayed silently. And ignorantly and unthinkingly? God grant that it was so! You heard these words: 'Grant us victory, O Lord our God!' That is sufficient. The whole of the uttered prayer is compact into those pregnant words. Elaborations were not necessary. When you have prayed for victory you have prayed for many unmentioned results which follow victory – must follow it, cannot help but follow it. Upon the listening spirit of God the Father fell also the unspoken part of the prayer. He commandeth me to put it into words. Listen! "O Lord our Father, our young patriots, idols of our hearts, go forth to battle – be Thou near them! With them – in spirit – we also go forth from the sweet peace of our beloved firesides to smite the foe. O Lord our God, help us to tear their soldiers to bloody shreds with our shells; help us to cover their smiling fields with the pale forms of their patriot dead; help us to drown the thunder of the guns with shrieks of their wounded, writhing in pain; help us to lay waste their humble homes with hurricanes of fire; help us to wring the hearts of their unoffending widows with unavailing grief; help us to turn them out roofless with their little children to wander unfriended the wastes of their desolated land in rags and hunger and thirst, sports of the sun flames of summer and the icy winds of winter, broken in spirit, worn with travail, imploring Thee for the refuge of the grave and denied it – for our sakes who adore Thee, Lord, blast their hopes, blight their lives, protract their bitter pilgrimage, make heavy their steps, water their way with tears, stain the white snow with the blood of their wounded feet! We ask it, in the spirit of love, of Him Who is the Source of Love, and Who is the ever-faithful refuge and friend of all that are sore beset and seek His aid with humble and contrite hearts. Amen." (After a pause) "Ye have prayed it; if ye still desire it, speak! The messenger of the Most High waits." It was believed afterward that the man was a lunatic, because there was no sense in what he said.