Who are you, really? When you spend half the day brooding over some way that another person did you wrong, and you spend half your moments while thinking about that person wishing for God to teach them a lesson?

Then, you want to pray to God for safety, health, peace for your own family.

It isn’t much different from some of the Psalms, you know. The writer of a Psalm prays for their enemies to be tossed off a cliff, to receive the full wrath of God’s judgement. The God of that part of the Bible is pretty judgy and even condones having a spear chucked through a tent that went clean through the pregnant woman and man copulating because the woman wasn’t of a godly tribe. People say that Jesus was such a hippy, but he did go around threatening many with hellfire and claiming to be the only Son of that angry, abusive God of the OT.

Yet, every night and morning I pray “Our Father, who art in heaven…” and often read “The Lord is my Shepherd…” and beg God for mercy for this poor old sinner who is watching his own life fall to pieces.

Faith is hard like that. You don’t seem to have any when you need it the most, and you are full of it when you are probably getting by on pure luck of the draw.

I want to be like Thich Nhat Han, and other like-minded Buddhists. I want to love those who mistreat me because they were my family in past lives. I want to remember that. That this poor slob who pissed me off, accused me of things that I never once thought, said or did, reading into my words and jumping to conclusions and then texting me back additional angry name calling when I called him up to try to straighten out, and he wouldn’t budge an inch to apologize and laugh and say, “Oh, I’m sorry,” no, he held his ground and offered me plenty of condenscension and advice on how to communicate better. Of course, I wanted to send one more text, because this is the kind of guy who has to get in the last word and I refuse to let him leave his untruthful accusations hanging out there.

Then, of course, my soon-to-be-ex wife – again, just immediately jumping to conclusions about a few words ripped out of context and now the pillars in making a case for divorce.

Too many nights wanting God to pay back those who hurt me in some way.

Maybe I’m just tired of getting into these snits with people over nothing. Attempts at humor when I should know better—those are done. Trying to arrive at assumed common ground with a friendly gambit about the state of affairs of some random thing—politics, the powers that be at work, etc.--only to find the other person virulently disagrees with you or at least has drifted in their thinking to some place you didn’t realize they had gone.

I’m frankly tired of interacting with people altogether. Unless the most perfect, jazz-loving, dog-loving, gorgeous woman came into my life and was willing to put up with a sad old almost divorcee living in a dump for six months to a year until his divorce and father’s estate clear—unless someone like that were to come into my life, I can’t see myself ever really trying the romantic relationship thing again. My body still flares up with mad lust, and I have to run the manual overrides more than I like, but anything involving having to establish some kind of basic syncing with another human being to get them to consistently see you and not your badly wrecked DNA self—that seems like an utter impossibility.

What still seems possible is resolving that side of me that wants to annhilate the Other who offends my precious little ego’s sense of personal dignity/respect, etc. It still seems possible that I can rid myself of most of the accrual of basic biolust that rises up throughout the day. It also seems possible that I can actually development my piano playing into something that sounds like songs others might want to hear and perhaps even attempt to play themselves.

However, death at any time also seems possible. I’ve had too many scares during these past several weeks while lifting so much heavy shit and working in all that rat feces and urine. My body has not felt right in too many places and too many times to count.

Prior to this, I had so many moments during the bad sepsis sickness and following where I watched my skin go crepey thin and bruise like an old persons. I’ve struggled to put on and keep on weight. I was 235 at my heaviest while drinking and eating and exercising little. Now, I struggle to get above 180 on a consistent basis. Some people would rejoice at this—how I got here feels like endless rounds of sickness and starvation due to the constant nausea present when trying to eat. I read about the THC sickness and the desire to have hot baths all the time—I was there, and then at some point the THC stopped causing any problems at all for me, except when I stop taking it (that’s typically when the above-mentioned monsters and assholes come out of me).

People hand me THC gummies that are supposed to be so many milligrams and I get a gentle mood lift—a good cup of coffee without the side effects--and I would heavily dose the THC-O, THC-P, Deltas 8, 9, 10, to the point where none of this stuff caused all the weird time distortion, short term memory loss and paranoia that it used to do when I only consumed it occasionally/recreationally and when I first started taking it again. I’ve stayed away from vapes and smoking almost entirely aside from a few recreational detours.

So, what actually caused me to lose and keep lost all of this weight? Quitting drinking altogether. Developing a strong distaste for anything with wheat in it (this passed, but I still prefer corn/rice-based food most of the time). Getting the munchies occasionally with THC, but the cravings now seem to come in short bursts with a desire to try a little bit of everything, and the focus is more on the spices and flavors...so, the munchies probably work up my appetite but the appetite isn’t for large meals but little meals and snacks throughout the day.

Healthwise, my strength seemed to be on the up-and-up since January when I started Tai Chi/Qi Gong classes. I was lifting more weights, doing more pushups, running regularly again. Like, I had turned a massive corner and now I could start rebuilding. I probably would/could have kept this up if it had just been the divorce I got hit with. Yeah, I would have taken a day or two to lay around and feel sorry for myself, but I highly favor my routines once I get them going, and wouldn’t have completely stopped the way I did when I was just a machine churning through my dad’s piles of stuff.

I don’t know why it’s so hard for people to not see the power of something like these Qi Gong exercises that seem completely body-focused to the outsider, to also heal what is broken in the DNA brain and where the Soul mind connects with it. Western mindset of the present time and place says I need to be in therapy or church (Christian or maybe Jewish synagogue). That’s it. Any other practice is suspect, backwards or simply not effective. The atheists and liberal Christians who are practically right there with them believe (excessively and without any critical thinking involved) that a standard talk therapy or SNRI-guided therapy or similar is the only way a person who has issues can get any better. Except so many of us don’t get any better during therapy, it just ends up being a kind of placebo-effect on the “loved one” who is making us go to therapy—they seem to play down your outbursts and unwanted words when you are regularly going to therapy yet can’t tell you one thing you tried from the suggestions of the therapist have actually made any difference. It’s just a safe, comfortable box to check—my spouse is in therapy so whatever bullshit comes from them is at least being met and dealt with each week, hopefully.

But, any therapy provided by someone that gets too far away from that paradigm (and isn’t labeled “therapy” or “counseling” or “psychiatric care”) is suspect. Even from those who study the relationships between the drug companies and doctors and how certain drugs get pushed on people in spite of little evidence they really help long term, and often create similar psycho and chemical dependence issues that THC and alcohol do—some of these individuals would still rather play it safe and only seek out treatments blessed by institutional western medicine.

So much of the patient’s protests get ignored, deflected or pivoted into endless exercises and random things to try that seem more useful in the same way distracting a child having a tantrum might calm them down, than useful in getting to the underlying causes, ferreting them out, developing methodologies to completely eradicate them that can be measured and accounted for on a regular basis. Frankly, those who perform exorcisms or offer expensive motivational coaching programs probably have more success in changing their patients than many therapists do who might see their clients locked in the same endless cycles of conversations about the same problems for decades with little or no change other than the lining of the therapists’ pockets.

Truly, a program to ferret out the demons in a methodical, slow basis seems more like what I need. Many therapists I have seen want me to believe that my most angry, demonic moments are merely the cries of an inner child who didn’t get what he wanted once upon a time, or was abused, or witnessed someone else getting abused and couldn’t stop it. Michael Newton’s paradigm of the DNA self bearing so many corrupted tendencies from its forebears while the Soul self tries throughout life to get it in line—that seems to make more sense to me. Brad Mehldau has a great album about Taming the Dragon, which seems like a nice idea—except I’m still not sure my Jack is a Dragon to be tamed or a Demon that needs to be removed from me. My Jack is basically Jack Nicholson in the Shining at his worst. A real dry drunk full of sarcasm and nihilism and endless judgement of everyone and anyone (even himself, but then he says “so, I’m a fucking asshole, so what, deal with it, at least I’m not going around claiming to be someone whose shit smells sweet.”)

And you just can’t have a Jack without a Jane. Jane at times seems just as fiercely feminine and pro-woman as Jack does pro-well...himself, really.

Which brings me to Daoism—the philosophy as described in some of the main texts and the I-Ching seems to be utterly in line with these primal Yang+Yin forces that are erupting in me. If Heaven is perfectly clear Yang and Earth perfectly clear Yin (at least at its most pure), then perhaps there is a negative aspect to too much of one or the other that turns Heaven to a Hell of fiery dragons and Earth to a Void of black-hearted succubi.

All that is in me that is corrupted, chaotic, out of harmony, is in fact all the places where the Mirror of Heaven has yet to be polished to clarity. These forces rise up in ways I can’t quite get a handle on when I am in communication with others. Where once I would have the uncomfortable and uncontrollable rise of anxiety and shyness, now, I have the unexpected and uncontrollable rise of anger and judgement.

The crazy thing is that at my most sane and calm and collected I don’t disagree with that asshole Jack in his judgments of others. Too many people are lazy and willfully ignorant when they seem like they don’t need to be and don’t have any reason to be. Jack isn’t going to give them the benefit of the doubt that they might have struggles of their own, or might even be smarter than him and are playing advanced chess at whatever they are doing. But I don’t disagree with the initial observation that this driver could have made a better choice or that person could have said/acted differently toward me (or perhaps even could have made a better choice for their own sake in that moment). However, Mirror of Heaven sages just let the world be with the principle of Wu Wei. Wu Wei isn’t exactly utter permissiveness from the way I understand it, but more of a way of being that effects change through more indirect and tactful remarks and behaviors that don’t trigger the typical human response that comes from those who feel they are under the crosshairs of judgement or anger.

Getting back to Wu Wei after rising up to being Jack (and after having some jackass bruise your ego with hurtful untrue words) is almost impossible for me without THC, my dog, reggae or jazz music, and playing a little piano. With all of this, I seek to need fewer and fewer of the outside inputs—the dog will pass, the THC will get banned again and the music may become impossible to listen to without taking the Mark of the Beast. So, I am also studying practices like Chod—a Buddhist practice of severance of thought forms at their root.

None of it works perfectly, but I probably don’t apply it perfectly since I’m an imperfect person. I don’t expect grace from others, anymore, since I suppose I have been too stingy with it. I don’t expect others to understand me, come around to my way of thinking or point of view anymore. I can see that this is impossible without putting in a lot of hours of simply showing others there might be a better way of being and talking than the one they are practicing. And, why spend time trying to change people who may not even need changing after all? So, the only reason for writing this and putting it “out there” again, instead of just leaving it in handwritten journals that my descendents will probably toss, is that a voice inside my head is telling me to do it. That this site and this format is where the endless journaling must go on.