The dragon in me. What is it? Is it merely heaps of my own ignorant cravings and endless discursive thought? Why is it though, that the tiniest vision of the appropriate triggering image can bring out the lust--that vision being in my head or an image from real life? Why does my temper and hypercritical self immediately start running, coming up with endless whiny diatribes of how such-and-such event in life was immaculately designed by Greater Forces and Higher Powers to simply mess with me?

When my father passed, and I was sifting through mountains of stuff that had to go straight to the dump, but might have been worth saving/selling had it been taken care of--I kept thinking to myself that once you reach a certain stage of affluence in your existence, the notion of "waste not want not" needs to be flipped.

The more you want of something, the more likely you are to keep wasting that which is already given to you in favor of chasing that need. One morning, you wake up, and the results of so much of that want and acquisitive behavior has turned to seemingly endless streams of waste.

But, materially speaking, the picture of the person in the throes of a hoarder pathology (or the obese glutton, the sex addict, the rage addict, etc.) is easy to spot. Perhaps the deadly sin of acedia or sloth or even mere pride is a bit harder to see. But someone full of lust, avarice, gluttony, even envy (in it's expression they give of their competitive and divisive words toward the Other that they are envious of) is easily spotted.

But, maybe my problem is merely that of pride. Which starts to look a lot like the same issue of killing the ego from a Buddhist perspective. I've had a judgy little self in me since I was a kid. Judging others, thinking I'm better than them. All because of...?

My dad told me his mom was excessively hypercritical. He wasn't so much, but compared to the expectations laid upon me as a father by my wife (and most in this contemporary Western society) my father was pretty critical of us much of the time. My mom would say stuff like "judge not lest ye should be judged," but then her tone in relating a story about someone would indicate otherwise, ("she got a DIVORCE") said in a highly disapproving whisper...for example.

But, I can remember sitting as a kid on the playground, incapable of joining in games of soccer or kickball without immediately feeling like I was the biggest loser, going up a small hill near a large tree with my friend J to just look down on people and criticize them. Some poor girl whose grandma had passed--I would imitate my mom--"P says her grandma was saved and is going to heaven because her grandma went to church every Sunday. Silly girl. Doesn't she know that's not enough to be saved? Lots of people go to church all the time but never ask Jesus into their hearts and ask forgiveness for their sins." J would nod in approval at these judgy statements, or perhaps he simply needed a friend more than I did, and was nodding along to whatever came out of my mouth.

At any rate, I have these memories throughout childhood and early adulthood of that side of myself coming out occasionally--this immediate leap to the top of the mountain where I can now sit in arrogance and look down on everyone else.

So, it is without any sort of judgement that I try to describe the state of affairs my father left his house in. Of course, there has been judgement at times. It's hard not to when you're alone in a house full of rat urine/poop for 12 hours a day going through decades of accumulation in piles, boxes, etc.

I get that my soul on the inside looks like that house did. There is a need for a deep clean, and perhaps the house needs to just be razed in the end because you can't remediate it. That's what my soon-to-be-ex wife seemed to think. I was a lost cause that needed to go away. That's what God has thought many times in the Bible. Floods and other means of destroying His own creation that He felt was not capable of remediation.

I hang onto my Christian faith, onto Jesus, etc. the whole idea that I am saved by grace and loved unconditionally by Jesus once my sins are confessed--I hang onto it because it is embedded in me too deeply to be removed--I will hang onto it unto death. I will refuse chips in the forehead or on the hand for the sake of convenience to buy stuff or to get on a plane, etc. I don't worship the Buddha or any other aspects of other religions I read about. I don't really think of Buddhism or Daoism as a religion most days, anyway--no more than utilizing Stoicism as a philosophy to guide your life and declaring that you worship Marcus Aurelius.