• Write about spirituality
• Write poetry

• Burning out at work
• Deep thinking about spirituality
• The struggle to get paid to do what I really love
• All the other emotional stuff

• I like talking to people. 
• I like connecting with people. 
• I like helping people. 
• I like helping people to feel better.
• I like thinking talking and writing about how to feel good. 
• A big part of feeling good is mental/emotional. 
• A therapist can help with that mental/emotional part, whereas a normal physician just helps with the physical part.

• I didn’t know which therapist in the search results was good, e.g., education, skill, etc.
• I didn’t know which therapist would be good for me personally, e.g., Buddhism, mindfulness, etc. 
• I didn’t know which therapists are covered by insurance and what percentage is covered.
• I wanted to do in-office visits, but it seems like virtual visits via Talkspace would be easier.

You don’t always think what you think that you think. Sometimes it’s actually an emotion and not a thought at all.

When you have a thought in mind, try putting it into words by either explaining it to someone in a conversation or writing it down on paper. Then you will know if you were thinking precisely what you thought you were thinking and, further, if it actually makes some bit of sense.

When you have an emotion in your heart, do the same thing—try putting it into words.

In my own experience, I have had thoughts that I believed to be strong and true, but when I tried to explain them to someone else in a conversation I realized either that my thought was still incomplete and/or tangled, or that there were gaps and inconsistencies in the thought, pointed out to me in conversation.

I have had emotions that I felt deeply and passionately, but when I tried to write them down the passion faded or seemed irrational. This has been especially helpful when I have experienced emotions that can become negative, like sadness or anger.

Words express the “manifested” world.

When you go deeper into your Self, there is a point when words no longer serve their communicative purpose.

Because communication between two consciousnesses is like this …

Firsthand experience of the speaker –> Words –> Secondhand experience of the listener

If you attempt to communicate the depths of your own spiritual journey to another consciousness, after you have gone deep in your own journey, there is a lot of work involved in retracing your steps and defining terms.

In my personal journey, I started writing as a way to express my questions, discoveries, inspirations.

It was always a spiritual journey. My writing was my ego wanting to bring the unmanifested to the manifested for its own benefit. I am growing to a point in my spiritual journey when I can leave things unwritten.

Other than my ego, why else do I need to manifest the unmanifested in the form of words?

• Because it’s beautiful and there is joy for others in appreciating beauty.
• Because it is and I am writing what is.

Does there have to be a reason for it?

I am drawn to poetry because it is minimal, in terms of word usage (less words).

It is also approachable for the reader, easier to start reading a poem than a novel.

My emotion about my back pain is more about the future of the pain. Will it ever go away? Is it something more serious than just muscle tightness?

In the present moment, my back pain is just that, pain. And pain is only a sensation, not necessarily a negative one.

It is intensified, on mushrooms, what is normal. Why cannot, when I am sober, chase after, with such reckless abandon, whatever crosses the windowpane, of my consciousness.

I feel high and get too high and then get sad when I fear that the high will not continue. It is intensified, this going up and then fearing the come back down, on mushrooms. But it is no different than it is normally. Like if you took a sine wave graph and squeezed it’s x-axis into a smaller space so that the amplitude of the graph seemed much higher and much lower. It’s the same function, but the perspective has changed.

It can’t all be written. There isn’t any one art form that can capture it all. Modern movies come the closest, I think. They have something for all the senses. You see the movie, hear the movie. You don’t smell, taste, or feel it, though.

What art form communicates what is beyond just the senses?

That is the tragedy, there, that an artist must cram it into her form and the audience must suck it out, as if through a long and narrow straw. The sucking process is not instant. It takes the time of listening to a song or reading a poem. You have to let it get into you through your senses somehow.

Is that the most we can give to each other? What can fit through the long and narrow straw. And only for those with time and energy to do the sucking.

There is a rate at which the thoughts come. The rate is very high during the come up. It is so high that I cannot write them down. One will come, I will start to write it, and then another will come right away. During a period of the plateau, the thoughts come at just the right rate, so that I am just about finishing with the one by the time another comes. When I am sober, and not tripping, the thoughts come so slow—one worth writing, maybe, only once or twice per day.

Normally, I count in my head when I hold a plank. “One, two, three …” I’ve been counting in couplets recently, so it’s more like, “One-two, three-four …” I count the first half on the exhale so it ends up being longer than the second half. “Oooooone-two, threeeeee-four …” I wear a watch to double check myself. I’m rarely right on. Usually, I’m counting too slow at the beginning of my workout or too fast at the end when I’m tired.

Counting may do more harm than good for my persistence. I end up paying attention to the count instead of my form. I also don’t think it’s a coincidence that my energy wanes right at the end of the count.

I have to get to the point because my soccer match is about to start and they need help moving the goals. Counting is western, capitalistic. I think it would be better if I achieve the same one-pointed focus in my exercise as I do in my meditation. I focus on one thing and that is holding the form. I focus like this until something else, like pain, enters my consciousness with such vigor that my focus is broken by force.

He likes women. That is his art, his joy, his purpose, his reason for living. He is attractive and friendly so it comes naturally to him. He is one of the lucky ones who has his abilities and his desires working in unison. He doesn’t have motivation for much else. He likes to go out looking for a new woman, to seduce her and make her love him, enjoy her love for a while, and then get tired of her and go looking for another. This is why he can’t commit. To commit to just one woman would be to give up his art, his joy, his purpose, his reason for living.

To live is to be challenged, to do again and again. We play the game until it gets dark and then the scoreboard resets in the morning. Nobody, not even the best, wants to win and then be done. You can also kiss your trophy so many times before the shine wears off.

The guy in front of me in line for customs at the SFO airport pointed to a different guy at the window talking to the customs agent and said to his girlfriend, “I know that guy.”

“I know his face, but I don’t know his name. He went to my high school.”

“He tried out for the wrestling team.”

“His friends and my friends were in the same group but we never met each other.”

“You know those type of people? People you know but you don’t know,” he asked his girlfriend.

“Yea,” she said. “I know those type of people.”

The guy in line continued to look at the guy at the window and then he said, “Maybe it’s not him.”

I was lying out by the pool not knowing what to do with myself. I was at constant risk of overshooting relaxation and falling into boredom but such was the peril of taking a vacation when I was already unemployed.

The waiters in their white coats walked by in front of the beach chairs holding silver trays that glinted in the sun. The day was hot as you would expect of midday in July on the top of the Baja peninsula. But it was enough to avoid sunburn sitting under the umbrella. I had learned to avoid sunburn on the first couple days of a vacation. For the last days, it doesn’t matter as much, especially if you are headed back to a place with less sun. It is even good to have the sunburn when you get back, to prove to yourself that you really went and had a vacation and were changed by it.

I could hear the spinning, grinding sound coming from the machine at the bar that made drinks with crushed ice. I looked over and there was one younger man in a white t-shirt at the bar. I thought of having a drink but then thought I better not. We would drink enough later in the night, I thought.

We got to Cabo and went out onto the balcony and the first thing that happened was a girl named Sarah from the condo below us climbed the pillar of the overhang to come up to our balcony and say hello.

She said, “I think the reason our generation has so much mental illness is because we are so far from where we’re supposed to be, biologically, like we’re supposed to be monkeys crawling around in the forest.”

This was after some conversation but not the amount usually required to get to such depth.

How can I describe her? Completely unabashed. Young and full of life. Beautiful. Unapologetically herself. Talkative.

My two friends continue to talk to her while I write. Greg asks what her and her friends are doing tonight. They don’t have any plans. Greg says the rooftop club that we can see from the balcony is a good one.

She says, “Want to go now?” It’s 3:45 in the afternoon. She has been doing coke for the past day and a half. Greg still has work to do on his computer. I would go with her, but I don’t tell her this. I don’t say anything. I just stay quiet and keep writing about this angel, friend, someone, I don’t know; but she is certainly more interesting and exciting than any of the last hundred or so people I’ve met.

She leaned back with one leg thrown over the other, wearing shorts that barely covered anything. Her eyelids fluttered over her eyes as she took unconscious drinks of the beer Greg gave her. 

She talked about everything and I sat there and typed on my phone about her just hoping she would never stop or, even if she did stop talking, that she would at least not leave and take with her all the life that she so easily brought and could so easily take away. 

I wonder if she is aware of the power she wields, to bring the whole universe to bear in a pair of short shorts that contain barely anything, let alone all the stars that were ever in the sky for as many nights as a man ever lived. One moment is not enough to contain her.

I exercise to lose calories. I eat to gain calories. I exercise to lose calories. I eat to gain calories. I exercise to lose calories. I eat to gain calories. I exercise to lose calories. I eat to gain calories. I exercise to lose calories. I eat to gain calories. I exercise to lose calories. I eat to gain calories. I exercise to lose calories. I eat to gain calories. I exercise to lose calories. I eat to gain calories. I exercise to lose calories. I eat to gain calories. I exercise to lose calories. I eat to gain calories. I exercise to lose calories. I eat to gain calories. I exercise to lose calories. I eat to gain calories. I exercise to lose calories. I eat to gain calories. I exercise to lose calories. I eat to gain calories. I exercise to lose calories. I eat to gain calories. I exercise to lose calories. I eat to gain calories. I exercise to lose calories. I eat to gain calories. I exercise to lose calories. I eat to gain calories. I exercise to lose calories. I eat to gain calories. I exercise to lose calories. I eat to gain calories. I exercise to lose calories. I eat to gain calories. I exercise to lose calories. I eat to gain calories. I exercise to lose calories. I eat to gain calories. I exercise to lose calories. I eat to gain calories. I exercise to lose calories. I eat to gain calories. I exercise to lose calories. I eat to gain calories.

I do not like to measure exactly. Who is doing the cooking then? If I follow the recipe exactly, scraping the back of a knife along the top of the measuring cup. If I do not taste the ingredients for myself. What kind of cook am I if I only do what I am told? Who are you anonymous author of the recipe? When have I followed your orders before without knowing it? Not today! You say, a half cup of milk. Bah! I will put in three-quarters of a cup. Because I like it creamy! And even if I didn’t, I would do it just to spite you.

What is is what is. There, I have said it. I do not want to say anything else. I have said what I am sure of and to say anything else would be like stepping down from a rock when there is quicksand all around me. But what about this? You might ask of me, or I might ask of myself. I sigh. I don’t want to answer. I don’t want to risk it. But you have a point. How can we do anything in this modern world without asking and answering for ourselves those other questions? It reminds me of something I once read, which was written on one of the desks at the library where I studied during college, “A ship is safe in the harbor, but that is not what ships are for.” I am safe standing on my rock, but there is so much more to life than just standing on a rock.

We didn’t really have it that hard is the truth. Some times were hard, sure. But some people have it way harder. Where’s their recognition? If you start almost at the top and then make the small leap at the top, how far did you really go? I have a hunch that the art we know about isn’t the best there ever was. The best there ever was probably wasn’t even translated into the common arts forms that we have learned to call “art.” It was probably something like a bum who whistled a tune in the middle of the night, lying all alone on his cardboard with nobody there to hear. But maybe even that is too cheap and cliché. Maybe it was just a single mom making enough at her night shift to put breakfast on the table for her son the next morning. Still, too obvious and trite. My view is still too narrow. Too human. Too here and now. We make art that we understand. Which makes sense, I suppose. I don’t know. Lying here in bed getting sober. My throat still burns from the cigar. It’s dark out and a car drives by. 2:45 a.m. I slept all day today, before we went over to John’s and had dinner and started drinking. We talked and we talked, but I don’t think we really said it. Maybe someone has already said it to me before and I just couldn’t quite understand. Even if someone said it to me once, I’d want them to say it again. See, I’m selfish like that. I have it too easy. I’m a glutton for more of all the goodness I’ve already gotten. In some rare moments, when I can keep from over complicating it, I can see straight through to the beating heart of the cosmos. I saw it in the white ceiling when I woke up from my nap earlier today. I thought to myself, damn, just the fact that I can see that white ceiling, just that is more than I can truly appreciate, when I muster all the attention I can give it. And I don’t know why, but that’s when I think of dying. I think, I will die and I won’t be able to look at a white ceiling like this again, and I want to cry. Sometimes I do cry. Most of the time I can only cry when I think about other people dying. Sometimes I get more sad than other times. Sometimes I’m not sad at all. I’m just very indifferent and I don’t really care what happens. Anyway, I think I’ll go to sleep now.

Now I have a better sense of why my mom got so upset when one of my siblings or I said that we didn’t like the dinner that she made for us.

As I cooked chili today, I found myself making decisions on my own and not really following the recipe. I didn’t measure anything. I added one cup of diced tomatoes instead of two. I added corn even though the recipe didn’t call for it. I was enjoying the creativity and I found myself thinking, “I hope this tastes good.”

Since I changed the recipe, it became my chili. If it doesn’t turn out well, it’s not the recipe’s fault; it’s my own fault. The chili is still simmering in the dutch oven on the stovetop in the kitchen. I don’t have any children to tell me how it tastes, but I hope my girlfriend likes it.

You’re not living just repeat, repeat, repeat. You have to shake it up to live again. Find newness to force yourself back into survival mode. Living the same groundhog’s day digs the trench too deep. Eventually it gets so deep that you look up along the canyon walls and you have no energy left to climb out, so you say to yourself, “Well, I guess this is just my canyon.” And then you keep on digging deeper. But there’s no light down there! No other creatures to keep you company. Back up on the surface you can skim along. Sure, you might wonder about the core. You might wonder, what’s down there? As you hop and skip over and across other canyons. You look down and see the others so deep down there and you think, maybe I should stay put and cut my own canyon. But don’t do it! Not until you’re good and ready to die.