Chinese New Year Holiday

Going back to sleep and waking up again, I see me as the mind attempting to jump in here and there to explain to me this and advise on that – how it is, could would and should be. As I watched for it and each time stopped it – usually only to an extent, I realized that my mind is just me, sometimes trying to be helpful, but mostly caught up in the fear – wants, needs and desires, dividing and disguising, using the conscious, subconscious and certainly the unconscious to keep even me as the mind/being/physical relationship from seeing/realizing the whole me. It's like having double and triple agents within and as me (multiple personalities perhaps), manipulating each other/me behind the scenes so as to get/have/save their pieces of the pie. Like a mother who is afraid and so refuses to let go: every Bit of energy – memories, thoughts, imagination, backchat, reaction, etc., is of the starting point of Fear – wants, needs and desire to survive/prevail. I didn't completely see the target of my most recent manipulation before, and even if I had, it is questionable whether I would have done very much differently. 

It's that time of year again when millions hit the road, all at same time. As for me, I usually get away a week or so before hand when the roads are still almost empty. During the last 4 days, I’ve remained quite stable – not exciting nor exhausting, just breathing. I drove down with an Australian friend to Puli, a small city in central Taiwan, met up with a friend who was currently attending an aboriginal wedding banquet, hung out with the local gangsters/politicians, went to the local karaoke bar, watched a mind-demon come out in my friend, assisted him to not hurt himself or anther, went to a barbecue  looked into some job prospects, did some sightseeing, and that was it for the first two days. In looking back, what I note about that area and events is that it's not the place I had imagined it to be – kind of like, been there, done that, and it doesn't match the Idea. Moving on to the third day: We drove more into the mountains to a friend's hot-spring for some camping and hiking. There was a group of 60 Taekwondo high-school students for which my friend was providing rooms and food, including roasting a whole pig, aboriginal style. Seeing the pig staked and tied to the cross bars, I was reminded of Jesus, us/me, and how we stake and crucify ourselves to the crosses we ware/bare. I recalled my dream of cannibalism because the pig, opened up and flattened-out looked almost like an human carcase with a pig head. It wasn't a sadness that I experienced, but a realization of the indignity that so many endure in both life and death. The pig was and is equal and one with the flesh/dirt of the Earth, as is the flesh of me. I watched and assisted in both the carving and eating of the pig. It tasted lean – probably a local. What I’ve noted from the two days/nights that we stayed there is that, 1) my friend's alcohol-induced demon again returned, this time in what could have more harmful consequences; and 2) that my appeal to that particular hot-spring and others like it has always been embellished/tainted by relationships that I’ve connected to these places.

Four days later, after having dropped off my friend, and picked up my wife and dog, I've been staying with my wife's family in in a small town outside of Chaiyi city, Taiwan. It's more like a town on either side of a main road with houses that look as though they were once inhabited by proud farmers. Today the look and feel is as though the able bodied have gone to the cities for work and a life away from the pesticide tainted waters, birth defects and all that come with pesticide-dependent farming, the uneducated quest for greater/profits/yields. Mostly we've just been in the family-house with the TV on. The food is simple and tasty – fun to eat, especially after I add some fresh hot-chili pepper that I always keep on the side. The dishes that are not finished at dinner are reassembled, recooked and served for lunch, then again for dinner, and so on. Main activities are lunch and dinner, playing mahjong, drinking, smoking, occasionally chewing on binlang (betelnut), and of course watching TV. Having just eaten lunch, sitting in front of the TV, I commented to my brother in law: “In the past, people would get together and have fun; these days they just watch the staged fun on TV.” Then it occurred to me that, even when they were having fun in the past, interacting together, it was still to an extent scripted inter-acting. Conversing, watching a play, reading a book, playing a video game..., as long as it goes through the mind, is part of a simulation, the product/s of separating ourselves again and again, as in – universal exponential-simulation, to the point where one might ask: would the real me in all of this, please stand up. In the past, there were many times that I sat in this same spot, bored and wanting to be somewhere else. This time around, I was not bored, I don't do that anymore. Instead I just kept on breathing, observing, and sometimes participating. Overall I remained stable, which is cool because the roller-coaster rides that I experienced in the past – of wanting to experience something else had almost always led to the consequences of a reality not on par with the desire/illusion. So this time around, I stayed out of the illusions, and directed my participation – seeing just where I was at.

I’ve always perceived my wife and in-laws – such an appropriate word, as being quite traditional, only speaking when there is pertinent information to convey, such as “it's time for dinner, who's going to play mahjong, and so on.” Like most people in my reality, I have little to no idea who they really are or what they are thinking, and these days I don't even try to guess, which is cool because it shows me (in comparison to how I’ve been) that I am letting go of many of the definitions/illusions that I used to carry along within/as me. Usually on the second or third day at the latest (at the family house), I would have found a way to get out of there, go camping, party with friends, etc. This time around, I/we stayed for a full four days because I realized that wherever I go, it's always just going to be me that I have to deal with. And within this understanding, I've come to see more clearly where it is that I am standing, sliding and stalling, and my level of awareness which is the status of my process of peeling off the layers of me to manifest me into a new being.

I've written this over the course of about two weeks, adding, editing, deleting..., and what I've realized is that I have been diligent in stopping/curtailing thoughts, and thus have enjoyed occasional moments. Yet, it was only after I returned home and listened to an Anu interview called, “Deliberately Sabotaging my own process,” that I started seeing some of the finer points of my self-manipulation that slipped by. During and before this New Year Time, I had been focused on the question of: to drink or not drink alcohol. I chose to do both within moderation, observation and self-direction, which worked and it didn't work. It worked in that I did just sip wine and or drink beer in moderation, yet it didn't work in that I had missed the point – the point of trying to hang on to non-supportive relationships, hoping that I could turn around and reassembled into something supportive – part of the new.

• I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to participate within and as apathy to change – defined as stubbornness, believing/hoping that I might change parts of me while at the same time, keeping other parts to me (as in selective relationships) the same. I now see, realize and understand that relationships that are based on fulfilling a want/need/desire/experience instead of on what is best for all, will only prolong this process that I am walking. Perhaps, change is like truth; there is only One and for that to be it must apply equally to all parts of me.
• I forgive myself that I had accepted and allowed myself to decide on a course of action, and instead of writing it out and examining it, kept it to myself. In this particular case, I had decided I would entertain the traditional/annual Chinese New Year relationships, and see how changed the new me was/is. The conclusion is that my change is progressing, yet still incomplete. Within this I forgive myself that I had accepted and allowed myself to not realize that my much of my motivation within all of this was simply, to entertain myself.
• I forgive my that I had accepted and allowed myself to use holidays as an excuse to entertain myself, instead of simply/honestly stating my intentions.
• I forgive myself that I had accepted and allowed myself to not see, realize and understand that what I was experiencing was energy – wants and desires of personalities activating and energizing, and within this that I allowed myself to miss the point of relationships – how they function within/as personalities/mind.
• I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to believe that I would be able to control an alcohol-induced mind demon in my friend, and within this not see, realize and understand the prevailing danger posed by a mind gone physical. I now realize that being around drunken suppressed minds poses substantial risks, and I realize that prevention is probably the easiest form of assistance for all involved.