a curtain reveal today.

 A while back I was feeling sort of like a duck out of water. I have so many friends that fall into the traditional spiritual/christian block that I often am very limited with conversations with people who are thinking outside tradition and really in this world to think and discover new ideas  and to find out for themselves what it all means rather than traditional thinking which is really not pro thinking. The bad thing that supposed Adam and Eve did was eat from "The tree of knowledge" which pretty much sets up religion based on the lore that you aren't suppose to question and think for yourself. So I had made mention to the flow/the universe that I was aching to have someone that I could bounce new ideas, revelations or concepts on and they could do the same with me. I was sitting outside the hall today and I realized that quietly and without notice, someone I knew for 2 years had slipped into the role that I had asked the universe for. He is someone  I would have never imagined becoming close friends with because my assumption that we were so different, and I was wrong, as so often when we "assume". I felt so warm and cared for when I realized my request had not only been granted but it was filled simply by sliding one of my acquaintences into full on friend role. We are not the same in any way except he has the same gnawing desire to learn and question and live and share and he knows that life without spirit is no life at all. Such a lovely suprise.

The blur that is my history, what was real and what was real fucked up.

I had a girl talk today and she mention how almost immediately her friends complained about the change that came over her the minute she began to use drugs, then I read a story online of a young woman who was laying in bed her head dizzy with the fact she had just finally lost her virginity. When she mentioned it to her party partner and bed mate that she was excited about losing her virginity finally. He looked at her and said, "I'm not sure what your talking about we had sex two nights ago".  She had not been away there naked fooling around had actually turned in to real sex because she was to drunk. The blur, the fuzz that envelops me when I use distorts EVERYTHING. Nothing about me functions normally, I perceive nothing normally , all my thoughts and feelings and emotions are warped. Upside down and backward is my normal diseased being. Even now when I experienced certain things I have to run it by someone else to make sure I am perceiving it correctly. When I look at my past, I must now be aware that I am seriously looking at it through fun house goggle.

How I know I am human

I was a really good Clinton Gandy imposter for most of my life. I was good at knowing the perfect thing to say, whether it was real or made up on the spot. What you thought of me mattered me than what I thought of me and no matter how much that you like me, I knew something you didn't. You didn't know me at all so it was all very empty. I read a book that uses the word "parody" in it. I come from theatrical roots so I was more than familiar with the term, but I had never associated it with my personal life. That's what I was , I was a parody. I was an exaggerated version of a character loosely based on myself. I was a good copy of a poor original, a good production of a really bad play.
I'm better now. On most days, I don't allow you to write the story of my life and certainly don't wait for you to put value on my existence. These days I am actually finding my own value, my own strengths and my own ideas of what makes my life worth living. I know who I am when no one is looking. I"m the most authenic version of myself than I have ever been and i suspect no reason to not believe I can only get "truer" as I live a life based on love, service, compassion and forgiveness of myself and others.

If these thoughts to provoke/inspire you, well, you are dead inside. lol

"There are two emotions: love and fear." — Iyanla Vanzant 

"You can accept or reject the way you are treated by other people. But until you heal the wounds of your past, you are going to bleed." — Iyanla Vanzant 

"We have a tendency to always test people's love. 'I want to see how badly I have to behave before you'll leave me. Because I don't really think you want me anyhow.'" — Iyanla Vanzant 

"You are never angry for the reason you think you are. There's an older hurt under that."
— Iyanla Vanzant 

"My favorite definition [of forgiveness] is giving up the hope that the past could be any different."
— Oprah 

"Create what you want as opposed to being stuck in what you didn't have." — Iyanla Vanzant 

"The best students get the hardest lessons." — Iyanla Vanzant

"Our beliefs become the rules we live by, and then here's what happens: We make ourselves right." — Cheryl Richardson 

"Affirmation plus action equals miracles." — Cheryl Richardson 

"Every word you speak and every thought you think is an affirmation for your future."
— Cheryl Richardson 

"Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, and not our darkness, that frightens us."
— Marianne Williamson, quoted during the webcast by Oprah 

"The key belief—Gary Zukav said this many years ago—the key belief is whether or not you believe the universe is a compassionate and loving place. ... I would have to say, I believe that no matter what, no matter what difficulty, no matter what dark hour befalls me ... there's a rainbow in the cloud." — Oprah 

"If you want a divorce, you're already alone. Because ... you're married to a person you don't want to be with." — Martha Beck

"When you don't show up as who you are, people fall in love with who you're not. Then when they find out who you are, that's when they leave." — Iyanla Vanzant 

"Just give yourself permission to tell the truth to yourself." — Iyanla Vanzant 

"Stay in your car in your lane on your road in your world. Stay in your own lane. Don't be minding other people's spiritual business. Stay in your car. In your lane. On your road. In your world." — Iyanla Vanzant 

"That's ... what Gary Zukav says about authentic power: Authentic power [is] when the personality comes to serve the energy of your soul."—Oprah 

"Very often as adults we still behave like we can't say this. We can't do that. We can't ask for this. ... We deal with people as if we're children who don't have the right to speak up. Deal adult to adult." — Iyanla Vanzant 

"Love people enough to tell them the truth. And respect them enough to know that they can handle it." — Iyanla Vanzant 

"If you start from the place of being grateful—this is what I love when I keep a gratitude journal, trying to do at least five things in a day that I'm grateful for—it means you look at the day differently." — Oprah 

"You are the only one who gets to say what goes on in your life. And when you say something—that this is going to go on in my life—[and] then it doesn't work, you get to say something else. ... Make another choice in another moment." — Iyanla Vanzant 

"Life gives you an endless supply of do-overs." — Iyanla Vanzant

Grateful, Lucky Lucky Bastard.

Why is it that humans, specifically this human are so god damn resistant to change. Stuff that doesn't change eventually dies away so it's really a matter of accept it now on my terms or accept it later when there is no choice.

Today is my very last visit with the psych doctor who has treated me for nearly 15 years. Financially it isn't possible to continue and more than that I feel like he has opened every door for me, at least a crack for me to do the work and push them open then walk right through them. He hasn't been the only source of open  doors for me but consistently he has been the most, well, consistent. It's cool what happens when willingness meets instruction and opportunity. I have gone from a depressed bipolar mess who insisted on trying the next newest miracle pill to someone who has to fight the urge to tell depressive friends, "That new pill your excited about isn't going to do for you what you want it to".  I'm actually kind of anti-meds now. I'm especially anti-meds when I hear someone who thinks the pill alone will heal their life.  Make no bones about it, if the day comes the pill comes out that will fix all my brokenness , I will be the first in line. lol  All those meds can do is adjust the intricate chemicals and juices in the head that put me on even ground enough to have a fighting chance and making better choices and to un-knot the knots of my diseased thinking and backwards feelings.

I've got a lot of medical and spiritual tools in my bag that are traceable back to my monthly meeting DFM.  He never asked me to be anywhere but in the moment and really examine what was happening as it was happening. For people like me who are depressive and living in the past or fearful or catapulting into the future,  Momentarianism- the land of living presently with thought is the perfect to built a house of wellness.

People make entrances and exits in our lives daily, some for a reason and some for a season. The fact that I have had a consistent agent of compassion and change in my medical life and my life of spirit for a decade and a half puts me in the "Lucky Bastard" category and also in the category of "Grateful Bastard".

I knew the look in her eyes, it was fear she couldn't disguise

A few minutes before time for a meeting to start I saw a tiny slip of a woman put her hands above her eyes to peer into the meeting hall. I smiled and motioned for her to come in. She was my mother, she was my friend's mother she was every addicts mother who had came to the end of their rope and just went out searching. Searching for help, searching for a hand, searching for a voice that would tell her that there was still a possibility that her fears wouldn't be confirmed. The fear her only child would die from addiction is what brought her to 3713 today. The only information I had for her was that a Naranon meeting would take place at 6:30 at the hall she was at and that there were people who knew where she stood. There she would find understanding and a way to deal with loving an addict whether or not he ever gets clean or if he chases the rock to a brutal senseless end. I gave her the NA.org website and assured her there were thousands of parents out their with a recovery plan of their own and that if her son ever wanted to come to another meeting she could call me and I would meet him there. This is real fucking life, unfolding under my very nose and I have spent most of the day consumed in my own  psychodrama starring myself. If I prayed I would pray for her, instead I am redirecting positive energy her way. What a bold, brave woman. No man or woman opens the door to recovery without facing down a million fears.  My human bowl is fuller this moment for my interaction with her. Heartbreak in her voice, fear in her eyes and hope, (though she did not see it) that there was something inside the sad gray walls of this building that could save her son. Color me touched.

Time for change but how?

Things in my living situation are about to boil over, or i am about to boil over. I know I need to change some things but I have no clue as to how to go about it. How do you get THERE from HERE? I was sitting in the tub just now and I realized I had my face buried in the washrag for an extended time, not moving and loud thoughts banging against my temples. After 20 years of therapy , treatment and a butt load of self help books the first thoughts that came to my mind were, "your trapped, the only way out is to kill yourself". I actively told my head that was a lie and that everyday i sit in meetings with people who change their situations all the time. That was the voice of illness telling me that living a life I would enjoy filled with the freedom that should come with being a grown man would never be mine, that I was incapable of living a clean grown up life. I know there is a life out there, I know I am doing real , good work moving toward it but as far as the real steps I need to take to get there are a mystery. I can stay clean, I know how to do that but how do I get my car fixed, find work and get a place to live in order to get away from my fucked up sister and the mother who depends on me not to grow up?

Creative intention of manifestation

There is a specific creative intention behind my manifestation on this planet. Just as dogs are meant to dogs, roses are meant to be roses, I am meant to be what I am. The only way I can fulfill the creative intention behind to me is to be myself and to honor the things that make me special and unique. My life is  not mean to be filled with crap I think is necessary/bells and whistles. As long as I am true to who I am, which is a loving, gentle , funny human ,I am a success at my own intention. The rest of it is extraneous bits of ego trying to tell me "this is who you are" "you need to look like this", "you need this car" "what they think matters". The spirit must be free of the ego and it's attempts at high jacking creative intention for egoic identification to nothings.

love

love

I caught the last 5 minutes of the update "Unsolved Mysteries today. There was a jewish man who was 14 when the concentration camp was liberated. He ran into a young soldier who gave him food. Overcome the kid dropped to his Knees and held onto the young soldiers leg. The soldier stroked his shaved head and kept telling him over and over that it would be ok.

The grown up man recalls the story and broke down in tears when the soldier touched him, hugged him. He smelled, he was covered in lice but the soldier didn't care. He just had this moment with this kid. He got rations for the boy and the others and he was never seen again.

I want to be the soldier. I want to touch, to hug and to love people that think they are too dirty for such human touch. It is like a magnetic pull in the core of my chest to love like this. I don't know how it's going to happen but I feel like it is. Not only was I born this way, my life of not feeling love is my greatest teacher on what people need and how to give love to them in a way they can feel.

In '82 when I went to the dentist, it was the first time Universal Health Precautions had started and I remember feeling like I was to dirty for the dentist to touch. The rubber gloves freaked me out. I knew exactly what he meant when he was taken by surprised someone was willing to touch him. It's a struggle for me to feel worthy of touch, but I have no problem at all giving love. My problem is receiving it without becoming nauseous.