Memory connects our conscious experience
Through the fabric of time and space.
​By doing so, it gives us a sense of 'reality'.

I was taken out of my body once, by what I can only describe as The Cosmic Smile.

As I was gently pulled out of my body, the green leaves I was looking at turned to grey as all colour of the physical world faded around me.  ‘Don’t take me away from all that I know and love’, was my instinctive, involuntary reaction, as I thought of my family, and nature surrounding me.  Immediately, I was let go, released to return to my ‘reality’.

As I walked away from my car, I felt immediate regret.  I had screwed up what was probably the most profound moment of my life, with petty fear.  ‘Don’t worry’, the loving smile was still with me.  You haven’t screwed up anything, I am here when you are ready.

I could see it everywhere, formless, infinite.  I couldn’t describe it as anything in this world we live in.  It wasn’t white, it had no colour, but if I must compare, maybe misty, like frosted glass.  (But really, none of that).  It wasn’t nothingness.  It was EVERYTHINGNESS.

Looking now at the horrors of my existence, I see the green around me, always beautiful, always.  And my children that I love.  All those I love and care for.  Those are the things worth anything at all.  Looking back, nothing from that moment has changed, in what truly matters to me, what truly resonates with me.
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In a self-consuming world, plants are a living thing that does not need to consume other’s flesh to survive.  I am not saying there is no cruel competition.  I am saying they don’t HAVE TO, to survive and flourish in this world.  And my Bees, my Beautiful Bees.  They suck the nectar from the flowers, their survival enhancing that of the plants, not extinguishing it.  Again, there is cruelty within a hive.  But their survival does not depend on the killing of others, quite the contrary.  Still, even their time is limited.

I saw problems, I saw shocks, I saw destruction, I saw hell.

From the day we arrived and all our belongings were destroyed, destruction was the key event in our new home.  I thought we were dealing with death and rebirth, but as time progresses, all I see is death of all that is budding and new, not just the departure of the old, as we explained it to ourselves.  We have arrived to a cruel place, where punishment is relentless.  Excuses are failing, the dream is becoming a nightmare, and heaven has turned to hell.

People are rich or otherwise, a place that breeds greed and indifference.  Problems are passed onto others, and those that have not are resentful, dishonest, and cruel.  And nature, lovely nature, is relentlessly punishing.
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When so much that matters seems crushed
By a self-consuming world,
Where else do we turn,
But to that which revives our Spirit
And nourishes our Soul.
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I wake up to another day in hell.  Emotional pain is physical, unbearable, horrifying.  I shift from despair to cold fear.  This is not poetic symbolism; this is body and soul terror.  My girls are plagued with flesh consuming parasites again, and I have no way of fixing this, no way of helping them.

I keep praying to a god I do not believe in, for there is nothing I can do.  6 million Jews were terrorised and slaughtered in the holocaust, and no one helped them.  No one will help me, not in this world.  I feel maybe only the truth will liberate me from the trap in which I find myself, but I do not know what this truth is.

I have a recurring dream that I am lost.  In earlier years, I was desperate to get back to my children.  Sometimes I lost them, and couldn’t find them.  Other times I got lost myself, and couldn’t find my way home to them.  Frantic, I would try to get back, waking before we were united.  I would try to get back to the dream, so I could find them, so that we would be together.  Now I am alone, in an unrecognisable terrain.  I have left my home and lost my way, not knowing how to get back, no money, no friends, no helping soul.  The last such dream I had, I made contact with a girl, who helped me some.

And now I am here, my paradise home a paradise no more.  My reality a surreal nightmare.  My truth elusive at best.  Pain and fear crippling, anguish an emotional relief.  How can people fear death when it is the only escape?  A curious end to a puzzling beginning, it serves to lighten the weight of this ‘reality’.

In a self-consuming world we are all predators or prey.  We give birth to our children with love.  We love them still.  We consume and are consumed.  We shift from terror to guilt, to denial when it gets too much.  We choose to believe in higher ground, in a better place, in heaven, in a home.  My perpetual ever returning belief that ‘things will work out’, ‘it’s all for the best’, ‘it’s a blessing in disguise’, and so on, tells me this is not home.  My instinctive return to an inner joy, repeatedly extinguished by the cruelty of this world, revived by a subtle underlying force, like a wound being hacked at again and again within a current of eternal healing, tells me I am misplaced.  My relentless search for happiness is not foolish, it is mismatched with my environment.  I am lost, detached, alone.  Looking around for my truth in a place that does not encompass me is searching for something that resides elsewhere, maybe in the place that I belong.  I need to find my way back home, together with my loved ones, forever.

Life has been fuckin horrific, for the last year and a half or so.  Relentless shocks and blows have left me wounded and traumatised.  Throughout it all, I keep looking for the meaning in it, the ‘meant to be’, the lesson to be learned to come out a better, stronger person.  There comes a time where one must conclude this is all crap.  There is no rhyme nor reason.  There is no higher purpose motivating all the adverse events in our lives, and any perpetual instinct to find one is either the remanence of misguided faith learned in childhood, or evidence that there is something eternally good in us, searching for reflection without and failing repeatedly to find one, evidence that we, indeed, do not belong here.

In a self-consuming world, how can we ever maintain love towards that which we eventually must devour, or that will devour us?  In a place where all my lessons of wisdom have eluded to oneness and acceptance of all, pain and grief only grow and mount relentlessly, as I share in the pain of all that surrounds me.  The only remedy to disconnect, and deny one’s self from one’s own pain and guilt for pain inflicted on others.

This world seems to contradict all that we truly are, and in so doing, inflicts nothing but agony on us.  The mere fact that this hurts is proof, yet again, that we do not belong.  What is natural to us doesn’t cause us pain and suffering.

Is there a reason, a lesson, a higher purpose?  A Deity up there trying to show us something profound through our suffering?  Such a common idea, such a popular belief.  And yet, had we raised our children this way, punishment upon punishment, they would be taken away from us, and we would probably be incarcerated, guilty of abuse. 
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And so, the only true way out is death (or maybe Fruitarianism for all -back to Eden, right?  😊).  Death, and Birth, and Sleep; the enigmas of our existence.  We seem incapable of comprehending infinity, but it is the finality in the detail of our lives that is alien to us.  It is the ‘reality’ that we know, that we cannot comprehend.  I ask myself often why we sleep, where do we go?  It is always such a healing, nourishing escape from this madness.  So why do we keep waking up again?

I don't know if the creation of this page marks the end/failure of my Experiment in Happiness.  I think, ultimately, if we are still here, and still asking/searching, it ain't over yet.  However, we have experienced many months of struggle and difficulty now, and I am hard pressed to justify events (ie, it's for the best, it was meant to be, bla bla...)  Pushing 5 decades of life, and watching everything  that I care about crumble around me, one by one, what feels like repeated punishment for no wrong doing that I can fathom, my faith in an all loving existence runs low.  Further, and ironically, I find myself instinctively looking for the reason for every sour event, expecting to find a reason why it was all for the best, in the end.  This is either a habit learned sometime in my childhood, or some perpetual inner positivity, constantly projecting on every experience, attempting time and again to paint the pain with loving caring colours.  If it is the first, it will pass.  If the second, well, I embrace love and positivity, even in a cruel world.  If such a world cannot negate an otherwise positive soul, that is a good thing.  It also points to the fact that maybe we are not this world.

So with all the turmoil around me, a wounded soul in a wounded world (especially now, where humanity at large seems to be suffering globally, caused or triggered by covid events), pain is in the air, and I find myself thinking again and again about one of my first posts ever: 'Our Place Here', in 'Thoughts'.  Still an outstanding question, and arguably one of the pivotal questions of our physical existence, it is one that demands attention.  To the best of our understanding we exist in a body, in a world that consumes itself, a world in which we literally eat each other to survive.  When I say 'each other' I mean all living beings.  This basic condition to life is in contrast to any experience of caring, sharing, and love.  It  breeds despair and fear, feeding ongoing aggression for survival, despite any natural loving inclination to the contrary.  Nothing good can come of a world that perpetually consumes itself, not when the condition to our existence is anchored in us inhabiting it, in this horror-show encapsulating our awareness.

So why from here to the subject of consciousness?  After contemplating oneness, spirituality, afterlife, the before as well as the after, greater expanded existence, etc, etc, I must conclude that although we know nothing of our true being in the big picture (where do we come from, where are we going, transformation, time and space Vs infinite existence, and all that), our current existence as we experience it is anchored in our consciousness.  We may be affected by infinite elements and aspects of ourselves that we are unaware of, physical and otherwise, but ultimately, what we live and know is what we witness, our conscious self being that witnesses.  Anything else may very well exist and affect us now and always, on every level of being, but we are ignorant to it, partially if not completely, and as such, are rendered unable to help ourselves or liberate ourselves from the pain, in effect, inflicted on us by our current existence.  In other words, goodbye free will, hello hell.

Even as a child I had no patience for lies.  Deceit, self or otherwise is a waste of time.  One thing worse than no hope, is false hope.  We do not need to live in a Greek tragedy.  At least let us  see  things for what they are.  But here's the thing, what are they?  I have no idea.  But at the moment it  seems to me that any answer that aims to nullify or ignore our conscious experience is a waste of time, a lie.  Because it is our conscious being that is suffering, that needs help, that is raising the questions in the first place.  Does the solution lie in changing things?  Is that even possible?  Is the only other solution simply to exit?  (For those of you who believe in re-incarnation, I don't fall into that group, one less thing to worry about... lol ).  Or can it take a different direction.  All that I have learned in the past few years has pointed to internal and external perception of experiences being the key, rather than the experiences themselves.  I'll take it one further: is it about EXPANDING OUR CONCIOUS AWARENESS, to perceive more than what we are perceiving now, and I don't mean a glimpse, I mean ongoing.  In affect, perceiving a different reality.  By doing so, creating a reality in our minds that is different to that we have already created?  Or rediscovering a truth inherent in us, forgotten?  Part of me  tells me if this is a natural part of us, it shouldn't be so hard to return to.  So, what are the things we perpetually return to?  That is an important question that may help us discover CONCIOUSLY who we really are.  Or, it may just be another lie.