You could call it weak or a weakness but it was one of those unawares moments last night when I lay not fully awake in the middle of the night and my thoughts ran freely.

This thought bubbled up and occured to me in this haze of an unawares: “There’s something missing . . . ” My disciplined and peacefully trained mind quickly took charge and jumped in to end this wayward train before it could careen on somewhere not wanted. I quickly interjected with “yes. I could use more gratitude.”

This may seem small and minor. But, to me, it is as big as a significant mountain of meaning. For this common tendency of us all to always want for more is not where it’s at. It’s not where we are going. It’s not why we are here.

Sober in the morning light I picked up my trusty copy of “Meditations” by Marcus Aurelius (while on other, regular, business) and imbued [sic] on the wisdom from literally the 2nd century. [We literally know because we arbitrarily started the counting!]

I’m going to paraphrase an address to this very concept of a problem, this mental challenge that any well-disciplined and positively inclined mind should be up to, It comes from Book IX, number 6.

Why do we want more? I plead! And more? I implore! And yet more?:

a) Your present opinion founded on understanding

b) Your present conduct founded on public good

c) Your present disposition and positive acceptance and contentment with everything that happens

That is enough.

We truly don’t need more. Of anything. Else.

P.S. We certainly don’t need *conservative* *faith* [If you don’t like this, plead the 2nd on me in your most pious way]

It would be the most disheartening thing ever, and ever possible, if only I chose to allow it to be a disheartening thing or even a thing.

I’m speaking of the tragedy of the vast chasm, that is. The vast chasm that is between what could be and what is.

For all the abundant Christ light and Christ energy there for the asking, there to bless us, any one of us, of any stamp of human life of any imagined or presumed status at all, to bless us without condition.

What could be.

Yet so many are so ready to hitch their wagon of ignorance, fear, nationalist intolerance to the name-drop, the name-cult of ‘Jesus’, in the abject object of advantage to self, obliterate with not even a modicum of awareness to the very real consequences this “lifestyle” “choice” visits unwittingly upon so many of our fellow sojourners.

What is.

It was all very theoretical before. Amusing theoretical, schadenfreude amusing, for the sadist tinge in us humans who are amused – and all are to varying degrees, some much more than others. But I watched, bemused to a degree, this theory fester for forty years into what it is now, no longer mere theory but hypothesis of a kaleidoscope of individual meanings, with the general agreement that somehow or other it is western liberal democrats who are the undisputed evil champions of the world to be defeated like Satan under the feet of Archangel Michael.

Oh yeah, life goes on. Long after the thrill of the amusement of schadenfreude is gone.

Now the theory is become alternate reality. Now we all have ring-side seats to the reality show of the slow-boil destruction of America by the Worst Generation, the so-called cabinet which is a junk drawer, pretending to the moral supremacy of the puritans and the founding fathers, gun rights enshrined ‘ablazing. The wet dream of the KGB.

It would be the most disheartening thing ever, and ever possible, if only I chose to allow it to be a disheartening thing or even a thing.

I’m speaking of the tragedy of the vast chasm, that is. The vast chasm that is between what could be and what is.

Postscript:

Ne nothi tere te

Or, in the fictional piggish Latin version:

Nolite te bastardes carborundorum

This thing you might think of, react to, and shake your head off the swivel to as “me” is patently not me. This frail human transient vessel.  I wouldn’t pay it any mind.  Nor should you.  Same for any human.  Same for any possible guru.  It is only in the slightest blink of the quickest eye against the theoretical measure of eternity that this frail human transient vessel is relevantly occupied by an eternal spirit.

Thoughts upon seeing and hearing a prominently-placed Texas woman crow about bible study in a public national forum:

Because I know they weren’t “studying” beatitudes. Nor were they studying the mystical parts of the Gospel of John (preferring, those people, the prevalent anti-semitic more enticing parts instead). Nor the meditative, yogic, experiential underpinnings, deep-structured underlying paradigm of the missives of Saint Paul (preferring, those people, the harsh, unyielding, political discourse and doctrine of empire and misogyny that the missives anon became ghost-written instead). Because such diligent performative “study” wounds, indeed intends to wound, the heart and pierces the body in multiple places attempting to alter the soul.

Because I know that nothing of their doctrinal intent can touch the soul – I am joyful where I should be demoralized in their systemic well-rehearsed attempt to break me in order to build me back up, morph my soul, transition my very identity with their bargains and ransoms, “improving” and “saving” me with their lifestyle. They take such parasitical cosmic ecstasy in recruiting to their strength-in-numbers lifestyle.

My soul is spiritual cosmic and eternal. I am awakened to this experience of truth. Hence I am filled with joy instead. I am sorry I am joyful thus to negate their intended meaning. But I’m not sorry. I am truly joyful.

How willful do you want to be?

How trusting can you learn to be?

These are the two basic eternal questions.  Spiritual evolution brings us through crucible after crucible in all karmic predicament after karmic predicament to the correct answers:  a) zero, nil, not at all and b) 100%, all, completely.

The journey is indescribably long and consists of a series of eternal moments of now.  But awakened awareness can indeed hasten significantly the inevitable change.  All are on the journey to the same destination and it is not a race.

Still, we all must be!  So be awoke!

Spirits conjoined! non-matter to non-matter

Nothing and no one on earth is worth the desiring.

Accept all that happens to you with gratitude and trust in everything that “happens to you”. For it has divine purpose. Everything previously thought of as “good” or “bad” especially to exceeding degrees is actually a blessing in divine purpose.

This, I know, is extremely counterintuitive to the degree of appearing asinine, and I can almost visualize the concrete real-world counter-examples piling up in the store of your mind.

Except this: in the long-haul of a single lifetime, consider all the “bad” things in your life that have contained a hidden blessing that you have come to be grateful for. It isn’t always hard to imagine. Some might even agree. Blessings are oft disguised in the mask of the stranger. Stranger things have happened. Yet, over the course of the long-haul of a million lifetimes there is no question: everything is divine. Absolutely everything has a purpose with divinity and blessing part and parcel with that purpose. So trust everything that happens, I say. Be grateful for it all.

Gratitude begets joy and joy begets more easily identifiable blessing, believe it or not. (Or else don’t believe me).

And the only other thing we need do besides trusting everything is this: love everybody regardless of all the conditioned conditions we have been so thoroughly conditioned to make conditional.

The fact is that no woman needs a man in any of the ways in which a chauvinist might think, believe, or “know”.

Accepting this fact is the key to enacting change for better.

Assuming the opposite (chauvinism) is the root of all problems between women and men. (And in society, in a larger sense).

I am spirit to be happy.
What comes around goes on.

To be sure.
I am still.

I am created spirit for joy.
Deep reality is spiritual.

No one *has* a soul. Everyone is a soul.