So, to the point of whether a forum is going to help anyone become free; not if you are reading this thread. 
I want to prove myself to the standards of this ‘world’.
But, I remember that young me. With a smile on my face. With the world still bright and full of possibilities.
I remember him dancing wildly to a bunch of old records on a antique record player.
I remember him being fascinated.
I remember him loving people. Forgiving them.
I remember him admiring the distant and seemingly adventurous father he had. His own personal Han Solo.
I remember the sexual abuse.
I remember imagining it would be better to be a girl.
I think of all those I tried to save. The schizophrenic homeless people that went to the inner city church I grew up in.
The prostitutes. The addicts that would come and go.
The belief that God could heal people.
The gnawing self doubt that I wasn’t making the grade.
I used to admire depression too. Peter said he listened to his old records one last time before selling them off because he knew they did nothing but glorify pain. I’m paraphrasing an unreliable memory of course.
Maybe it’s time to let you go. Consider ‘I’ nothing but a memory. Today there is just a body who has awareness and sensuousness and intelligence. Call him Andrew. When ‘I’ haunts the body from time to time, remember how ‘I’ is no longer valid. Andrew doesn’t need it. Andrew lives here. Here is a lot nicer anyways.
I think so too.
There is this “proper” narrative which I feel compelled to conform to.
A tragic poem. An epic saga.
It feels so meaningful.
Everything I ever admired I am.
How can someone with 35 million in the bank put a shotgun in their mouth?
That’s not me of course. But… I get it.
To fulfil the legend. To fulfil the scriptures.
I find it so terrifying.
Vineeto didn’t talk with Richard for two years after that video.
He said it’s beyond terror.
I always had this imagination of a dramatic cathartic event.
It’s a template. Something I believe in with all my soul.
I appreciate the reply @JonnyPitt
I don’t want to fail my sons.
Leave them with this disgusting tragedy of manhood.
For sure, your sons are human too. They don’t want to live without their father and with the baggage of his suicide. Not a considerate thing to do at all. Don’t let the past and future make you forget that. There are nice things to focus on. Things happening now. And things to look forward too. Even the looking forward to those nice things is nice. A lot of nice things. Your mood can be nice too
I feel that only in seeing that I am the “horror with eyeballs” that I have the softness towards them.
I work with my middle son now. Have for a few months.
After last Wednesday, I hug him many times a day at work. I don’t care what anyone thinks.
I don’t care whatever it is I am meant to be teaching him.
This morning, I went up to the director who had been so helpful to me on the phone last Wednesday and hugged her. Told her I missed her. ( She had been away on holidays in Bali I found out).
Although I can’t shake the alcoholism yet, I feel devoted to my fellow humans. I wouldn’t want them to suffer on account of me.
The terror is there though. Being alive or being dead is terrifying to me these days.
The highlight of my day is the 8 minutes on my electric scooter to and from the office. Feeling that boyish freedom of launching off the curb, getting my balance back and feeling my ability to face uncertainty with the skill of a child-like bravado.
it doesn’t have to be limited to the commute. I wouldn’t ride while intoxicated though.
Alcoholism is tough. Mainly because of the hangovers. They really fuck up with your next day. Meetings might help. A replacement drug like weed might help.
Essentially, I am not going through anything unique to me, in the sense of having nothing to hope for. It’s just I was holding on to hope for longer than some do.
The hole I must step out of is despair. Which was what the hope was there to cover over.
I do have to be willing to let go of the glorification of despair.
It was extremely “cool” in my generation to despair. It’s not so cool now, for a 47 year old. Indeed, it was those of the previous generation trying to make out to make a buck off the young, that glorified the despair to begin with.
However, having been on this trajectory during the formation of my adult identity, which built on the eschatological nihilism of my childhood self, which itself was formed from all pervasive conviction that someone is to blame for “sin”, leaving it behind has been obviously difficult.
It’s not like I haven’t seen all of this before.
However, there is no question that whilst the cause of despair is the human condition, the reinforcement of it’s grip is all around me.
I am fortunate to be here in a liberal democracy, with both geography and a powerful alliance keeping the worst of that grip (war) away.
It’s certainly a luxury to sit here in such safety.
In short, what I am going through is the culmination of the gods I held dear being seen for the travesty they are.
The recycling of one generations angst onto the next.
I had a great day today. I didn’t intend on “investigating” yesterday, it was more lamenting, but it seems that the conclusion of “letting go of the glorification of despair” actually hit the mark.
It feels like just the seeing of what I was doing, may have moved my mood away from that dark place.
4 Likes
“ Vineeto didn’t talk with Richard for two years after that video.”
May I ask what you are referring to?
The PCE video. I believe.
There was a time when it terrified her so much, that she avoided Richard.
She may have written about it, or it may have been something we talked about in person.
In the spirit of sharing when things are going good;
I had a wonderful afternoon (Sunday) yesterday.
I lay in the winter sun, in my back yard and snoozed. It was one of the loveliest things I have done in years.
Just me, in my jocks on a couple of old sun deck chair cushions I had rescued from the side of the road last year.
I went to the gym. Really enjoyed it.
Didn’t drink any alcohol. Certainly didn’t touch mushrooms.
I made a decision; that it was worth sticking around just to see what happens in the world. It maybe the worst show (the wars, and whatever), but just like a bad movie, sometimes it’s just worth watching to the end. Who knows?
Also you can do the best you can to make it the best show! And you know what the best you can do is 
Indeed. 
The future is a space we can enjoy doing things now.
Had another lovely day.
On my own.
Another sun bath.
I was reflecting, whilst stretched out in the back yard on my second hand sun deck cushions, what I had learnt about solar radiation.
I was enjoying being literally bathed all the way through by the sun. The knowledge that certain spectrums of light were literally going right through me, through everything in me, all the muscle and bone, every organ.
To be bathed.
Not something that is truly “solid”. Something that the surface is absolute.
The feeling of the sun going straight through my skin, muscle, bone.
Being bathed more intimately than water.
The gym was great.
3 Likes
Trauma bonding.
I can’t stop thinking about my ex. Even though we never had anything close to what I would describe as my ideal relationship.
What I suspect is that due to my own upbringing, with an extremely damaged and distant father, I have always been drawn to damage. I imagine that the answer is that damage will one day turn around and nurture me.
I am not an actualist, or an actualiser; for that to be the case, I would need something to actualise.
I am a romantic.
Moved by the idea that damage can be undone by some profound moment of connection.
It can’t.
I am as flawed as my mother; dreaming she can love a man back into health and happiness.
Watched again “Shawshank Redemption”.
So many moments of incredible writing and directing, cinematography, acting.
Each character has a moment when redemption is possible. Yet only two end up taking it.
I am hesitant to do anything, yet, the line “get busy living, or get busy dying” has to be the most powerful writing in human history.
To live, one has only a moment. To die, only a moment. The immediacy of the future is now.
I dream now of studying. Of studying genetics. Of extending my life and making humans immortal. Yet, I could die any second. A heart attack, brain aneurysm, random meteorite.
This is what has held me back. I just can’t stand the thought of losing everything, yet it’s all forfeit anyway.
Even if I rock up to my first lecture, and die, isn’t that better than doing nothing at all?
What you are referring to here is the ‘present moment’, the blink and you’ll miss it slither of existence sandwiched between the past and the future, ‘you’ are always at risk of running out of those hence there is always a desperation of sorts.
But the thing to actualise is this eternal moment which can never run out, it is not ‘a’ moment that one has, it is something that is forever here. The difference is monumental, it is 180 degrees opposite.
If this is actualised then there is no more race to slot in as many moments as possible, because it is no longer possible to run out of time.
I remember reading Richard mention how life and death are not opposites, birth and death are, life is what happens in between - life happens in the arena of this eternal moment.
Although I think this is tricky to grasp unless one has a solid memory of a PCE. I have quite a solid memory of this being the case although I am still stuck in a similar drama to you! 
Basically I am aware of the fact that I could die any moment and yet I am putting off living fully now - funnily enough I am putting off living fully now due to the fear of death one day.
And as long as this is my MO there will be that desperation to slot in as many moments whilst waiting for death to come anyways!
The bottom line seems that ‘I’ must truly embrace death in order to live fully now - how odd!
This really seems to be it, I have never seen it from this angle before, it’s quite incredible to contemplate for an entity who has spent his entire existence escaping death. What an odd thing to do to embrace it, yet I can see that it is the doorway to freedom. The thing I have been escaping the most is the doorway to freedom. Has anyone ever mentioned that this actual freedom business can get weird?!? 
I had this taste of what it must be like for the actually free, for they are no longer opposed to death. And I can see that living in that place there could be no more drama at all. It is that last frontier that has to be penetrated in order to be free.
@geoffrey and @Srinath are you guys actually just chilling around with death no longer being a ‘thing’ ? That is enormous to contemplate.
3 Likes