art, travel, life
Things are coming to fruition and it’s a wonderful feeling. Things are coming full-circle. I feel like I’m having a beautiful first-hand experience of watching something grow and finally begin to bear fruit – of closely observing an organic process. Slow growth. Slow and steady, I keep telling myself.
I feel good – I feel full. I feel like I did the right thing. Somewhere along the line I made a decision that sat well with me – that was an act of kindness to myself. An act of nurturing myself.
I have this great fear that everything is totally empty. Cardboard cities – empty of meaning. Nothing is real. For some reason, this meaninglessness comes through most strongly at night.
I remember experiencing this while having drunken late-night conversations with friends in Singapore. Looking up at empty buildings in downtown Kyoto. On a bus approaching New York City – in motion, seeing the bright lights of the Manhattan skyline. Beautiful, yet empty. Empty, yet beautiful.
Somehow on a plane you become a lot more aware of how brittle our reality is. In the next moment you could be…
I remember when I was a child I used to lie on the sofa with my head touching the ground and imagine that reality was upside down. I used to imagine myself walking on the ceiling. After a while I’d get dizzy & sit up normally again. I would just be really amazed at how strange reality was – were 3D objects really ‘real’? I always thought there was a certain hollowness to them.
Now I can go and I have no desire to return.
The desire to return, the conditioned thought patterns are really what pull us back. But it’s okay because we want to experience desire. And we finally depart when we have truly had enough of it. It’s important to be honest.
Strange, floating world of illusion.
Every single time I directly experience reality, I get the sense that it is not real. A certain solidity is absent. The whole world is a mirage & it, too, will pass. All of this will pass.
Thoughts running through my mind: I actually enjoy being here on planet Earth. It isn’t perfect, but there’s something for me to work with – a good base upon which I can build and create. And I can experience and I can simply enjoy what it feels like to be alive.
Think constructively.
Think about what can be done.
Think about what can be enjoyed.
Think about how easy love is to access.
Feel love.
Engage life.
Even if life is not perfect – I am happy to have it. I am grateful for the ability to hear music in this moment.
It’s nice feeling love again.
It’s nice to just be.
It’s nice to be in the process of finding my way back home.
Greyfriars Kirk, Scotland
Love doesn’t hurt – it’s certain conditioned thoughts and feelings that crop up in association with it that really do. Like the idea that it might never happen again, or that I don’t deserve it, or that it will be taken away from me soon. It’s those beliefs that really hurt me.
Leaving Manhattan
Like when I think about those really perfect times I had in New York – I’m not depressed thinking about them, in fact I feel really invigorated and inspired that I actually experienced such amazing things in my life. But I get really upset when the thought occurs to me that I might never experience those things again. And that’s really such a ridiculous thought. Why would I not continue to experience wonderful things in life?
So it’s really these strange, associated thoughts which accompany every thought or feeling of joy, happiness or love. These conditioned beliefs and patterns which crop up saying “this won’t last” or “this is too good to be true”. These are the beliefs I let go of more and more every day.
I know love. I have always known it. And my life will continue to be full of it. Because it is a really a decision more than anything else – to open up and let it flow through me. Because life expands outward and there is no going back. There is only further expansion into more and more – more of the universe, more of love, more of God.
