Writing well is the best revenge.

            Lately my past has come back to haunt me, particularly in terms of people who imposed themselves on me when I neither had boundaries nor knew how to set them. Now they pretend that they knew me. But if they were actually reading the blog, they would notice that the person I was is the person I am, but that they had no knowledge whatsoever of who that person was then, just as they have no knowledge of who this person is now, even though the blog makes it apparent post by post. All they remember is their power of imposition, a presumption, today, that will get them in serious trouble.

            I knew who I was, but I couldn't trust it. So, even when people sneaked into my notebooks back then, they would have had no knowledge of what it signified. My only real life was the process, but the moment of the process was never the whole. And it was only near the whole in terms of the moment of my process, a process that I never revealed to anyone, since I couldn't grasp it as the whole. It was the thread of light. Once or twice I got to a clear enough space to assume that I could make a whole statement. And certainly, in terms of the piece I had at the moment, I could. But if I have a burning residual anger at academe, it comes out of those moments of presentation, since invariably, in my innocence, I thought intellectual labels meant something.
            I never tried to present it to friends, except in the most abstract terms. I couldn't talk about how it was integral in my life, the ground of my process. As conversation it was, 'There's that. Now let's toke up or go to the bar.'
            But the integral is my life, my person. And now that it's all in one place, I'm all in one place. Only those who were receptive and not imperative had any inkling. And, even today, I barely need two fingers to count them.

            Any public presentation today is a risk, now that people have this vicious and idiot sense of anonymity, of invisibility. That, and the absolute partiality of their lives makes them worse than savages, twisted sociopaths who feel fully self-righteous and self-justified, engaging in transactions tantamount to spiritual murder while sitting at home with their tight little smug smiles, as if what they were doing were cute and comic rather than homicidal and emotionally cannibalistic.
            But, of course, it is precisely the measure of the lack of any legitimate spiritual base in the culture. And spirit alone is not enough. Spirit alone is not the value of the moment, but only the halo around the value of the moment - its aura, so to speak. It's why 'be here now' made a fine slogan and a lousy practice. Where's the value? And so, after we've run around after all the external icons, whether it's God or drugs or yoga or vipasana or vajrayana or dzogchen or astrology or est or whatever, we say, well there's really no value, only the moment - back where we started from. But the one thing we don't say is, 'I am the moment of value. What value is this.' This is probably where the 'What is it' of Zen first took shape.
            Because, you see, if I am the value, if this moment is the moment of my value, then I have to take responsibility. I can't sit behind the tinted windows in my suv with the system cranked up pretending that nobody can see me. And I can't sit at my computer in the actual unreality of 'virtual reality' and pretend to be some set of values that I espouse externally but cannot realize from within. And therefore I cannot sit at my computer and dis others from my own dreamworld pretensions about myself.
            I have to stand before the moment of the value that I am as the great mystery. When I have humility before the moment of my own value, the value reveals itself.
            But don't assume that it's like a prescription drug - 'take this two times a day for a week and you'll be all better.' The same sense of invisibility prompts the faith in instant cures and overnight panaceas. If I am nothing, all I need is something. I am only my judgment, therefore whatever I judge to be wholly good can cure me instantly, instantly fill me completely. What arrogance!

            You have X amount of time. If you're still breathing, you can start. It's never too late.
            But, in the meantime, if you need to dump your twisted sociopathic impulses, focus on Brad Pitt or Angelina Jolie. Or better still, get some help.

- Jeremy