Cultivating Joy

Hola Everybody!
I’ve been busy working around the new apartment. It seems that things need to be organized. I haven’t had time to write, so it’s repost time…

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I've come to a point in my life that I'm actually fine with where I’m at: the work, the relationships, the, as Zorba the Greek would say: The full catastrophe! I love life -- all of it -- the good and the bad, all of it! Fact is, today I can feel, and that wasn’t always the case.

At one time in my life I couldn’t take it anymore: I went to sleep cursing a paternalistic God and asking the very poignant question: if there really is a God then be merciful and don’t let me wake the fuck up, motherfucker! I went to sleep in misery and would awaken to a day I cursed. Some days it was all I could do to get up from the bed. My existence was filtered through this misery and life really sucked people! LOL!

Really sucked!

It got to the point where I started giving a lot of thought on taking myself “out the count,” as they say in Sing Sing. But my attempt at suicide was almost comical – it didn’t work out – and I walked away from that miracle thinking I couldn’t even get that right. I kept thinking that with my luck, I would fail at killing myself and end up a paraplegic and miserable, so I went about doing things in the hopes someone else would take me out the count, but that failed too. I once grabbed the barrel of a gun, put it to my forehead, and begged the young man who had threatened me with it to kill me. “You’d be doing me a big favor, motherfucker – just make sure you kill me!”

He pulled the trigger and the gun jammed!

This was in broad daylight in the middle of the summer in a really bad neighborhood. Freaked him out! LOL! I was like – come back motherfucker! Finish the fucking job! This is true people, I’m not making any of this up, it happened. It wasn’t that I was brave or anything like that, it was that I honestly didn’t care whether I lived or not – death by any means would’ve been a welcomed option at that time.

Eventually, something would happen that would bring me to the abyss of total complete, utter surrender and it was in defeat that I caught a glimpse of what life could be. No angels, no burning bushes, I didn’t become a born again Christian spouting bible quotes or anything like that. But my life changed – little by little. You see, I had several options that one day I was brought to my knees: I could kill myself or if I were to choose life, then I had to find out how to live it skillfully because I didn’t know what the fuck I was doing.

It was in the realization that I didn’t have the answers and the stark reality of my total defeat that I came to see the possibility of a different worldview – a possibility, however slight – of some measure of happiness. At that point in time, I became open and in going into that abyss, I found infinity, not emptiness.

My life is full today, but I had a long road and being the hardheaded motherfucker that I am, I was taken kicking and screaming into this process of liberation.

Why write all this, you must be wondering. I put it out here because I was fortunate and I feel a responsibility for carrying one message: hope. The message is that anyone can have what I have, but you can’t let it depend on external factors. If your happiness depends on a person, place, or thing, then you’re bound to be disappointed. We will never have enough of possessions, material or otherwise, we will never have the perfect situation, the universe will not conform to our desires (thank “God”!). If we depend on something other than our divine inner essence for happiness, we will be miserable motherfuckers.

There’s a lot of sadness going around folks and one of my precepts is to hold back on my complete liberation until we all get it right, but I’m getting fucking tired! LOL! Do the work people, reach out to others, re-connect, become like a child in your wonder because no matter how fucking smart you think you are, if you were so fucking smart, if you really have seen and done it all, then what the fuck are you doing here reading this bullshit? It you’re so fucking smart and it’s everyone else’s fault that you’re unhappy and then why aren’t you on some beach getting your shit off?

Shut the fuck up!

We live in a world where it behooves the powers that be that we stay disconnected, leading isolated lives of quiet desperation in which we try to fill the abyss with “toys.” Fuck being in love! Why don’t you try being love for once in your life?

It’s a lot more fun, really! And the rewards are beyond your wildest imagination.

I know this.

Love,

Eddie