Surviving and Integrating

I find that every day I face dealing with the problems of survival—food, money, health, and so on—and I’m constantly asking myself “what am I getting back for all of this foolishness”—I work so I can make money to buy food so I can have energy to work to make money to buy food so I can have energy to work…..Beyond the basic survival instincts, like pulling my hand off a hot stove, I can’t think of any reason to be here if all I get out of it is participating in consensus reality and a stupid north American society that I really don’t want to participate in in any case. Even simple things like eating drive me nuts—why do I have to keep feeding this thing—why can’t my body just be? I find I have to be very careful not to get very self-destructive—normal life, everyone’s goal, everyone’s joy, is a prison for me.

But not in terms of wanting to be somewhere else, because any ‘somewhere else’ looks good until it becomes ‘normal’, and then you’re stuck there again. No, it’s just a matter of not wanting to do this any more, of having seen it a thousand times, and of realizing that you don’t belong here any more. And I think that that’s the key—of outgrowing this world, of seeing it for what it is, so it loses its magic. For me, I know that I won’t be back here again, that this is my last life, and that in this life I’m basically reviewing and integrating everything I’ve learned from being here in god knows how many previous lives. This also means that I’m developing an immunity to the things that have trapped me here in the past. This is all very hard work and I’ve had to go in directions and into areas I never thought I wanted to see. It’s not about renouncing or giving up anything—it’s about recovering all the pieces of yourself that you’ve given to others—whether it’s to your mother or father, or to Hitler, or to Christ. I think that at some point the desire for wholeness becomes as strong as the desire for life,the desire for survival—and I think it’s this desire for wholeness that will get you through tough times even when your desire for life has faded, or when you’re telling yourself in your heart that all this bullshit really isn’t worth the effort. Unfortunately it’s really easy when you get to the tough parts to just give up and walk away, even to give up your life—unfortunately, also, the drive for survival only operates ‘inside’ a life, while the desire for wholeness operates inside your soul—so you’ll keep coming back until you’ve found all your pieces. The desire for life is universal—everything wants to live. And everything wants to be whole—that’s also a universal drive..
 

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