possibly related
I have been struck recently by the earthly end of Michael Stone. He believed he needed (and maybe he did) the narcotic ease of street opiates, needed to try to calm the hurricanes inside him, and laced, the self-meds killed him, coma then a turning off the machines and bodymind left us for this ever.
He said about this in 2015: "It can be hard to admit even to ourselves that there are times when the stability of awareness that we discover in [meditation] just isn’t there. When this started happening I’d say my practice needs to get deeper. But the truth is, there was a chemical change in my brain." Lion's Roar and Carina's words
Whatever finally balanced state we need to survive abandoned him, left him tossed about like a bouncie house in a tornado. "Taking care of his extreme mental states became a full-time job" for him.
Michelangelo was afflicted with extremes, and Charles Dickens, and probably 2/3 of the crazily productive geniuses we revere over time. I suspect, though, that Rumi and Hafiz were able to find a Truer Heart to reside in, and that's the point of this essay.
The journey in is a journey back to Source, back to Mother Father Creator, back Home. As such, it is a journey of needs, the need to return.
The journey out is a journey of desires and rejoicing, it is Love's will living through each of us, b/c that's how it works.
Love, and do what you will.
Love, and you will be so at Home, so aligned w/ Love that your every action will affirm Life, will celebrate Creation, will go so far beyond "Do No Harm" that we will marvel at how limited we've allowed ourselves to become.
I fear that Michael Stone missed Love at the center of his and all Creation. He was mighty close, but the mania propelled him so rapidly that like any wheel screaming around off-center, wobble and catastrophe follow if slowing down is not possible.
For me must come to the Still Point, the Living Moment of Arrival over and over again in all directions, for there Is nothing else.
Is'ness can only exist in the present moment, in this particular place where you or i might be right now.
The journey is not one of arduous ascension, it is one of instantaneous return, the perfect dwelling in Heart of Love.
This Truth has been known and witnessed and sung about ever since people first felt Awe.
Please take away this, if nothing else from these words. The path is short, the steps are simple. You, by being human, are almost there by birth. You are one step away, from your own Heart. Take that simple step, and do what you will, you and Love.
What confuses all this is how far we feel ourselves to be distant from Love. This fiction is accelerated and amplified at every turn by malicious beings, many of them human, who seek to gain very temporary advantage over other human beings, through force, and vile might.
Some might is Good, as are all actions that stem directly from the Heart. But when one's "center" is far from Heart, far from Love, the wobbling and the turning are like rivers getting pissy and smashing logs into rocks. That is probably an apt metaphor, for i'm sure the river didn't feel it had a lot of choice in whether to toss or not the logs about; rather it was being flung by earth gravity and lunar tides, by evapotransporation and gravity, by ley-lines and geology, by solar heat and forest health. Given all that tumult, perhaps the river acted within the powers of larger forces, and maybe that's the best analogy for what we humans can go through, periods where life is happening us in all directions, flinging us about like arm-drug dolls in the hands of hungry little girls.
as for what to do, we'll do that next time