[Merged]

"So how are things going for you guys and girls? Are you finding what you're looking for in CC's work? Is there fulfillment or do you not expect to ever be fulfilled? What will it take for you to say to yourself, "This is it. This is what I dreamed it would be like. I've accomplished my quest."? Or will there be eternal longing?"

Three of four years ago when I was living and breathing Castaneda everyday, life seemed so much clearer.
Not doing was enough. It was the easiest thing in the world to do because there was no right or wrong to it. Everything had an edge of mystery that covered enough of the semantics that the imagination would fill in the rest. There was a comfortable lack of sobriety. The desire was clear - it was for power and understanding, what else could it be for? Freedom? Freedom from what?

Behind the every fanciful intent to lose self-importance lurked visions of power and seduction, to conquering this gate and that... these concepts were far enough removed from everyday awareness that they cast no real shadow of responsibility. And there were so many validators along the path that the world was alive and responsive!

And now some years on, branching into Tao and the 4th Way. All similar concepts, all pointing at the same thing, the mind, the centers... the terminology describing the process, the levels etc... It 's all the same on paper.

You know what it actually feels like? Leaving your first school where you know everybody and everything about the school. You like it there because it feels so familiar but at the same time you're bored sick by its familiarity and yearn for something different, something new. It would be nice to have the new thing come to you in your familiar surroundings, keeping them as they are, but then they wouldn't really be new would they? No you have got to change schools, start at the bottom where you suddenly know no-one. Meet new friends, learn in a different style. So what's it to be? The sickly familiar everyday?

But imagining the alternative and doing the other are like being told what an apple tastes like and actually biting into an apple and tasting it for oneself. I had to jump off backwards when I did a bungee jump. And thats what it feels like now, that I am bored shitless with repeating the same shit over and again and yet I watch myself do it over an again! I say I! Not that there's anything wrong with that either - you know I think that's what really gets me more than any of it - its the fact that there is nothing wrong with it, judgement is just another trick the mind uses against itself... that tangles the knot even tighter... And even saying this is just another example. The idea always gets in the way, particularly the ideas about oneself...

But say we get to a point where we do see something. Do we try and verify it thereby automatically negating its validity! Maybe by doing absolutely nothing we begin to realise that there is really nothing to do - the sheer weight of nothing becomes unbearable - give me something to do! Crave the old routines!!! Anything to keep that silence from tearing my world apart!

And then - well, now the pressure eased maybe I can return to the emptiness, but what made me think I had ever left???

But how serious should we take, after all isn't it one big cosmic joke?

Better let the cat out...