My "Long, Dark, Night of the Soul"

If you think you are truly enlightened, go spend a week with your parents - Ram Das

   So I was at a real low point a couple days ago. Being bipolar, you experience amazing heavenly highs and crushing earth shattering lows. So as I'm facing a pending divorce, being jobless, penniless, and on the verge of homelessness, it can be hard to keep an even keel most times. I feel constantly tormented by my thoughts...

if only I could get her on the phone - she'd take me back
if only she'd answer her phone - we could work this out
if only I said this, or did that, or didn't say this, or didn't say that - I wouldn't be in this position.

  Then there's the berating myself...

nobody's ever gonna wanna have a relationship with a 40 year old twice divorced looser

you have no job, no prospects, no degree, no money (literally), no place to live, you don't deserve another chance

you blew your last chance at life - you're going to live the rest of your life alone and you deserve it

  I've been scared to death because the last time I went through a divorce, I lost many friends, spent way too much time alone and I tried to kill myself three times. I didn't want to go through that again. Especially since I'm barely 2 1/2 months out of a mental hospital, where I was sent because I tried to kill myself. 

  I will say that for the most part, I'm many ways, I'm handling this go around a lot better than last time. Since I'm literally broke, My massive caffeine intake has stopped cold turkey, I've stopped smoking, I'm not drinking on a daily basis, and I've been doing a lot of walking. 

  I'm at the library every day from open to close. That means I only eat once a day. combined with my regular walks, and cutting out booze, soda and junk food, I've already dropped close to 20 lbs.

  But I was afraid that I was using exercising and not eating as just another way of self medicating, and soon enough I would enter into another relationship, or my wife would take me back (not likely) and I would just end up repeating the same behaviors over and over again that end up driving everybody away and ruining every relationship and costing me every job I've ever had. 

  That brings us to earlier this week. I was feeling real low. My mind is always racing, and it was tormenting me with thoughts, of guilt, remorse, sadness, depression, self-hatred, and I couldn't turn it off. I decided to go for a walk, thinking maybe I could walk away from it somehow, but that wasn't working. It was starting to get dark, there were no cars in sight. I had the whole road to myself. 

  The harder I tried to let go, the less it worked. I try to keep my attention on the present moment and bypass my ego, bypass my thinking, but ego kept finding a backdoor to torment me.  My wife has had enough of me, my parents have had enough of me. I miss Sacramento, and I have no way to get down there. I was convinced that when I got remarried that this was would be my last chance at love, and life, and now I blew it just like I always do. I can't live another day with this torment, and guilt.


I reached my breaking point. 


  It was a little after 8pm. I was walking down a mile long stretch of paved road that has the residential neighborhood my folks live in, on one side and a school and some farms on another. It's the dividing line between old, rural Queen Creek, and new suburbia Queen Creek. I walked into the middle of the road, and sat in the left turn lane, legs crossed in the half lotus position. I closed my eyes and told myself that I'm going to settle all these issues, put this torment to rest once and for all, and make peace with whats happened to me in life, and I'm not gonna move until I resolve it all. The cops may end up forcibly removing me, or scraping my brains off this road, but I wasn't moving until I made peace with myself. 


I didn't know what else to do. I was that desperate. 


 I believe in God, but not the Christian God. Not the old, angry man in the sky. I believe God is, as whats been called, "The One Consciousness" or "The Universal Mind" and I believe that we are all connected to that, its just for most of us, that connecting link is dirty and corroded because we either hardly ever take advantage of that connection or we don't believe it exists. I'm not trying to start a debate, that's just my view. 


  I was in tremendous emotional agony. I had tears streaming down my cheeks. I turned to that voice within and asked why have I always been so angry? why have I always sabotaged every chance a happiness in life? Why was everything always so hard for me? Why have I caused so much pain and misery to the few people who have actually loved me? 


  I've asked these questions before to that voice within, but I've never gotten any answers. However I don't think I was asking right all those times before. If I ever asked these questions before, I was asking with an agenda, usually with no other interest than to appease my ego, by getting that person or thing back in my life, and fulfill my definition of what I thought I needed to be happy in life? I never got any answers when I asked from that place. 


  I made my plea to God, and kept quiet. My resolve was firm, I was not getting up and getting off of this road until I figured it out...I kept my eyes closed. I tried focusing on my breathing but my thoughts were too powerful. They kept baiting me into the same old circles of endless self-abuse, guilt and torment. I kept my eyes closed. I have a realization, not a thought a feeling. Maybe I'm not bipolar. Maybe I'm just guilty of compulsive thinking. If I could learn to stop the compulsive thinking and learn to live in just present moment awareness, I could stop tormenting myself. That kind of realization is an attack on the ego, and it was there to fight back. Every time, I tried to let go of my thinking, my thoughts, my ego fought back, each time stronger than the last. 


  It wasn't working. I felt like I was burning inside. I didn't want to go though another 40 years of this kind of torment any longer. I wanted this to stop, and not for any selfish reasons. I was sick of the depression, the misery, the constant mood swings, and highs and lows. Not because I wanted anything, or anyone. I just wanted to be at peace, and enjoy my life, however that looked like. 


  There was no way in hell I was gonna get up and get off this road. I was beginning to think they were going to have to scrape me off of it. There are hardly any lights on this road. I didn't have any ID. I wondered how long it would take to notify my parents. I wondered if they would even bother calling my wife to tell her. Or if she would even care. I was breathing heavy, tears rolling down my cheeks. I stood up and said out loud to that voice within, 


DAMMIT! I DON'T KNOW WHAT TO DO ANYMORE. I'M TRYING BUT NOTHINGS WORKING. PLEASE JUST TELL ME WHAT TO DO.PLEASE, PLEASE TELL ME WHAT TO DO!


  My head fell in my hands, I was blubbering like a child. I had given up. Then I finally heard that voice answer back for the first time ever. 

Be good to yourself. Do you understand?


  What do you mean be good to myself? What kind of crap answer is that? Why should I be good to myself, I suck right now. I can't do anything right. Nothing ever works for me. I've ruined two marriages. I'm almost 40, no job, no money. I'm nowhere near where I should be in life. Nowhere near where other people my age are. Why should I reward myself by being good to myself at this point! huh?


Be good to yourself. Do you understand?

  I suddenly remembered that David Icke video I was looking at the other day. He said everything we see and everyone we meet in this world are just projections of whats going on in our own heads. If somethings not right in our life and we try to solve it by changing whats on the outside, its like combing the mirror. When we change whats inside, then we change whats on the outside. 

Be good to yourself. Do you understand?

  If that's true then maybe everything I complained about and accused my wife of doing to me, happened because I was doing it to myself. I accused her of being overly demanding with me, impatient, not understanding, not nice or affectionate. But in reality I was being overly demanding with myself, not nice to myself. 
  She accused me of being impatient and too hard on Ava. In reality I was actually being impatient and too hard on myself. This marriage doesn't look the way I want it to so I can be happy.  

Be good to yourself. Do you understand? 

  Shit. I start to rewind the clock. I see that every relationship I've ever had, both my wives, every girlfriend I ever accused of being, mean, bossy, demanding, rigid, having a love that was based on conditions. That happened because I was doing it to myself. 

  The more relationships that failed the more hard I was on myself therefore more relationships failed. It was a sick, cycle of dysfunction and self abuse. 


Be good to yourself. Do you understand?

 I was starting to understand. I haven't experienced lasting love or goodness or happiness in my life because I've never gave it too myself. I was punishing myself. Time to turn back the clock some more. Where did this all start. When did I start punishing myself, and why?
 Every time I was picked on at school, I didn't fit in, I was a minority living in white suburbia, going to mostly white Catholic schools, I didn't fit in with the other kids, I wasn't smart enough, I didn't have as many friends, I got turned down for dates. My parents didn't show the affection or understanding that I thought they should. I didn't finish college like everyone else. Nothing is going right, I'm not as far ahead as everyone else in life, 
   I've been frustrated and impatient and demanding of myself ever since I was a child. I had this solid, inflexible idea of how I should look, how my life should look, how my relationships should look, and when that didn't look exactly the way I wanted it too. I punished myself. After all why should treat myself good when I've failed in all these areas. I must punish myself so I'll try harder. 

  And if something good did come along, then I would tell myself. Hey remember you don't deserve anything good, you suck,  you're a failure, so I would punish myself even more by not letting myself have anything that was good in life. 

  But that shit don't work. Like combing the mirror. I'm beating myself up, then looking at the mirror and what I see is beat up, and I get mad at myself for that and beat myself up more then just get more confused when I see that everything I'm looking at in the mirror is beat up too.  I've been beating myself up for shit that's happened ever since I was a child. 

THAT'S IN THE PAST, AND EVERYONE HAS MOVED ON BUT YOU. NOBODY IS PUNISHING YOU, OR TORMENTING YOU BUT YOU NOW. DO YOU UNDERSTAND?

 
  OK, so maybe for once in my life I can start loving myself. I never knew what that meant to love myself. It means to be accepting of myself, be understanding of myself. Encourage myself, not put harmful things in my body, Not berate or call myself names. Be flexible with myself. 

  If I'm good to myself, then others will be good to me. Others are good to me because I am good to myself. Stop combing the mirror. 


Be good to yourself. Do you understand?

 Thank You, Thank You, Thank You. Yes, I understand now. 

 This didn't all happen instantaneous. It was a long process, it was painful too realize the truth, my ego didn't wanna believe it, I was in denial. I was wracked with pain,and tears as it seemed I was purging myself of my inner demons who didn't go without a good fight, all along just that kind, deep voice from within, patiently repeating, "Be good to yourself."

  I don't have to cope with this situation by reading every damn self help book in the library. I don't have to search the Rig Veda for special Sanskrit Mantras that have special powers. I don't have to have Eckhart Tolle's Audiobooks in my ear 24/7. Thats just self medicating just like how I nearly drank myself to death 12 years ago with my first divorce. All those authors, all that advice can be summed up with just 4 words - Be Good to Yourself. 

  I was amazed at how simple, yet elegant God speaks. Encyclopedias of information conveyed in just 4 little words. A lifetime of therapy wouldn't have given me that kind of insight. 

  Now it's not like I'm crapping rainbows of pure conscious, light, love and sushine. But I've stopped that bad habit of compulsive thinking. In my experience thinking is overrated. I've started to let my gut, my conscience start handling  my problems instead of my mind. Sure I have dark thoughts like everybody I'm human. But thats just what the mind does, and I can let it be and I don't have to play into that. Thats being good to myself. 
  I'm not in pure bliss or anything. But I've decided to just let life take me where it wants to. As long as I'm being good to myself, I can set goals and I will achieve them. But I don't get to decide how long its going to take to get there. That's for God/The Universe/whatever you wanna call it to decide. I don't have to beat myself up because its taking too long, or it doesn't look the way I think it should or because other people have more than I do. Thats not being good to myself. 

  You may be all JOE ATHEIST and think thats all just a bunch of bullshit, and you'd be absolutely right. I'm only trying to share my experience. I can honestly tell you it's true. Thats too complex to have made up. I'm not trying to entertain anybody so much as I'm just trying to share my story. Let anyone who cares know, that I'm going to be ok, and by writing this I'm kinda purging myself, getting rid of all this baggage once and for all.

 
 
 Personal history must be constantly renewed by telling parents, relatives, and friends everything one does. On the other hand, for the warrior who has no personal history, no explanations are needed; nobody is angry or disillusioned with his acts. And above all, no one pins him down with their thoughts and their expectations. - Carlos Castaneda

  If you give up your personal history then you don't have to live up to others people's opinions of you, and mostly your opinion of yourself. 

  PS: As I was writing this, I was called and officially offered the job that I had been wanting. I start tuesday. And I was called by the other people I had applied to for a second part-time job, who I'm meeting with on Monday. 

Very cool indeed. 
   

Combing The Mirror: The State of My Union Address: And Why I PrettyMuch Suck Right Now

  Thought I'd post this on my blog, so no one can accuse me of using Facebook as a platform to whine and cry. At least if you're here, you're here by choice.

   My wife is divorcing me. I haven't been home in 2 weeks, I am not being spoken to. Calls are not being returned. Emails not answered. Doors are not being opened. You understand?

  I'm penniless, and soon to be homeless. Just as my wife finally got tired of my bullshit, my parents have pretty much tired of it too.

  The good news? It appears I've found a job. It's not the greatest job. It's a dead end job with little pay and no room for advancement, but its doing something I'm really going to enjoy. I am looking for a second job too. However I may not have enough time to get the money together that I need to move out. I'm waiting to pass the background check so I can hopefully start work next monday, but we'll see.

  I feel like the boy who cried wolf. Similar situations have happened so many times now that nobody really gives a shit how I'm feeling. It's just crazy old me, being his crazy old self. But this is different.

  I'm experiencing fear: 

of being 40 years old and alone, 

who's gonna want a 40 year old two time looser.

of being homeless,

 fear of being unloved/unlovable,

 fear because I don't know what the hell I'm going to do.

  I'm experiencing guilt:

that I was a total asshole and drove away the very people I didn't wanna loose. that I                               

the same shit that I always do
and blow it every God damn time.

 I'm beating myself up: 

for blowing what I sure was my last chance at a happy romantic life.

  I'm experiencing incredible sadness

:because I have no one to talk to. that just like last time, this divorce will cost me my friends,

______________________________________________________________________________

Now the video on top is interesting. What David Icke says about the human soul is what a lot of Eastern Religion and people like Deepak Chopra, Wayne Dyer and Eckhart Tolle have been saying for a while now. But I love the image that he tells of trying to change your world by changing whats on the outside is like trying to comb your hair by combing the mirror. Unfortunately, if you continue to read into David Icke, you'll find he has a wonderful view of the human soul and spirit but his message is also sprinkled with tales of aliens, conspiracies, the illuminati, and reptile people. But what he says about the human soul and consciousness is spot on.

  

  It's true that while the eyes take in the light of objects, it's the brain that does the "seeing" the brain is telling the eyes what to look at! What it decides to look at is based on our past conditioning. It's literally true that when we change the way we look at things, the things we look at change.

  I'll give you one better. You don't actually SEE anything! Your eyes are only taking in the light reflected off an object, light that is ultimately interpreted by the brain. You may see my soon to be ex stepdaughters play room and think, "oh how cute!" while I say, "Sheesh what a frikkin mess!" 

  And I'll give you even one better than that! we don't touch anything either. Before I can touch the table, the electrons in my hand react against the electrons in the table. Our brain is conditioned to believe we touch. Kinda like the matrix. 

  So we live in a world where nobody touches, or actually sees anything other than what mind believes is going on. We live in a giant hologram. This is all an illusion, and what we are is just one pure consciousness experiencing itself in different ways. What we see and experience is the reflection of ourselves. If we don't like what is happening then you gotta change whats inside. Otherwise your just combing the mirror. 

  I can understand that from an intellectual point of view. I have a knowing deep down inside that tells me this is so. But then my ego, takes over. My view of myself as only the body and mind, then it's like,

   well great we live in a hologram well right now my fukkin hologram of a wife is about to divorce me and my holographic emotions are making me feel like shit about it!

 But you gotta look within, otherwise all youre doing is combing the mirror.

  And don't worry, even though it was only two months since I was institutionalized for trying to kill myself, I'm not going to do anything stupid, other than sit around and pester my wife with text messages she's never going to answer, and read every god damn self help book in the library and watch every guru on youtube. 


  I'm trying not to comb the mirror.

Dammit, Jim! I'm a guitar player, not a...

GUITARDEDBLOG.COM

If you can actually play, its very hard not to copy other things that you hear. But we couldn't copy anything because we couldn't [play] - Roger Waters

  I've been playing guitar almost 30 years now, but I've always had problems composing original material.

 I used to overthink things and believed that I needed to study everything about music, and theory, and deciphering sheet music before I could be qualified to write a song.

  William Mann who was a critic for The Times [London] wrote the following about The Beatles:

one gets the impression they think simultaneously of harmony and melody, so firmly are the major tonic sevenths and ninths built into their tunes and the flat submediant key switches so natural in the Aeolian Cadence...

     John Lennon was reported to have said, Aeolian, cadence? sounds like a type of bird.

  I was a child of the 70's & 80's. I grew up in era of Heavy Metal, and people like Eddie Van Halen, and Yngwie Malmsteen (who I met once but thats another story), who are technical geniuses. Everything I grew up hearing taught me that if you can't play at a 100mph then you are not a worth a damn as a guitar player.

 My musical heroes include people like John Lennon, Syd Barrett, Kurt Cobain just to name a few. If there's one these people have shown me is that Creativity and Originality are also important too, and you don't HAVE to be a technical genius to be a successful musician. I never wanted to be one of those flashy, technical dudes other than to just fit in with all the other musicians I knew. Fact is I can't play that fast, nor do I want to. Hell I can't even THINK in notes that fast, much less play them.

 

 Ok so you don't have to be a musical theory genius and a technical wizzard to be a songwriter in modern music. My next idea had to do with inspiration and God. My thinking was that some people are just born or destined for greatness or have been born with this "personal hotline to God/The Universe" and either you have that or you don't.

  Afterall, Paul McCartney wrote Yesterday from a dream he'd had. Keith Richards wrote the riff from Satisfaction after waking up from a dream he had as well. Iggy Pop has talked about how if he can't get a song completed in under 10 minutes then it just gets thrown out.

  And yeah I know what some of you might say, that yeah his music sounds like it was written in under 10 minutes, but hey man, some of those old guitar riffs are heavy as hell, and Lust For Life? thats just one of those tunes you just can't get out of your head.

 And Mozart, being a technical genius, wrote the following to a friend once about how easily musical ideas came into his head:

     When I feel well and in a good humor, or when I am taking a drive or walking after a good meal, or in the night when I cannot sleep, thoughts crowd into my mind as easily as you could wish. Whence and how do they come? I do not know, and I have nothing to do with it. Those that please me I keep in my head and hum them.

 Inspiration is a funny thing. You only have it when you're not expecting it, and if you look for it, you'll never find it.  I've come up with a couple descent guitar riffs of my own. Everything I do is acoustic, and my style, if you could call it that I like to describe as "Pink Floyd Floyd on Heroin."

  The couple descent guitar riffs I've come up with on my own always happened by accident. Whenever I sit with the guitar with the attitude of, "ok I will now create a cool riff around which I will write an awesome song." it never happens. The only cool original things I've done, have always happened when I'm just playing in the moment and my mind is clear of objectives or goals or ideas. And there's something about the nightime too. Its weird but I could never play or write anything original during the daytime.

So what have we learned today?

•  You don't need to have an encyclopedic knowledge of music to write music.
•  You don't need to be a technical wizzard to be an awesome guitar player than songwriter.
•  For a lot of people (myself included) originality is much more important than technical ability
•  Inspiration is wonderful and special but ultimately not required. What's the proof? There are thousands upon thousands of awesome rock songs but only one Yesterday. Just because you didn't write it in some awesome dream, doesn't mean it can't be cool.
• The truth is, songwriting is a craft, and like any other craft its something that requires time, and hard work to master.

I always wanted to write, but I always figured it'd be no good unless somehow the hand just took the pen and started moving without me really having anything to do with it. Like automatic writing. But it just never happened. - Jim Morrison

 Yeah Mozart was a genius composing Symphonies at age five, but he didn't compose anything good until he was sixteen and had been playing his entire life.  Thomas Edison said genius was 1%  inspiration and 99% perspiration. Yeah Paul McCartney was 23 years old when he wrote Yesterday in his sleep, but he been writing songs since age 13. 10 years of practice and hard work set the foundation for Yesterday. In fact all The Beatles were all seasoned professional musicians that played thousands of gigs before anyone ever heard of them.

  So the reason I've never been able to really write any of my own material is mainly because I never actually worked at it. Kind of like Jim Morrison's quote, I thought if just didn't automatically happen there was no point in trying.
  Sometimes I also think that I maybe learned too much early on. My teens were spent learning theory, practicing flashy techniques that I didn't really want to be doing anyways and learning classical guitar. Like Roger Waters said at the start of this thing, sometimes I think that if I wasn't so concerned with sounding like how I thought I should sound so people will like me, that it would've forced me by default to be more original since I would've lacked the technical ability to simply mimick what I was hearing around me. There is some precedent to back up that statement. George Martin the legendary producer of The Beatles, once said of Paul McCartney:

I have often been asked if I could've written any of The Beatles tunes, and the answer is definitely no; for one basic reason, I didn't have their simple approach to music. I think that if Paul, for instance, had learned music 'properly' - not just the piano, but correct notation for writing and reading music, all the harmony and counterpoint that I had to go through, and the techniques of orchestration - it might well have inhibited him...once you start being taught things, your mind is channeled in a particular way. Paul didn't have that channeling, so he had freedom, and could think of things that I would've considered outrageous.

  And there's another thing too. I just don't have a driving urge to be creative. Sure I could practice and learn how to write a descent song, but I just like to play. I don't have a need to express myself musically the way someone like John Lennon has that driving creative urge. I don't have that burning in my soul that all my musical/artistic heroes all had. John Lennon had something to say, I don't have anything to say. I just wanna play the damn guitar.
 
  I'm just not a songwriter, I'm a guitar player, plain and simple. The only times I've ever felt like writing something original have been situations where I'm trying to impress a girl, or the real rare occassion that I meet another musician that I get along good with and we collaborate.
  I do very well with a songwriting partner. When it comes to playing or writing with others I've always favored people I get along with and am comfortable around and shares my same views on music and art  versus some dude who just has a good rep a singer or guitarist. I'm descent at coming with an intro or a riff, but not so good when it comes to melody and song structure. If I run into anybody I can collaborate with so that I can focus on my strenghts then I'm all down for trying to be creative.
  If not thats cool too because hey, I'm just the guitar player.