Excerpt from the Raja Yoga.

And thus [nature] is working, without beginning and without end. And thus through pleasure and pain, through good and evil, the infinite river of souls is flowing into the ocean of perfection, of self-realisation.

This from George Harrison:

Remember, now, be here now
As it’s not like it was before.
The past, was, be here now
As it’s not what it was before – it was

Why try to live a life,
That isn’t real,
No how
A mind, that wants to wander,
’round a corner,
Is an un-wise mind

Now, is, be here now
And it’s not what it was before,
Remember, now, be here now
As it’s not like it was before – it was

Look, it’s really very simple. The past is an illusion: what we know of it is solely based on our own flawed perception of it, that’s all. The future also is an illusion, based only what each of us anticipates it might be. We could drop dead tomorrow, and what then would be the point of all the planning and expectation?

All there is, is now – God’s creation, and each of us in God’s creation. I’ve spent so much of my life trying to equate the teachings of organized Christianity with the reality that I have lived amongst fools who use it for their own sense of self-worth, power, moral judgement, and superiority. And, to a great extent, my own sense of self worth and importance. Which, by the way, is zero. There’s nothing wrong with the Christian Church and its Judeo-Christian heritage at its core; the sad truth is that it has become corrupt beyond any form of measure. When it starts to practice what it preaches, keep me posted.

I won’t say my six decades immersed in it has been wasted – nothing could be further from the truth. And I can’t say I don’t believe in much of its teachings. But what I will say is that I’ve come to believe that the Church in its everyday practice is no longer relative, and certainly no longer relative to my own place and time in the universe. It’s up to each of us to make our own destiny; we make our own heaven and hell right here on earth, and that should be sufficient for one lifetime. God is most certainly big enough and merciful enough to sort it all out in the end as it relates to our souls in the grand scheme of things.

I’ve spent so much of my life living an illusion of what I am and what and who I should be. I am nothing. And I’ve wasted so much of my life trying to live up to others’ expectations, giving so much of myself to others, yet getting nothing in return. I see so many of my relationships as completely one-sided: if I never reached out to them would I ever hear from them? I think not. And maybe that’s my own fault in my own setting of expectations. But what it does do is help me to recognize that in the end I am responsible for my own happiness, and that I have spent far too much time living with the illusion that it matters and that everything I’ve been involved with is somehow important in the grand scheme of things, which it is not.

And while I can still cherish relationships, it’s time for a reassessment of everything they are and everything I am. In the end, when the cards are all laid on the table, I am alone with the reality of a life lived as a stranger in a strange land, striving to be someone I could never be; someone I wouldn’t even recognize. There’s nothing wrong with asking yourself who the heck you are. There’s everything wrong in looking into the mirror and not knowing who it really is that is staring back at you.

Perhaps the time has come to let go of all of it. I’m given up trying to be someone I’m not and trying to live up to expectations I can’t control. What I can control – and this is so in only the smallest way – is how I seek to be whomever it is I am supposed to be, and to seek God and wisdom and happiness in whatever those forms take. And also recognizing that the search for the above is all relative to what it is you are seeking to begin with.

I’m no longer attending church and have no real plans of ever going back. Tracey and I have our places in the St. Anne’s Episcopal Church Memorial Garden, where our ashes will be placed next to my mom and dad’s (whenever that time comes). Oh, we’ll continue to support St. Anne’s monetarily in the small way we’ve committed ourselves to, but that’s as far as I see myself willing to go from here. In the end I really don’t think God cares one way or the other. I think we are called to live for love and seek love in any and all of its forms, and let God be the judge in the end. I can only be myself.

The water for irrigation of fields is already in the canal, only shut in by gates. The farmer opens these gates, and the water flows in by itself, by the law of gravitation. So all progress and power are already in every man; perfection is man’s nature, only it is barred in and prevented from taking its proper course. If anyone can take the bar off, in rushes nature. Then the man attains the powers which are his already. Those we call wicked become saints, as soon as the bar is broken and nature rushes in. It is nature that is driving us towards perfection, and eventually she will bring everyone there. All these practices and struggles to become religious are only negative work, to take off the bars, and open the doors to that perfection which is our birthright, our nature.