The Journey towards Enlightenment.

Woke up this morning with the mind unleashed, like the subconscious the strata of my consciousness decided to turn on the release valve and unload loads of toxic fumes that has been accumulating for some time now ever since i decided to take on this solitary retreat. Like bubbles rising from the fermented waste at the bottom of a bog, thoughts rose from out of nowhere to remind me of how bad a boy i was from way back when i realized that my penis has more functions than just to pee and that my hunger and thirst for self satisfaction knew no bounds and all the people that I had stepped and tromp upon and all the actions i had indulged in has caused untold pain and suffering upon others. I was and perhaps still is incorrigible as one of my friends told me. Nothing new really, these uprising of negative vibes and emotions and i have become somewhat okay with them. I pretty much shelf them back where they belong after letting them run their gamut through my sitting meditation; my ancient twisted karma as the Buddha would have called it.

I have been carrying my past negative experiences in my mind like a worn baggage, often ending up with a depression that twice in the past had caused to take my own life and failed. This has been my punitive punishment to myself and if I were a staunch believer of a certain sect of Christianity I would be whipping my with a cat o nine tails bloodied, but I do not believe in self mortification and so that is that. Through my practice and thus through my practice and discipline I have been trying to heal my splintered soul hoping against all hope that I will be able to forgive and love myself without reservation before i die. It has been a long road as long as it had taken me to walk on the dark side of my life before i made the choice to find my way back from being lost for good. I have to die before i can truly find death in this physical realm or I will die still carrying my baggage into the afterlife and God knows what lies beyond for me. It would be comfortable to accept the atheistic stance that nothing would as i would end up simply merged back into the void of non existence, but I have my doubt about that. Unfortunately I feel deep in me that I will have to answer one way or another for my past transgressions.

Who am I? This is who I am as far as my mind goes and it makes sense in as much as logical deductions goes in the realm of the spirit; as you sow, so shall you reap. What I had been sowing was pretty much weeds and hemlocks and thistles, poison ivies and poison oaks. The only way to remove these is to uproot them from my subconscious bed and till the earth thoroughly before regrowing healthy produce that can become my healing diet. This has been my effort throughout my adult life, as life that began when I decided that enough was enough. It all began when i landed at the San Francisco International Airport sometime in 1983 when i left green Bay, Wisconsin with my bag pack and a portfolio of artworks to start a new life; join a Buddhist monastery was the goal. I had left GB with a trail of good relationships that had ended in bad taste and with the money I had on me it was a one way trip. In Islam it is called a Hijrah or a change of venue if not life. I have had several of these moves which began by being moved to the East Coast of Malaysia from Penang where I frew up for 12 years and then to the US at the age of 25,married and with a child. I then moved to Alaska where I lived for two years in the Aleutian Isles, after which I made the error of moving back to Wisconsin for two years before I moved to SF where I settled down for 10 years. I then moved to Japan with my lat wife and two of my children where we lived for 3 years before I decided to return to Malaysia, another error, perhaps. After five year in the East Cost i moved back to Penang where it all began; full circle.

This too is who I am in my physical existence and impermanence has always been the characteristic of my experiences. It came o my realization that no matter where or in what culture or religious back ground i had grown up till now, I am still who I am, asking the same questions and making the same errors but moving step by step towards my destination into the unknown. my mind has not really grown in any significant ways other than that it has become more acute in seeing the ways things have manifested as I had at one time or another envisioned it to be in my distant past; the seeds i had sown are slowly but steadily grown into my own sense of reality. I have achieved many of my goals in life even if they had not really meant much to brag about, but none the less these were thoughts and ideas I have had since i was a child, to travel, to see the world, to become and artist, a writer of sorts, a spiritual mind, a father to children who were conceived, and  through my own choices of women who bore them and to last but not least to heal my own soul from so much stress and challenges; to become and enlightened being will be the crown of my existence on this earth.