Drew in Zombieland

Yeah, what if you missed your window, woke up too late? You could start over. You could push through and yes, start again but a forty year old man isn’t suppose to be waiting on his peers, he’s suppose to be blazing his own trail and blah blah.

My generation is full of nihilists and definitely not capitalists and stuck behind the cushion of life’s couch. I managed to squeeze out but I’m still picking crumbs and lint from my hair.

When I meet someone and they seem uncomfortably hard to be around, they are probably a lot like me. I’ve also noticed there aren’t that many general personality types, behavior-wise and it is possible to predict people’s reaction more readily than I thought it would have been.

Growing up is putting aside childish things and that is true when I consider my growth, at this late stage, and how immature certain aspects of my behavior were as an adult.

I have a chronological age: 42. I also have an inner child/emotional age that I can always check by just asking myself and listening to what that inner voice tells me (the first number that pops into your head). Everyone has this ability and the ‘inner child’ knows this and will give you that number. When I was 32 and started redoing my personality, my inner voice would answer ‘13′ years old. I was an emotional 13 year old.

After 10 years of good therapy and rebuilding I have hit about 28.

That fucking box fan’s shrill spinning
fat mama jokes at high speed and she’s stomping
again to the heartbeat of my paranoid fantasies.

She got that late night dust bunny dream sickness
on spotless floors and what’s more is that someone
needs a hug and I’m blamed for a world of emotions I cannot control.

Christ, did I create all this in a noise cancelling
headphone of evening disenchantment? I don’t
remember plugging that cord when I set to rotating

my mania with the outside world. Yes,
on high, on low, on semi-permeable membrane of dust -
in fur, in breeze, in yonder to semi-please I scream

at the sky for relief in these times.

Knock one time for absolution, twice
for restitution then set those fans to spinning to keep
the outside world at bay.

That fucking box fan’s shrill spinning, still winning
as drones bone down into my marrow to cover
the fear that despite all the hell fire and smoke

she might ask me for something.

Wow, almost 10 years old

We’ve pretty much started realizing that meditation, like exercise and eating right, is an essential part of a healthy lifestyle in that it reduces stress and helps things like PTSD recovery and any number of mind related stresses.

But I always had a horrible time meditating as I couldn’t get the perfect time, a quiet moment, a settled moment or even the mindset to consider creating the space. My mind was always racing and I’d be 10 steps in front of where I was when I thought I should be meditating and would just shrug it off and move on.

Then i got introduced to a form of Nichiren Buddhism (Japanese) that chants “Nam Myoho Renge Kyo” (which is also the title of the ‘Lotus Sutra’ (without the ‘Nam’)) and away i went chanting a little here and a little there…

Once I got the phrase down and felt comfortable repeating it over and over I found I could launch into meditation a lot faster. I also noticed the repetition of the words, the speaking, the chanting, gave my brain something to do and allowed me to train myself to sit still and take some time. i didn’t need bells or music. i didn’t need silence or to settle down, I could just launch into the chant and in a few moments be literally meditating.

Now after 3 years I have actually chanted (with heavy meditation) for over 3 hours straight! (a huge victory for my ADHD, short attention span self.)

And after years of going through alcohol recovery and personality recovery I truly believe this form of chanting might just be a killer back door for people who find traditional quiet meditation untenable. These links below are slow and fast version of someone chanting ‘Nam Myoho Renge Kyo’ in a meditative state:

Slow version: http://www.sgi-usa.org/newmembers/resources/slowgongyo/daimoku_slow.mp3

Fast Version: http://www.sgi-usa.org/newmembers/resources/slowgongyo/daimoku_fast.mp3

- *Nam* - Naam (Like VietNAM)

- *Myoho* - Mee-Yo-ho

- *Renge kyo* (pronounced together:) Wren Geck Ee-yo

You are suppose to put the emphasis on ‘Myoho’ because it is the ‘mystic power’ that kicks the stuff into gear

Naam Mee-yo-ho Wren-geck-ee-yo

And here’s more explanation from Wikipedia - Diamoku (chanting Nam Myoho Renge Kyo):

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daimoku

Unpopular as this might be, we hate the government because it is a direct reflection of the majority of people in our country. We hate what we are and what we were. For us on reddit and the internet in general, this is a hard pill to swallow.

We, as a whole, are a war mongering bunch. We love sentimental platitudes of patriotism that stroke our distorted egos. We love law and order, wars-on-things and capital punishment.

We, until recently, love boot strap pulling tough guy cowboys and berating the unfortunate that happen to have been born poor, without structure and end up in crime - we want to lock everyone up and throw away the key.

We love throwing our weight around the world and pissing money away to make sense of our military industrial complex. We hate admitting when we’re wrong and will invade a country based on lies to meet vendettas and cover our asses. We love looking down our nose at older, more secure countries like France and Germany that have been through it before, have learned a sense of maturity and have insight to offer. We don’t need them, we know everything.

We take up sides like we’re players in a football game. Rah rah-ing and shaking our pom poms oblivious to the distortions each side is smacking us with and ignoring the truth as long as we win.

We are children of recent history, reveling in our ignorance and spinning around on our egos. We look up to fakes like Reagan and paint our history as some paragon of virtue while ignoring the horrors we have unleashed and the mistakes we make continually, repeatedly like parent-less children.

At some point we will have have to take a long look at our sick and bloated societal egos and relate that to our own existence. Many other societies do things the right way, care about their fellow citizens and aren’t nearly as susceptible to flagrant propaganda by the likes of corporations that fleece us dry at every step.

So when we hate the government, we are hating a direct representative of who we are, what we have allowed from behind the comfort of our cushy living rooms and we, the majority, have some serious growing up to do.

Taking responsibility is the hardest part.