Hut time!

Tuesday 7:30 p.m.
                            The Life of Milarepa is definitely one of my favourite books and I'm much enjoying re-reading wee bits ever now and again. When he finally got Marpa to give him an initiation, he went off and walled himself into seclusion and meditated for eleven months. Stuff like that makes me feel like a complete wimp!!
                            I spent from three till six in the hut this afternoon. I had two pairs of trousers on, but my legs still got cold. Next time it's three pairs!! My fingers got a wee bit cold too though I was wearing heavy duty gloves. Then  a big greeny jelly blob came to eat me up and I ran away!!

Haunted!

Tuesday 1:00 a.m.

                           Got out of bed because I was feeling a bit haunted by this bit I watched on youtube about Gerald McClellan this morning, the boy who had the brain haemorrhage whilst fighting Nigel Benn in 2005. 

                            I watched all these super middleweight fights on the telly in those days. Two of those that I watched resulted in horrible injuries. They were on prime time on Saturday nights. You could have been watching these with your kids. What is the matter with that man, daddy? Why isn't he getting up?

                           I'm going to watch the fight again. Gerald McClellan was four to one on to beat Nigel Benn. And maybe the fight was only going to last two rounds, and maybe that's why Gerald McClellan had in that weird gumshield which, apparently, only American footballers wear. For fast, explosive movement. Not any good for the long haul. How can you be a world champion and not have a decent gutta percha gumshield? 

                          You could see the way the boy went down on one knee and took the count that he wasn't right. The blinking. No way was Nigel Benn winning that fight. Anyway, the boy is blind now and eighty percent deaf and getting looked after by his sisters.No insurance maybe. Don't be poor in America. 

                          Anyway, I'm going to watch the fight now. The boy was beautiful until he walked into that ring.
Later
        Maybe I forgot how unremitting Nigel Benn was in that fight. 

Crisp and deep and even!

Monday 6:10 p.m.

                   One photie is of Cambusnethan kirk from the mother in law's back garden.
                   The jobbie got snowed off today. Hurrah!! I went up to the hut in the afternoon and meditated there for an hour and a half. With the gloves and hat and scarf and long johns, all you get is a wee bit of a chilly nose. Tomorrow the jobbie is snowed off again. Hurrah!!!

Alan Cummings!

Sunday 10:26 p.m.
                              Just  finished watching a programme on the wonderful BBC Four teevee channel about Cabaret, and Christopher Isherwood,  and being in Germany in the 1930s. It was presented by Alan Cummings, who I do like although not like that, although he got me into a Traverse party once after I met him in the toilet, and made demands. But it's great to see Scottishy people getting ahead. I also saw a programme about his ancestors once and that was brilliant as well. So I hope to see some more of that kind of thing from him on the telly.
                            I have a great affection for Christopher Isherwood. I'm not sure why. Here's some of the things I can remember that I liked anyway.
1) I read in an autobiographical thing from him once that when he'd left uni, (a chap without a degree! Oh no!) he went to Eastbourne and spent the summer writing his first novel. He wrote it in longhand SEVENTEEN  times. This has ever since been my benchmark. It's like being a music producer. You have to be able to listen to the bugger again and again and again. Anyway, his prose is full of semi-colons, colons, etcetera like you might expect from someone well educated in Latin, Greek, grammar, etc. These are the days before copy and paste and all that word processing stuff, when you had to think. I can almost remember trying to write like that. Make a mistake and you have to re-type the whole page.
2) None of his books were that good. The boy didn't have a plot in him. Prater Violet is, however, a fantastic description of a person and far better than anything I could ever aspire to.
3) I saw him interviewed by Kenneth Alsop who was a titan of Newsnight in the early seventies. This would have been after his autobiographical book came out, Christopher and his Friends, I think it might have been called. Kenneth Allsop asked him about going to Germany and corrupting these German boys. I think Christopher Isherwood said they were far more corrupt already than he was.
4) His pal said you shouldn't sell what was dear cheap, as regards him writing screenplays in California. Auden. He said he sold what was dear dear.
5) He funged off to California when the second world war was getting awkward. Why want to fight for a country which puts you in jail because of your sexual preferences.
6) He said when he got back to London much later that he liked it better because it was full of people who were cosmopolitan, like black and brown and polka dot.
                         I don't know why I like Christopher Isherwood so much, but I do. The concentration on the malleability of the prose which means that the seventeenth time it will be better .... Why stop at seventeen times? I think you should maybe write the one book seventeen times in your life, and just keep writing the bugger. So the prose had to keep up with you.
                         You're never going to make any money thinking like that, Hotboy. No, Jack. But I would have just spent all the money on drink and drugs. Some painters must have painted the same scene over and over as they grew older, and it would have changed as they changed.
                         They all ended up in the gutter, Hotboy. The evil bourgeois all end up in hell, Jack. Hell's too good for them!

The auld maw!

Saturday 12:50 a.m.
                              Of course, I'm very fond of the auld maw. Although she changes. I started going to see her every week when I was looking after the kiddo. When the kiddo appeared, I  thought I should take her through to Bellshill, and I did this every week.I'd take the kiddo through every Monday. These are your people. Then, when the kiddo had other things to do I thought  I should go every week because the auld maw was by then about seventy, and I thought she might not last so long. Now, she's ninety two.I still go every week.
                            I'm not a real man. I can talk to folk. I can ask them about things. I'm not a stookie. A lot of men are like that.
                            Anyway, she canny hear too well these days. She won't put in her hearing aid either. Last week, I got there a bit later because of a mix up with the train. So I wasn't there so long. Today, after we had the chatting as we do when I first get there, she asked if I'd some time left for the meditation. Yippee! So I says that I don't have to go this week for another hour, and we go upstairs so she can lie down and I can sit, and we can listen to the Dharmapadda. After the wonderful first meditation I had before going to Bellshill, I knew this would be a treat. I don't know what she makes of the Dharmapadda, but she says she's still with us because of the tapes. A contented mind. This wummin has one. She's always had this ability to lie down and tell the world to go fung itself.
                         Before she lies down, she tells me she's going to give me a week at the Samye Ling for my sixtieth birthday. How much would that cost? About £250, and a bit rich for me. But she says okay. Christ alone knows what that amount of money means to her. But she's got it and she doesn't care. Not as if she can go out and spend it.
                         I can do ra bliss and all, but I'm not as good as she is. But at least I'm her son.
                         The tree is in Bellshill. The view is off the Telford Bridge on the way home. Part of the beautiful, wonderful city!
                    

Pre Bellshill!

11:10 a.m.
                I've just had the best meditation ever, for me anyway. Everything just opened up like a gorgeous great blossomy thing. It was just wonderful!! The most brilliant sensations of lightness and bliss. But I had to stop since  I have to go to Bellshill. Oh well, it'll be there when I get back, the cushion that is!

Chardonnay!

Thursday 10:15 p.m.
                              I've been drinking more collapso since the new Scotmid opened. They sometimes say it's half price. Anyone know about the plonko collapso out there? This purports to be 2009 Reserve. Chardonnay Verdelho. Wine of Australia. Banrock Station. Weighing in at 13.5% and costing £4.99, supposedly at half price.
                              They've got to do something about the cheapness of the alk, Jack! I know it's more expensive here in Chilly Jockoland than in most countries, but they're not pissheids in most countries. In Scandinavia this wine would probably be ...
                              I'm just going to tan this bottle then and write crap with my headphones on, so yous can all fung off as well!
                              I must say it tastes quite nice. I'm having it with cream crackers dipped in peanut butter.
                              I haven't been doing dairy for about five months now, and I haven't lost an ounce of fat. But I had to give up all the tasty tastes I had left, or had developed, since I gave up the cannibalism.
                              I used to make the most delicious ham rib soup. That was the worst deprivation from stopping being a cannibal. Hmmm ... I can still taste it. Since I gave up the milk and butter and cheese, I had to give up the taste of home made toasted breid, butter and banana. You have no idea how much I savoured that. Since July up until last week, I've been eating tatties and onions, usually boiling and then frying the tatties, but I finished all the tatties last week, I think, and now I'm eating soup make with vegetables from the shop. Even if you chuck in cumin, coriander, curry powder and any old spice that you can find, it still doesn't taste of much when the vegetables are from the shop. And no ham ribs in it.
                              Eventually, other tastes will arise and you can tell yourself that these are delicious, and you will believe it because they will be delicious. I think it's called projection. Or fat. Things with fat in it are bound to taste better because you're geared to the calorific values. Maybe a bit of projection and a bit of fat combined.
                              I didn't do any writing today though I did feel like it. Thought I should meditate when I should have been writing.
                              Things have improved since I signed a deal with the consiglieri. I like the consiglieri and we can smoke cannybliss together and have a laugh. I might have to segue into a stand up comedian because of this association, but that might be alright now that I've nothing better to do.. Writers who do reading are just stand up comedians who are not funny. Anyway, it makes you think that something might happen even although it probably won't. It has some kind of potential attaching whereas previously all I had was the initiations, ra bliss and the chance to become a buddha in one lifetime. Oh well. I need to get out of the jobbie and if I don't turn into a stand up comedian without jokes I'll have to work till I'm dead. Which wouldn't be all that bad.
                           I hate comprehensive education. It's a blight on working class kids. In this city with these kinds of schools and schoolteachers. The evil coalition pipsqueak says they should fast track military chaps into being school teachers and ... I'm afraid the moron has something here. Last week, the science techie showed up in the staff room and spoke to the Business Manager, whom I was sitting beside, and told him about a fracas in the bogs. So the Business Manager goes to see about this. I said I'd go as well to back him up, which is a position I've never been in before. I did it because I knew the Business Manager had never worked with kids before. His last jobbie was as a personnel manager with British Rail.  He is not in loco parentis. Neither am I. Neither is the science techie. So we're throwing these fourth year boys out of the lavvies where they have probably been torturing someone, and where are the school teaching basturns? They're having their tea break. Where were the senior management team? Hiding as usual. Up against the wall with the lot of them!!! Send your kid to the evil bourgeois schools if you have any money. They will turn out to be evil bourgeois basturns, but at least they will be able to spell.
                         The interesting thing is that nobody notices that this, this denial of birthright from being Scottishy, is happening. It's not seeing the wood for the trees. Also, most of the folk working in schools are stupid. They really are. We should have the best brains in
1) Medicine
2) Education
                          Obviously, the really smart folk should be given government grants to sit in caves and understand non-self and emptiness, but try telling the dumb to meditate why that would be a good thing! Try to ... Oh, dearie me! The plonko is one glass from finito. Must mooch off to bed then!!
                           Or read on in the Life of Milarepa. I'm a fan of Marpa. Milarepa is  wuss compared to Marpa. I'd like to read more about this stuff. Anyway, it's very inspiring, but not for yous, the too dumb to meditate. Thank  God, I am not so gross at that! Fancy never having even tried. Better to have loved and lost than been happy to be a self satisfied moronic flatheid! God preserve us from the flatheids!
                        
                        

Thursday!

Thursday 6:15 p.m.
                              Slept like a log last night and had to see the denstist this morning. Coldy cold outside. Went to meditate in the secret garden at the Botties and then in the hut. Like the bare trees at this time of year!
10:00 p.m.
                             Everybody was out all evening watching Harry Potter. Great! I didn't have much of start to my wonderful Thursday because I slept in this morning and didn't waken up till half nine. Normally, I sleep between five and six hours a night these days, but that must have been a good nine hours. Running yesterday and the day before; the jobbie,  and all that obviously took its toll. So when I had to go to the dentist ... I kind of lost the morning. But I got the evening! Then they came back and I've been crabbit ever since!!
                             Being a hermit would be great. I was thinking that today in the hut. Once you'd settled into being a hermit and not seeing anyone, what an amazing amount of bliss and such like you'd have to put up with! Instead of folk coming home and asking you about phone calls, and why didn't you answer it and why are you being so rude? I'm not being rude! Why don't yous just fung off and leave me alone?
                             The bad start to the day was getting made up for this evening with the flat being empty (for once!). Being in your room with the door shut isn't the same as solititude.
                             Even with this evening, I probably didn't manage more than six hours today, and that's not very good for a wonderful Thursday. The reason why you have to spend the time on a Thursday is partly because, as you go through the day,  the meditations get better and better. Also, if you spend a long time sitting on the Thursday, it's easier to sit on the Friday and so on.
                             My so-called practise if funged up by having a jobbie and being surrounded by flatheids. God preserve us from the flatheids! But I'm feeling tired and a bit crabbit now. So I'll just stop there and start again.

Wednesday night!

Thursday 12:10 a.m.
                               These are Princes Street at the bus stop photies and one when I was leaving the jobbie. Not quite dark when you go out and dark when you get out, but just about.
                               But there is no jobbie tomorrow. Allah Akbar!

Oh, ra bliss!

Monday 9:10 p.m.
                           Almost as soon as I sat down for this evening's meditation, I thought kind of like, Whoa, fasten your safety belts. You wouldn't be normal like me if you didn't  question the wisdom of  your endeavours at times like this. It's back on the rollercoaster again, and you do not want to fall off! A little anxiety is bound to arise.
                            Were the 'energies being unleashed', Hotboy? They've been getting unleashed bit by bit all along, Jack. Will you be able to control them, Hotboy? Well, I don't know, Jack. I haven't been controlling them  up till now. Once you've been getting into the bliss for a while, a kind of momentum seems to build up.
                            The boy in The Bliss of Inner Fire says you've got to let go.This seems to be letting you of your attempt to control whatever is going on, or letting go of your anxieties.
                             On the other hand, you don't want to crash and burn.
                             So did you get a middle way, Hotboy? Well, Jack, some way into the juju, I decided that maybe it would be better to stop doing the symbols and channels stuff, and get into the dissolving the deity -which you still cannot visualise properly at all - into the vast and getting vaster oceans of bliss, and some heat.
                             In other words, I'm listening to the lama. I've got a tiger by the tail here, Jack.
                             The great Vajrayana really is an adventure!
                            

Monday Morning



Break time

                  I'm finding it hard to believe that I'm still suffering from nicotine withdrawals, a bit anyway. I had a poor weekend really. Serves me right of course! Anyway, let's hope I've learned my lesson.

                  The only good thing about the weekend was getting back into writing again. I couldn't be bothered with the Traffic Warden book really until then. It's not what I want to write about really. But yesterday I started getting into it and I guess that's me really started on it.

                   Two of the photies were taken off the Telford Bridge. The other was was from the usual spot in Princes Street.

                   One of my capped teeth fell out this morning. Every time you get ahead with the debt repayments ... it could cost a couple of hundred quid that. Free teeth for the workers!!

Crap time!

Sunday 12:15 a.m.

                            Four bottles of bought from the shop beer later, a mere bagatelle! Bad week. If I can tackle the Nicotine Dragon every bloody month, I should be able to give up this ... this looking out from the ... this looking out for some kind of sustenance. Sometimes I wish these computery things had never been invented. I tried to write something tonight for the first time in a while and how long did it seem to take? Ages! Poor concentration!

                            Clicky clicky on the computery thing; flicky flicky across the far too numerous telly channels. Communication longing with folk with the long thumbs, even bigger suckers than myself!

                             Meditated for only four hours today. Did a totally exhausting training session too early. This is not ra bliss!! Waiting for more self satisfaction and that's got to be a bummer all the way down the line. 

                             But it will be better tomorrow. I think I'll be able to change or improve my wicked ways once I've paid back my main debt to the Domestic Bliss which is six months down the line. I'd like to buy a halogen lamp then and stop buying soapbar, and grow some decent weed. Hmmm? That might not be such a good idea after all!!!

Nicotine Dragon part 2

Thursday 10:00 p.m.
                               I'm still meditating between thirty and forty hours a week.
                               This current nicotine withdrawal unfortunately occurred when the consiglieri had set up this meeting with Dale Robertson from Wells Fargo Publishing. So I wasn't able to enjoy it as much as I would have. Also, I hate going out on a Tuesday. Totally wrong time of the week for me. I need to make up the time at night when I've wasted so much time on the jobbie.
                                Anyway, the hat's off to the consiglieri if he pulls this off. I hate trying to sell stuff, at least when it gets serious. Sending abusive emails to agents and publishers can be fun, but actually talking business with folk is something I hate doing. It's not writing. Writing is something I do want to do. Talking to folk about writing is something I don't want to do. It's like going to work.
                                What I want is some completion at the moment. Just now, I can't really see the point of spending time writing another novel (when I could be meditating instead!)(and doing ra bliss!) when I have so many unpublished novels stacked up.
                                My preferred option was what I had a few years ago. A webpage where the stuff was on it and you could download it for nothing. Nobody likes that. The trouble with that is that nobody knows it's there either and nobody knows who I am and nobody is going to read any of it. Actually, one or two people did read the books off that page. There was one student at Edinburgh uni who went through the lot of them and read every one. However, basically it's just going to sit there.
                               If the consiglieri gets the deal together with Wells Fargo, some people will know there's a webpage there and we might even make some money. To effect this, I might have to start doing readings, but that would get me out of the house and could be quite a good laugh.
                                What do you want, Hotboy? I want to become enlightened, Jack. I want to sit in the hut. This is a possible route towards that. I need to get out of the jobbie. That's crucial. I can't sit in the hut until I'm sixty five unless I have some other kind of income. Otherwise, I could be in the hut when I'm sixty two, about two years or so away.
                                 Is this going to happen, Hotboy? Yes, it is, Jack. Why is it going to happen, Hotboy? It is going to happen, Jack, because people are looking after me. The consiglieri is looking after me. The Domestic Bliss is looking after me. I am supported on all sides.
                                 And what is your role in all this, Hotboy? I have written the books. Now, what I have to do is stop smoking joints. Stop smoking joints and keep sitting. Why have you got to stop smoking joints, Hotboy? Well, Jack, my weak point is my lungs. Smoking will kill me. If I stop smoking ... I want to live till I'm eighty four. My granda lived till he was eighty four even although he had pneumoconiosis from working down the pits. The buddha lived till he was eighty four. Milarepa lived till he was eighty four. My uncle, Daniel O'Connell,  lived till he was eighty three. Prostrate cancer killed him and I expect it'll kill me if I stop smoking.
                                  Enlightenment in this very lifetime is all that matters. I have to live a long time because I'm stupid. The auld maw is ninety two. Her granny lived till she was one hundred and four. Unfortunately, we are not guaranteed the time. So I have to stop smoking.

The Nicotine Dragon!

Thursday 9:10 p.m.
                           I've only meditated for about three and a half hours today and that's bugger all for a Thursday. Of course, due to the home brew binge last night, I started late. No excuse really. I'm just on my first pint now.
                            Keef Richards says the first seventy two hours of cold turkey is the worst, the first three days. Same with the wrestlings with the Nicotine Dragon.
                           When I'm imagining the Medicine Buddha above my head, one of the things I thank him for (deity yoga uses the result as the path, so it's already been done) is curing my addiction to tobacco. Then I thank him for curing my addiction to alcohol. Quite often I go around thinking I'm not addicted to tobacco. How can I be when I stop smoking joints two weeks into every month? You can tell yourself what you like, but the first three days without tobacco can be a wee bit tricky. Your concentration is poor and I tend to drink away the evenings. You get crabbit alright.
                            Fifteen years ago, when I was working in another job share, the same thing happened. It was worse then. The tobacco was more of a problem. This current situation has been going on now for nearly two years and started to become established when there was a bob hope drought (well, for ill connected joes like me!) nearly two years ago. Before that, I only ate soapbar. I hadn't smoked joints for five years, so I was nicotine free for all that time, except when I was in the company of someone rolling a joint, which was rare.
                              From tomorrow the Nicotine Dragon will have been subdued once more. I could stop smoking joints and I know that smoking soapbar is really stupid, considering what crap is in it, but somehow I don't care enough. It's a kind of complacency. Also, when I score I tend to see the consiglieri and we smoke joints and that kind of re-establishes the habit.
                              Hmmm? All this is very bad for my meditations. It's harder to sit for long when you're concentration is off and you're a bit antsy anyway from the nicotine withdrawals. But it's as if the meditations occur in a different country as well. Whatever it is - channels opening, sheaths being penetrated - gets stronger anyway. It's as if there's a momentum in there which isn't going to be stopped.
                              Before the lama warned me about unleashing energies I wouldn't be able to control, I knew that something was going on with these meditation that's got a life of its own. I'm not going to stop it. If I sit, it's going to happen. The present is getting unwrapped. It would get unwrapped a lot faster if I wasn't drinking or smoking, but somehow I tell myself it doesn't seem to matter that much. It's easy to be complacent when you're surrounded by folk who don't meditate at all.
                               Every month I tell myself when I've over the three day hump that I'll not smoke the next time I score, but ....
                                I have to say this nicotine withdrawal stuff is nothing in comparison with trying to stop smoking when you've got a cigarette habit. When you've got a twenty a day cigarette habit  and have had it for some time, stopping is horrible and much harder. It drives you mad.
                                Interesting that the drugs which are the worst are legal.
                            

The next day!

Thursday 3:30 p.m.
                              I deleted the last two posts I wrote when I was steaming last night. I always get drunk when I'm wrestling with the Nicotine Dragon!!
                               Anyway, felt fine today! Had a nice walk through the Botanics and sat in the hut for a bit.

Stupid sayings!

Wednesday 11:25 p.m.
                                   A friend of mine has been landing on this bloggy recently from vampire land, which is Louisiana, or Shreveport. It's on the BBC as that kind of thing, and otherwise we would not know it. I think Louisiana was known to me once as the stomping ground of Huey Long  ... but that was in another country and besides the wench is dead ... that's Shakespeare, but I think you might have known that..
                                    I'm just so sorry. And there is nothing I can do about that. It's inadequate, that response.We should be like bonobos. I'm sorry. I'm so sorry! But I am not fully bourgeois! Once the kiddo and her joe leaves, just come and stay here. Forget about these feelings of abandonment. Come with your son and stay here. I'll go and live in the hut! I am the one joe in this world who is not a flatheid!  I need an excuse to go and sit in the hut.
                                    People should be with people and be able to deal with people. I have found this out since the kiddo brought home her boyfriend, and from the sense of reading Keef Richards Life.  Above all others , to thine own self be cool. And you have to be open to people. And people should come round to where you stay and they should be able just to be there.I'm sorry I was crap at hanging out. I always wanted to be busy.
                                    I'm so sorry that I was unable to make the space for other people to settle in. And I didn't make any money for this. It was not something I could offer. But maybe some times some men in my family did this in their way ... they offered solace to people who needed it,. and I'm just so sorry that I haven't got the money or the anything. All I've got is the bliss. And nobody meditates. Dearie me!
                                     But on Thursday we do not have to go to the jobbie! Allah Akbar! Allah Akbar!

Ebooks!

Wednesday 5:51 p.m.
                                 The consiglieri and I had a drink with Dale Robertson from Wells Fargo Publishing last night, and the consiglieri seems to have done a deal which means that they'll publish all my books as ebooks and publicise them. No mention was made of the book Dale told me he was going to publish next summer, so I don't know if that's happening now or not. I should be pissed off if it isn't, but somehow I feel quite detached from the whole thing. Who knows what tomorrow may bring? The Viper's Nest publisher still hasn't knocked back the crime book.
                                 I dug up the last of the tatties today. What a shame that's them all gone! Boo! I've been eating tatties just about every day since mid-July. The onions have just about run out as well. One good thing about this time of year is that the trees are worth photographing again.
                                

Up the Republic!

Tuesday 7:20 p.m.
                            I was in a bad enough mood. No nicotine after over a fortnight of dancing the dance of death with the Nicotine Dragon, and then the six o clock news comes on and it's just the beginning, Jack, of hours and hours, and days and days, and months and months of the lickspittle media and other toadying basturns crawling up the backside of the establishment now they've got another royal wedding to push down our throats.
                            I don't want to be a subject of anyone or anything! Sometimes I even wish I was French. Bastille Day is a great idea for a public holiday. Why can't we have a public holiday for the day they chopped offthe head of Charles the First? I'd vote for that!
                        
 Ye see yon birkie, ca'd a lord, 
Wha struts, an' stares, an' a' that; 
Tho' hundreds worship at his word, 
He's but a coof for a' that: 
For a' that, an' a' that, 
His ribband, star, an' a' that: 
The man o' independent mind 
He looks an' laughs at a' that. 

A coof is a silly or a stupid person. That's the kind of craven moron who supports the Royal Family, the Monarchy,  the whole sick, sad web of privilege and inherited wealth which is there to keep us in our place! And they've got the nerve to tell us we live in a democrasy. Off with their heads, I say! Off with their heads! 

Sunday night!

Sunday 10:30 a.m.
                              'If you are many, make war. If you are few, cast spells.' I've been re-reading Milarepa's biography today. A classic! Anyway, the uncle who ripped them off said this to his mother. A big mistake. If you haven't read the book, you should give it a go. Great story.
                              Physical bliss and mental ecstasy is what I was promised once in a book about meditation. That's what you get. Bliss. And eventually multiples of that. This, of course, is a wonderment. There's no reason why almost everyone couldn't get this. Sometimes when, like this afternoon, I was in enormous bliss, but like walking a thin line and waiting for something to go boom, I thought that this is what people are supposed to feel like. This is our birthright. Being able to go to the bliss.
                              They have beer banquets in Milarepa's biography. I went to do some missionary work at one down in Portobello last night. And to shout at the boxing on the telly. Didn't get home till five a.m. Dearie, dearie me!
                            

Blissed again!

Friday 11:20 p.m.
                           I had a drink last night just to see what it was like. I hadn't had a drink since last Thursday. It was quite good. The home brew tastes better if it's at least a week in the bottle. But it wasn't all that good. It wasn't as good as the bliss I missed because of it. I'm been getting so, so much bliss these days. I thought I'd be getting more heat, but it's back to the bliss again. And I'm not taking many vase breaths because of the strength of the afters. It's maybe at this point when I should just try to stay up for a while tonight and give it laldy.
                         Maybe it's at this point when you give it laldy, Hotboy, that the boiling hot kundalini goes squooshing all over the shop instead of behaving itself and just being nice. Maybe this is the point when you unleash the energies you cannot control and get carted off to the loony bin, Hotboy. That's a very pessimistic appraisal, Jack! This is where I've been going all along. Into ra bliss!! Forward! Forward! All my plans are simple!
                          I've been feeling very fortunate during my meditations today - before Bellshill, on the train, on the train back, then a couple of hours this evening - due to how wonderful I was feeling. The progressions are glorious to behold. I really am the most fortunate of fortunate creatures.
                          Oh, what a fortunate creature I am, I am! What a fortunate creature I am!
Forward! Forward! All my plans are simple is a quote from what play and film? The title starts with Oh.
                        
                          

Channels and Drops!

Thursday  4:50 p.m.
                              Meditating on the channels and (my) chakra symbols has just kind of crept back in. I decided with the reply I got to the email I sent to Teresa about getting put off in the summer allowed me do to what I liked. However, I was looking at having the channels and symbols as just something else to concentrate on, just another tool. And I'm back into the big vase breathing routines at times. But I am watching out and being  careful.
                              The book on chakras by Johari seemed to indicate that the juice wouldn't start blasting through the chakras up your central channel until you had suspended the breath. This was re-assuring. A few years ago I would have laughed at the idea of yogis being able to, or having their breath stopped. Not breathing for a bit in other words. But not anymore. But that must be a long way down the track, so I reckoned using the channel and symbols wouldn't do any harm.
                               Bugger the cautionary principle, eh, Jack! I mean, I'm nearly sixty years old and already in the death zone with chummies falling off their perches left, right and centre! So long as I feel that I'm not going to hurt myself, I'm all for giving it the gun!!
                    

Wednesday Night Again!

Wednesday 6:25 p.m.
                                 Sorry about the duplicates!
                                 The increasing amounts of bliss these days is not making me feel any closer to the flatheids. Sometimes, quite the opposite.
                                  Flatheids just don't get the bliss. They have whole lifetimes without getting even a snifter of the bliss. This is a bit of a tragedy really, but if you never get it, you not going to miss it. Anyway, I never see anyone who meditates from one week to the next. There is no one really I could share these deathless delights with. You can experience it, but you can't properly describe it. Anyway, who wants to hear someone going on about the bliss when you're too dumb to meditate and have no idea what the hell he's talking about.
                                I'm back to all my old ways, the things with the chakras and channels and whatnot that the lama told me to lay off. But sometimes the bliss is so all consuming that you don't want to do or try anything else. Sometimes your daydreaming and have lost focus, and it just comes round of its own accord; you're maybe suddenly single-pointed in stonking great shedloads of the bliss.
                                I've been drunk just once on the home brew over the last fortnight.
                                I have  a lot of appointments in front of me at the moment, but c'est la vie!