Half Way Thoughts!

Thursday 3:32 p.m.
                              I smoked about two ounces of the cannybliss in under three weeks, and was smoking the night before I came here. So I came here with the worse nicotine problem I've had in ages and ages.
                              A lot of thoughts arise which are condemnatory or derogatory or just plain wrong. Of course, when the meditations have been working well, the bliss has been better than ever. Well, better than when it's being screwed up with the tobacco. It does dim the bliss.
                              After four days and nights wrestling with the Nicotine Dragon, it should be mostly subdued by the time I get back to Edinburgh. Almost half the population doesn't smoke now, but the great majority of the folk I socialise with smoke. Socialising is a problem.
                              Sometimes you wonder why you bother!
                               I've been in the habit of trying to do difficult things or things which were just a bit beyond where I could go. Meditation definitely comes into this category. To be really successful at this malarkey, I think you have to be able to commit to spending long periods in solitude. People who do this say that eventually they grow to love the solitude, but even if I could grow to love solitude, there's bugger all chance of me getting any, except in little doses like just now. I'm surrounded by flatheids. My daughter is a flatheid, my partner is a flatheid, and there's no one I know who meditates at all, apart from Brian Wilson who did five minutes once.
                               So I may get lots of bliss and whatnot, but gaining the correct view of reality ... well, I seriously doubt that this is going to happen to me during whatever life I've got left. So there's virtually bugger all chance of me becoming enlightened, not like Milarepa and a million other lucky basturns!
                               It's alright this if you believe in rebirth. Right now I don't believe in rebirth and I don't not believe in rebirth. I'm frankly much more interested in this life than anybody else's in the future or past.
                                This might present a slight problem if you want to meditate a lot, but realise in the end that you will probably not be completely successful. Is it worthwhile to cut yourself off from people and do the juju for ....
                                 Of course, the more meditating I do, the happier I get!
                                  But this is a problem. It's not a problem if you believe in rebirth. You can meditate in the understanding that it, along with other things, will increase you chances of a good next life. Hmmm? Bugger that!
                                  I was hoping this was going to be the best summer since 1988. But it hasn't been. I thought I could do what I wanted to do, but I can't. If I could do what I wanted to do ....
                                  Apart from all the Newmains business, the summertime is like Christmas in that the flatheids come loose from their moorings and collide with you whether you'd prefer that or not. When I go home, there will be the McDucks, like great sponges of alcohol and nicotine.
                                   It's very difficult to mull over stuff on this retreat because the nicotine withdrawals make everything you think an even bigger lie than usual.
                                   Are you going to tell us you believe in something then, Hotboy? If I do that I can't be the single member and sole representative of the Disbelieving Congregation, can I, Jack? No, Hotboy. Tell me you believe in something and I'll tell you to go fung yourself.
We embrace our ignorance
We don't believe in any things
Especially thoughts.

Back to the gong bashing!! I don't even know what a Drupcho, or a Drupchen is!