I remember it like "it" was yesterday. I was 17, sitting half-lotus in the Himalayan foothills, middle of the jungle. As "green" Magic-the-Gathering -wise as it gets. And I got to thinking. And thought led me to my dear friend Descartes. Who thought and therefore...was? Something seemed off. A splinter or two in that mind. And no disrespect to the brilliance, since it was brilliant as it got. But we're all human at the end of the day. Anyway, I got to thinking, and the caboose of this thought train led to a thought experiment. And it went something like this.

Imagine you operate the central control panel of your experience. Some of that Inside Out shit. Levers and buttons galore. Take a look around. See the button that controls your sense of hearing. Yeah. Turn that off. Cool. So now you're deaf. You just pressed the button, light's off, so sound is gone. Keep perusing. You see that button next to it, which controls your sense of taste? I dare you to keep sipping on that fucking pumpkin spice latte after pressing it. And pressed it you did. So now you can't hear or taste. Riddle me this, in case you can't catch this drift, keep pressing those buttons.

One by one. Turn off your sense of smell. So now all you can do is see and feel. Now turn off feeling. How light you ironically feel now! No haptic sensation. No friction, no pressure, no warmth, none of that. All you have now is your mind and your eyesight. Now put your thumb and forefinger on the thought cadence lever while your other hand's forefinger rests upon the sight button. Press the sight button. Now you are just a mind. No five senses. You are in Descartes territory now - the realm of pure thought and pure thought experiment.

If you can still keep up, then you understand all that constitutes your experience now is "thought." So you're essentially meditating now. Every few seconds and you experience a new thought. Maybe it's your mind's eye, or mind's ear, or mind's tongue, etc., but it's all just your mind. Now will yourself (despite not feeling or seeing your fingers on the lever) to move that lever the other direction and effectively slow the cadence of your thoughts. Instead of experiencing a new thought every second, now it's every 10 seconds.

Now every 60 seconds.

Now every...

See where I'm going.

What is going on?

In the "space" and "time" "between" thoughts, "you" were "nothing." But WERE you nothing, truly? Descartes would say yes, since you are fundamentally a thinking thing. But ARE you fundamentally a thinking thing? This thought experiment says nah.

Buddha says fuck no.

As did I then - and now.

You simply are. You are pure, boundless, infinite, awareness. The blank canvas upon which all experience is painted. And with this realization, comes infinite freedom and bliss.

The worse thing of evil, is when you see its face and realize it is just as human as you are. Meaning you understand the people's misery, as you put them through those atrocities.

You understand the loss they feel when one loses a daughter, a son, a husband, a wife, but you couldn't be bothered to think about it. How we wish evil's face was twisted and indistinguishable. Yet, evil is so recognizable it sends a shiver down my spine.

I do not know what the devil looks like, but I do know what those look like that has done evil. That his trivial temptation seems like child's play. Especially when his temptation at times is the only thing that gives me relief from this earthly evil.

Don't show me that you can love, Don't show me such a caring smile on your face. Some will say it is a mask. Then how can it be worn so naturally. I understand why the hero always struggle's with the finishing blow. For when he can finally see evil's face, it's the soul of a human looking back at him.

I find myself holding a pen and staring at a blank page. Again & Again & Again. My mind just as blank as the page I am staring at. When my mind fills with words, the page that was blank becomes filled as well.

I'm describing the process of writing as you might have guessed. As simply as it may sound, it is one of human's hardest quest. Because rather it is now or then, stone or paper, only words that are worthy should fill the page's void.

For writers the page is no different than a painter's canvas or a desolate space to an architect. We want our words to connect to your imagination. The two together painting a picture that even the world's greatest artist couldn't replicate.

He who writes easily is someone that is fine filling a blank page with empty words. For us who write there is no worse tragedy. For when we write the page turns red. For our heart is on each line.

Devotion to party, I believe, will be America's downfall. I spoke to a client today, who is a devoted Home Depot shopper. Despite the multiple hassles he and I have endured in the past weeks due to their extraordinary lack of customer service, inventory accuracy, and organization, he absolutely will not shop at Lowe's. Most recently, he paid for two vanity faucets which I was to pick up and install. The system revealed the nearest store had 35 units in stock. I went to pick them up, and they had none. But, they showed the order and said they would be in the next day. I called to be sure they had arrived, and they said they would not be in for another week. But, another location 8 miles away had multiple units in stock. The next morning, he spent just under two hours on the phone with that store trying to purchase the two faucets. I made the trip and the faucets were in a locker outside, to which the cashier had provided me with a combination to unlock it. I got them out, then went inside to complete my shopping. On the way out, I was stopped and asked for a receipt for the faucets. I had no receipt, just a scrap of paper with the code for the locker. They had failed to mark the boxes with any identification suggesting they were ever in a locker, and I had to locate the woman who had given me the combination so they'd allow me leave with them. The whole time, I'm thinking about the multiple times I'd chased thieves out in the parking lot when they'd walked out with their arms full with power tools and the employees had been trained to do nothing. Me, they have to stop.

During the past weeks of remodeling many rooms of his home, I've been to the Home Depot many times. Every single time, it's another problem, another delay, another misinformed worker, another inaccurate notification of delivery, etc. Today, I asked him if someone at Lowe's stole his beef jerky from him when he was a kid. He said... let me look at my phone to get the quote right... he said, "I'm loyal to a fault."

At some point, we need to question our loyalty. I understand that Americans have their favorites--favorite actors, favorite restaurants, favorite football teams--and no matter how terribly our favorites perform, we still cheer for them... because we are loyal to a fault. I get it. I'm a Raiders fan. That being said, our system of government, with its two-party system, is dependent on blind loyalty to party. If our registered democrat voters don't stop blindly voting for anyone with a D after their name, our nation is going to continue down this road toward depravity, self-destruction, and eventually annihilation from within. Our elections are not football games--they are to determine which representatives will guide our nation's policies. That sounds unimpressive here, but those policies are what set the parameters for the thousands of programs and systems which govern our daily lives. They protect us from criminals, monitor our borders, provide medical treatment to our veterans, create treaties with our friends, keep our enemies as bay, oversee our drug manufacturers, and teach our children. Our elections have far greater consequences than simply having to admit that our favorite team is on a losing streak.

Our devotion has not been to our nation or to our neighbors or to our posterity, but to the letters R and D. As criminals ransack our department stores without fear of prosecution, as every morning adds another city to the list of recent shootings or stabbings, as tens of thousands of American citizens die from fentanyl overdoses, and as hundreds of thousands of children are trafficked across our border, our sitting president and the democrat party have unleashed the Department of Justice to attack their greatest political rival, and to do their damnedest to send him to prison for the rest of his life, over a paperwork storage dispute in Florida.

With one in four (25%) high school students, today, identifying as LGBTQ+, while the national average of LGBTQ+ citizens stands at under 8%, it has become undeniably obvious, to rational, thinking people, that the US Education System, today, is far less focused on education than on the cultural conditioning of our nation's youth. There is simply too much literature instructing that the owning of the minds of the youth is key to securing the usurpation of a country from within, to believe that those who directly seek to gain the attention of our nation's children, are not celebrating these statistics, and are in fact deliberately corrupting their minds for the purpose of creating a strong devotion to faction, as opposed to a strong sense of family, which is the enemy of evil. What does it do to the mind of a young adult who identifies as LGBTQ+ when they see these stats and realize they've been brainwashed by the teachers they trusted? What if they already had the surgery?

There is only one party in this country that champions the policies that are tearing this nation apart every single day, and people's blind devotion to that party is to blame. Everybody knows who's to blame. Everyone sees the destruction. How do you get 80 million people to admit they were wrong?

“Well, the trouble with our liberal friends is not that they're ignorant; it's just that they know so much that isn't so.”

-- Ronald Reagan on October 27, 1964

Most people in this world are nobodies. They will never do anything substantial. Nobody will remember their names. Doomed to live their life in obscurity. A simple cog in the machine.

Yet, the world caters to them

The unremarkable. The only problem of the unremarkable is that they never take notice of the remarkable power they hold. Everyone who they consider remarkable are desperate to curry their favor. Artists, Musicians, poets, actors, politicians, all hope for the unremarkable to take notice of them.

And the unremarkable repay that desperation with their admiration

The remarkable's dream is for the unremarkable to take notice. The only way to write their name in history, to be remembered, is for the unremarkable to notice them. So, while they believe to be remarkable. They are just the chosen few the unremarkable allowed to rise up.

And if the unremarkable chooses, they will fall to the dirt as quick as they rose.

I strive to be the one that says the right answer cautiously. Instead of he that says the wrong answer confidently.

One should never answer confidently even if it is the truth or the answer is the correct one. For you don't understand why that answer is correct.

You may know what year that war started, but why that year. Why not the year before or the year after. What lies were told, what truth's hidden to ensure it started that year.

You may know that birds fly, but why do they fly, what advantage does flight give them. What about their body allow for flight.

He who says the answer too confidently is someone that will seem averse to learning. Only those who are true masters can answer with confidence. But even they keep some caution in the back of their mind. In case there is more to the answer, more to the truth.

Jesus is my shelter.

When the day has been long and hard like pouring rain pushing me down at every moment he is the cabin that keeps me safe and dry.

He is the roof over my head, the warm and soothing tea in my hand and the towel upon my shoulders.

He lets me talk about my day and comforts me in my distress.

He reminds me I am safe and loved and I no longer need to push through the rain, the weight that has been pushing me down.

He lights a fire inside that dries me and warms me.

His cabin is the safety I need.

He is my shelter.

So, what I'm learning is, if someone takes a leak behind a dumpster, or has sex in a car, they run the risk of being arrested and forced to register as a sex offender, but grown men can frolic in a public fountain in front of children, and that's not an issue as long as they're homosexuals.