Abandonment Fear (still trying to integrate this inner "demon")

"The exact timing of tonight’s Full Moon occurs at 4:28 AM EST/9:28 Universal Time (UT) on Tuesday, December 17th" ...
and so I see the synchronicity of this full moon on my birthday because I have realized once and for all time that The Universe Itself whispers loving encouragements constantly in our ears and I promised The Universe that I would never fail to open the door on the first knock for the rest of my life here. The Universe always knocks three times regarding important soul or heart issues in our lives, I feel. Trying to help us resolve them. After the third knock, The Universe does not knock again and leaves us to tussle with whatever the issue is forever or until we do come to terms with it as it abides with us in some form, "disguised" often. After this third "knock", the issue becomes what I think many refer to as "karma"? By paying attention to these knocks, by listening and hearing the constant stream of loving encouragement given me, I hope to keep unraveling the karma in this life while creating no more - only a partial success insofar as creating no more part while unraveling existing karma seems to be coming along well. But when I do create karma now it is no longer out of ignorance but willful which multiples the karmic effect so much that it is a bit terrifying to think of?

Birthday Magic upon me and like so often in spiritual matters I feel something but do not know the why and the feeling is ...that I can make one wish which is odd because my mind tells me that is self limiting thinking and wrong - my mind says, "make as many wishes as you can - wish for anything, for everything - only imagination is the limit so do not limit". But my feeling is clear, "No. One. Choice. Choose. This is the power in this matter" And somehow I know what the choice is and it is not whether or not to choose selfishly or for world peace. Sadly, perhaps. But this is about a personal choice. And I choose to be whole once and for all. This wish regards only the sanctity of my own heart which is rightfully my domain to claim.

I want to choose something else but I realize that the choice I want to make is not actually a personal choice so in fact is not fair game anyway. What I want more than anything I already "have" insofar as we can "have" anything, that is. My Soulmate. Yet out of this bottomless hole of need that I herein try to deal with, my wish plaintively would have been, "Dear God I have wanted so little in this life, You know that I have seldom come asking of You,  but please do not take this love from me in any way. Don't let her leave me. It is my one fear. My last fear. The Only Fear." I had thought I had comes so far but this love has thrown me back to square one. I know now that this is a blessing and The Universe's way of loving me by trying to make me a better thing. But I do not waste my wish on this insecurity because I am wise enough at least to know it would be a waste. I know that I would be wishing for what I already have. So instead I pray to God please keep her safe. On my knees sincerely I pray. Please, God. Having been brought back to God by this very fear itself and the realization that no magic can allay this fear of losing her for even as I will lose this physical life itself, I will surely loose her eventually and that I am powerless against it and that I need His help. I come back under the weight of this fear utterly humbled. Make no mistake, IF I thought that was a choice I could make in this wish, I would choose to bind her to me even knowing it would be the wrong choice when weighed against being whole, you see. I would make the wrong choice not out of ignorance but willfully if I could. I would do it knowing full well the karma of it would follow me most assuredly into the next life.  I am not perfect. I don't even want to be perfect. Just whole.

So I choose for my wish to once and for all time be whole and by that I mean my intention is to replace this empty feeling that I know is abandonment fear that I have felt my whole life long in my solar plexus and that has been the curse of my existence here in this life in this physical reality in this DNA Machine Body in this persona known to others as David Brian Sky with love. My intention is for self love to fill this emptiness completely like light so bright that it dissolves the dark that is this inner emptiness I hear name: "The Last Demon", Abandonment Panic. I call it out and own it and now I do not run from you, Demon. I turn upon you and embrace you. A love of abandoning and being abandoned that you represent. You who with cosmic ironic never have abandoned me while all others either have or been abandoned by me. I cannot do this alone I know for I have tried. I have no magic to dispel you but I do have help. I have an army of angels and the love of God Almighty that I can call down upon you in this battle like artillery called down into the fray from afar. I choose this night at 4:28AM, this exact timing of a full moon on my birthday, to face you head on, once and for all. I call you out in this matter at the risk of empowering you with my firm intention being to dissolve your darkness in the blinding white light of love everlasting.

*                                                        *                                             *                                            *

I have used a dream pad for years to ask questions of my unconscious self  by writing them down on this pad and looking at it just before sleep achieving over time a remarkable report with my unconscious as the question is usually "answered" with a dream sometimes requiring interpretation but often given in a rather obvious manner. During a period in the summer of 2012 of extraordinary personal spiritual growth characterized also by real emotional and even physical healing, a part of myself that I called, "The Autistic Child" came up with using this dream pad in a very different manner. I began then to use it in a more active manner for deep programming of my mind asking now my unconscious not to answer a question but to actually perform certain tasks usually regarding creating in my unconscious mind what I called "programs" wherein I sought to reprogram old childhood programs to new ends of my own, considered adult design by thoroughly considering, for instance, the psychological purpose of Ego Boundaries, in depth and then "designing" my own new ego boundaries via a self programming technique using self hypnosis, visualizations and Neuro-linguistic programming along with this dream pad deep programming at night. My "Autistic Child" self helped in this having arisen during this period I designated, The 52 Days of Magic,  and I know now that Autistic Child is something of a misnomer that this is actually  the Asperger part of my own mind that I had repressed in early adulthood because it is wholly inadequate in helping with adult matters so necessary to basic survival but which was unbeknownst to me at the time responsible for my creative writing ability and that by repressing it I had inadvertently caused a severe writers block that lasted 28 years. The first night that I attempted to use the pad for programming, I was getting ready to write on it and draw on it a diagram in this particular case when I thought popped up that I felt was from this Autistic Child self: "turn the pad from vertical to horizontal before writing on it. This will be a clear visual signal to unconscious self that we are doing something different now." I remember literally saying out loud, "Thank you" with tears of gratitude to this Autistic Child self immediately recognizing the validity of such a statement in this wholly unprecedented procedure knowing full well that my conscious identity would never have thought of such a thing. I include this night's programming on a picture of the dream pad - I've found that keeping it as simple as possible is best. This night it is not properly a matter of programming but is similar in that I am asking the unconscious to do something also I would use this technique to ask my astral body to do things such as asking it to go out into the world and find "her" which it did. So since my astral body is a proven performer, as it were, I call upon now to help in this matter. My suspicion here is that it will be best to do this in sleep taking "the enemy" by surprise and bringing all my greatest forces to bare on it, I feel. Thank you Sun Tzu.

Physically, I am much reassured this evening before sleep and rest as easy as I can reminded once again that my concerns of abandonment in this new relationship is internal not external. I wake at 4:39AM and after going to the bathroom lay for a moment surrounding us both in white light visualized within my heart center of self as I lay in bed again. I can detect nothing consciously and I think of how important faith is. Not just a word. Faith is an angel with a sword. Come to me, Faith, I ask of Her. Be close. Waking at 5:20 to the rude protests of the alarm, I make coffee for my Lioness and a sandwich for lunch and see her off to work and then I go back to sleep which I never can do. I dream of going into a fantastical mansion with gargoyles and amazing architecture of grandiose and complex designs. It clearly recalls last weekend in conscious life when we did a couples thing visiting a local old town area where she bought some Christmas ornaments. The inside of this house is enormous and a maze of complex passages with many rooms and I surely do loose Rosie inside

I do not find Rosie in this dream and when I reach for my phone to text her, of course the phone is gone. I then cannot even recall what her number is in the dream so find myself with her gone and no way to even contact her. Waking, I find the terrible feeling in this dream to be exactly the worse manifestation of this feeling in my actually. At the end of the dream, I am speaking with a guy who works in this house of knick knacks and we are talking about how dismal the job situation is and he is saying, "I'm only a few paychecks away from being on the street myself if I'm honest about it." And I respond, "who isn't. Me too for sure. At least you have family, I assume," seeing he is fairly young guy. "I do," he says, "that is some consolation." "Not me," I say at the very end of the dream, "I am utterly alone in this world".

I wake not knowing quite what to think but I smile confident that I had indeed programmed the unconscious and before arising I place my hand on my chest as I do so often now applying light pressure and focusing my self into this heart place: "fill this empty space with love" I ask. "Once and for all". I look at the birthday card that she has given me and it is absolutely beautiful and perfect and I know that she choose it with ... love. I cry reading it. It says exactly what I need to hear. It occurs to me not for the first time that a good Shaman does not waste any resource in his healing efforts and that she herself appears to be playing a part in this particular healing attempt. I can't quite grasp the ramifications of this whether there is some irony here in her helping me with my fear of losing her or if this is actually the most natural thing in the world for her to do and I'm simply overthinking it as I am want to do?

 

Short Short Story, "Knock Out Queen Knocked Out, by David Sky

 Knock Out Queen Knocked Out

I am used to being misunderstood, believe me. You cannot hardly be misunderstood more than a physically attractive, heterosexual, white female boxer. I say hardly above because I know that You, anyone of us can be taken Wrong. Only, I never gave a shit about Them. Because inside of me is a boxer so pure and real that I am certain if you could smash through my chest right now and tear out my heart while it was still beating, it would punch you right in your face. That thing inside my chest is shaped like a fist, no doubt in my mind.

Once this guy who I cannot help but still think of as the Love-Of-My-Life really wanted me to go down so badly that I did and that was good, I found, because He is this Love-Of-My-Life and that was really good, great. Everything was great with Him, I smile. So just to be clear, it's not like that, right, it's not about my ego ...

I know I am smiling because the ref who is following me around in my new dance here in the middle of this ring head is ducking and weaving up and down, in and out, looking right INTO MY EYES HERE, following my eyes in this comical way really and making a very strange face and if I could laugh, I would laugh. I am looking him in the eyes my mind as clear as a bell and I am reading his lips and he is saying softly - I think softly not sure how I know softly because I can't hear a goddamn thing - "Missy doesn't go down?" With that strange look on his face,  "What The Fuck?"

But other than this, other than for Him - I just would not, not even, no way, no how - I would not ever go down! Just to be clear. Because Missy does not Go Down. The others go down and this is just a fact. All the others have gone down. Knocked out not a technical knockout - no KNOCKED THE FUCK RIGHT OUT. Without exception. "Knock out Queen", the others call me instead of Missy. I like it all right because that is what I am: the one who knocks the others down.

Until now. Until right here and now. Because I know I am knocked out this time. I am stumbling, guard hanging out of the side of my mouth, drooling, reeling back and reeling back and already good and properly knocked out by this beautiful thing "what's-her-name" there and suddenly my mind so strangely clear as a bell fuzzes up, like the inside of a window fogging. And my mind is not clear as a bell any longer maybe my mind is whatever the opposite of clear as bell is, I don't know? And this seems right to me somehow because I am knocked out, after all, fair is fair, right is right, only I won't go down because my heart is holding me up more than my legs are holding my up. My heart is not only a fist, fuzzy thought now, giggling on the inside, my heart IS wobbly legs holding me up right here and now even though I have been good and properly knocked out already and I should be prostrate on that mat.

But I still do not go down even as this strange clarity of a bell begins fogging completely up now so that I cannot even see the ref any longer and I think my last thought before actually hitting the mat for the first time is, “help me here, ref. Call this! Hey, Randy, dammit, come on out of your corner there and catch me I'm about to be knocked the fuck out here” and at the end of it just spinning, no shit, look at that will you actually stars! Thinking almost happily, STARS! We'll I'll be damned! …

Trailing off into some little girl self just afraid now who doesn't want to fall but whose fist like a heart cannot help but hold her up even though she is good and properly and rightfully just plain knocked out ...

Down

And

Blank

"Never Let Another Moment Slip Away"

Energy Neither Created Nor Destroyed
http://van.physics.illinois.edu/qa/listing.php?id=1757

Still feeling raw and vulnerable lately and trying not to over think this and to just lay into it and not even resist this feeling realizing that t...his “trying not to resist the raw and vulnerable feeling” is in fact the way I flex my spiritual muscles – the way I “fight without struggling” which was a big lesson from the voice hearing period of 2007. It took a little over five years to grasp what this principle means in practice after I was told, “you will have to fight but you must not struggle in order to overcome and persevere in this battle it is imperative that you do not struggle”. Like much of what I was told, I had no real idea what it meant but I wrote it down like the good scribe that I am. But now I know. I know “the feeling” of this manner of doing battle which is quite the opposite of how fighting typically feels to me. It is about submission, acceptance in love. It is no wonder that I could not imagine what was meant for it is so radically different than what I had come to believe is “strength”?
I listen to Michael Franti driving back home this morning dawn just arisen and my inner voice is saying in my mind, “it's okay, Buddy, just lay into me and be easy and we'll figure this out” and I have a vision of my inner child resting his head on my shoulder and I put my arm around his shoulder and squeeze him. He is crying a little and his body is limp and I feel the energy of it that he is very tired and still insecure and still a little lost and this is who my inner voice is speaking to so lovingly, so gently and so very differently than my inner voice would have spoken pre 2007. This goal of being able to speak to and reassure or actually to “parent” my “inner child” was achieved finally with the help of an amazing woman I found in the Bitteroot Mountains of Montana in the late summer of 2007 who worked with me doing hypno-therapy as I had begun to realize that my “work” had only been begun my those mushroom experiences not finished at all. At first that was so difficult to do but she had insisted, thank God, and with the help of an induction state I was able to find and speak to this inner child without the self judgment that was prohibitively strong: “this is ridiculous bullshit!”. And what I realize this morning driving as this inner child is laying into my shoulder and I am reassuring (him) gently and easily is that I now CAN reassure him. What I had told my hypo-therapist at that time was how could I possibly reassure my inner child when I have no sense of assurance in my myself? She had explained that this is what you do for your children because you love them and you know they need to be reassured and I did not know this because I never had children but she assured me I would have done it for them if I had.
What I realize then as this inner vision slips away lasting only a few moments as Michael Franti plays in the background, this beautiful and perfect artist, “hey hey hey no matter how it used to be don't let another moment slip away” is that my inner child is an adult now. His head is on my shoulder, do you see? He is as tall as I am? A thought then comes, “I am being self limiting about the book I can do both at once. I can do this new agey dribble that I seem compelled to do and the novel at once. I do not have to choose between them.” I had put it out to the Universe that I would except what is coming to me almost in the way of automatic writing but which I resist in this expository writing and had thought that it would mean concentrating upon that solely to the exclusion of fiction which is what I want to do. I have been through a lot over many years soul crushing intensity internally and as I park I bow my head and visualize myself kneeling upon the ground and surrounded by a blazing white light that is egg shaped and extends about three feet around my entire body even into the ground and in this visualization outside of this protective egg of light a horrendous storm rages lightening bolts the size of tree trunks zap the outside of the protective shell and the earth is gone as this storm assaults me with a comic violence and I know what this means exactly. I have just driven my new love to work and had been talking about short term goals and thinking much about what I do still believe is a very near and very real economic crash and also potentially socially speaking something even more devestating. I realize that I do not want to put this madness on her that I do not want to put it onto myself. I think that all we can do practically in the way of preparation is to not incur new debt and pay off existing debt as aggressively as possible. I am pleased then with the balance of spiritual and practical energy I am feeling as the sun comes up this new day and I feel truly that I will not let another moment slip away. I am grateful for my life now, our life, beyond measure.

On Judgment

12/11/2013
Judgment

I'm looking beyond the Christian view of this which is directly that Judgment is the providence of God the Father with even Jesus Christ deferring to His Father on this as well as saying in no uncertain terms that lite...rally anyone at anytime can come to Him and receive forgiveness, something that many Christians conveniently overlook in their often seemingly obsession need to judge and condemn others, not to mention themselves.

Obviously also I'm looking beyond the simple need to judge the relative distance of other vehicles when driving so one does not run into them - I mention this because I myself did not understand this spiritual concept of non-judgmentalism and would think rather bitterly, "well you can't exist without judging!" totally missing the point, LOL!

The "point" can be rather subtle, I think? At an Adult Children of Alcoholics workgroup meeting wherein the leader is a little more directive than normal for the group, he said that from the Big Book it says that it is not a good idea to even help someone understand something they need to understand and I perked up at that? I'm at the point myself where I very much would relish help in pushing back any remaining dark for I understand well that while I know what I know I don't know what I don't know. But he said that if we figure out what we need to figure out for ourselves, the process is following a natural course that is totally individual and that then we move along at an emotional or spiritual pace, as it were, that is exactly right for us. Wow. That is some wise ass shit right there, I whistled softly. Blows me away how often this ACA stuff is as clever as any Zen Master might be?

One of the hardest things I've had to learn and barely so is that I should not always say what I know to someone. For me it is especially hard since one of the coping mechanism I evolved to deal with early childhood trauma is the understand everything - EVERYTHING which I refer to as "hyper-vigilance" and which I am still attempting to change into a Zen like "awareness" that is a receptive thing rather than active or "projective" thing for in my "understanding" is also judgment. Also, I expend a great deal of energy in this hyper-vigilance and much less when it is flipped to it's other side as Awareness? I do truly understand now that there are as many paths to the mountaintop as there are climbers but it is fiendishly difficult for me to not want to help others along their own path. One still unresolved issue in all this is that writing fiction comes directly from this compulsive need in me to understand everything and everyone down to molecular levels and the process I'm still involved in is jamming me up in a very strange way but I'm allowing it for now for back to "the point" I've learned now that just because something is "wrong' doesn't mean it isn't right when viewed from the big picture point of view, or perhaps to say from a spiritual point of view. Like I see now that I HAD to make considerable mistakes in order to get to this place I'm at now for which I am so grateful to be? And so with others now I consider that while what they are doing or not doing may look wrong to me, or even wrong to us all, in some fashion quite beyond my ability to comprehend (we're talking "the Mind of God" here) even our mistakes are not really mistakes?

In 2007 I was told, "Everything that ever was, ever will be or is right now is perfect" and even now that is a hard pill to swallow. But more than ever I feel that it is correct only I am not spiritually advanced enough to grasp the truth of it - much as I hate to use that phrase, "spiritually advanced enough" just not sure how else to say this? But to be sure the opposite of judgment is acceptance and acceptance is my goal to just keep praying for the strength to "accept the things I cannot change" which is the overwhelmingly vast majority of "things" in life.See More

From my Tribe.net Blog dated March 1st 2012

Was in Santa Fe New Mexico when I wrote this and physically not doing well at all barely about to walk using a walker, in the throes of bankruptcy and divorce but I did indeed tumble forward which was about all I could do and now I am in such a better place in every way with my faith restored in The Mushroom Path and stronger than ever with my faith having been tested now in every way including  a near death experience and proven unshakable and warranted. Now I have emerged from the dark and scary part of the path and into this sunlit meadow and truly I can say to God Almighty thank You from the bottom of my heart for giving me everything I need in this world. I have travelled across the country many times over but all that has actually happened is that I moved myself out of hell and into heaven on earth -

Where is there to go now
East, West, North and South
Wherever a human heart beats
I am already there ?

Tribe blog:
"The Last Rabbit Hole"

When you get down soo low, new lows appear - exactly the opposite of climbing say up a mountain - “there’s the top!” Little while later, “No, wait, there’s the top” And so on. I pray in the name of love for insanity, for death, but neither comes save the thrashing and horrible dying of my human spirit. Sanity rings me like a bell as if some punishment itself and I try to rip the sanity off like a mask but cannot so am doomed now to this purgatory without even the salve of delusions, deflections and other ego defenses, good and bad as they may be?

Everything is brighter now, clearer, edges crisply defined and all aglow as if in the midst of nice little Acid Trip? There are the twenty five years of my life wherein I could even walk gone - I experience the goneness of a life, what grief, something that one cannot get back by any means whatsoever. Now literally crippled both physically and emotionally and in the depths of a nasty Rabbit Hole. An instinct now to seek the Mushroom Path. If I am alive then the Mushroom Path exists. I can follow it on my knees, do you understand? I could lay paralyzed again unable to move a muscle yet I could Choose to follow the path.

The secret is that the path is nowhere and nothing at all. Like the breath of eternity as she rests her head upon the shoulder of god. To "Look" for the path is folly. To struggle in any way is hopeless error. Best to look out of the corner of my eyes, use those rods like for night vision, squint my eyes, maybe, - yes, there, there it is a vast glowing white membrane connecting all things ... and then it is gone from sight but not from mind and I know that we see with our minds, not our eyes.

Alright. I think I can do this maybe one more time. And we’re talking on my knees, no sword at hand, no power but my own pathetically flawed power to love. I can tumble, maybe, forward one last time. Put all my life fearlessly once again into the utterly fathomless hands of fate. Because this is the Mushroom Path. It is most certainly not the shortest path nor the easiest path nor the right or wrong path nor the up or down path nor the narrow path nor the holy path but only my own path that I choose to follow with my human will because I believe that this is the path through the very heart of all things.

No right path only the path upon which the heart field explodes with energy - I will know it easily because right now it is the opposite, the heart field engulfed in a thick darkness and worn down to a bare nub, the tiniest flicker of life.

Right now, give me strength to love. Strength to crawl out of this nasty hole by bloody finger nails if necessary and on into 2012 and Operation Monkeys and Ocean - in the name of love, I pray.

(Hey, I didn't come to this party for the nuts and cookies, man - I came to stir the pot, dammit!")See More

Short Fable, How Wasting-Energy Became the Last Sin

An extremely short fable, "How Wasting-Energy became the Last Sin" by David Sky

In days that are like a year, things begin to grow a little fuzzy in memory even though it was merely a year and a half ago in “Normie Time”. It is written down somewhere. Documented. On this particular day I slaughtered all sin -  no, not by myself, that would be INSANE, come on. I had worlds of help. For the thing I am become is never alone but always amongst an army of angels. It was a long and terrifying battle that lasted most of a day – most of a year, in days like a year, mind you. I was beyond exhaustion. We all were. I lay with the others sword down on it's quiet side in the bloody grass amidst the carnage of the sins feeling grateful to tears for such a victory.

Someone said then, “O shit man, there's one still standing – who will take it, I do not have enough strength left to raise my sword?”

“I cannot raise myself from the earth here.” I said, “cannot even raise my head off of the ground, Brothers, Sisters - can someone tell me which sin had the unmitigated audacity to evade our wrath?”

“Waste of Energy” someone answered.

Waste of energy, I thought about that for a moment. I tried to raise myself but to no avail. “Okay, then, we will give quarter to this one sin,” I said. For I am always the leader of my army. “So Wasting-Energy shall now be the last sin, the only sin left in this world. Let this one sin keep us all honest,” I declared.

“Here here” rose a tired chorus from around me.

And this is how now in reality the only sin left is Wasting-Energy. To be clear, Wasting-Energy covers a lot of ground in my cosmology. It is a waste of energy to disrespect ones elders. A waste of energy to lie. A waste of energy to commit adultery. Waste of energy to kill … sure I sinned that day all day long and without repentance as those sins fell, one after another, amidst blood and gore under the pitiless blows of our swords. Sometimes we put our mortal souls on the line for a greater good. Sometimes we have to do so.

No need to thank me, friends, it's what I do, man, it's what I do.

Short Short Story, "An Inmate Escapes the Asylum"

(Originally written July of 2012 "about" the feeling I had when the "52 Days of Magic" came upon me with its powerful, healing energy that broke me out of the many dark rabbit holes into which The Mushroom Path had led me very much for my own good)
"An Inmate Escapes the Asylum"

Short-Short Story by David Sky
He stands fingers enmeshed in the wire of the ten foot fence surrounding the asylum. On the outside now looking in, watching them play those games that they had always played in the outdoor courtyard full on summer now. Remorselessly. Soft grass so green, he notes, looking around as though for the first time at a park like setting surrounding the asylum, a line of trees demarcating the boundary of some as yet unexplored forest full of birds, of bird song. Promise. Feeling an easy breeze against his gaunt face, not merely looking at the many flowers blooming everywhere around him but seeing them with a sense of too-good-to-be-true mixed with deja vu.

Now, he thinks, I could not go back in there even if I wanted. They did not seem to see him standing there? He almost feels guilty but not quite. Such nonsense gone now like some ancient Phantasmagoric vision. He does feel sad, though. Deeply so. Whether or not this sadness is for himself on the outside here, or for them on the inside there, seems to him irrelevant - it would be a fools errand of the first order to parse that one, he thinks.

Perhaps all grief is everyone's grief? He wonders lightly. He is relieved, sure, but weary with it all.

Relaxing his grip on the fence and rolling his thin neck loosely and slowly. Sobbing softly now. But this, this pain, he marvels, this is what I am. This is mine. This is as real and honest as a hard days work. I here do not so much take responsibility for this pain, he whispers to no one, but ownership – no, more than ownership - this pain IS me. He long, thin frame sinks then his fingers dragging without resistance down the cold metal of the fence until his bony knees reach a comfort on the thick summer grass.

This is me. This is part of what I am - thank you, he whispers again, a newly reflexive “thank you tic”. Gratitude now such that it was much more than a word. He thinks back to when not so long ago for the very first time he had actually felt grateful for his food for which he gave thanks in word only before. He wonders if simply saying thanks had finally worn its way into genuine gratitude or if the gratitude had arisen like some grace of it's own accord? It felt like the kind of question that would characterize his life now? It must be grace for grace is upon him of this he is certain.

Even through the sobs that suddenly wrack him as if a attack from outside, a smile flowers upon his lips and gratitude slowly mixes with grief like two rivers he had looked down upon from high above when backpacking up the the Canadian Rockies, one a brilliant aqua marine, the other a deep muddy brown, the line where they initially meet definitive for a half a mile or so until finally mingling and merging into a greater, conjoined river and flowing on toward the distance Pacific ocean.

Gratitude and despair is the thing I am now, he affirms in himself.

Finally, he pulls himself up upon his weak legs giving thanks for this grace however it had come upon him and all too aware that he gives thanks to nothing, nothing at all, but feeling great heaping gobs of gratitude flowing freely up through the ground beneath his feet and wildly, wonderfully up through his body screaming out of the top of his head like banshees.

I think I'm still alive, he whispers cautiously, looking around beyond the compound now. With a hint of the unreality of it all that would become for him the Coma Dream Conundrum in the near future, he wonders a little vaguely if they do not take notice of him because he is merely a ghost? He doesn't waste too much time wondering because it doesn't seem to matter for now one way or the other.

He turns and walks away then knowing that what had started as a one day lark had transformed itself with spectacular subtlety into a full blown adventure in eternity. Thank you so much, he whispers to no one, to nothing at all. Perhaps just as any ghost might do? Gratitude that now always made him smile a huge, idiot grin that felt just like a great big, god damn hug empowered his weakened legs.

He knew that he is free and clear now - just free and clear. Feels a little like walking on air. Worn to the bone, weary from the effort, walking away into a bright summer landscape okay with this weariness that like the pain of it all IS him. So far as I can recall, he reminds himself significantly, no one had ever promised me that becoming real would be easy.