I had a semi lucid dream that involved a hair raising car chase along the side of of a number of cliffs. It was during this point I felt like I had some sense that I was dreaming, but decided to ride with it. The dream started with some kings horses and men (a lot actually) that ended up chasing me and a few others by my side, where we escaped in a mechanical vehicle that suddenly spawned hundred of years from the future. Eventually we gave up that vehicle and stepped into some kind of weird interdenominational lift that popped us out into a time closer to today. This is where that car chase along the cliff started. I was not long then faced an adversary challenging me that ended up with me hacking people to death. It was at that point that I woke up at 4am.
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My shoulder feels not too bad. The pain is not stopping healing. It's been present with me long enough that we are now one and the same. Smiles. I am super sensitive to pain, yet also used to it. A level of acceptance that allows for mending without the use of drugs. I've even managed to lose a little weight this time as I have been disciplining myself re those unhealthy comfort foods. In that process my skin is once again on the mend. Additionally I have also been getting to bed much earlier as well as spending less time on my computer; away from my four radiating screens. The next level of healing might involve taking out the ear buds and less fiddling with my phone. I think perhaps a return to printed books or the purchase of an ink pad. Yes, I think that would fit well into my current backyard ventures. While I am at it I would benefit from some multi focal glasses as well. Best to get the latter first. Taking multiple glasses with me everywhere I takes up a lot of space + tiring.
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I think that is enough acknowledgments and goal setting. Actually scratch the term goal setting and replace with 'setting intention.' I really need to drop all that clinical self help lingo. I too have ready many self help books over the decades and none seem to really hold any form of long term solutions for me. In fact most are based on the same fallibility to which our modern society is built on. Spirituality as it is also peddled is offering me less and less. It is as seemingly twisted and confusing as the common dynamics found in online truth seeking. ... Thus time to go back within. (I often say it, but always find myself drawn back out)
This need not mean I no longer read or take other things in. It just means going back to what worked before and seeing if I can connect once more on those previous levels I have tasted before. Learning to live in a world that singles out those who do not feed it's current structure is a hard task to be sure. It's part of that long learning curve where at my current point and I doing my best to endure that aching loneliness so commonly associated with alienation. How you view or from which point you look, with respect to who is separating who? That being a key element in the process of suffering. The more one identifies with that which they yearn to leave, the more pain one suffers in that process of alienation. Yet if one can sit with the discomfort that comes from braking away from said attachments and distractions - the more one is able to endure these natural reactions / phases of depression. (definition on natural being where resistance has the potential to trigger or acceptance can take place) Only then can one fathom the concept of learning from suffering. However, I would term it as simply moving on. That concept I think is as misinterpreted and often comes up the same as telling someone who is gutted to 'cheer up.' I am sure it has merit, but in today's butchering of terms it does - for me at least - more harm than good.
That's a wrap. I think I will head out into the darkness and cold then greet the sun in whatever mood I am in when it comes.
Have a good night/evening.
Adios.