I am grateful for the good health I’ve enjoyed so far…
Even as the feet, ankles and knees seem to require
lots of ‘maintenance’ to keep functioning…
I’m glad I still have a fighting chance at keeping the moving parts…
Moving.
I am not in a comfortable financial position these days
with just enough to keep us afloat for a few more years
when social security kicks in.
Our once very profitable Luv biz
has had many unexpected bumps in the road.
At first,
over 13 years ago, our digital marketing was kicking arse.
Most of our competitors had not yet jumped on this
new kind of marketing…
But within a few years, they all starting jumping in…
Which made the cost per clicks to view our website sky rocket
and significantly bring down the number of weddings we’d land.
But I intensified my approach and got the wheels turning in a sustainable way…
Then,
The evil knuckle heads that get a sadistic pleasure out of fucking with people’s websites created a malware issues with the folks that host my site.
Then I’m told,
“We’ve got malware on our system so YOU have to pay $1000’s to fix it”.
I’m then ‘black listed’ on google and all of my past SEO efforts are wiped out.
It takes over a year to get the groove going again.
Then,
Covid knocks us out.
It knocked everyone in the world out.
We used that time to rebuild the website and put heaps into
search engine optimization $$…
advertised with a wide spectrum of wedding groups that indeed
got our momentum up and running at an inspiring pace once again.
It took over 2 years to begin this recovery…
But,
Less than 16 months into the new groove…
The Lahaina fire knocked us completely dead.
No one came to Maui for at least 6 months…
In fact,
It’s been about 20 months since the fire and tourism
is still way below the norm.
Last year, about 8 months after the fire,
I restarted my google ad campaigns…
After 4 months and no inquires…
I learned that the evil knuckle heads that get pleasure from fucking with people on the internet…
They automated.
Cyber bots are now all the rage with dip shit excuse for humans.
They automatically go to ad and click on them relentlessly until your budget is all used up.
So,
I had to give up on the only marketing that used to work very well.
But,
Now I’ve been relentlessly working on organic direct marketing on Facebook.
Once a week a number of Maui visitor groups allow local businesses to post an ad.
Then,
During the week,
I relentlessly throw my hat into the ring for those that seek the services we offer…
It’s time consuming, but,
At least for now, it’s showing signs that we may soon start making
almost our cost of living…
Then….
tRump came into power to fuck over the world with his childish revenge agendas.
His all-mighty ego has lashed out to disrupt the world economies and
devastate everyone on the entire planet.
So,
The whole world is fighting back, and
boycotting everything ‘made in aughmuricaugh…
International vacations to Maui is crashing.
Even when we don’t have an asshole purposely fucking up the world…
When our economy takes a little bump,
Hawaii vacations takes a huge bump.
Our economy is just starting to hit a bump
of a magnitude we haven’t seen in history.
And,
This administration has just cut countless 1000’s of government agencies
that helped the poor and middle class get by.
So the ultra rich, the ones that got his ass refucin elected…
Are shielded from paying their fair share of taxes.
And these same buttweazels are trying to eliminate health insurance
for the poor, middle class and particularly retires.
And,
They are foaming at the mouth to do away with social security.
If any of this continues to go like it’s going…
I’ve got about 6 years before we get to live outdoors again,
The last time we enjoyed living our dreams outside by sailing over 37,000 miles…
But the next adventure, we’ll be
scrounging for food scraps.
But ooooohhhh yea…
That’s what makes aughmuricaugh great!
So,
Meanwhile…
I will enjoy every breath until then.
I’m resuming my very in-depth meditation practice…
Very long sits and abiding in pure awareness
with every mindful breath… every breath.
My plan is…
Maha Samadhi.
I look forward to every breath…
But,
I also look forward to being done with this self-defeating existence that lacks any purpose other than mindless and senseless pain and suffering.
Oh, if that’s the purpose… to live in denial of the purposelessness of life…
Yippy kai yea motherfucker… as was stated in ‘Die Hard’.
I am grateful for the depth of Wisdoms I’ve gained
by integrating every reasonable non-dual tradition practices
into an ever Deeping philosophy and understanding.
“We” are just something like “Pure Awareness”… “Pure Consciousness”…
But,
These are just words, and words can never teach the whole lesson.
The experiences of the very deep ‘Insight meditations’ reveal an experience
that does indeed go very far toward gaining that ultimate Wisdom…
But,
Until ‘we’ are fully liberated from the body,
that Ultimate Wisdom will not be experienced.
However,
In the even higher stages of Jhana meditation,
beyond the initial breakthroughs I’ve experience and deepened …
It is in the absorption aspects near the final fruition
that ‘we’ are at least temporarily liberated from the body.
I already have profoundly experienced a ‘disembodiment’,
when it becomes remarkably clear that there is no “me” inside…
anywhere,
that is the ‘self’ ‘we’ once thought as the one in control.
To gain this ‘effortless’ phase of the practice…
Heaps of effort for many years is necessary
to gain the focused ‘one pointedness’
that seems to align all the mind-sub mind faculties
that combine to stay on point.
What happens is…
Surrender.
You let go of the effort, but,
You stay with the awareness.
Much like when you fall asleep…
surrendering to an unconscious sleep…
Everything is surrendered, but…
The clarity of awareness becomes noticeably profound.
Maha Samadhi is the ultimate surrender…
But…
There’s no coming back.
This is a very mystic practice.
Only a few master’s have been documented to achieve this in the last 100 years.
Swami Saraswathi is one of them, and I’ve studied his teachings deeply. But,
In all naive fairness…
It seems like it helps if the dude is very, very old
and the body is about done anyway.
The enlightened masters that have ether earnestly achieved Maha Samadhi
or were just so fully enlightened that they were in the deep mode of ‘Rigpa’,
Pure Awareness’… right up to when ‘they’ leave the body,
before the brain flat lines…
They have managed to state that:
“Nothing changes”.
I feel strongly that:
It doesn’t matter if you abide in Rigpa most of your life,
Or,
If you just ignorantly go through this life unconscious of higher Wisdoms…
When your body flat lines…
Whatever continues will flow as naturally as the falling rain.
For those that are not satisfied with ignorantly living an unconscious life
and dying that way…
There is … the ‘Practice’.
So
when you are living, there is peace, when your are dying… there is peace.
When you die… there is peace.
The Pure Awareness you had during your deepest meditations and daily Practices…
This abiding in our ‘Natural State’…
This is what the masters state that:
“Nothing changes”.
Maha Samadhi is much like the surrender from
the effort part of focused concentration meditation …
to the effortless aspects of the final phases of the ‘Practice’…
It’s just that…
Everything is surrendered so completely… that,
There is no returning.
