Death as Spiritual Practice

...Or at least near-death as spiritual practice.  It's interesting, really, how a life-threatening illness or experience can shake the illusions and projections out of your system in a very short period of time--the ideas, positions taken, justifications for certain behaviors seem petty and, in my case, not even "real."  I spent 17 years constructing a way to operate in this world of ideas only to come to the conclusion that ideas aren't all that real.  They're a product of our evolution but only another substitute for what it is we are really searching for.  Beautifully, laying in a hospital bed, with brain damage and uncertainty of the future, the discovery that what it is we are really searching for has always been present slapped me across the face and has never really left since.  Inevitably, however, upon returning to the world of ideas, illusions, and identity justifications, the bullshit that had previously dropped away returns.  Only now its much harder to take the bullshit seriously.  Operating in a world of bullshit and knowing via experience that that's what I am doing gives life a different flavor.  I can still argue certain positions, get angry, get sad, shout, be at peace, drink beer, and eat chocolate cake, but I can't really take it all that seriously anymore.  I can no longer pretend.  It's liberating, in a way.  So, the purpose of this Bodhi-blog is to let you know that I Love you.  I'm here for you.  Take heart.  You are home.  You were never really lost.  And if you want, you can stop pretending, if that's what you are doing.  Don't worry, I won't tell anyone!