I spend so much time stressing and fearing, arranging and hoarding, I cling to this tendency for vigilance because of this over inflated sense of self. I can’t put down the idea that this time might just be about me. I MIGHT, in any given circumstance, be able to do just the right thing to cause the effect I want. Be damned all those times that the opposite has been true; I was a cause all right, in getting things I definitely did not want (the root canal, the onset of rosacea, the garden dig that fucked the house foundation). And be damned the fact that what I want at any given time is sorta arbitrary: Something I imagine will fulfill a fantasy, and then which I build a fantasy around, clinging to, and getting saddened by losing the thing I imagined the value into in the first place. And be damned that all of this vigilance, the effort and stress of it, hurt me; I foolishly think it’s worth the cost to carry around a safety blanket, no matter how heavy, no matter how warm I get, no matter that it may put me in danger, just because one day it may help when I am cold. Even though — no matter what I believe — if the causes and conditions for my being cold, for my dying of freezing, get met, I will freeze with or without a blanket.

MIGHT is not an affirmation of anything except for the reality that there is also MIGHT NOT. A while back, when I was considering, I told Mae Neecha that the fact that my yellow purse SOMETIMES makes people think I am awesome is why I cling to it. But later I reflected, the only thing sometimes proves is sometimes not, ie NEVER ALWAYS. Clinging to a purse because I think it makes people think I am awesome sometimes is stupid; if the purse’s nature was that of a tool to make people think I am awesome it would work for everyone always.

Might/Maybe/Sometimes are symptoms of a world where the matrix is true. And why is the matrix true? Because everything is circumstantial, conditional, occasions when the proper causes/conditions/factors have been met for arising and occasions they have not. In this word, what happens proves the causes for it happening were met, and nothing more. It certainly doesn’t prove a purse will prove my awesomeness. It also doesn’t prove my awesomeness. It doesn’t even prove me.

Myopically, I measure my worth, the worthiness of my efforts, on a case-by-case basis. On those occasions that it doesn’t strain credulity to assume my vigilance gets me what I want, I put a feather in my hat, feel proud, confirm this idea that it tis I, Alana-The-Great, who maybe can’t pown the world, but can at least have dominion over what I have named and claimed as MY CORNER. In those cases, when circumstances land in the favorable corner of the matrix, I get the outcomes I want, so yay, a point for me and for my vigilance. But before I tally my points, before I brush under the table all the stuff that didn’t land in the corner of the matrix I had hoped for, it’s worth asking another question: Are my victories really even victories? Am I really ever getting what I want? What I have come into this world to achieve? These crumbs that keep me sustained, but perpetually hungry and willing to fight for more, what are they really? Which brings me back to anxiety in the sauna…

When the pandemic started, vigilant monitoring of the news got me lots of masks and toilet paper ahead of lockdowns. I patted my own back for my prowess staying informed, for my power to protect myself, I called this victory to justify further vigilance. I used it to fuel my hope that I might just be able to effectuate the outcome I want, some of the time. Enough of the time to make it worth it… but masks and toilet paper is a pretty shitty prize. What I really want is a world without disease, where I don’t have to worry about viruses or bacteria consuming me. A world where I need masks and toilet paper hoards at all is a world that is not going to let me win. I am not going to get what I want here, or at the spa, or in the cabin in the woods, they are the same, there is disease here, there is decay.

When I got long covid, I patted myself on the back for doing all the research that helped me isolate the likely cause, and the right drugs to cure me. Never mind btw the crumb I brush under the table, that I figured it out on my second guess, after the first guess led me to take medication that made me much worse. Right alongside my research/preparation prowess, I credited my bank account balance with being able to afford the drugs (off label) and the doctor willing to prescribe them. Sure I had become subject to disease, but I kicked it right back in the hole, by bringing the brute force of ALANA to bear on the situation. Here was proof the tools I had amassed could protect me.

But really — what I want most in this world is to be safe. All the preparation, all the knowledge, all the willpower, all the wealth, these are what I have cultivated as a means to the end of being safe. Is a world where I got sick in the first place — where my stressing at the spa shows that I am fully aware could happen any time again — actually safe?

And if wealth and qualities could really have kept me safe, why didn’t they prevent me from getting covid? Or at least long covid? All that I claim and then cling to because I hope they will protect me, at best seem to do so SOMETIMES. Which is to say, NEVER ALWAYS. Which is also to say, not on my terms. Which is all an indication that its not my actions, my preparations, my blahblahblah, that determine my health or sickness, if they did these would reliably do so all the time.

All these conditions require a cause to be helpful. They require my having the karma to not get sick at that time, if that karma is lacking, or alternatively if the karma for illness is ripe, I get sick no matter what preparations I put in place. How do I know? All the preparations I took to avoid long covid didn’t work. I had stockpiled Paxlovid, took metformin, washed my sinuses, put every bit of science, every paper I had read, every action I had know at the time that might prevent long covid, into effect and still long covid came. Besides, how can I be protected in a world that offers no shelter?

At the beginning of the pandemic, Mae Yo sent me a picture to contemplate, it was a prize fighter holding his hands up in victory, but his face was all swollen and bruised. The text below said something like if this is the winner, imagine the loser. It made me reflect: Here I was a Covid lockdown winner, I had a cushy job I could work from home, a bank balance that allowed me to get everything delivered, a ton of toilet paper and masks…but then is that really winning? Nothing about my life in lockdown felt like a win. Sitting in the spa today, I realized that my ‘post pandemic’ life doesn’t feel much like a win either. Whether you are up or down, if you are in a dukkha world, what you get is dukkha.

Here is the part that fools me: I do get what seems to me to be wins some of the time. As I said before, clearly my actions/abilities have a palpable impact; sometimes that impact is in accord with my wishes, with what I envision myself to be, what I think my life ought to be. For years I had both the sheer force of will, plus the financial wherewithal, and the general circumstances to covid isolate. Because I was never exposed to covid, I never caught it in that time. WIN! But as soon as I came out – I felt like I had to come out and live — covid got me. Actually, to be more specific, on our first trip, Covid got Eric. And then my partner, who in my mind exists to keep me safe, is one of those tools I have stockpiled in the name of safety, ended up getting me sick. Just a wait, a duration before I lost.

And another example: For years I worked-out vigorously, I brought the sheer force of my will to the task of being fit and supremely fit I was. WIN! I trained my body to control it, to force its shape to my will, to prove to others I was on top and in control. To prove it to myself so I could convince myself I had a modicum of safety. Afterall, I can’t control everything, but at least myself, my body…if I can’t master that what can I expect to have mastery over? What can I depend on? What will be the proof of my exceptionalism, or of the qualities I value and identify with? For all those years of training, for all the crazy fit shit I could do, 1 bout of covid gave me long covid that literally laid me out flat. I had all the will in the world to exercise, to get back to who I had been, but my body simply wouldn’t obey, it just kept collapsing in exhaustion. Just a wait, a duration, before I lost.

I lost my fitness, I also lost the fantasy of my body to prove my control — if this body could prove my control of shit, then duh, I would have been able to actually control it. It couldn’t have been circumstantial, conditional, dependent on a disease-free state that vanished after just a week battling a microscopic virus. Dependent on something other than my actions, my secret sauce.

I am fooled by the sometimes; I take a duration of time that I seem to be affecting outcomes more-or-less in line with my desire/imagination and I think it proves me, proves my efforts ‘WORK’. Again, this is myopic. The big picture is that I go from circumstance to circumstance trying to get the outcome I want instead of seeing any ‘victory’ in this world is a pyrrhic one. All I need to do is peek at the time outside of the duration –a duration btw that I don’t dictate –and I will see the truth: If some shit I did or I was actually ‘worked’ it would work ever fucking time. But every object, every effort, everything is just like that yellow purse; if it in and of itself had the power to effectuate some outcome, it would do so all the time. If it proved anything, it would prove it all the time. And actually, it does prove something, the thing I quickly brush under the table, that I desperately want to ignore. It proves that everything in this world is conditional, arising only when the causes are ripe. Causes are ripe some of the time. All of the time they become exhausted.

None of this proves anything about me. It just proves the nature of the world. And yet, in my ignorance, I think it proves that my vigilance, my sadhana, my efforts are worthy, that there is hope, that if I can just adjust and recalculate and figure out how to do better next time then I can find my refuge, then I can have the life and be the me I want to be. But this thinking, this view, will never ever EVER get me that happy haven I desire. That is literally not the nature of the world, that is not the nature of the body I use to be in this world. What this thinking does get me however is suffering: More rebirths, more tries to try and accomplish what is impossible. In the end, there is only duration because there is arising and ceasing. What arises and ceases, all of it is conditional, and what is conditional can’t prove me. It can’t be me. It’s just what arises based on circumstances, circumstances that arose based on other circumstances, ad infinitum. This isn’t special, no part of it, no moment, no cause and no effect, its just the mundane process of the world.

So where to next with all of this? The scaffolding is laid, I see the contours of how this world works, of my wrong view, of karma. Now is the task of sticking it to my heart. More evidence, different words, more angles, more internalizing, more examples. More and more till my heart can’t refuse the truth. More and more because for lifetimes I have sought refuge, it has been my raison d’etre, I have hustled and suffered on this refuge hunt and all this time I have been searching in the wrong place. All this time, I have looked outwards, bringing the force of my will, my vigilance, my parami, to try and mould the world, my corner of it anyway, into a shape that –at least temporarily – looks like refuge to me. But refuge isn’t out there anywhere. I need to bring my force to change my heart, my hope, my expectations. Real refuge, a real cessation of dukkha, is to change myself, to develop right view.

Now Dear Reader –cliff hanger –the tasks have already begun, but you will need to wait a little while till that story gets told. It’s not complete yet anyway… Next week, we get back to 2022 where we left off.