What can I say? I'm a mover and shaker. I need happiness without financial limitations. I need to be out there for others, so in the first place, I need to be there for myself. Its funny because we dont often think of help in that way. I used to think it was selfish and cowardly to want to be financially free, independent, when there were so many people UNhappy, poor, etc. But I learned that when you are happy at work (if you work) doing what you love, you spread SOOOO many rainbows in all directions that people feel it - they flow with it, and you are then helping THEM to realize THEIR dreams...just by WATCHING YOU do your thang. So if you manage to make money and thrive, and do your conscious best to avoid harm (which my theory is CAN NOT happen - even grass needs to be "harmed" to sustain life), then congratulations to you; you are now a solid citizen capable of teaching others to ground themselves, to be present to the air up there, and be in both places at once. You are now worthy of a handshake. Now another thing was also looking around and not finding MY nitch. I mean I am still looking. I've tried some things out, done things, etc., and I dont know if I have a NITCH. I may have a PHASE instead. Like, today, is phase MOVIES, and I watch some great indie film and gawk. Tomorrow may be MUSIC day, and I will write a new song. So on like that. Same with larger projects. You take on a project, and you play. You succeed, or you fail, but you try. Its always worth a try. Its funny we go through phases - sometimes I'm MOVING, sometimes I'm moping. I have tried to find patterns to this all. The important thing is that we shift - each to their own wind or what have you. So today, thinking about freedom, finances, and what I want overall - I chose to be present and peaceful. That was the possibility of the day. Present and peaceful...

I bet most people in this network has a sense of a teacher figure. A lot of you have probably had Buddhist masters, some sort of system they followed, or maybe not at all. Well for those of you who have experienced the type of "devotion" Buddhism deems as the highest virtue to do the work of self-awakening, I would like to ask: When is it enough? Rather, when is the teacher and concept of teacher outside oneself get dropped? I ask because often times, being human, those diligent students like ourselves, tend to get entangled in the web of teacher/student relations. The lines get blurred, you get to know them as people, and still they remain on a pedestal of an intangible sort, one so hard to carve out of your mind once its imprinted, that it raises another question: "Do you trust yourself to find the way out of 'darkness?'" And then: "Are you in fact, in the dark?" I raise this question because I have been wrangling with all this. And I have found that through the dark times I encountered, through the feeling of "path abandonment" (where I feel that I had denied my "true" calling - yeah, as opposed to the fake one) as I left my teacher and granted my self freedom from any path, I came to a point of freedom. The path I practiced is irrelevant. The one tenet that is most important to me now is the one that states that even the "teachings" are an illusion. Which is where I am. I dont want a teacher. I want myself to allow myself to accept that fact that I am WHOLE AND COMPLETE ALREADY! And I need nothing to FIX me, because I am not broken. My eyes may be closed according to some religions, but they seem to be pretty darn open right now, and I discovered that I will also find what I will find. I am strong enough to walk my path and in a way I see fit. So I guess this is a calling to the realization that we are all whole. The teacher is also a phase, a phase you may return to several times in your life, or every other week, but there HAS to remain a sense of self. A sense that you will be fine without them there. I agree that we need discipline. Without discipline we will achieve nothing. There comes a time, though, when you must administer your own discipline to yourself. You come alone, you leave alone. And that is not depressing! That is empowering! We are responsible for ourselves, so get yourself together. Be weary when your teacher becomes your crutch. Be a teacher to someone else, and you may discover you know it all already.