SUBLIME SUNLIGHT: With Great Expectations...

We're told to expect great things, or sometimes even mediocre things, but always to plan ahead. When I went through some of my worst depression and was put into the hospital all the therapists wanted to know what my future plans were. When I told them I didn't have any and wanted to live in the present they told me that was my problem and insisted I come up with a five year plan. I've had a lot of days now, just sitting here, looking at my expectations, and realizing that they are what brings suffering. When in your mind you see things going a certain way and then they don't, you feel like you did something wrong, or that life just isn't working in your favour, and that can make you cynical, depressed, angry, and you might lose hope when nothing was wrong in the first place. Can anything ever really go wrong? Deep down I really don't think it can. We all have these ideals on the surface, every one of us, but they're all different. All our opinions on what is right and wrong, they were born through culture, on ideas that mostly haven't been around for very long. If I really look within I see that almost everything I've believed is untrue.

My body has been sick the past few days, resisting food very strongly. I'm mostly at peace with it though. When I think about this wonderful life that I live, of every beautiful moment I've been given, how can I be ungrateful? That doesn't mean I'm not going to do everything I can to heal. I'm just not going to fight the reality of this moment. I got a book entitled "Instinctive Nutrition". It was recommended in that book I read last month about instinctive eating. It's strange to be reading these books which aren't supportive of vegan diets, or really any labels at all. Reading them is helping me to become more humble. You know how when you believe in something like veganism, treading lightly on the earth, or living a certain way, and you feel superior to have this label, and everyone you talk to you feel like you want to convince them that what you're doing is right? It's not a good feeling to me, very defensive. Well, what if we could let it all go? What would it be like to be nothing and to be everything all at once? To love everyone and everything because the world is so perfect just the way it is? I think it is the deepest peace, a life of surrender and unconditional love.

My sleep cycle is becoming so in tune with nature. When the sun starts to go down in the afternoon, around 6:30, I begin to feel very calm and sleepy. It's funny, I have a solar light in my cabin, but I rarely use it. I'm beginning to feel like artificial lighting confuses me, and the light of the day is all I want. So, as it gets dark out I relax in my big comfy bed(the one I dreamed about for so long), and I fall into the deepest, most peaceful sleep I've ever known. I wake up in the morning, usually a half hour or an hour before the sun rises. I find that a really good time to meditate, and then watch the sun kiss the trees as it comes up. There's something so magical in the sun's light. In the morning, when I have my long walk to the bus stop, I get to feel the early morning sun on my skin, and it just feels like pure unconditional love, the most beautiful thing in the world.

I got a rollinia that weighed about 4 pounds yesterday. It was so ripe it was falling apart, oozing custard, so I got a deal on it. I have another variety of jakfruit that the man down the road says I will love, but it won't be ripe for a couple more days. I also have some organic mameys from the fruit stand here. This food wasn't cheap, but I need to do what is necessary to eat right now.

I've been going through a very intense period this past week. I spent two days in complete solitude, not uttering a single word, passing through so many emotional states. Then I talked with my family yesterday and I missed them so much. I felt so lonely and out of place. I didn't know who I was anymore or what I wanted. In the afternoon I fell into deep depression and I felt doomed to spend the rest of the day alone. I was so restless, my thoughts racing, so I decided to go for a walk. I walked for hours and hours, allowing the thoughts and emotions to be. I realized that so much, if not all of my suffering was being caused through my resistance to going through what I was going through. I noticed repetitive thoughts: "I can't go through this again. I was over this. I've suffered enough. I don't deserve this. I'm different. I've changed. This isn't how I wanted my life to go." And through it all I noticed expectations of this person I was suppossed to be now. I saw myself as being through all my depression and emerging as a different person. I've spent so long in such fear of going back to who I was, in such a tight state of resistance, that through it I became who I've been for a very long time: Someone who resists what is, so lives in suffering. What if I could let go and be free to experience anything, even things which in the past I have labelled as wrong or bad?

As I walked yesterday I looked at everything around me, all the trees, the rocks, the animals, living in complete peace. I'm learning so much from them. They seem to resist nothing, to be so completely present and alive. I realized that as long as you're thinking you can't really see. When my dad put me into art classes when I was 14 the teacher told me that through art we were learning to see. I remember contemplating what she said, wondering what she'd meant by it. Had we not been seeing things our entire lives? As I drew I always thought about what she said and I began to notice that when I truly saw something as it was there were no thoughts. When I truly became one with my art my mind became empty and I became filled with so much joy and peace. It's been a long time since I've been in that state. Shortly after finding such fulfillment in art I stopped because of expectations I had for myself. People began to praise my work and suddenly all I cared about was pleasing them, every one of them, and art became a chore. The thoughts of failure would rush with every brushstroke and I began to hate it. So I stopped. For a little while I tried to gain back the acceptance I felt in the beginning when I did art just for me, but I never found it. For me expectations are a curse. So for today, I vow to let it be, every moment, exactly as it is.