The birthday boy

I've been quite busy recently and not able to concentrate on my blog as much as I'd like to. I posted the manuscript for my book on the author's website authonomy which demands continuous work on my part. I just can't leave it there if I want to play the authonomy game. The authonomy game is a slippery slope. Inactivity on my part means I topple off the rankings that activity on my part got me to. If I want people to read and comment on my manuscript, I've got to be equally generous of my time with theirs. I'm also preparing twenty pages of my manuscript for review by an agent in February. I remind myself, before getting too excited about my daydream of becoming an overnight literary sensation, that I paid $50 for this privilege as part of the writers' group I'm involved in.

Chris celebrates his birthday tomorrow. Ian and I are giving him a copy of The End of Your World: Uncensored Straight Talk on the Nature of Enlightenment, by Adyashanti. The book is about what happens after you begin to wake up from the dream state. Chris appears to be momentarily stuck on co-existing meaninglessness and superiority. These sticking points, according to the book's author, are common traps. Ian and I feel that Chris is capable of applying himself to vocational training or further academics or a sense of purpose that fires him up, but right now he doesn't see the "point."

What Ian and I are hoping for Chris is that he soon decides to return to ordinary life, something that inspires him enough to get him out of his bathrobe and slippers and get going. Make no mistake about it, Adya teaches, the ordinary state is where you eventually want to be.

Adyashanti, a Zen master, teaches that enlightenment actually eventually leads you back to the ordinary, but with a newfound appreciation of how marvelous the world really is, and how one must work to add their own unique value to it. Chris is still wobbling on enlightenment's path.