I’m changing with time. Time. Interesting notion.

Bushido teaches something I find helpful, metaphorically at least. “I am already dead.” You have already lost the fight, so you can decide what to do with your “failure”. If everything is a failure then what is failure? I am a huge failure. I never sustained gainful employment. I have achieved no big goals in the eyes of my community. A failed first marriage. Failed parent of a special needs child. I can’t think of a single success I have ever had. Should this bother me?

Do you measure yourself by those standards? I am labelled with a medical label. They call it autism. I can’t understand the concept of standards, but I do know that people are alienated from me and use the standards I don’t understand to “deal with” me.

I offer that there is nothing to fix, for anyone. Just things to do, things to be, places to be these things in, and people to be with. I think we gain by realizing we can do nothing more than this, and if we have had any great success, we don’t have to worry about that either.

I am not really a failure spiritually. Are you a failure materially? Is there a separation?

I found out something. It does matter what people think of you. It will affect your life. It has affected mine, but I learned there is nothing I can do about it except be me. Do that more with greater depth. Then it’s weird. Peoples ideas of me break when I get that deep.

Most would say financially yes, I’m a failure. I have actually been a hero and guess I still am to some. I never was going for it, but I do miss my former life. I never was a villain, but I still am to some. I have stopped trying to be a hero. Are you at peace with this heroism?

I call heroism “Herodism”. Herod had a big sweeping view of how Israel should be, and he felt it moral that he be able to remain on the throne to guide Israel to that destiny. He was loved by his people and Israel prospered. But then a prophecy arose that another would rise who would do more than he. Rather than accepting this, he began behaviour in the name of his vision that made him a huge villain, but he still had hopes. He still had a dream and a view of how things should be. There have been many Herods. Hitler was one, and now one of the members of the Hitler youth is Pope.

I often feel like the tool of greater powers. I’m just a conduit. I feel annoyed same as many. It‘s just my personality is such that I do something about it. With that view, it could be said that the circumstances and feeling you fight are the will of that higher power also, and part of the whole that you must likewise accept.

I really did not intend to get into this! I would say your spirit did intend it. What’s your totem? We have a heart totem and it often has the most say. My heart is the snake, sensitive, shifting, almost inert and seemingly cold until a primal disturbance arises. It took me a long time to realize this. Finding my heart totem was healing though. I was once called a monster for how I behaved emotionally. Being unmoved to tears by things like death, which confused me because things do move me. I just had to accept how my heart behaves.

Your thoughts are welcome. Be well friends.

Travis Saunders
Dragon Intuitive
~science,mysticism,spirituality~