Sometimes I get so tired of this, and mornings are still the hardest thing – when I'm most vulnerable to my emotions. It verges on panic, not wanting to be here but realizing I'm a failure at doing something about it. The feeling fades as I go about my morning routine, and is long gone by the time I start morning sitting.

The odd thing is that the people who mean the most to me, the monastics, and now even Madoka, tell me to listen to my heart; do what's in my heart. They don't know what it means to do what my heart tells me to do.

I get tired of this, I get fed up with this, but that's an emotional response to what I still think of as inevitable. It's not an emotional issue anymore. I see it as my journey now, my investigation having perfected impermanence, non-attachment and non-self. Have I perfected impermanence, non-attachment, and non-self? I don't have to answer that. I won't answer that, it's rhetorical. It's a trick question.

Life is my laboratory, my playground. I don't take it too seriously, but the "fact" or tangibility of the manifestation of reality comes with certain characteristics that make the laboratory experiment difficult; going on the rides at the amusement park a challenge. Those I'm still working on. Hypnotist? Magician? Manipulator of reality? Manipulator of illusions?