Things, existence-wise, have progressively been getting increasingly "unbearable". Pretty much everything I do, everything I have to think about or consider has taken on varying degrees of the unbearable. A few moments in a day, I have totally senseless, mindless activities when I don't think, and then it's bearable until I think of what a load of time I'm wasting. Even bearable adds to the unbearable.

I still love listening to music. It brings me much joy. Even more so recently. Maybe because of the sheer span of music that I have to listen to. I still listen to music that first got me into music, I don't get sick of it. It's not nostalgia, that it reminded me of some other time; I love and appreciate it for what it is now to me. And I continue to find music that stirs me to my depths.

My cousin tried to get me to go on a retreat at a Tibetan monastery in Nepal, but in the end I'm flatly rejecting the suggestion. The timing is uncanny and it feels like it would just be an excuse to prolong things, procrastinate. And that is, in fact, exactly what I'm doing on a daily basis, btw, but going on a retreat seems like a shot in the dark to go on for an even longer time, and I need a suicide attempt or gesture right now. Her suggestion at an uncanny time is simply too late.

Procrastinating and prolonging. I want to finish reading a bunch of books that came to me. My cousin gave me a book entitled "Initiation", which is odd since I just used that word in my previous post. My cousin's suggested readings in the past have been dubious, and I'm not totally sold on this one, either, but the end philosophies are really right on; all the conclusions in the book I've come to as well, so I feel some affirmation, if not inspiration. The ideas are very good, the writing and the style not so much.

Another is entitled Peaceful Death, Joyful Rebirth by a Tibetan lama. He goes into more mechanics of the Tibetan Book of the Dead and it's been very intriguing.

I had this experience when I was reading the book in a crowded space when all the people . . . I just stopped conceiving them as people. They broke out into energies – vibrations – and mechanics, body mechanics. The people were just more than the bodies we deal with in our every day lives, that there is so much more to them that they may not even realize. It became like a din of spiritual humanity which was perfectly analogized by the aural din that all of those people were making by their incomprehensible speech.

And if I ain't foolin' myself, just pages later I came across that exact same experience told by some previous lama.

And, of course, the issue of death and a belief system that I'm really buying into, once I take away the cultural trappings which I take with a grain of salt – I'm feeling pushes and pulls of doubts and confidences that I didn't think I would be subject to.

These formulations don't mean much to me anymore, but I wonder if in a previous bardo, if you can humor me in engaging in the possibility of these bardos, I had glimpses and brushes into what is called the luminosity or clear light, which is the very ground of our being, which is the ground of reality, essentially god, total oneness – and I envision this as not some spiritual or mystical thing, but something in the natural world, just a part that science limits itself too much to acknowledge.

You see, I'm reading in this book that enlightenment in the bardos is not an all or nothing deal. It's not a matter of if you recognize the luminosity and your true nature of being that everything is yourself that, bam, you hit enlightenment, or you just miss and shoot through the bardos to your next life. But depending upon your training, while in the in-between bardos you can touch on it without fully recognizing it and attaining "enlightenment".

And even without attaining enlightenment, it is suggested there is much benefit in those glimpses, because it adds to comfort in the chaos in the bardos and in taking rebirth, it affects our karma and our being, as opposed to beings who are just shot through the bardos and end up in whatever existence their karma dictated.

So now me humoring these suggestions, I wonder if that has been in my experience, and in one of those times through the bardos I did touch on enlightenment and felt such a rush or inspiration that I got an impression that I want to come back through the bardos again as soon as possible. Which means in my next life . . . dying. Ergo the suicide imprint.

But suicide not being the despondent, end-of-life kind of suicide. But, of course, I've had to have a resistance to it in order to come across the teachings again and prepare myself for the roller coaster ride of the bardos. So it's something my entire life has been pointing to, but I still have been resisting. That explains the resistance all these years, even though I keep asking myself why resist what my entire life has been pointing to?

I'm not gonna "belief" this enough to claim it's reality, but I find it personally compelling for what it's worth.

In general, I've been pretty confident about my path, mainly because I just don't see any purpose in doubting myself. I just say what I say, and I do what I do. I follow what I follow, I'm not going to go into any spaces that I find uncomfortable or make me feel bad.

But this book has allowed me to touch the feeling that I haven't lived a worthy life. What have I done except live a selfish existence, where I just allow myself to do what I want to do, trusting in my karmic self-limitation to not engage into debauchery and mindlessness.

Sitting outside on a bench on a still-blazing hot Taiwan early evening, I notice how uncomfortable I am, and how I want to go buy a drink, and realizing that is karma. The desire to not be uncomfortable, the desire to satiate is karma creation. It felt like I've gotten no where in these years of practice. I'm still just following desire, it's still animal. I ended up staying there quite a while reading, just to spite my karma.

And the most important thing to focus on to realize in the bardo states is that all we are seeing and experiencing comes from ourselves, our own nature; they are our own projections. And that's what we should be focusing on during the living bardos (i.e., conscious life, dreams, and meditation).

I still grapple with negativity, even though it's gotten much better. But then I realize these negative situations are helping me train. I recognize these incidents and I tell myself my anger or negativity is not because of these people around or what they did or how I was offended by them, but the negativity is me, my own projection. They have nothing to do with it.

The idea being that this is all training, getting it to be habit so that in the death bardos, when consciousness is luminous but not concrete as is formed by our neural functions, our habitual tendencies can also do that – recognize that what we perceive is us, just our own projections of ourselves, even if our initial "reaction" in the bardo is a negative one.

And still focusing on practicing being positive, feeling love towards everyone and everything, on generating love and joy spontaneously, and practice and train that these things aren't dependent on . . . things.

Unbearable, but still putting all my positive effort to maintain an equilibrium. And there will be a time where I stop that effort and I let myself come to terms with the happy unbearable.