the end of the path

Well this is it; the end of the path.

I am confident in my conclusion. My aim from the start was to extract the tools from the buddhist framework so that they could be used pragmatically and without dogma. 

I did not set out to walk the path intentionally: I was thrown into utter confusion by the sloppy diagnoses and pharmacology of the psychiatric industry. It is only through tearing myself away from the doctors and the drugs and finding parallels with the buddhist path of insight that I was able to rescue and repair my mind.

I flew through at least 5 ‘path moments’ in a whirlwind of altered states as the maladaptive deep learning of life unravelled. I reached the end, released the scaffold, and realised that the end of the path is the same as the start. It is the same as the start of all things, before one took a step in the first place.

The end of the path is not the end of growth; it is the end of unravelling. The cutting of the brambles and the tilling of the soil, ready for something new to be planted.

I see these people profiting from ‘awakening’ and I do not want to follow. That is simply stepping out on a new path, forming a new tangled ego with money and greed at its core.

But I do want to help people. We neurodivergent folks are put in boxes and labelled broken and given drugs to make us comply. We who would have been the priests and the Buddhas, now given stimulants and mood stabilisers. Meat for the machine.

A priest for the priests; that’s what I was saying at the outset. And that might be what I become yet. But it will not be for money or greed or notoriety. I will not charge people for advice on how to ‘awaken’ into some imaginary sculpted body and mind. That is just greed manipulating greed.

At the same time I do not feel the need to update this blog on a daily basis. I will follow Jack’s advice and do the laundry, be with my kids, do a bit of art, and help anyone who comes my way. I will make the nibbana-protocol website into something optimised and small, lightweight and easy so that people have a new middle-way between chemistry and compliance, religion and renunciation.

I have never had such ease in my life. Never. It lacks fireworks and fanfare. Those came along the way as the maladaptive code was trimmed, but now I am here I just have clarity and a sense of suchness. While this is the only way things could ever have turned out, I was incredibly lucky to survive my brush with the psychiatric industry. It is only through ardent effort, analytical thought, and randomosity within constraints that I was able to come through this ordeal.

Some will look at my love of ice cream and family and say ‘bah’, but that is only because they have laid a different codebase to me. I eat ice cream instead of starchy carbs and I take solace in my family instead of a sangha. I sit at 10% body fat and hold my kids for support while my wife keeps me moored in ‘reality’, whatever that may be. There is no bloat, but neither is there unnecessary asceticism.

This is a lean development process. A middle way.

I do not need the dogma of buddhism and neither did the Buddha. He used the dhamma to cross the river. He shared the raft with others but explicitly told them not to carry it on the other side. He allowed his monks to eat anything so long as it wasn’t killed for them. Lay followers stayed in the family life and though liberation was easier for a renunciate it was not unknown for a homeowner.

There are two paths for one who discovers the dhamma anew: renounce and become a Buddha or stay in the home life and become a wheel-turning monarch. I choose the latter, even if my kingdom doesn't extend beyond my own little palace.

Let’s take it easy for a while longer. Continue sleeping 10 hours a night as the mind settles. Meditate an hour or two a day. Take my omega-3s and go for walks and set up my bike on a trainer for the winter season; keep that dopaminergic environment stable. Continue refining my skills in cessation, aikidō and italian cooking. Continue loving and supporting my family. Maybe play a little guitar and make some pictures between the housework.

My dreams last night centred around helping others. Guiding neurodivergent folks on whether they wanted sim-city or sim-farm. Helping people to find their regulation without religion and without the need for doctors and labels and drugs.

But I’ll take it easy for a bit just a bit longer. Maybe brush up this site when I have the inclination. Find more pictures in the grain of the wood. Continue to cultivate this mind.

It was a hell of a ride, but I am glad it is over.

Do not chase the lantern. Use it to guide the way, to go deep into your mind, into your scaffold, then use the wire to come back to this side. Cast a net and reel it in; go non-dual and then come back to your container.

The Buddha taught only the way to end suffering.

Maybe we can take it out of the old language and make it available in the new.

The end of one path. The start of another.

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