For all of my adult life I have lived simply- with very few things; mostly only what was necessary to survival- I am cautious about the extraneous for that so easily leads to material dependence. I don't have an issue with material addictions. My dependency is in the currency of ideas and the things of the mind- books, letters, writing, thought. It is a more evolved addiction than the material one, but an addiction nonetheless. And being an addiction it therefore holds as its defining characteristic the nature of a barrier to Original Mind. I have been working on it; coming to understand the limitation of ideas, no matter how elegant or comprehensive they are- 'the map is' indeed 'not the territory'. Thinking has gotten me into a good deal of trouble. In fact, the whole thrust of the anticipatory anxiety structure is essentially an over-indulgence in the 'What if?', hypothetical thinking function. I have grown better at regulating that. I have emotional dependencies also- a tendency to construct fantasy relationships off of the basis of real ones which allow me the benefit of safety and some satisfaction through contact. But the truth of 'fantasy' is that no matter how elaborate or pleasant it is, it can never be reality. I have felt the terrible disappointment of realizing that the person I wish to be closer with has no such inclinations for me. I have experienced the shame of being rejected for 'scaring people off' by becoming way too intense too quickly. But it hasn't all been bad. There is a bright side to a type of character which is normally classified as 'mentally ill' or 'neurotic'- the sensitive. The greater one's sensitivity, the greater one's vulnerability to one's environment and the greater one's potential for hurt. But with that also comes a greater receptivity to depth and experience, to penetrative knowing and understanding. The sensitive personality is the introspective and contemplative personality and it is through such investigations within that wisdom is born- 'knowledge of self and knowledge of universe are one.' I have found that very often when we enter periods of cognitive and emotional discord, it is as a result of splitting ourselves off from a natural wholeness, a coherence. Such turbulence arises when our perspective constricts out of fear, or one of its many offspring, and we can only see and acknowledge the negative or shadow aspect of our selves or our environment and experience without seeing the value. Once the tendency to reject that which we judge as unacceptable is habituated, it grows in strength and momentum and occurs more and more beneath the level of our awareness, farther outside of the range of our conscious perception, and control, it grows, until we can't even access it to begin the process of healing and re-integration without a long process of digging, which usually requires the help of a well-trained and intelligent professional. Almost all of us now have so much of this work to do on habituated mind and so few of us actually do it fully, if at all, usually only enough to 'function' again. But washing machines and dishwashers function. Such a standard is grossly insufficient for a human being. We are creatures of the mind, of thought and meaning, purpose and creativity. Living at the level of function and survival is to live at the level of the lowest common denominator of life. But this is where we are- meant to aim for the stars, but stopping before we ever leave the ground. Sure, we come from the ground, the earth. But our original womb was in the bodies of the stars themselves. We are meant to grow in Awareness well beyond the boundaries of mere survival, to shed this skin of self, and die to Significance. I have been Dancing for all these billions of years, in a diverse multitude of radiant bodies all through the medium of experience and steadily evolving Home.