Today was my first day decentralized.

Yesterday I rented and vacated my property and moved all of what was left of a 2 bedroom condominium into a shed at a fellow seeker’s home.  It felt like a harrowing run to daylight.

Over the past two weeks since I have retired, I have sold, donated or destroyed about $6000 in furniture.  Some of it incredible hardwood pieces built in North Carolina, other imported Indian Antiques.  Finally a bed from Wayfair shipped from probably China used as my consulting couch and drunk bed in my healing room.  Contradictory or complementary you be the judge.  What I can say is that it is all 100% Gouthum.  I tend to orbit a wide range of values as I explore myself and the world.  Not everyone feels comfortable expanding their boundaries; some cannot help but to.  

For most of my life I have moved every two years or so.  Whether it was within the same town or from one school to the next I constantly felt pushed, driven or pulled toward my dreams.  I tend to live life at a rapid pace.  I do not know how others might feel doing this, I cannot say how I might feel if I didn’t.  It is just me.  Mostly I have been seeking a mate or a life partner or a job or, or, or.  Always seeking.

And always finding.  Over the years I have met some incredible individuals.  Few stay in touch.  They usually die sometime in their late 20’s and30’s.  As stated in the movie Interstellar, “They become memories for their children.”  Astrologers call the period at around 29.5 years the Saturn Return.  It marks the point in a humans life where Saturn returns to the place where it shined upon their births.  It tends to be the point where we become our parents or become someone else entirely.  Whether the phenomenon arises due to genetics or biorhythms it effects the same.

At 29.5 years I renounced everything I owned down to wife, child and career.  I began the ancient path of Advaita Vedanta as my father before me.  Although the US Army had started my Brahmacharya many years hence, I had yet still more to do.  The inner work, a process of rendering all self-contradictory and transient thoughts to nothing.  You remove words like, “Wish,” and “Should,” from your lexicon.  You no longer wish for something because, “what you want, you get;” and “what you wish for, you do not get.”

There is no should for “what is,” is, “what should be,” by definition.  You see this word poison dialogue wherever it a speaker employs it.  The word becomes a moral judgment on “what is,” and more often than not reflects the speakers inner thoughts rather than general ones.  My father would quote from Fritz, In and Out Garbage Pail.”

“Gouthum, There are three kinds of shit.”

Gouthum listens intently as he loves it when his father is speaking directly rather than lecturing.

“The first kind is chickenshit.  These are the people at the grocery store telling you, ‘have a nice day.’  They don’t give a shit how you feel.  They just say it as some kind of talisman to ward away their ancestors droning in their head demanding they do something meaningful.”

A young Gouthum chuckles at both the language and meaning.

“The second kind is bullshit.  ‘We should do more for the homeless.’  They don’t care about the homeless, or they would be doing something.  Furthermore they are talking to themselves with you conscripted into their ego’s army of self-reinforcement without ever having to act.”

“Finally, elephant shit. ‘Everyone needs to cut their carbon footprint.’  Do they know everyone?  Who is this “everyone?”  Last I checked approximately 60 billion human beings have lived and died on this rock. What proportion do they know?  100/60,000,000,000?  This “everyone” serves as a repository for every failed action they have ever taken.”

Shouldisms and Bullshit.  Two things I almost always avoid.