What a Waste!

There surfaces the fear that with Breakthrough will come the terrible regret that so much of this life has been wasted, and especially that others—in particular, close others—have been denied benefit. Yet so many lives have been wasted already! Why postpone it further?

I AM

Why does awareness exist rather than non-awareness? (Can non-awareness even exist? What would that mean?)
Did I create awareness?
Can anything exist outside of—separate from—awareness?
How does awareness come to believe it is created by the brain (which is merely a thought within awareness)?

Reflexivity

So
I'm impatient with others I view as impatient
I'm intolerant of others I view as intolerant
I hate others I view as hateful
Which means
I hate my own impatience, intolerance and hate
Now what?

Impermanence and doing

Reading Sogyal Rinpoche's The Tibetan Book of Living and Dying, the old question arises, Why work to improve [the world | ourselves], when, even should we create perfection, our achievement would eventually vanish (transform), as all things, being impermanent, do? It's answered with another question: Since we must do something, what alternative do you suggest?

Master Ma is unwell

Though it would seem we are all unwell at least some of the time (I happen to think now of Kierkegaard's Sickness Unto Death), the trick appears to rest in not identifying with—building an identity, or self, around—our unwellness, or our sickness, our emotions, our thoughts or whatever-it-may-be.

A Personal Interpretation of the Buddhist Wheel of Life and Death

I interpret the Buddhist Wheel of Life and Death mandala for myself in slightly different ways at different times. Here's one interpretation.

The wheel itself represents the egoic realm of personal [cognitive/behavioral] psychology, [as constructed and represented by] Yama, [who inhabits] the realm of invisible spiritual forces, studied in the modern world by parapsychology and transpersonal psychology. The Buddha field represents the realm of unconditioned love, the source of all, and the domain of religion. Since each of the two outer realms subsumes the realm or realms depicted interior to it, all three together, the full range of existence—or all-encompassing consciousness—comprise the realm/domain of religion.

Per Yama's design, human awareness is usually confined to the wheel, or some portion of it. In this predicament, it cannot fathom the existence of either of the two superior/containing realms and is doomed to suffer as an alienated, fearful ego exclusively for Yama's sustenance. Rarely an individuated human awareness will be confronted—find itself engaged in hyper-communication, as it were—with Yama or some other non-human, non-physical intelligence, or otherwise find itself exposed directly to one or more alternate realities (or, generally, to the realm of infinite possibility). Such exposure may result in extreme ontological shock to the ego, resulting in its near or total destruction—a "spiritual emergency," in the words of Stanislov Grof.

The person in crisis finds, again according to Yama's design of [the] modern [world | human society], and following the pattern of physical predators, that he has been "cut from the herd," such that, not only can the victim find no assistance from others of his kind, he finds himself fearfully and actively derided, humiliated and officially branded "psychotic" (defective, in other words). This utter alienation sets the stage for Yama's suggestions of suicide, which, when carried out, represents a step toward Yama's ultimate goal, the destruction of the entire human race, who, together (at least potentially), embody love.

At this critical point, however, the person may choose instead (only two choices remain now, death or life) to allow the ego to disintegrate, to forsake his own previous life of human drama [and pretense] for the life of the spiritual warrior. He accepts his experience as real and that it sets him apart from most others who remain (as he was before) unwilling—even unable—to allow the existence of a larger and incomprehensible world. And with this battered heart, beating in concert with the suffering of all, and his new awareness of the cause of suffering, he looks to alleviate it where he can, without thought of reward or even acknowledgment, impeccability being virtually his only defense against the circling wolves of darkness, looking for any opening to take him down.

Love

I will
love you forever
no matter
what