Schizophrenia totally ruins your life. You can’t sugar coat it. What has been interesting though is going from a worldly life to a world of contemplation. It isn’t easy to adjust but in the end you have few people you can turn to. That doesn’t mean people don’t care about you. It means life moves on very quickly. What you end up with though is a world of spirits and gods. Pure energy in a boundless world. That was what I recently spent time writing about in a short story. I feel as though all of my efforts drive people away. Especially writing. Yet most of those thoughts are simply my own. People have little time to contemplate and when they do they don’t want to deal with the insane. Writing seems self indulgent in some ways. Yet I can find the time. I can do it. I may not express myself as well as I could but I try. A lot of people have moved on in my life. Some decades ago, some recently and what I realise is people have so much on their own plates. They have so much to worry about and deal with from day to day and year to year. They are driven to reach their goals. They will stop at nothing to get where they want to.

People simply fall by the roadside on the journey forward. Those that fall off may get back on the road or just lose themselves somewhere that wasn’t part of their original goal. Or they find a temple to pray in. An old Taoist Master finds them like in ‘Dream of the stone” and they disappear to never be found again. When I first met the Taoist Master I still had worldly efforts to make. I couldn’t escape but my mind had already succumbed. I had to battle every day to keep things going. In the end it all seemed like a dream. Dreams were more powerful than reality at times. I lost contact as I tried to do my family duties. Unfortunately I lost the love of my partner because I was too crazy to be able to be constructive in the ways needed. Then when family life had completely been resolved I had health problems. I had a mini stroke, a couple of them but I had reconnected with the Master. I spent a lot of time doing Tai Chi and beat my health problems. It is a beautiful peaceful life, the past seems full of regrets and heartache. That is my inspiration to try and pray in the temple within myself.