There is a difference between intoxication and ecstasy. One comes comes from God, and the other comes from ingesting poisons. But where then, ultimately, does poison come from? Poisons are wonderful and I’ve had some lovely times with them, but they’re ultimately God’s middle men. There are many types of poison out there, only the crudest and most ineffectual of which can be drank or smoked.

Infinity itself is incredibly intoxicating. You get a little hit off it and fly off to the Moon, and then you think: “That was nice. Let’s go to Mercury now.” Maybe you should stop at the Moon for a while first and hang out. Not maybe, definitely. Because if you get so high on infinity, you’re going to crash a lot harder afterwards. You’ll get right up there and have a wonderful time and it will be all amazing and shit, but then the next day you’ll be left wondering what the fuck happened, why you can’t maintain these incredible states you can sometimes get into.

You have to take your infinity in small doses.

And when you get a dose of infinity, the thing you’re supposed to do is PRACTICE. Practice staying there, practice getting there, practice going back and forth between the two. Infinity is perspective. Practice maintaining that perspective. If you can’t maintain it all the time, then you have no business dabbling in infinity in the first place and you should stick to the mundane life.

Mundane life, after all, comes out of infinity too, just like everything else. It may not be quite so glamorous as smooching with Our Old Lady Of Infniity™ in the back room of some shabby bar, but you have to be able to face-to-face it.

If you can’t handle mundane life, how the hell are you supposed to handle Infinity?

People act like they want to know how to end their suffering. But what they really want is recognition for how bad they feel. They want somebody to notice that they are suffering. Fuck that. We are all dying every single second of our lives. You don’t get some special pass to bitch and moan and act like an idiot because you’re intoxicated on your own perception of pain. You decide in this life not always what you experience, but how you experience it.

The first step you take is claiming responsibility for the consequences of your actions. That’s hard enough. Takes - again - some practice. The second eventual step - a quantum leap forward from the first - is recognizing that you are responsible for your own experiences of life, and for your internal states of being. If you don’t take charge of how you feel, then someone else is going to. You’re going to be playing a bit part in someone else’s musical. Which may be fine - if they’re a good writer and director. Most people are not though: but you have the ability to become one - through self-mastery.

Don’t tell me it’s too hard. Don’t tell me all the reasons why your stupid suffering is more important than the wonderful people around you and the beauty of Life unfolding around your heart in cascading waves of infinity at every single second of every day.

Say aloud (allowed):

I invite this moment of existence into my heart.

Say it out loud until you actually begin to mean it.

The best way to live life, I discovered last night, is to live as though you are always on the verge of laughing about something. That’s where love lives. All we ever have is what is right in front of us. It is the so-called secret of the saints, mystics and sages. They are doing something about it; are you? Or have you committed yourself to your pain instead of this eternal moment unfolding before you? You want to end suffering? Give up the part of yourself that suffers. Stop being so self-obsessed. Simply live for other people. Stop living for yourself, and your true self will finally utterly emerge unfettered and unscathed by all the self-abuse you’ve addicted yourself to over the years.

As Taybot’s business card says, “If you can’t be yourself you chose the wrong grind.”