reason vs faith vs reality

[Whateverist]

I also love immersing myself in non-verbal and unmediated experience - primarily working in the yard, building things for the house, grooming and playing with the dogs. But the part of me that is the artist and writer pushes me to create; I feel the need to make images, poetry, and writing about stuff that I encounter or think about.

Another simpatico area. Working in the garden, hanging with the dogs and fixing the house up are all things I like to do. (Not much a dog groomer however, unfortunately for my poor dreadlocked aussie.) What sort of dogs do you have and what do you do with your yard? My signature line shows a bit of my garden and gardens are big part of what interests me these days. I think we all look for some acknowledgement for what we do in the world that matters to us. Perhaps it is just a concern to find others with a similar sensibility so you can say, hey, me too. Maybe that is a basic desire for community with ones peers.

In my twenties I was just breaking out of my familial reality structures and discovering personal empowerment. But without any alternative reality structures to inhabit I sort of wandered around a lot mentally... with a lot of anger!

You don't seem to have a lot of anger any more. How big a family? What did your parents do? What if any religious affiliation and how central was that for them? Did you end up doing any therapy in finding your way out of your family of origin?

I did. My father was military, my mother was the primary parent for 7 children of which I'm the second. My father, while pretty bright analytically, probably had some brain damage and was woefully incapable of ordinary interpersonal relationships. He was authoritarian as a parent but blessedly absent a lot, out to sea in the navy. He was obsessed with religion. (I think if God had given him Abraham's task, he would have been a hell of a lot faster about it and have had us all flayed before any angel could arrive to call it off.) My mother was manic depressive and squeamish about all things sexual. Her mother was schizophrenic. My many siblings are all bright but all no one else did college and probably all suffer from essential self esteem issues. Some are depressed. Aside from my one bout with depression I may also have had episodes of mania, but if so they didn't lead to any major financial ruin but here have been some adventures some might find odd. I coped by being the apple of my mother's eye and a flaming narcissist (though I'm no longer practicing .. when I catch it). I might be somewhere on the bipolar spectrum but I doubt it.

I wonder how my life would have turned out if I'd encountered Alan Watts or a teacher who brought out Watts' work, or James Hillman when I was in my 20s. Actually for the next decade I was just enjoying working, buying clothes, hanging out with friends. I completely externalized myself and didn't think about life much at all.

Ahh, so when did the wheels come off for you? Did anything specific lead to your dissatisfaction with the friends and cloths? What did you find exciting and what adventures did you have?