I buried my face in her breasts and let my limbs with hers entwine. Windows open. The landscape was cold. Lights out. The moon’s reflected light seemed bright. Lying there with her, gentle summer breezes caressing our bodies, night sounds roaring 'round us, I was yet utterly alone. Time passed. For all the connection between us, she could have been asleep, or dead.

21 JAN 74 - Completed my full two and a half hours of meditation both yesterday and today, which, however, is not all that common lately. Usually it runs more about half that. Attended association at Joseph's home yesterday. Gertrude gave the discourse; and I recorded it on a cassette for my brother, Ralph, in Italy. Have decided I must shore up my lifestyle and be a better disciple. It is really time for a new beginning.

Applied formally for the claims examiner job the other day. Limbo. Suspense. Not very good at waiting.

2 FEB 74 - Have been having a juice fast one day a week lately.

Several dreams involving Maharaj Dayal Nam Ji. Nonetheless, am disappointed with how the meditation is going. Am also once more quite distressed with intellectual reservations about the merits of the LW philosophy.

Feona, at The Orange Squeezer, suggests that I spend my energy on meditation, instead of squandering it on being clever, witty, and intellectual. "Think where you’d be by now!" she observes.

3 FEB 74 - Today is my parents' 32^nd wedding anniversary!

I took Hope to association today, then visited with her this evening. We became a bit overly expressive in saying "Goodnight." Must try to cool it, at least till I learn if I am even to still be in Austin two months from now.

5 FEB 74 - It seems it is our ideas and feelings about things, and not the things themselves, that usually bring us down.

In a dream last night Michelle and I were married. Obviously, this is not the right time to be leading on Hope further, as if we may, after all, be getting hitched. Obviously too, I must consider long and hard before I do get married, since I seem to be especially impulsive and emotionally susceptible right now.

Though they may not carry us beyond the final death of the physical body, yet high states of consciousness must be more profound, even more reliable in an ultimate sense, than the states of illusion in which we normally live.

From the individual’s point of view, at least in observations of myself and others, we may say that the primary meaning and purpose in early existence is simply pleasant stimulation. Later, as we grow older, a second compulsion takes on more significance: to secure validation of the lies we tell ourselves.

But, as with divorce, disillusionment with a long sought vocational choice, a major failure, doubting god, or experiencing terminal illness, events transpire as to conspire to reveal us for real, as ignorant or fools in the lies and half truths we tell ourselves. "What's it all about, Alfie?"

Most people work away their lives at jobs that stifle their spirits.

"It is always equivalent to many riches, to learn to be satisfied with whatever your lot may be." Julian Johnson, With a Great Master in India

Ah! It is raining once more. This is good! Sometimes the light streaming through pale mists, that rise from thick stretches of wooded greenery, which hem one in and deepen dark shadows between the trees, seems to make this world quite like a dream; a dream that blends ugliness and beauty, death and life, violence and peace, pain and joy. The winds cause the tall, stately trees to sway slowly; and somehow they seem to be saying, soul-ly, words one comprehends just beyond the edge of reason and knows he is not quite awake and something of a stranger to this place.

7 FEB 74 - Today learned I’m being considered for a position as a federal energy investigator in Richmond, Virginia, for IRS. No word yet on the claims examiner position.

9 FEB 74 - My sister, Alice, helped me pick out some nice threads today, to help me present myself well in upcoming interviews for better jobs.

Again am having intellectual problems with LW. I feel that in the sphere of meditation and mysticism there is a real danger if you set forth ahead of time what are to be the results of your efforts, as LW does, that you will thus affect those results, just as a hypnotist affects the consciousness of his hypnotized subjects. One obtains pretty much what one expects to obtain. How, then, are the confirming results at all a proof of the belief system out of which they arise? They are, instead, perhaps only a confirmation of one’s preconditioned expectations. For me at present, of course, all this is academic, since I am still a long way from fully assuming the belief system of The Lifestream Way. I wonder if it is worthwhile to go on with this when I see no prospect of shedding my prickly raiment of skepticism.

15 FEB 74 - Michelle arrived back in town and called me last night, a big surprise, throwing me off balance once again. We had a long talk on the phone. She is only here to wrap up a few loose ends in Austin. In a couple days she'll be heading back to California for good. She pretended to have no time for a get-together. So why the call? Her visit has plummeted me into a new depression.

This morning I had an interview for the federal energy investigator position. I do not think it went well.

Later. Tonight Hope and I had a long talk, over coffee, and left feeling really titillated and excited with each other’s company, touch, and attentions, but with nothing resolved between us.