You may know people by the depth of their love and the quality of their visions.

I remind myself: regard the average person’s level of being and consciousness as you would that of someone who has had too much to drink. Do not judge; and do not feel self-righteous about trying to live without "booze" yourself. Make allowances. Be compassionate. (After all, you yourself have had a very serious "drinking problem.")

One attempts to take oneself safely through the isthmuses and Dardanelles of life, maneuvering one’s terribly small and fragile craft along mighty currents, sometimes over great depths, sometimes between the narrow bounds of rocky shores, sometimes over shallows and raging rapids. We call this freedom.

"But life is actually something very different than what we feel." Maharaj Charan Singh Ji (from LW literature)

18 FEB 74 - Yesterday I was so depressed I was considering suicide, after I had done a really stupid thing. I told Hope about having asked Michelle to marry me last month and about my continued great confusion now. Naturally she was less than overjoyed! Late this evening I dropped off a letter to her in which I told her I care for her very much and wish we might spend a lot of time together in the coming weeks, to see if we might want to share our lives. I hinted that if I were to get a new job and move, we could go together.

19 FEB 74 - Visited with Hope today before work. She was very angry, not quite the reaction I had expected, and broke down and sobbed in frustration (if not just rage or hate). I left feeling guilty as hell. What the fuck have I been doing!? Maybe they ought to lock me up so I don’t keep messing up folks’ lives. I even tried to convince her I really do love her and care for her and want to marry her (even though I want slippery shit more right now), just because I was feeling so guilty and wanted to do the "responsible" thing. But when I tried this approach I quickly became so terrified I lost my voice! It’s all over now, finished. What a mess! After I got home tonight, I made a firm vow I shall never hurt anyone like this again. Instead, I shall devote myself completely to LW and just lead a single life. So be it!

23 FEB 74 - From now on, I must avoid anything that jeopardizes my meditation.

Master has said that the very best diet for meditation is simply milk and fresh fruit, maybe a few almonds now and then.

I must forget everything that has gone before and start afresh.

9 MAR 74 - Got the word today in the mail that I did not get the energy investigator job. Oh well! Evidently not the claims examiner position either. I suppose I’ll reapply for graduate school and start back next semester.

A few nights ago I had a dream that Janet, a woman who had applied for LW initiation here, had been turned down for it by our master and had been so upset that she had immediately left town. Today I learned this was true! She has left the house she had shared with three other initiates or pre-initiates and flown to Chicago. (Janet, Hope, and Michelle were the three ladies I had considered, in recent months, as potential mates, until just a few weeks ago, when both the external events and my own inner conflicts had begun to show I was just fooling myself [and others] big time. Now two of them have left the state and the third is terribly upset with me. To put it mildly, I am not doing too well in this business of romance!)

Everything seems very sterile, dead, or mechanical now. I simply go through the motions, fulfilling what has be done - but insect-like, not with any will or passion. I get through my little, bit-part scenes while a coil of shattered glass slowly rotates in my bowels.

"There is always one person to whom you speak in the audience - one!" Martha Graham

20 MAR 74 - Last night I had some interesting astral dreaming!

27 MAR 74 - Had another in a series of interviews for child welfare worker today, for a job checking on abused children in their homes and removing them if necessary. Not sure I can handle it. Seems you’d really have to have your shit together. And I learned there was a 94% turnover here, in the past twelve months alone!

28 MAR 74 - Last night, I dreamed of Hope, for the first time in quite awhile. Today she called me, also for the first time in over a month, and suggested we see each other. I agreed. This time I must be sure to keep it on a "just friends" basis.

12 APR 74 - Got a call today from a woman in the Civilian Personnel Office, Fort Lee, VA, asking if I were available for a position as a safety management specialist trainee. I said "Sure!" So, she told me a courtesy interview would be arranged for me, at Fort Hood, relatively close by.

Early this week I paid off the last of my personal debts, for the first time in eight years!

It’s raining again. It’s raining on the cobblestones. It’s raining on the grass and the flowers. It’s raining on Mary’s face, at the bottom of the hole they've dug for her, and on the bare, fresh-turned, sun-baked, and still steaming earth.

One person close to us who’s dying, and with whom we can identify and relate, is more eloquent an expression of the reality of death than all the television or movie footage of slaughter in distant countries or on inner city streets, or all the poetry and prose ever written on the subject.

Quote from George Bernard Shaw, 14 February, 1910, to Leo Tolstoy: "The current theory that God already exists in perfection involves the belief that God deliberately created something lower than Himself when He might just as easily have created something equally perfect. That is a terrible belief..."

19 APR 74 - Yesterday I had my interview for the safety specialist position in Virginia. The courtesy interviewer, the Fort Hood Safety Manager, had forgotten our appointment and had even temporarily lost my application. So, embarrassed, he decided to conduct it cold. Once we got into it, the interview went very well; and, because he did not have my application in front of him, which contained a complete listing of all my numerous jobs, information that was not contained in the brief application available to my prospective employers at Fort Lee, he was not put off by fears I am a "job hopper." Anyway, the long and short of it is that he went ahead and called the Civilian Personnel lady at Fort Lee while I was there and said he was so impressed that if she didn’t hire me he would! She asked him one question: "Has he got long hair?" As it happened, I had cut my long locks a few days ago, because I was applying for a state opening. So he assured her it was "Real short!" She talked to me briefly and hired me over the phone! I start the first week of May.

How ironic! Considering my "trouble maker," activist background, helping to keep young men out of Vietnam, applying for recognition as a conscientous objector, etc., the only agency I can think of that would have been less likely than the Army to hire this dude is the FBI! Indeed, if not for my own commitment to LW and its higher (than liberal politics) principles, I would never have considered working for the military myself. It almost makes you wonder if there really might be something like destiny, or if the LW Master is pulling the strings in my life now.

April 28^th will now be my last day at The Orange Squeezer. Now one long phase, of struggle and waiting, has come to an end.

I wrote the following tonight to my brother, Ralph, in Italy, as my attempt at resolution of our clashes over belief vs. doubt, concerning LW: "Often our differences are about nothing, nothing at all. And, of course, sometimes they are real but still are insignificant compared with the common belief we both share, that the LW Master, Maharaj Dayal Nam Ji, is as close to God as we can ever know, that by merging our consciousness in Him that goal is attained of God-Realization, and that the means to this, regardless of initial faith and love or lack thereof, is through initiation and meditation. And if we can say that God and our Highest Self are the same, we can agree on these things, even during my times of greatest doubts."