Asking for What?
2026-06-23
Novelty is a real bitch, isn't it?
What, you mean like how I can't come up with a better opening tag? Or the fact I use opening tags at all? Come on man, I'm trying to make art here. Anyway, having small moments (three-hour stretches) of sadness is a weird thing. I find it almost amusing at this point how things can change internally at the drop of a hat, and how a small moment of overwhelm can be instantly forgotten. I think most people cope with this by distracting themselves with something, but for me, I just let myself get distracted by—well, myself. A constant internal dialogue can have its own benefits, perhaps, but it can be a silly thing when you realize just how much of it gets lost in oblivion. It makes me go back to Zhuangzi, you know, the Daoist guy and the greatest opp of the ancient Chinese Confucians; when I realize just how much of my existence is tied to a series of ephemeral impulses, it helps me take periods of sadness and put them into better perspective. On top of that, I go back to the ancient wisdom of knowing that God has good things planned for us, and since I can lean on the perfection of His good and perfect will, that helps make the sadness go away.
I'd venture to say that among my regular readers, whoever you are, the Christian ones really enjoy reading Cogito. It makes sense, given how much I speak on theology and can be a bit repetitive on that in these entries. To those who aren't Christian but still return to my writing anyway, I often wonder how they compartmentalize that in their heads. It makes me wonder: am I helping turn a stone there? I'd like to think so, but I also understand that since we're all different, everyone comes to know God as they understand Him differently. Love is universal, but not always cross-compatible, so to speak. And that's okay; all mileages will vary. However, if you're a regular reader and roll your eyes a bit whenever I invoke Christian theology in my entries, just know that it's not my attempt to proselytize to you at all; it's simply my way of coping with my own reality, which is of course an internally strange and at times unpleasant one.
Yesterday afternoon, I had another series of lucid dreams during my nap. First, I had a dream where I was asleep in my bed, but I was aware I was dreaming. This is a common lucid dream scenario for me, and this time around I decided to do some classic fun tricks. First, I decided to shoot fire out of my hands. Yes, while I was lying in bed. Of course, the fire wasn't hot, and didn't really have typical properties of fire outside of how it looked. Man, I love doing that and feeling like a superhero. Second, I decided to conjure up a ball of energy and shoot it out. It was this blackish-purple thing, and it went out into my room slowly after shooting out of my hand. Then, I decided to telekinetically pull it back to my hand so I could make it grow a bit more. However, my mage abilities are still quite underdeveloped, so instead it ended up flying right into my face and forced me to see the depths of the cosmos in warp speed. Whoops. My next dream was a sex dream. I haven't had sex in a few years now, and it was strange feeling it again. Of course, I could feel absolutely everything, and it was as real as it could get. Well, except for the part where I flipped her over to doggy and her ass suddenly turned into the rear bumper of a car. That was strange.
See, no virtue signaling here. Honestly, I think the thing that makes me most upset with Christian thought or discourse, even with Orthodox Christians, is this idea of praying for certain outcomes. "God, help me with this illness." "God, help me get that job." "God, help me find love." I've spoken on this before, but the thing I continually pray for is the will of God to be done, whatever that may be. For me, it helps assuage the ills of suffering because as much as it might suck to understand, suffering is a part of God's will too. While accepting that is a difficult thing, I find comfort in it because I know that at the end of all of it, whether alive or not, something better will come. It's not my position to ask God for any special favors, and while I understand the wisdom from Matthew 7:7–8, I try not to conflate that with worldly things. Here are those verses for you:
Ask, and it shall be given to you; seek, and ye shall find; knock, and it shall be opened unto you: For every one that asketh receiveth; and he that seeketh findeth; and to him that knocketh it shall be opened.
This kind of stuff isn't about finding a job, a partner, or easing suffering. We ask God not for things that don't matter, but for the only thing that truly matters: grace. This is why the Eucharist is so important; it gives us the means to further enmesh ourselves with God's will. We get the chance to be unified with Him and act not by our own myopic means, but through something greater. All of this is dust, and the only tangible thing to really exist is something we can't fully understand with our sensory experience: love. Sure, we can call it a feeling, map it out in our nerve endings or neuron receptors maybe, but it's a mystical thing in and of itself. That's why Christians pray for their enemies, and why we should do it more than we do for our loved ones.
Once we realize that we have no enemies, all the suffering starts to make sense.
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