Finished my Zen book last night. The two most important meditations tips that I learned were to sit on pillows that allowed your legs to be lower than your butt, cuz it helps a lot with posture, and to use your abdomen to breathe, not your chest (although there's lots of small specifics with breathing too). Had a good meditation last night. Lots of wild dreams. One was that I had surgery on my calf, and to cover the square hole they cut out, they covered it with a purple balloon-style piece of plastic. That's gotta be symbolic for something. I started reading two new books. One is the sequel to a book I already read, a true story about a shaman who takes this anthropologist under his wing and basically feeds him all these crazy drugs and shows him his way of life. VERY fascinating and mind-blowing, really makes you look at drugs with a whole new respect. The other book is this free online book I came across (http://thespacebetweendreams.com/files/tsbd.pdf, but you need Adobe), that is very interesting so far, as it talks about all sorts of deep shit like determinism, meditation, dreams, etc

A friend called me in tears last night and after discussing the problem, I went on like a 30 minute speech about how they have control over their mind and have the ability to choose what direction it goes in, and that if they decide to suffer, it'll have been their decision. I talked about how creativity is fueled by situations like this and that they should go crazy if they need to and just have a blast, as long as they stay in control. After my speech was done, the person seemed in a good mood, despite the fact of what had prompted the phone call in the first place. I was very happy with myself and I'm eager to hear how things are going so far. Two songs that are really worth checking out..... Birth of Fish & The Dive pt 2, both by Eyedea