I get emotional reading my old Work writing

I get emotional reading my old Work writing.

If I try to list why I do I suppose it is because...

1. I'm reminded of having been fully in a 'cosmos' of school back then, a very real school, and of having made real development and understanding within it.

2. I'm reminded of the passing of time.

3. I'm scared a little as to whether I've back slid; and added to that I'm wary that I may have back slid more than I currently am aware of.

4. I compare myself then with myself now and I don't like the comparison. I seemed to be more lean and mean, so to speak, back then. Less fearful of man. Less defeated. Less caring what people thought of me. I also seemed to be braver in general.

5. I suppose I still don't quite know how to reconcile the reality of Christianity with the Work. Though I also suppose I do know how to reconcile it more now than ever, but the doctrinal study seemed to have poked a hole in the cosmos that was the school I was in. And a big part of that I suppose is my knowing that I was and have been slumming throughout it all. I.e. arguing with a level that I have nothing to do with. Allowing myself to be trolled by that lower level, and in honesty also me trolling them as well. A lot of nastiness there.

6. I miss the real activity of searching out the ideas and practices and goals of a higher teaching.

7. I'm somewhat bothered when reminded, as I read what I've written in the past, that I am saying the same things now, though I seemed to have a better understanding of them back then, and could articulate them better back then. That gives a sense of a curve where I was at an apex in my development back then and am now lower than that point today.

8. I seem to feel more like a loser nowadays than I did back then. That has to do with that defeated feeling and fearing of man feeling. I think I've done what Nietzsche said one shouldn't do: pale after the fact. I.e. I made a decision to separate from the world back then and went with it boldly and didn't look back. Then, I seem to have drifted out of that state and now all I do is look back. I have 'paled' after the fact of that hardcore and decisive act. I also have come into memories that I had blacked out for years, and they are really devastating to my vanity and pride and really knock me out and knock me down, but that should be neither here nor there because my old self wouldn't give a sh*t.

So, 8 points is enough. In my favor I will say that I had an ideal situation to do what I was doing, and that situation just naturally changed. Things don't last forever. Also, I *did* have to shift my attention onto basic life survival during the time my parents were dying and after they died. (By the way, I didn't list it above, but I suspect all this new information technology has hampered me regarding real learning; but I don't want to blame anything on it. We should be able to live with it and take advantage of it without allowing it to destroy us.)

If you've read this far this is an interesting thought: I wonder what I had in mind 'eschatologically' as I was learning and doing the Work back then? I mean, be more awake, have more Real Will, increase understanding, for...what? I don't think I thought about it. It is Christianity that supplies the telos, so to speak. The end game. I actually remember now, I do remember thinking in terms of developing my soul so that at death it would manifest, to speak metaphorically, as a great Redwood tree rather than as a little bush. But we need a place to go. A higher Kingdom. Someplace real. And that gets back to Christian doctrine, which I recall now I had back then too, if just from the early complete Bible readings, and what I was picking up from Mr. Murray and Grail literature and what not...