Circuit Break

Positive Desire

2011-12-13T23:35:00.001-08:00

The problem of seeking happiness is that it's always a step out of reach. If it were present, then there would be no seeking. We are always looking for a future situation that promises better feelings than the one we have right now. As soon as we get that situation, we imagine a better one just out of reach of the present so that the cycle of dissatisfaction continues. From the emaciated poor starving for food to the anorexic rich starving for attention, there seems to be no escape from this mental wiring of insatiable desire.

It's not exactly desire that is the problem but its tenor of dissatisfaction. What if there was a way to desire happily? Positively expectant salivation over a meal is qualitatively different from a hunger pang though they share the desire to eat. At the other end of desire is fulfillment or the failure to fulfill. Can the failure to fulfill be reliably avoided or prevented from causing disappointment? Failure loses its sting when you know it's temporary. It's just a mistake that can be corrected. The mistake could be in an intermediate step toward attaining the goal or even a mistake in choosing the goal. Disappointment occurs in proportion to the perceived permanence of the failure state.

Boundaries

2011-12-06T06:03:00.001-08:00

I had a good discussion with a friend yesterday about boundaries, a word I've avoided because of its confrontational tone. Based loosely on her description of what it means to her, I've come up with my own provisional definition that a boundary is an explicit description of what behavior in another or circumstances make one uncomfortable. It's not intended to lay blame but to inform the other person that one may react poorly or leave if those circumstances occur.

I think part of the reason I didn't like to think about boundaries is that it puts emphasis on external circumstances for one's happiness. I believe in ultimate oneness, and boundaries seemed to be a delusional separation. I think I may have been too idealistic. Upon entering the physical world, we have "signed up" for separation as a vehicle to learn how to reunite. We grow incrementally, dissolving one boundary at a time, but to do away with the boundary concept all at once denies the structure of the school in which we find ourselves.

Boundaries do presume and uphold separation but for the greater purpose of enabling relationship. A lonely Creator can be seen creating an independently willful Other, whom He can love. Not satisfied with just satisfying Himself, he allowed multiple Others to feel separate from each other and so that they may potentially experience a microcosm of the original love that created them.

In order to experience true relationship, people must allow for the will of others to remain independent of their own. Otherwise, what they experience is a premature merger, a destructive consumption of another. All forms of control seek to consume or subsume another. Love, on the other hand, plays with that illusory gap between selves in a way that enhances and enthuses (i.e. puts God in) both the individuals and the whole.

Dream on, kid

2011-11-13T01:31:00.001-08:00

I just did my favorite education/public outreach demo so far to a high school class in Chile. The kids were really good at driving the rover, not getting stuck on rocks or driving crazy because of the 4 second delay between a keystroke and seeing the result of the motion on webcam. (The delay simulates the logistics of off-planet exploration.) I loved seeing them smile as they operated the rover. They looked so happy. I would be too if I was 15 years old driving a NASA robot on another hemisphere. The applause at the end of the session was heartwarming.

When I was in 3rd grade, the teacher had us draw or paint a nearly life sized body and put a photo of our face on it. I drew an astronaut suit. My parents still have it. When I was in 2nd grade, I etched and painted a psychedelic shuttle on a clay tile. When I was a toddler barely able to walk, I fell asleep on a hammock with a small picture dictionary on my face. The page I was on was one depicting planets and space related words. I still have both the clay tile and the picture dictionary. And now, where do I find myself? Near a world famous observatory with a beautiful view of the heavens every day, rain or shine. Here I am tearing up again at the sheer brilliance of destiny or whatever you call it. I still feel like I'm dreaming as I walk into my room in solitude.

I have so much to tell my young self. I would tell him not to worry so much about what other people think of him because it'll ironically just make him less attractive because no one likes a phony trying to conform. As I grew older, I began to fear the difficulty of projects. I would tell him to continue doing impossible things without a care for how long it takes or how hard it is. I would tell him that romantic relationships are one of those impossible things but to take care not to assume it will eliminate all of his problems. I would tell him to practice self-love now because it doesn't get easier if he habituates in the other direction.

Now at 31, reading this as if my 50 year old self were admonishing me, I have trouble accepting this advice. "Yea, right, old man. You've forgotten what it's like to be young." So instead of further giving answers to life lessons, I would just give him a calm smile and a fearless hug. I would express through my demeanor that things will be all right. I would tell him yesterday's dreams that I'm living today and my dreams today that I know will be fulfilled tomorrow.

Inner Being

2011-11-09T01:19:00.000-08:00

Who is this inner being?

It is the part of me that knows of eternity. It has no fear of death. It understands this physical reality as a subset of reality. A fun game. A play.

It puts obstacles in the way as part of the game. Every problem that arises is exactly the problem I need, is exactly the contrast I need to clarify where I want to go. The going is as enjoyable as the getting to. Desire is as endless as eternity, and that's a good thing to the inner being, who enjoys fulfilling each and every one of them.

The inner being knows that everything is as it should be, just as it is and just as it is changing.

Superstar

2011-10-30T02:59:00.000-07:00

When I was watching the YouTube video of Karen Carpenter playing drums, smiling so big and enjoying herself so much, I felt jealous. She's so pretty, musically talented, and adored. Songs like Superstar and Yesterday Once More were ironic in that in singing them, she was speaking of stars as if she wasn't one. In an attempt to feel better about myself, I thought, "There must be something wrong with her life. It's too damn perfect." I was ashamed at my schadenfreude when I discovered the circumstances of her death. On the other hand, I wanted to find proof that being admired like her wasn't all that great, and it was good to find that evidence. The admiration of entertainment stars is often for superficial and unstable reasons. It's much better to be validated just for being human rather than for any particular accomplishment or gift because conditional love isn't really love and can only sustain you temporarily.

Fairness

2011-08-02T18:48:00.000-07:00

There is no such thing as fairness or unfairness. It is a line in the sand of human imagination drawn to motivate balance between equally imaginary parcels of the one true whole. Instead of engendering balance, thoughts of fairness or justice sometimes instigate war as one side imagines being deprived by the other.

"Reciprocity" can also be used as a club to beat the other into giving back. Such a demand needn't be verbalized; one can signal disapproval with the body, mood, or even more subtle ways.

Balance doesn't require justice. Balance just is. When a ball drops into a pool of water, the water splashes upward in a balanced response. Every moment is a moment of balance even while the quantities involved are still changing. Equilibrium is no more balanced than the movement toward equilibrium.

We may push forcefully to secure a certain outcome we consider fair. If worry accompanies the push, the outcome will likely bounce back the opposite direction. If the weight behind the push is greater than the either your hand or the object you're pushing, you will effect a more durable change. The largest weight is the weight of the world. Hence it is the complex interactions of the entire world that determine where the scales tip, not some man-made sense of fairness.

It would do us good to observe with humility the hugeness of the universe and let it determine how the galaxies and atoms should dance with each other. Atlas, let down your rock and let it roll.

Trusting the clarity of the mirror

2011-07-28T11:06:00.000-07:00

She looks at me with disgust as I refuse to do what she says.

I look at her with disgust as she demands me to give.

The thoughts that arise from the dispute are meaningless rationalizations that only serve to empower the feelings of righteousness and contempt. Thoughts like:

She is so ungrateful.
She is so spoiled.
She is so lazy.
She is so weak.
She is so incapable of happiness.

Simultaneously, she has a volley of negative thoughts toward me.

He is so lazy.
He is so inconsiderate.
He is so weak.
He is overly sensitive.
He is so selfish.

We are reflecting each other's negativity. We don't see the hall of mirrors, only the infinitely reflecting images of hate.

Until now.

Others are just perfect mirrors of ourselves. Paradoxically, we are perfect mirrors for others, even though as the subject in the experience, we must think of ourselves as the generators of the image, not the mirror. In other words, when I look at others, I see only my reflection, me in turn being any image I dream up in that moment. There may be some artifacts in the reflection, like the right and left sides being reversed, but the underlying relationship is the same. For example, if I hate being told what to do, what I see in the other person won't necessarily be disobedience. It would most likely be bossiness.

As we are but mirrors, if we want to see a better picture, we must be that picture first. This requires thorough trust that the other will mirror it back to us because we don't want to waste energy projecting for nothing. Unfortunately, we think their image is coming at us from outside us; the mirror analogy is too much a leap of faith. They are independently mean and selfish, and so I must defend myself or avoid them. In so doing, I lose the opportunity to change a part of myself that would've benefited from the feedback.

Practical Solipsism

2011-05-18T18:43:00.000-07:00

Whereas the philosophy that all we can know is what is in our own minds is often ridiculed as being impractical because it denies the objective existence of others, there is practical value in noting that our values and judgments are indeed subjective and thus changeable.

Our minds hold a pattern, which ostensibly corresponds to an "external" reality. It is a map of a territory that we can never sense directly because sensing necessarily filters information. If we had a direct, unfiltered experience of so-called external reality, we would receive one huge chunk of information, unorganized and unmanageable. It would be like downloading the entire content of the Internet as one large stream of ones and zeroes without a method of decoding it.

Objectivity is consensus and relative repeatability mistaken as fragments of absolute truth. The illusion of absoluteness leads us to a problem in judgment of right and wrong in human intentions and behaviors. When we think, "He should have done this," or, "She shouldn't be this way," there often arises an uneasy feeling of annoyance, rejection, or distaste. We automatically blame the other person for causing this disturbance when it really is our mind's signal that we are encountering a contradiction in our mental map of the world. Before we can even consider that our map needs correcting, we must be open to the possibility that our judgments are not absolute.

The feeling of judgment signals a contradiction between what we expect the other person to do and what we observe them doing. Ironically, it's easier to assume that our expectation is more correct than observed reality. This is simply a habit, a repeated pattern of thinking that has served us in the past. We ignore the fact that it does not serve us now out of sheer laziness: it requires thoughtful effort to adjust our mental map of how the other person should act. We would need to ask ourselves why it is the most beneficial course of action in their minds and hearts to do what they just did that annoyed us so.

What can we control?

A practical solipsist does not deny that his values and actions affect the conditions of his experiences even if he denies the metaphysical independence of such conditions. The practical question then is, "What can I control to achieve happiness or less disturbance?" In the case of judging people, the answer is to elaborate upon or otherwise change your model of how the other person should be. In other words, justify their behavior with adjusted "laws of the universe" (mental model). The alternative is to resist your observed reality, a tiring and futile endeavor.

As a bonus, when you understand more deeply and more consistently with your observations why a person values or acts a certain way, you can more easily organize causes and conditions for them to act in a way that is mutually beneficial. You can spend your energy where it actually matters instead of just frustratingly grinding on why they are the way they are.

I don't need anyone's praise

2011-05-16T02:32:00.001-07:00

I don't need anyone's praise. It's not important to me. They have
their own values, which may be different than mine.

I don't need to judge others. They have their own values with which to
judge themselves. Mine are irrelevant except when I mistakenly believe
that others are pressuring me toward their values. In that case, I
remember that only my values need to be factored into my choices.

This is not to say that I ignore other's desires and preferences. In
fact I am closely observant of them, and in my striving to fulfill my
own values I see the multiplicative power of mutual benefit.

This is not to say that I'm a calculating sociopath. My keen
observance of other's values stems from the joy of connecting with
others' joy. I do not need their praise, so I am well prepared to
receive it in the form it was given rather than requiring the gift to
conform to my own design.

You are good

2010-11-02T19:34:00.000-07:00

i want you to be happy. do whatever you like. i know you will harm no one. it is not in your nature to. people will tell you otherwise but it's not true.

trust the goodness of the universe and those around you. there is nothing to gain from fearing them and much to lose. don't believe those that tell you to be afraid. they are just afraid themselves.

trust your own goodness. you are a strong force of benevolence that can overcome any obstacle. you have a history of solving difficult problems, and i know you will continue to do so spectacularly. you simply cannot lose.

drop the walls imprisoning your true self. let it out and watch it enlighten and enliven the world.

Cholesterol--Don't Think Without It

2009-10-05T21:11:00.001-07:00

Cholesterol may promote neuronal communication. Maybe clogged arteries are a sign that the heart wants to speak. http://sageke.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/abstract/2001/7/nw26

Love and Debt

2009-10-04T13:46:00.001-07:00

Abraham-Hicks recommends forgiving debts as a means to tap into one's own abundance waiting in escrow.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7MCcBT5-ai8&feature=youtube_gdata

Byron Katie vs Abraham-Hicks

2009-09-25T17:32:00.000-07:00

Byron Katie's inquiry holds beliefs in a quarantined mental space so that one may determine the effects the belief has on emotion, thinking, behavior, and general well-being. It isolates beliefs and deals with them one at a time so as not to overwhelm the subject with the spiral of rationalizations that may occur in free-association.

The inquiry is an experiment in which the subject creates a model of himself with the belief and then without the belief. The way the questions are phrased invite the subject to actually feel the feelings generated by the belief rather than hold them in an indifferent, cerebral way. This is in contrast to the way most of us feel feelings: we generally latch on to the feeling first and then activate cerebral thinking to manufacture reasons as to why we should feel that way. We thus amplify and prolong the feeling:

Thought - belief - feeling - supporting thought ("reasons") - belief - feeling - repeat.

The questions of the inquiry, e.g. "How do you react when you believe that thought?" frames the belief as the creator of the feeling. We focus on the prior part of the cycle:

Thought - belief - feeling - supporting thought ("reasons") - belief - feeling - repeat.

Because belief is actually more a choice and feeling is more an automatic reaction, this line of questioning empowers us to choose how we feel indirectly by believing differently. The pivotal point in the inquiry is the reframing. If the subject jumps to the "feeling - supporting thought" phase too soon, he will reject the question and derail the inquiry. His mind will be so flooded with reasons as to why he feels that way that there is no room to catch the more useful reason, the one he can change, i.e. his belief in a thought.

Abraham-Hicks' philosophy mainly focuses on adjusting the feeling part of the cycle (though there are techniques such as the focus wheel which direct attention to the beliefs that take one in or out of a desired feeling). Their idea is that one can directly imagine a better feeling state and generate that better feeling immediately. Automatically, cerebral thinking will manufacture reasons why one should feel that way, and then the spiral flows upward.

Hence the two methodologies are complementary means to a better feeling life. Byron Katie's inquiry draws on curiosity while Abraham-Hicks asks for imagination. The inquiry is better suited for more severe emotional downturns, but requires at least a modicum of curiosity for the truth. Abraham-Hicks' focusing on positive aspects is better for brighter times as good feelings can snowball more quickly.

What is the pain telling you?

2009-09-09T01:42:00.000-07:00

I am willing to learn how to love the pain. I am willing to see the value in my suffering.

Your suffering tells you what you do not want. It tells you the thoughts that you do not want. When you hold on to a thought that isn't in vibrational alignment with the joyful version of you, the discordant feelings you feel are a direct experience of the discord between that thought's vibration and the joyful version's vibration.

Learn to sing in the key of the best rendition of your song. It's easy because it's instinctual, and mistakes are part of the process. Suffering is just a helpful nudge. Do not get caught up in the fact that you are nudged, but instead follow its beckoning so that you may become more in tune with your joyous song.

Congestion tells you you don't want to be near someone or some situation. You feel crowded, suffocated. To alleviate congestion, either get out of the situation or love it. There is no benefit or growth in strength in enduring the congestion. In this case, more pain, less gain.

Let go of each thought that makes you suffer one by one. Do it by first holding the thought in a quarantined area which you observe carefully. Observe how the thought makes you feel and act. See how it makes you suffer to hold it. Then open the door, and let it go.

Be

2009-07-22T00:26:00.000-07:00

What if everyone was discontent with who they were, what they were doing, and what they had? They would be continually competing for your attention and respect and constantly mired in a critical self-consciousness. They would not be happy at their jobs, so their service would be poor or insincere. Their products would be tainted with the motivation of trying to impress you or manipulate you into seeing a different image of them. They would accumulate many things that give them very fleeting pleasure and a lasting burden of upkeep and low resale value. They would defend and promote the useless things they do because they would be embarrassed if they were the only ones engaged in such futility.

What if everyone started out with the notion that they were worthwhile for no other reason than that they existed? Would they be in danger of complacency and stay in dead-end jobs or would they use the energy freed up from not trying to maintain an impression toward pushing the envelope of human achievement? Even if they did not achieve by someone's standards, would they be depressed about it? Would they need to have more and more in order to presumably alleviate the itch for more? Or would they be content with what they have and leave a lighter footprint on their environment?

People who are happy with who they are, what they do, and what they have are hard to control. Society's suicidal impulse as evidenced by the popularity of violence and Armageddon-themed movies is encouraged by the capitalist pressure to not be who you are. Even when one tells you to "be yourself", they imply that you are not being yourself right now and that maybe if you buy this product or idea you can express your unique self better.

You already are yourself. And that is fine.

Dialogue with Addiction

2009-06-29T21:11:00.001-07:00

C'mon. You need to test out your will. If you don't test it, how do you know how strong it is?

You're lying. I know that the flesh is weak when it comes close to the addiction. That's when you want to creep in and hijack the mind.

Well, yes. But I'm doing it for your own good. This is the only way you can get pleasure.

No. There are many other ways to get pleasure. I can learn something new. I can write a program.

All that stuff is hard. They don’t guarantee pleasure like I do.

Yea, but they also don’t guarantee self-hate like you do.

Self-hate is natural and familiar. You know how to deal with it. You’ve dealt with it for years already. You don’t have to learn something new to cope with it. It's comfortable. Besides, doesn’t it feel kinda good?

I don’t really trust you. Maybe it does feel comfortable, but that comfort could be killing me.

Look, you’re going to die anyway. Might as well go out with a lot of pleasure rather than risk failed attempts at greatness. It’s better to die comfortably.

I don’t imagine being so happy on my deathbed considering that my life had been wasted away in comfort rather than accomplishment.

Where do my desires lead me?

2009-06-27T00:32:00.001-07:00

Where do my desires lead me?
Lust leads me to faking myself.
Jealousy leads me to hating myself.
Fear leads me to stress and worry.
Desire for freedom leads me to feel stuck.
It may be premature to say all desires are bad, but so far it seems like it.

Motivated by Shame

2009-06-06T17:33:00.000-07:00

I envy computers. They don't stress over false beliefs and processes. Sure, bugs in software will make a computer produce results that are not very useful, but they don't suffer from self-criticism in the face of useless results. When we humans make a mistake, it is worse than a useless result; it can be experienced as shameful failure.

On the other hand, without shame or guilt, a computer has no impetus to change itself and no criterion to judge whether a change is in the right direction. But who judges the judge? How do we know shame is an appropriate motivator?

We're all one

2009-04-16T23:42:00.000-07:00

From reading Ouspensky's "Tertium Organum", I've been thinking about how everything is all one being and, in particular, all human beings and animals are like branches of the same tree.

To begin understanding this, we must consider time. Actually, all future and past events may exist simultaneously. The reason we see ourselves travelling at a constant rate in time is because our sensory apparatus is peculiar. The past is foggy and the future is even foggier. We only pay attention to the present moment. (And we don't even do that well.)

Just like a flat plane is a slice of a solid 3 dimensional object, our 3 dimensional world is a slice of a 4 dimensional one. A plane being can only see 2D, his 3rd dimension appearing as time. Things on one side, say below him, are the past, and things on the other side are the future. In a similar way, 3D "slices" in front of us are the future and 3D slices behind us are the past.

If you dip 4 fingers pointing downward into a bowl of water, ovals appear on the surface where your fingers go through it. To a plane being living on and seeing only things on the water's surface, the ovals appear to be separate objects.

Assume again that above the surface means the future and below means the past. Say your fingers are spread out. As you dip down further (and create the illusion of time passing by for the plane being), the ovals move closer together. Some time later, they suddenly merge into a single long oval, which is in fact your palm. This is pretty bewildering for our flat friend who not only

sees an illusion, which he calls motion (you were not wiggling your fingers, just dipping your hand) but also...
sees separate objects merging into one (your fingers were never separate to begin with).

What if what we see as motion in our 3D world is really our senses, being limited to perceiving only 3D sections of a 4D world, fooling us into imagining separate entities dancing around in x, y, and z coordinates? What if those separate entities are just fingers of a 4D hand that is still as a rock, but we're only perceiving it slice by slice? You and your brother are one being if you trace your past (3D sections "behind" the present) back to the same mother.

Mitosis is a branch coming off of 4D tree. All of life is one being. Motionless. Timeless. When you attack another person physically or with harsh thoughts, you are denying your absolutely solid connection with that person in the 4th dimension of time. Also when you do something regrettable, you bet against the possibility that action is a fixed connection between the present moment and future consequences.

Who knows, our conscious intention may be the only thing existing outside of time and space able to direct our limited senses around the maze of 4 or more dimensional metageometry. We attribute to randomness things that seem out of our control much like the past generations attributed things out of their control to capricious gods. Finally we are coming back to the ancient view, except this time, we find our own consciousness to be the capricious god steering the ship of our experience through intention and attention.

Imagination Practice

2009-04-02T00:22:00.000-07:00

Imagination is key to changing the subconscious mind, which is the part of the mind that's really in charge. The conscious part is mostly an agitated spectator wasting a lot of energy kicking and screaming at the subconscious part to quit bad habits. The reason telling yourself change rarely works for most people is that the subconscious mind essentially speaks in terms of sensation rather than concepts. The perceived or imagined sensations of hot, cold, bright, smooth, fragrant, giddiness, melancholy, etc. are easier for the subconscious to understand than ideas like "I should be hot/cold/happy" because the grammar of such thoughts makes them less immediate. Basically we have a dog in the mind that needs to be trained like a dog using more primal communication. Trying to reason with the subconscious is as useless as trying to reason with a dog.

Instead, we must use sensation imagery. By imagery, I don't necessarily mean visual pictures in the mind; any of the 5+ senses will do, e.g. imagining running your hands over fur. Knowing that imagination is so useful in communicating with the subconscious mind, how do we hone that skill?

Read fiction, and get lost in it.
Write fiction, and get lost in it.
Take mental snapshots of interesting experiences during the day and relive them later that day.
When reliving, use as many senses as possible, and try to make it feel as real as possible.
TV is generally imagination-cheating. It talks to the subconscious almost directly, training your conscious mind to be lazy in imagining.

Imagination practice is not an excuse to ignore your current perceptions. As bad as things may seem in the present, it is important to experience them deeply. Alternate between the feeling things as they are and things as you want them to be.

Problem: Solution

2009-02-27T21:58:00.000-08:00

Challenges: I am capable.

If you can't solve a problem by thinking in steps 1, 2, 3, dance instead. Shout. Use your whole body. There are other ways to think.
Use your expanded potentials to solve social problems.
Don't believe what people say. Don't believe yourself.

Congested: Clear your head.

Be generous and grateful.
Let someone close to you be completely herself for an entire day.

Rejected, ignored, misunderstood: I can always try again, differently.

Try something different. Repetition may frustrate the other person.

Attack thoughts: See no evil.

There is no single absolute reality. There are multiple realities playing with each other. Even the entire game cannot be the ultimate reality because it becomes another single reality among many upon being named.
There is no evil except being infected by another's ignorance.
Evil comes into existence when you give it independence from you by blaming something external to you.
A double blind studies the collective unconscious by obscuring the conscious.
Indifference is willed ignorance habituated.

How to overcome stubbornness

2009-01-17T15:21:00.001-08:00

Set a timer or watch to countdown for 15 minutes.
Do something for those 15 minutes, e.g. write a thank you card for a friend.
Write down the activity or product of your activity, e.g. "Thank you card".

Repeat steps 1-3 for the rest of the day, doing something different every 15 minutes. If something takes longer than 15 minutes to complete, come back to it after you do something else. You may notice the following:

You can let go of emotions more easily. Letting go of activities trains you to let go in general, and that includes emotions.
You learn to break activities down into manageable (15 minute or so) chunks.
Hence, fewer projects will seem overwhelming.
You wake up to an alarm more easily as you let go of the stubbornness of sleepiness.

Though we tend to think they happen to us or we just have them, emotions are activities we perform. So are the beliefs that lead to the emotions. By practicing letting go of behaviors, we indirectly practice letting go of emotions. (It is advisable to practice letting go of emotions directly, too.)

Defamation

2008-12-14T14:44:00.000-08:00

Dalai Lama under attack: video.

No matter how beautiful a person seems, there will always be people who will notice his or her mistakes and amplify them to the boost his own sense of being good.

Two nights ago, I was up all night reading criticisms of Byron Katie and Eckhart Tolle, some spiritual mentors I have a lot of respect for. I felt pretty shitty going to bed after all that. That's how I came to my aforementioned conclusion: People will go to great lengths to prove they are better than others, even to the point of defaming others who are overall positive manifestations of love. They do so waving the banner of truth, but the anger and hatred is fairly evident in their voices and choice of words.

The question then becomes, how is my frustration toward these defamers affecting my mental, emotional, and physical state?

Pure Nonjudgmental Awareness

2008-10-03T23:57:00.000-07:00

Guilt is bad mkay? There's never a proper time to use guilt to motivate behavior. I'm not even sure it's a good thing to use against myself!

Who cares why we do it. It doesn't work. It makes me feel shitty and unmotivated. It makes others feel uncomfortable sitting next to me. Should I hold my tongue then? Yes. By all means, go silent. Monks do it. But what if I have their best interests at heart? Then understand that guilt will not make them their best.

See the ignorance in my wrong perceptions and breathe in. Anything that causes anger is definitely a wrong perception. So how am I angry? I'm angry that people are pushing me around. Wrong. They aren't pushing you around. You're not allowing your values to be expressed. Your true values. Not your opinions and need to be right. Your values. The things you know are right. The thing that no one can attack because they know it's right too. Fuck the superficial stuff.
See them, breathe out smiling. I'm sorry buddy. Your story just isn't true. You really don't have to hold on to it any more. It's not gonna work for ya.

I want to do beautiful things for her. I want to take her to nice places and let her enjoy the splendor of living. I want to show her the wonders of the world. I want to give her hope that life has meaning. I want to dance with her to the music of life. I want to show her that she is beautiful inside out, no matter what she eats, no matter what she wears, no matter what she thinks even. Yes, even thoughts. Thoughts after all are not important. Let's drop the thoughts. Let's just be with her as a human being, not a thought partner. What is the deepest part of my being? It is love. It is pure nonjudgmental awareness.

It's so rare to see such a thing. A glimpse of the ultimate nature of reality is really just two steps away in an unfamiliar dimension, that of love. If I can just sidestep those two steps, I would be in the land of ultimate bliss already. Poof. I'm here.

Here, there is no judgment of any sort. No one judges me. No one judges her. No one judges any one. We are all expressing thoughts and fears. Every word is an expression, nothing more. There is no such thing as judgment. Whatever you see as judgment is a misuse of the imagination. Even if people think they are judging, they are only fooling themselves because what is there to weigh against when the universe is whole?

Display Affirmations on Your Screen

2008-09-01T02:25:00.001-07:00

"Conscience" is an application I made to display affirmations on my computer. It's sort of like a screen saver except you run it manually.

Make a text file with affirmations, quotes, or whatever you want displayed. Separate the messages with a return (newline). Save it as "messages.txt" in the working directory (usually the same folder the program resides in).

Run the program. Right-click the cat to minimize or set the interval, the time to wait between messages. Drag the cat to move it around.

>> Download Conscience <<

Breath Pacer

2008-08-29T12:46:00.001-07:00

Breathing slowly, quietly, and rhythmically helps you

Feel calmer
Feel and release headaches
Loosen bodily tension
Feel and release body aches

To that end, I've created a simple program that lets you pace your breath. As the blue bar goes up, inhale. As it goes down, exhale. (This one is set to 6 seconds.)

In the downloadable version, you can select anywhere from 2 to 10 seconds per inhalation/exhalation by right clicking on the bar. Move it around your screen by dragging the bar.

>> Download Breath Pacer <<

Destiny Makes a Cameo Thrice

2008-01-25T23:36:00.000-08:00

I ate at a restaurant supporting Master Ching Hai last week. I wanted to find out more about her, so I Googled, and avoided the Wikipedia article so I won't get a consensus bias. Found her news channel to be really touching, albeit something I would've described as corny in my teenage years. The site had many links about vegetarianism. Cruising around on iGoogle. Funny, the first story on the Digg list was 10 reasons to be a vegetarian. First story on the howtos section was pilates to strengthen your back. Great, just what I needed since my back is terribly sore. Just when I thought the synchronicities had ended for the night, I found a flyer for something like Buddhism near my dad's computer telling me a few timely quotes like,

Helping others is helping yourself. Harming others is harming yourself.
Offenses that fill up the skies are dissolved by a sincere thought of repentance.
Stop procrastinating. Life is exceedingly short. Don't squander your time.
Value, appreciate, and be content with what we have. Enough is enough!
The past is history. The future is a mystery.
Overcome and accept our problems and obstacles.

Ironic since my dad is a devout aspiritualist. Wonder where he got it.

Comparison of Jesus and Siddhartha

2008-01-20T06:13:00.000-08:00

Jesus Christ's divinity ~ Siddhartha's carriage on the trunk of a heavenly elephant into his mother's womb.
The incarnation of the Son of God ~ Siddhartha's reincarnation as a Buddha.
His baptism and crucifixion for the salvation of us all ~ Buddha's vow to end all suffering, nearly killing himself in the process.
His resurrection ~ Buddha's enlightenment under the Bodhi tree. From Mara's hell of temptations rises a liberated man.

Trishna

2008-01-18T05:35:00.000-08:00

Trishna: a Buddhist concept similar to desire. The word is the root word of the English word "thirst," but it's meaning is here is wider. Trishna is the desire for things to be a certain way, a desire that is easily disappointed when reality turns out to be different than what you wanted. In this sense, it is not just desire but also aversion, since aversion is just desiring something to go away.

The Buddha's admonition to rid ourselves of desire is seen by many people as an austere rejection of pleasure. What motivation do we have for living if we are not to desire? I think this misunderstanding comes from taking the word "desire" too literally. Of course you must desire to be free from suffering to even start to learn about Buddhism.

The kind of desire we must investigate is the desire to reject reality. We look around us and categorize the world into:

Stuff I like (the good)
Stuff I don't like (the bad)
Stuff I don't care about (the neutral)

When someone criticizes me, I don't like it. That is "aversion." When I'm disappointed with reality, I'm rejecting reality. When someone tells me how smart I am, I like it. "Attachment" or "desire." (Remember that these words are just approximate translations of what the Buddha meant.) How is this rejection of reality? I am smart, of course, and that person did tell the truth. Well, imagine once the person changes her mind. Or if someone else calls you an idiot. Suddenly you are disappointed with reality, rejecting reality. And believe me, for every person who praises you, there will be at least one person who will look down on you. So within each desire is a hidden aversion to reality. Reality will be what it is, but our ideas of what it should be and shouldn't be get in the way of our happiness.

They're So Wrong

2007-11-26T22:18:00.001-08:00

Just reading their remarks make me sick. I can't believe they think that way. It's so pathetic and wrong. Is being so one-sided that easy to do? Is ignoring half of the world really just a snap of the finger? My way makes sense. My way is all encompassing. It even includes and understands their pathetic side. So, hmph.

Wait. Was that anger? Yes, I'm angry at their imbecilic one-sidedness. This anger is the same anger they had. The anger that divided their reality into two and banished one of the sides into cardboard boxes labeled "Ignore".

Infophobia

2007-11-26T01:20:00.001-08:00

I'm overwhelmed by information again. I've got a ton of tabs open. I've just bookmarked 8 pages today. And when I bookmark them, I debate what tags/labels to use, expending further mental energy. I've just created several blog topic series.

Prioritize. Find out what is really important to me if I'm to get anything done besides starting a million open-ended projects. Only spend time on things that bring me closer to what I value.

Tao Te Ching Ch 1

2007-11-25T22:12:00.000-08:00

My Internet Era Interpretation of the Tao Te Ching. I draw from 4 translations. The sources are indented and the author is in (parentheses). You may find it helpful to read one version straight through first, then read the referenced one. Or not. Whatever works for you.

1.
If you can think about it, it's not the full Tao.
If it has a name, it's just another thing, not the full Tao.

The Reason that can be reasoned
is not the eternal Reason.
The name that can be named
is not the eternal Name. (Susuki)

2.
Even though you can't point to the Tao, it created everything around you, which you could point to.

The Unnamable is of heaven and earth the beginning.
The Namable becomes of the ten thousand things the mother. (Susuki)

3.
When you don't want to hold on to things, you'll fully see things as they are. If you continue to want things, you'll only see things in terms of "I like this" or "I don't like this" and miss out on their other aspects.

Therefore not to desire the things of sense is to know the freedom of spirituality; and to desire is to learn the limitation of matter. (Goddard)

4.
Actually, not wanting things is just another perspective. Understand how both perspectives can coexist if you want to see things clearly.

These two things spirit and matter, so different in nature, have the same origin. This unity of origin is the mystery of mysteries, but it is the gateway to spirituality. (Goddard)

Immediate Honesty

2007-11-24T23:51:00.001-08:00

Give feedback ASAP. The longer the delay, the further away they are from the state of mind in question. You create stronger, more appropriate associations when you provide live feedback.

Email is slow feedback. It's harder to guarantee that your recipient is in a desired state of mind to receive your message.

Even in a live situation, it's hard to get someone into an open enough state to receive. I make them feel loved before I say anything, even if its a compliment. (Compliments can easily be misinterpreted as flattery.)

Reading pile

2007-11-24T23:42:00.001-08:00

18 years ago

2007-11-24T22:38:00.001-08:00

I made this when I was 9. Funny how prophetic art can be.

Bear witness to their suffering

2007-11-22T14:34:00.001-08:00

Bear witness to their suffering with compassion. Only after they feel secure in your arms of unconditional protection may you talk of personal responsibility.

Anger Is My Mirror

2007-11-22T14:12:00.001-08:00

You are my mirror. My attempts to change you are just scratches on the mirror, obscuring you and ultimately myself to myself. My attempts to change you are my attempts to hide from myself.

Replace war with sports

2007-07-08T22:08:00.000-07:00

What if battles were decided by the leaders from opposing sides playing a chess game? The loser gets his head cut off. Everyone else gets to live. Oh wait a minute. The Maya do something like that: Mayan ball game

Game3.0

2007-06-10T23:19:00.000-07:00

Very cool game.

Nothing to Fear but Fear Itself

2007-06-04T04:21:00.001-07:00

FDR said, "The only thing we have to fear is fear itself." How did we get to a point where we have declared war on fear, or its synonym, terror? A war on terror is a tail chase, a terrified assault against terror spiraling us into more terror. They have us where they want us: a permanent war economy.

The Other Half That Makes Us Whole

2007-06-04T02:47:00.000-07:00

I was looking up a reference to Plato's story about Zeus cutting people into halves as punishment so that we search relentlessly for our missing half. Instead I found an interesting advocacy for homosexuality. Wasn't expecting that.

But those who are halves of a male who pursue males, and being slices, so to speak, of the male, love men throughout their boyhood, and take pleasure in physical contact with men. Such boys and lads are the best of their generation, because they are the most manly.

from Symposium: Plato

Ayahuasca

2007-06-03T06:18:00.000-07:00

This guy takes his family to the Amazon jungles and drinks ayahuasca. Great documentary. Touches on environmental issues as well as drug legalization.

Visualizing World Development

2007-05-30T17:39:00.000-07:00

The world ain't in that bad a shape if you look at the data. The rich-poor gap is actually lessening. The problem, in my opinion, is where we are equalizing toward. I have a fear that we're being corralled into a worldwide police state of two classes: the public under constant and complete surveillance and the surveying elites.