Are you controllable?

When I was in high school, I had a teacher for Freshman English names Ms. Butts who became something of a friend and confidant. Freshman English was a full year required class, but starting sophomore year, the students were allowed to choose specific classes that they found of interest.

During the year, it had become quite apparent that Ms. Butts' favorite class to teach was one called "Persuasion and Propaganda." Personally this was not something that I would have chosen but she was so excited in the subject and thought that I would get a lot out of it so I signed up for it.

The reading for the class was George Orwell's "1984" and I think we either read or discussed Ray Bradbury's "Fahrenheit 451." Along with the reading was a excellent introductory into the worlds of advertising and subliminal manipulation. It really opened my eyes to how we are tricked by what we see to buy products we may not even need.

Some say that advertising is the art of convincing people that they need something they likely didn't know even existed before hand. My personal favorite quote on the subject is as follows:

"Advertising is the rattling of a stick inside a swill bucket."

George Orwell

I just finished reading Al Gore's book "The Assault on Reason" in which he touches on the subject while discussing the change that has occurred with the distribution of information from print to audio and later video mediums. Scientists have viewed the differing wave patterns in people's brains and what areas are or not activated in the brain's logic centers with differing medias.

In America, at least, we have become largely a nation of peoples who get more information from carefully crafted sound-bites than from actual study about "whatever."

When I was a child, we used to watch the local news to see what was happening in St. Louis and the immediate area then the network news to find out about the nation and the rest of the world. I remember watching films that have since become cultural icons from the Vietnam era when they were first shown on television.

You won't see such things today, in the name of "family decency" or gratuitous violence, but in times like now, when our nation state is at war with another nation state, this should be a nightly segment of more than a quick statement of a couple of IED's and shelling incidents but an in depth statement of what is happening, top story every night until it is over. Making it into an "also ran" is just another form of manipulation, it's happening but you don't want to know to much about it.

Sadly, some executive realized that news was a salable product and that by making it "pop" you could raise ratings and hence charge more for advertising space. There was a time when television news was not about making a buck, but paying the people for the privilege of using the publicly owned airwaves by supplying a service, information.

Now I am sure that Britney Spears' latest meltdown is fun for some to watch, it is not (and never will be) news, so why is something like this the lead story on the network news and why do we let it go on without a comment from the public?

I feel sorry for Britney and her sister as it seems their family has some serious issues to deal with, but it seems REALLY sad that this would be used as ratings gathering fodder when people are dying so that we can have our minds reduced to mush so that this seems of importance.

We could go into the next realm of this discussion, politics, but why, if you want to know about the manipulation of the public by Washington, there are a plethora of blogs and outside news sources that can do it in much more expansive detail than I would ever want to. I'll stick with religion as my subject, spending my life in the pursuit of political understanding would likely have me opening a wrist or two.

I may have my issues with the political arena, but I have to agree with former Arkansas Governor Mike Huckabee when he said "Jesus was too smart to ever run for public office."

The point of this is to start becoming aware of how you can be manipulated to do things you would not otherwise. This is important, if you cannot discern how you are controllable, how can you regain that control?

A basic piece of the philosophy taught here is that we are all responsible for that which happens to us, none of it happens without our express permission, either consciously or not and on a level many of us are not aware of. There are no victims unless one chooses to be.

Part of learning about who and what you truly are is to become aware of how your truth has manifested in the world of your experiences. The past is what brought you to where you are, in learning how and what it was, you become prepared for the next moment.

The Church of Scientology may take a lot of grief for some of their stances on things, but I have to agree with the idea they put forth of the "reactionary" person. We are not really taught as children to question and analyze the world that is put before us. Instead, we have a nearly instant reaction to what is happening around us with no clue as to why we are responding in this way.

Start to look at the thoughts you have, the ways in which you think and continue to ask that deadliest of all questions, "WHY." That one little word can open the most massive doors in the experiences of past present and future. Try it and see what answers come to you, you are likely to be quite surprised in many cases, I know that I was...

My high maintenance Life Partner...

I am not sure, but I think I may have accidentally sold my soul to the devil, also known as the mechanic at the auto shop. :-)

Here is a picture of my '90 Mustang LX (ok mine needs paint and body work...)


I have been having an assortment of difficulties with my car as of late, mainly dealing with the coolant system. They told me when I bought it that there was a leak in it someplace and it has been one thing after another.

1. The heater core
   It turns out that a lot of my original issue was likely this little problem. I made the assumption that the wet floor on the passenger side was from the door that doesn't quite align properly. Turns out that the core had a leak and since it is on the inside of the firewall, wet floor.
   
   My solution? I bypassed the heater core with one of the hoses that connected it to the main system, a temp fix at best since the hose was not shaped for this little maneuver.
   
   
2. My badly patched bypass
   As I said above, I knew my fix wouldn't last forever, but I though it would work for at least a week or two. Good thing I had already been to my local Pep Boys where a very nice Part's Department guy let me rummage through the assortment of hoses so I could find a ½ inch hose with a 180° turn of the appropriate size.
   
   A few days later I was headed home when the car started "smoking(?)" at Beverly Glen/Mulholland and as it was too dark to see anything under the hood and since home was all downhill from there, I coasted the rest of the way and parked it immediately.
   
   The next day I went to see what had happened and I think I must have nicked the hose trying to install it, I had a new pinhole that had been the issue. I spent the afternoon cursing out the car while trying to get the old hose off and the new one on.
   
   Why do they make 8-cylinder engines almost impossible to manipulate around under the hood?
   
   
3. Today's issues
1. The Lower Radiator Hose
   Last Friday I noticed more water coming out of my engine, but this time it was from the front of the engine. Gads!!!
   
   I felt around the radiator hoses and felt a couple of spots in the lower radiator hose. I was not in the mood to deal with this myself today, so I took it to a local mechanic that several friends use.
   
   I figured that I would kill two birds with one stone and get an Oil Change at the same time.
   
   
2. The Water Pump
   I had heard a strange sound under the car a couple of times, so I asked him to check under the car and see if they could find something that may have punctured the hose. Sure, it's only a guess, but worth looking into.
   
   While doing this, they found that my water pump was leaking. It cost me twice as much by itself than the hose and oil change... Eeek!

Now don't get the wrong impression. I am happy to fix the car, thank God that I have the cash in the bank to do it, but it was a bit of a shock, $300.00 total.

Some of the Hidden Blessings in the above...
I guess for a car that I got for a steal and haven't really had to do that much to, I am really lucky.

So instead of thinking that I am upset, I am just venting a touch and trying to realize the blessings that are hidden in the situation.

Where the cash flow issue is frustrating for me, ok ANY time I have to spend money that I am not planning on it's annoying. But with business having been as slow as late it freaks me out a bit. This is one of the issues that I am still working on. I tend to get a touch (right) manic when my cash flow and savings are running low. The universe always works it out, but I still get insane. Maybe that's why I keep going through the lesson again and again.

As of late, I have wondered if I really need a car. Well, in Los Angeles the answer is a fairly well sounded "Oh HELL YES!!!" At least while I am doing on-site computer services and trying to get my coaching working.

I am learning the hard way that I need to let go and just be in the moment, I am quite aware that I am both attached to money, my stability and I am finding myself worrying about my rent for next month when I just paid it 6 days ago (it's due on the 15^th).

These things will continue until I learn the lessons, I seem to bit a touch slow in this area... ;-P

An Unexpected Christmas Gift

Yesterday was Christmas (OK, if you looked at the header for the message you know that) and I had the best Christmas I have had in years.

I have always been aware of the fact that we tend to see "outside" us better than inside ourselves. I can look around and see a million people around who are miserable and obviously so very sad without realizing how sad and/or depressed I may be since it has become such a habitual state of mind and being.

It's like the man who has something terrible happen to him and he gets angry. In time, he has been angry for so long that he doesn't even realize that he is always angry and that those around him are quite aware of this. Eventually, most will leave him since who wants to be around an angry person all the time. They may realize why, but many will not, but he will just know this is who and what he "is".

Since leaving the limo company and going to work for myself has been a somewhat stressful and unnerving experience, I have written here before about how disconcerting getting outside my personal comfort zones has been. It has had an interesting effect on my life that I am SOOOO very thankful for.

Yesterday, I went to a party of friends and have to say that I probably had the most enjoyable time that I have ever had, or at least in many years.

Having been so attached to my job for so many years, I had not even realized how much of "life" I was missing out on since it just "was" what I did. May I never get to that place again of bypassing life while trying to survive.

This group of friends and acquaintances are mainly people that I have only known for a few months and they have accepted me and made me feel welcome in ways that you don't find in Los Angeles very often. After the party, I was driving home and became aware of just how full of joy I was and how long it had been since I had been there outside of meditation and teaching.

As much as I loved all the gifts I received for Christmas from my friends and adopted families (K: the "Magic 8-Ball" said that my wish for happiness today was likely, right so far... :-) ) the one that I will cherish forever is the joy and happiness you all have brought into my life and the refuge that you have offered from the difficulties in the day-to-day existences of my life and calling.

May everyone be blessed to have that one person or group of people that let them just relax and enjoy, if not, why would life be worth living?

ॐ शान्ति
Om, shanti (Peace)

Time Travel; fun but not very profitable...

Last weekend, I was working on some questions and supplying answers when the following came up:

How can I let go of others’ problems instead of trying to solve them?

---

This is an issue that I have been working of for a while. So far, the best I have been able to accomplish is to become aware of it as it is happening and then I can try to let go of it and begin to regain my peace.The hard part for me is the letting it stay gone, I tend to rehash it after the fact and I can get just as frustrated, if not more so, as I would at the time, time travel can be fun and completely unprofitable.

I find that we all suffer from this to some degree. Albert Einstein and Stephen Hawking may not be a big proponents of it, but to a degree, we all do it. When we think about things that have happened to us in the past, imagine or plan things in the future we are practicing time travel in at least one of it's methods.

There is an old expression that says "if you you have one foot in the past and one in the future, you completely miss the present" and the present or now is actually all that we really have. Another expression that I heard on this was "yesterday is a cancelled check, tomorrow is a promissory note, today is the only cash we have."

Learning the lessons of the past is important so that we are not condemned to repeat them as Benjamin Franklin said. Becoming fixated on our past is not healthy for us. Rehashing our past failures or disappointments for the purpose of punishing ourselves is not healthy.

The same goes for the future. We can enjoy an amusement of playing out the future in our heads but thinking that we can plan every detail of the future and expecting it to follow our detailed schema is a fantasy that tends to become painful when it is not realized. As the saying goes, "If you want to make God laugh, tell Him your plans."

Imagining and fantasy can actually become detrimental to our growth. In the process of fantasizing, we usually tend to tell ourselves how we would like something but define why we are not going to get it or are unworthy of it. For those who are aware of the Law of Attraction, this is a big warning sign to not allow to pass unheeded.

Within reason, all of these time travel experiments can be helpful and fun, but the fact is that if you spend all your time in any of them, you are going to miss the present and it is the present that you change into the future and the past is just a record of how you got to where you are.

Enjoy the now, be the now and live in it. I can guarantee that once you spend the majority of the time thinking about what is, this moment, the past stops being something of sorrow and the future becomes a new landscape that unfolds moment by moment before you.

What are we and Why?

There is an old question that I got asked in philosophy class that is reasonably close to a koan from the world of Zen, "Can God make a stone so large that He cannot move it?"

What if this is the wrong question? What if the right question is, "Can God create a puzzle and/or riddle that is so complex that, as of yet, He has not solved?" And if that is not enough heresy for one day, I would add, "What if we, people as well as creation, are the attempt to solve that puzzle/riddle?"

Generally, I tend to think of the relationship between God and His creation in less than philosophical Gordian knots, along the lines of, as explained so eloquently by Neale Donald Walsch, God knew Himself to be the totality of all that was, is and ever would be, but the knowing of something and experiencing it are completely different. Creation is the attempt of God to turn datum into experience.

Now, to some, this is absolute heresy, I tend to feel sorry for these people since they usually have a view of the relationship of man and God as being nearly diametrically opposed. The view of separation between creator and created seems to manifest in forms of societies that end up bullish and uncaring in their assumed relationship to the creator as "the chosen."

Why is it that we cannot look beyond our little egos (OK, not so little in many cases)? If we take this view of God as a diamond and all the differing ideas about God are just different facets of the same stone, we are left with all our descriptions of God being like the story of the blind men who start fighting over what an elephant is since they all have experienced different pieces and not the whole.

Imagine the joy that would come from the acknowledgement that not only is our view and belief right, but also the plethora of views from the Haitian Vodoun Mambos and Houngans, to the Islamic Imams, through the Hindu Brahmans, to the Buddhist Lamas and Arhats to the Christian Popes and assorted ministers and preachers, wouldn't that just be amazing to experience?

Note:
Thanks to J. Michael Straczynski for reminding me of this with Dr. Franklin in Babylon 5.