Fear of Loss of Familiar Phrases

Blog date: 9/12/2024    Journal Entry: 7/20/2024

I was fixing breakfast and noticed that I was low on peppercorns. "Pooh", I said, since I didn't remember having any more in the pantry. I looked up on the shelves. "Well whaddya know!" said I as I spotted an almost full bottle of peppercorns.
 I briefly found myself a bit surprised about remembering the phrase "whaddya know". Where did that memory come from, I thought. The phrase just appeared just as automatically as my very breathing. It was a felt memory, almost like it flowed out of the fingers – just like typing.
 A vague half-aware question briefly went through the background of my mind, something along the lines of "Am I going to remember these sorts of sayings as I continue to get older?" (Indeed, "along the lines of" is another half-remembered/half-automatic phrase.)
 I then allowed the brief fear slip away as I continued with my scrambled eggs and toast.
 And why would I bring such a trivial thing up? Why would I find myself ask myself asking these sorts of questions from time to time. Well, that would be the memory of the time when there weren't any feelings at all - the time of The Problem in the distant past – the "Death in Life". (This is described in my essay on Schizophrenia - link to the right)
 Not having any feelings is an issue that will get your attention real good, and it fully occupied all my mental resources for several years back then, resulting in the loss of my college career in physics.

If by chance you find yourself asking "what does memory have to do with lack of feeling? Memory is all in the nerve synapses, isn’t it?" Actually, no, it’s not. Memories are in the heart and hands. No feelings – no memories.

But this time, the vague question about possible lapse of feeling drifted in and out of the background, and was easily replaced by my awareness that I wanted the eggs soft scrambled.
 I likely remembered instead that nothing is ever really lost.

Interesting twist on affirmations:

Blog date: 8/13/2024    Journal Entry: 7/27/2004

Many of us have good reason to believe that if we make affirmations of supply, health, or success, we find that sooner or later we begin to manifest abundance, health, or success. And it's not just that we merely believe or hope in these positive affirmations – as if they were some sort of spiritual magic.
 One other reason that positive affirmations have a life-changing effect is that, having made the affirmations over a period of time, we begin to do the things that bring about the change. You don't just image the supply, health, or success. You create it.
 We'll take health as an example.
 One way in which a positive affirmation for health derives its effectiveness is that, once we have made that affirmation over a period of time, we begin to do the things that bring about health. So we might start some exercises, and maybe get more sleep. But mainly we change our eating habits and move away from the "Standard American Diet" of highly processed foods, soft drinks, and refined white flours. We begin to eat the whole foods, the ones that provide life-giving powerful micronutrients in addition to the usual vitamins and minerals.
 We might also note that, since the Universe is a Neutral Entity, this same scenario applies to our fears of lack, sickness, or failure. (And what are fears but negative affirmations?) We will also do the things that bring about these outcomes.
 And it's not enough to release our own fears. There's all the background negativity that we inherit from our society. Our movies, our advertizements, our magazine articles all assure us that we are all but destined to have declining health.
 We find ourselves surrounded by the almost universal belief that deterioration is inevitable as we "age":

"You lose muscle mass as you get older."

"Absorption of Vitamin B12, D, and just about any other vitamin/mineral is compromised when you get older."

"Mental function gets worse and worse until you slide into dementia or Alzheimer's."

So the affirmation by our subconscious societal milieu is that we will decline more and more until we find it necessary to move into "Independent" living , and then into "Assisted" living institutions.
 So one might ask if this might be the reason for the debilitating state of our food supply – provided by big industry. If we and our food suppliers make continual societal affirmations that we will inevitably decline and endure poorer health, then those food suppliers will be predisposed to doing the things that bring these affirmations about. Hence the sugary, creamy, and life-blocking sorts of food that we see in all the stores.

So if we quit mentally buying all the negativity, and if we quit physically buying and eating all big industry's poisoned products, we just might change our and their negative assumptions

Some Humor on D.I.Y. Projects

Blog date: 7/19/2024     8/23/2021

Here's some Questions and Answers to help you in your next D.I.Y. projects:

How many bags (of river rock/gravel/mulch) do I need?
  A: About 10 more than you actually bought.

How much does each bag weigh?
  A: About 10 lbs more than you can lift.
  Corollary: Just about anybody can lift a bag of dry mulch.
  But it's always wet.

On a D.I.Y. scale of 1 – 10, how hard is this project?
  A: From manufacturer or internet site: 4
  Actual: 9

How much paint do I need for a 10 x 10 room?
  A: About 1 qt more than you bought.

OK then: I'll do it scientifically: How many square ft total is a 10 x 10 room with 9 ft ceiling?
  A: About 100 square ft bigger than you caculate (the 1 qt).

There are typically two sizes of ceiling boxes for hanging lights. Which one does this light fixture fit?
  A: The other one.

Will my extension cord reach the nearest outlet? OR: Will the "Shower" setting on my garden hose sprayer reach the tree I want to water?
  A: Both will be about 1 ft too short.

Will a 12 in braided line reach my faucet inlet?
  A: No. But the 18 in one you almost picked up at the store will.

"I need some information from a store associate. Can I find one?
  Yes you can, but she's currently with a customer who has just asked her to to explain Wave-Particle Duality in Quantum Physics.

What size nut/bolt/plug/fixture/electrical box/braided line/connector will I need?
  A: The one that’s out of stock in the store.

But what if my project can't be completed without it?
  Then it'll be out of stock online as well.

Here's an added thought about the item about extension cords and garden hoses being too short:
 "How to make yourself appear to be a scientist"
 Answer, create a "constant" and name it after yourself.
 Scientists use constants all the time. They are essentially Fudge Factors that are used to make their equations work. For example, Max Plank created an equation for Energy levels:
 E=hf
 The "h" is Plank's Constant. He uses it to make the equation "fit".

OK. So suppose you were to have investigated the too short cord/hose phenomenon, and you find that almost all the time it's about 10% too short. In other words, our extension cord or our garden hose always somehow ends up being 90% of our desired length. You have kept track of enough cases such that you think you can claim that this is a "law".
 So if you are writing an article about Home Improvement, you simply say:
  Actual length = 90 % of desired length.

And if you want to look more sophisticated, you might change it into a math equation:
  L_a = 0.9 L_d.
  Where L_a is actual length and L_d is desired length.

Now you are (almost) a scientist.
 To make yourself appear as a "real" scientist, you make the 0.9 a constant and name it after yourself!
  L_a = k_a L_d.
  where k_a is "Adams' Length Constant" for extension cords and garden hoses.

That's it! Now you have made yourself a bona-fide scientist!

My Experience with the Coronavirus

Blog date: 4/9/2023    Journal Entry: 4/2/2024

I have managed to dodge the Coronavirus ever since its origins back in 2019. But it caught up with me while I was visiting my daughter in Austin during late March.
 The initial symptoms gave no hint at all.that I was about to experience an episode with the Big Bad Coronavirus. I was actually doing some fairly hard work removing parts of my daughter's deck – she wanted to eliminate an 8 foot extension on one side and about 6 feet overhang in the front of the deck. This was one of my usual "Hey dad, wanna do some remodeling work on my house." projects - which I actually enjoy. So I went about all this with my usual relatively limitless energy, during three cool spring days (cool for Austin, TX).
 However I could tell right away that something was amiss, because by the second day I could tell that there was somehow more inflammation than I'm used to. Had to take a couple aspirin each day on the second and third day. I usually take a couple of aspirin every year.
 On the fourth day I began to re-stain the deck in the morning. This was when I began to notice that I had run out of energy – I found myself keeping track of how much I had finished, like you might do when you're tapped out: "Well, I'm a quarter finished. . .half finished. . . 3 quarters – well amost 3 quarters." I was pretty beat and I knew it. My daughter began to help with the staining and I found myself glad that she did. When I finished mid-day I promptly went to bed and slept about 3 hours that afternoon. I just figured that the energy level was low due to doing all this nonstop work while breathing big city air pollution. with a stiff dose of South Texas pollen.
 But I could tell something unusual was going on, when I developed some "flu-like" symptoms.

Extreme fatigue.

An unusually intense sore throat.

Accompaning the sore throat, I developed a pretty debilitating cough.

Chills. During the nights I became chilled and found myself putting on a thermal shirt under my pajamas and using more covers.

By this time it was Wednesday - I had started the work on Monday.
 On Friday my daughter announced that she had the Coronavirus. My wife and I tested positive. It was almost a relief, since the symptoms I was experiencing were just too strong for ordinary allergic reaction to high pollen. (It had been a mild winter and the Austin air was full of pollen – in addition to all the big city pollutants.)
 We all did a lot of resting/sleeping during the next few days.
 On Saturday or Sunday morning I awoke with the sore throat almost gone, with the cough more managable. I recovered to decent energy levels by Monday. I could do some small tasks around her house - refinishing the front wooden door, doing some repairs on a toilet, and the like. I felt mostly fine except that I would describe my energy level as about equal to what I oould normally feel just before going to bed in the evening on a normal day.

So, apart from the persistent and debilitating cough, I would rate my experience with the Big Bad Coronavirus as relatively mild. I would put the acute part at about 5 days. I have had much longer and much more uncomfortable colds in the past.There wasn't the initial two or three day period of endlessly runny nose requiring kleenix every few minutes, nor was there the suffocating congestion throughout the rest of the cold.
 I will note that I did experience one of the hallmark effects of the Coronavirus: one or more things might linger for a week, perhaps longer. In my case it was the ongoing cough, which stayed with me for another week and a half - along with less than optimum energy levels. For my wife, it was an ongoing earache and compromised hearing for two weeks longer.
 Nonetheless I think it is of interest to take note of my age:
 I am 78 years old, and my wife is 73.
 By definition, I am supposed to be dragged to death's portal by the Coronavirus at my age. By definition I am hopelessly immune compromised at my age. I believe it would be well to dismiss these societal beliefs, for they do nothing but create debilitating fear. They should be stored off along with the almost universal perception that we do nothing but decline as we get older and inevitably end up in some assisted living facility until the end.
 I would amend these fears with the idea that if we take care of ourselves and eat a life-giving diet instead of the usual inflammatory "Standard American Diet" of mainly meat, refined white flour, and prepared foods, all washed down with sugary soft drinks, we can beat that dismal outlook, and beat it with ease.
 In other words. if your idea of a hamburger is eating low-quality beef on a white bread bun with perhaps a token tomato slice and some iceberg lettuce, you then might have to take some serious flack from the Coronavirus. But if your idea of a hamburger is eating a vegetable or bean patty on a whole wheat bun with spinach, tomato, maybe some sprouts, and perhaps some sauteed red onion, then you can confidently expect to have a relatively benign session with the Coronavirus - or perhaps no session at all.

An Imagined Scenario of the Origin of War

Blog date: 3/6/2024    Journal Entry: 9/5/2023

I found myself imagining how the first interactions with cave dwellers went down. Suppose there were various groups of people scattered about in an area. Perhaps people on a mountainside could pick blueberries. Maybe some people by a river discovered peanuts. Perhaps others found chickens. Soon the individual groups became adept at growing the blueberries and peanuts, and raising chickens.
 As they wandered about, they soon discovered the different foods that others could grow. Somebody had the idea of bringing some peanuts up the mountain and traded them for some of the blueberries. After a while everybody was trading their specialties with the others.
 And thus began trade.
 But during this time, some might have noticed that they were bigger or stronger than the folks with the blueberries. So they simply went up the mountain and just took the blueberries. Back to this later.
 Somewhere in there, some got tired of taking their product to so many places for the different foods, and perhaps discovered some pretty rocks. They took the pretty rocks up the mountain and traded them for some blueberries. They took more pretty rocks and bought some peanuts from the folks by the river. Soon everybody had supplies of the pretty rocks and traded them for each other's foods.
 And thus, pretty rocks became the first money.
 But, after a while, people began to say "Well, I have lots of the same pretty rocks. So I'm not willing to accept them for my food." Then somebody had the idea to find something more rare. Perhaps the rare item was even prettier than the rocks, in addition to being scarse. Perhaps it was gold that became the first rare item. They began to take their gold to trade with the others.
 And thus they learned the idea of "value".
 But since the money had become rare, some realized that they could do some task for those who had the rare money item, in return for some of the money.
 And thus was work started, and everybody was back to buying other's food or goods. But, alas, the ones who were bigger or stronger found that they could steal other types of food, and even the rare money. Soon, one of the groups that had the food or the rare money discovered that they could defeat the stronger ones with sticks.
 And thus weapons were developed.
 But the stronger ones just found longer or heavier sticks, so that they could overcome even the ones with the smaller sticks. Soon, a group took longer sticks and sharpened them. Further, they found they could throw the sharpened sticks and injure or kill those that had the big sticks.
 And thus weapons that could kill from a distance were formed.
 Soon one of the groups had a clever person who bent a flexible wood into a bow shape, and secured some twisted fibers to the ends. They then sharpened shorter, straighter sticks, notched them, and could fire the sticks with more accuracy and distance than the spears.
 Thus, the first bows and arrows – and the beginnings of the first arms race.
 After some time, everybody had the bows and arrows. But one group began to train some of their members to shoot the bows and arrows more accurately. And they developed better bows and sharper arrows, perhaps with metal or flint tips. They could then attack many of the other groups and take their products. And perhaps the first group that found the rare money – perhaps gold – got the idea that they could hire the powerful ones with the superior bows and arrows and send them to steal the other groups food or goods.
 And thus began the first armies.
 Soon some of the other groups who were near each other began to band together, for protection. Perhaps they developed ways to surround their common land with walls or buried sharp sticks.
 And thus began cities.
 After a while they found that the strong ones could defeat their defenses and overcome them. So they began to train some of their members to become stronger and provided them with the improved bows and arrows. How did they get the improved bows and arrows? Perhaps some of their attackers were injured and fled, leaving behind their superior bows and arrows. The groups in the cities could then reproduce the weapons and arm their own strong people with them.
 And in such fashion originated the flaw of arms races: "Superior" weapons aren't superior for long. They are simply copied, until everybody has the same weapon. It becomes necessary to develop even more lethal weapons.
 Soon one of the groups with surplus amounts of the rare money became restless and greedy. So they gathered more strong people and trained them. They sent them to several of the cities to overcome the inhabitants and bring back their goods. They may have even begun to take their land, as well as their goods.
 And thus began War.

There is No Quality in Our Society Anymore

Blog date: 8/18/2023    Journal Entry: 7/13/2023

Recently, NASA released its first anniversary image from the Webb Telescope, the Rho Ophiuchi cloud complex. The NASA Webb site showed a video of slow movement and zoom-ins from this mage, along with a narrator explaining some facts.
 But someone took the video and added some gorgeous dreamlike music. I discovered it on a news feed of some kind. I watched it, mesmerized, and promptly wanted to replay it again, perhaps several times, and allow it to sift into my consciousness and be as inspiring as it was surely meant to be.
 But the original site would not let me repeat the video, and instead insisted on playing ads in its place, followed by a different piece of news. I searched under various names and finally found the video on another site. So there I was, watching it peacefully along with a sip of wine. But about halfway through it, a large banner ("Up next: flooding in . . ." ) was pasted over the right side, and a few seconds later my peaceful reverie was cut short.
 I tried the first site again, but the site refused to replay the original work. Finally I found it on Youtube. "Good ol' Youtube", I thought, expecting to see the whole thing uninterrupted. But alas, a strident ad pierced the experience a short time after it began.
 I shut the whole browser down in disgust.
 Right about then, the thought surged into my head: There's no QUALITY in life anymore.
 For internet-based content, t's not about the user experience. It's about the business experience. It's about how many videos can be crammed into each hour of programming, or how many ads can be inserted into the same hour – in order that the site/entity can satisfy its investor's "metrics". Heaven forbid that there would be a few seconds of "Dead Pixels" – the digital equivalent of "Dead Air" – so the the viewer can savor something they just watched.
 And what about text articles? There are still plenty of engaging essays being written. But you'll have to read them while some constantly being distracted by flashing ads on the side, or in between sections of the essay.
 Is it any better over in the world of "Brick and Morter" stores? Actually, no.
 It's no longer about customer service. It's about company profit. Want healthful food? It's becoming more and more scarce, because sugar and fat-laden food sell to a wider audience. The store could continue to sell the healthful food, but fewer people buy it, so the "Inventory Turns" are not appealing to the big grocers. You can get 40-50 turns per year from Lay's potato chips instead of maybe 10 for Spudlove or Tom's Organic potato chips. That's why you see an entire aisle devoted to Frito-Lay and only a small section devoted to more healthful brands (partially hidden by multiple "Free Standing Displays" of Frito-Lay products placed right in front of them!)
 Side Bar: Spudlove could not find enough stores that would carry their product, and had to shut down.
 On yet another note: Do you notice that the plants around stores and other maintained areas somehow look chronically barren? It's due to overzealous pruning! That's because the big landscaping companies have long since discovered that if their workers butcher all the shrubs rather than lightly trim them, they can service the site 1 or 2 times a year instead of 3 or 4 times a year. And if the landscaping includes grass, they have no qualms against cutting all the lower branches of trees so their personnel can mow more easily, despite how this ruins the natural appearance of the trees.
 So now the big landscaping companies can take on more business, while the rest of us are deprived from the simple pleasure of seeing rich green vibrant plants while walking or driving through malls and other business districts.
 Our society has become fast, frenetic, and given over to assumed short attention spans; our food industry has become obsessed with flavor and sweetness; Our movies have (in many cases) become vehicles for lewd language, superfluous sex, and vicarious violence.
 And our quiet times have timed out.

Our Lives as Being Loved

Blog date: 6/28/2023    Journal Entry: 7/25/2005

(OR: Our lives as Being)
 Wouldn’t our lives be so much easier if we accepted that the Spirit of existence is benign? The Spirit creates the warm bright moist green planet out of the eternal cold and wishes to participate in its richness – and the only way It can do so is to give Itself form as us. Spirit creates each one of us so that It can interpret the Earth, so that It can experience Time.
 Each of us is the Spirit interpreting the Earth as us.
 Spirit is creating us as a way of experiencing the opulence of Its material creation.
 So we might say to this Spirit:
 "If You are Timeless, do You experience time through us? And do You experience space and form through us? Perhaps the only way a Timeless, Formless Being can experience the Earth is by incarnating through each of us."
 And this Spirit might say to each one of us (if we will listen):
 "I have created your existence for your enjoyment and Mine. Your existence is not a test. It is a gift.
 And do not be afraid.
 I will not punish you for anything that you did.
 I will not punish you for anything that you did not do."

Free Will vs Predestination

Blog date: 4/17/2023    Journal Entry: 3/30/2023

Ernest Holmes, in the April 13 entry of his "365 Daily meditations, says:

"The ability to attain your goals – to control your experiences and have them result in happiness, prosperity, and success – lies in your own mind and the way you use it. This means you control your own experiences – you are really in charge of your affairs and the way they are to develop."

There have been countless philosophical discussions about "free will vs predestination". Are we really free to choose our outcomes, or all of them preset, and all we can do is passively experience them – and there isn't much of anything we can do about it. "Predestination": "the destination has already been predetermined".
 Financial predestination might take the form of being in a state of lack, due perhaps to past financial mistakes, or being born into a poor family.
 Predestination of health might take the form of undesireable inherited genes.
 Predestination of mental health might be that we have had an unloving childhood and are mired in some seemingly intractable mental health state.
 So, If we understand ourselves to be isolated beings, and that an isolated "God" has served us with these conditions – perhaps as a "test" or "trial" – then yes, we might feel that we have to helplessly accept them as "real".
 But if we have been devoting at least some time to spiritual questioning, and not necessarily trying to find some strength outside of ourselves, sought from entity above or beyond us, if instead we have been spending some time discovering our inner Self – the Spirit within – then we might then begin to view these events as experiences rather than reality. And we then might begin to understand that since we are Spirit interpreting the Earth as us, and that our thoughts have creative power, we can begin to use our thoughts to change these experiences.

A dog’s view of babies

Blog date: 3/20/2023    Journal Entry: 2/4/2015

OK. What is this strange new toy they brought home?
 It’s been over a week now and the big bipeds still haven’t put it aside like they do with all their other toys.
 I’ve watched them play with their other toys. The big bipeds make up the rules and play when they want to. Well, that is except for the little toys they call “electronic”, the ones that beep and chirp like birds – nobody seems to know what their rules are.
 This new toy, on the other hand, makes up its own rules. When it squawks or whimpers like a puppy the big bipeds all scramble to pick it up and mumble incoherent words.
 And what’s worse is that when new bipeds come over they all want to hold the new toy, but when they do their eyes glaze over, they become hypnotized, and start babbling strange sounds and more incoherent words.
 Sigh. All I can hope for is that the novelty will wear off, the big bipeds will come to their senses, and I (and maybe the cat too) will be the center of attention again.

A babies view of babies

Blog date: 3/20/2023    Journal Entry: 3/27/2015

The big bipeds are making sounds. My Baby Manual says this is “speech”, and that I am supposed to learn a “language”.
 OK. Fine. No problem, except that the Manual says the language is “English”. Sometimes the big bipeds talk in this “English”. I can learn this. Piece of cake. But they only talk in English when they talk to each other. When they talk to me they use this other language. I believe it’s called “Itchy-Kitchy-Koo”.
 So what’s it gonna be? English or Itchy-Kitchy-Koo??
 Oh yeah. Then there’s the demeanor issue. The Manual says they’ll like you more when you smile for them. But when I do that, the big bipeds quickly develop big cyclops eyes.
 Really big cyclops eyes. There’s even strange writing on them, like “Canon”, “f2.8” and such.
 So I think I’m going with the yawns, drool, and grunts.
 Hell. I’ll even throw in a couple of “Itchy-Kitchy-Koo”s right back at ‘em.

Astrophysicists and Quantum Physicists have the Same Problem

Blog date: 2/27/2023    Journal Entry: 1/28/2015

I was reading the January 2015 National Geographic article about astrophysical research on Dark Matter and Dark Energy. The article asserts that "all the stars and galaxies. . . make up only 5 percent of the observable universe".
 Note that this is similar to the quantum physicists statements that most of the atomic structure is empty space.
 The article goes on to say that the other 95 percent is "27 percent dark matter and 68 percent dark energy. Both of them are mysteries.

"Dark matter is thought to be responsible for the shapes of galaxies "yet nobody knows what it is. Dark energy is even more mysterious; the term. . . has been called a 'general label for what we do not know about the large-scale properties of our universe'"

One might ask if the astrophysicists have the same observation problem as the quantum physicists have.
The quantum physicists say that we cannot properly observe (and know) certain things about very tiny particles - the little stuff. Maybe it's the same way with the really big stuff.
 "As is the microcosm, so is the macrocosm." says the Vedic text.
 Or maybe - just maybe - both physicists and the astrophysicists have created instruments, extensions of their vision, that are beginning to allow them to approach the unseeable and unknowable. They are beginning to see hints of the Universal Consciousness Itself.

Babies Convey Peace

Blog date: 2/14/2015    Journal Entry: 1/28/2015

After the recent visit to my kids, to be present to the birth of my first grandchild, I departed separately from my wife (to take care of some home appliance issues). Normally I am nervous when on flights, what with the security checks, and the need to be at the right places at the right times, and the like. But I noticed an unusual sense of calm throughout the flight and during the two hour trip home from the airport.
 My wife flew home a few days later, and when I told her about my experience she appeared quite surprised, and she stopped walking - we were walking back to the car from some store - and paused a bit before saying "Really?! I had the same feeling during my flight."
 Why is that? How can such a little being with puffy eyes and wrinkled, peeling hands and feet induce an almost spiritual peace and well-being?
 Maybe it’s because the baby is perfection in physical form, free from all fears, plans, worries, likes and dislikes. She’s perfectly content to be all bound up in swaddle blankets, perfectly content to just observe the world around her – just like the Budda suggests. A little baby Budda whispering unformed words of wisdom and inviting all those around her to stop their activities and listen to one who just a few short months ago did not even exist in this plane.
 “Stop and hold me, and I will speak to you about the act of creation, and can I tell you also about the Incarnation?”
 In the movie “What the Bleep”, one of the scientists was telling about his experience as one of the early particle physics observers. As they descended into ever smaller levels of particles, the scientists found that the particles became more and more untouchable, unobservable, and mysterious. And finally, "at the level of the Unified Field, we were at the most mysterious level of all. We found ourselves “dealing with pure Existence, pure Being”.
 So there we were, first me and later my wife floating as if in a dream at 30,000 feet, having just the day before cradled Existence in our hands.

Milking the Christmas Season a Few More Days

Blog date: 1/4/2023    Journal Entry: None

After putting it off for a while, I found myself taking down the Christmas decorations, on January 4. As I started, I thought "Well, I could milk it two more days by following the Catholic tradition of keeping Christmas going until January 6th - the "Epiphany", but the decoration removal was a bit too much under way. So I continued gathering the little strings of lights, the bright green vases with their reflective gold interiors, and all the various wire renditions of everyone's favorite tree.
 But the January 6th thought reminded me of the time, when I was a kid, that I listened to Christmas music on AM radio in the middle of the night. I would drink a lot of water before I went to bed so that I would have to get up to pee. (At my current age, I no longer have to drink a lot of water; I get up in the middle of the night several times anyway. . .)
 So, somewhere around midnight or so, I would get up and listen to Christmas music on my parent's old "Sonora" radio, which I tricked out with a long wire running along my bedroom walls along the ceiling, for better reception. I found that I could receive transmissions from far-away cities during the night - when AM signals could travel great ranges. (I was living in Dallas, Texas at the time - a central part of the country.)
 Apparently the FCC allowed selected certain stations to be "Clear Channel", and transmit at 50,000 watts, in order to provide radio service to rural areas. Radio buffs and the staff of these stations would refer to them as "flamethrowers" or "blowtorches" and would brag about their ability to "DX" over a multi-state area during the night.
 There was WLS out of Chicago, KOA from Denver, WWL from New Orleans, and WSM from Nashville. These were some of the "Clear Channel" stations, and one of them - WSM if I recall correctly - even played Christmas music until January 6.
 So there I was, mesmerized while I lay there in the quiet of the night with my old static-y 1950s Sonora radio, milking the Christmas season for a few days more by listening to Christmas music from distant cities.

Spirit, or the Great Oneness, can't communicate!

Blog date: 11/7/2022    Journal Entry: 3/15/2011

The Great Spirit, or the Great Oneness, can't communicate!
 Before you say "Well, that was a rude way to talk about the Timeless, Formless One!", please read on.
 From the Brihad Upanishad:

"He who is One speaks without speaking, for there is nothing separate from him, hears without hearing, for there is nothing separate from him, sees without seeing, for there is nothing separate from him. Where there is separateness, one speaks to another, hears another, sees another. . ."

So is this the reason there are no “obvious” signs?
 We keep wanting the Great Spirit to give us signs. "Show us some proof, Spirit. Throw us a Belief bone or something." (We overlook all the miracles that happen all around us – the plant arising out of a tiny pot of soil which could not possibly hold all that raw material, the leaves of a fern unfolding out of a circular coil that can’t possibly hold all that mass.)
 We want a 'Hollywood sign'. "Come on, Spirit, if Industrial Light and Magic can do it, You certainly could."
 But perhaps Spirit is stuck with that Oneness problem. The Great Oneness can’t communicate to others, because there are no 'others' to communicate with – no separateness.
 Perhaps the reason Spirit can’t give us a sign is that we ourselves are the sign.

Our last trip to the Sacred Place (Feb 24-26, 2011)

Blog date: 10/10/2022    Journal Entry: 3/10/2011

NOTE: The "Sacred Place" was Beaver's Bend State Park, in Southeast Oklahoma. This was our source of quiet times and inspiration, allowing us to get away from the noisy city where we lived - Dallas, Texas. I had just found out that an opportunity to transfer to Oregon came up at work a few weeks before. This opportunity was a life-changing event for both of us, since we had been dreaming about moving to the Pacific Northwest for most of our adult lives.
 So we decided to celebrate this gift and by going to our Sacred Place, knowing as well that this would probably be the last time. Here's some thoughts/observations taken during our 3 day visit.

Friday
 We hiked various places on the lake itself all day, and saw no one. The day was clear, in the high pressure air mass of a cold front, and the lake was as if the sky had dissolved in it, turning the waters a deep cobalt.
 We took many pictures of grey stumps and driftwood, which were in stark and lovely contrast to the sea blue water. We had parked the car on one of the familiar campsites in an inlet of the lake, and were pleased to have it all to ourselves – no people, no noise.
 That evening we procured our smoked bratwurst hot dogs and whole wheat buns from the cabin (we weren't fully Plant-based at the time), and began the drive back to the same area. Would we still have it ourselves, or would we round the corner to the campsite and be disappointed – as we were so often in the past – to find somebody parked there and setting up.
 Still empty. Still quiet.
 After the bratwurst was cooked and the buns browned, I started to ask "Do you want to say…" I did not finish the question because she simultaneously offered the same question, "Should we say a prayer?" (We have often been in synch like this, ever since we were married.)
 By this time we had both enjoyed the entire day far from the noisy intrusions of civilization – no people for the whole time, and just a few boats. Nothing but silence, the soft crunching of our footsteps, and gentle tapping of waves on the shoreline.
 Standing by the fire, I started "Thank you, Spirit, for such a lovely time…"
 But the voice and the vision simultaneously failed.
 I turned and walked away from the fire a bit, overcome utterly by the force of a lifetime’s dream about to be realized and the sadness of the last visit to the Sacred Place.
 Finally, and with words that pressed against the air, I said something – who knows what – that was meant to release those powerful feelings inside. No further words could be summoned, so I let the orange glow accenting the distant mountain tops in the distance serve in lieu of speaking.

Saturday
 This day we were treated to clouds and an interesting winter-like sky. Although the forecasters promised partly cloudy and upper 60’s, what we got was cloudy and somewhere in the 50’s. But that was fine with us, since it meant no people.
 Lovely. Every cloud and puff of chilly wind.
 Lovely.
 Quiet. Nothing but the waves tapping against the shore - each wave a Word spoken by a vastly articulate Universe.
 No frenetic civilization.
 Just Existence. Just like it has been for countless eons before we crowded in on it and shattered the silence with our machines.

The Human Voice as a Reminder of Our Spirituality

Blog date: 9/24/2022    Journal Entry: 8/18/2022

The human larynx ("Voice Box" and Vocal Cords) is a small assembly, about 2 inches in length and breadth. The actual vocal cords are a small opening in the center of the larynx.
 The vocal cords create the various pitches and sounds of our voice. These sounds are then filtered and shaped by the airway leading from the vocal cords to the mouth or nostrils.
 So all of this amounts to a loosely-defined cylinder about 6 and a half inches long. And yet this assembly produces literally billions of different voices. Almost everybody has a completely unique voice.
 If you were to create a musical instrument that size, you would never be able to get that kind of range of pitches and timbres. In other words, the huge variation of sounds created by the human voice really can't be accounted for by the purely physical. We say then that the Human Voice (like the Human "Body") is not entirely material.
 It must have a Spiritual aspect. There must be part of us that is the Great Spirit interpreting the Earth as us.

Two (humorous) side notes:
 If we say that the human voice is produced by an oscillator (the vocal cords) that is then filtered and shaped, then in this sense we're all Subtractive Synths!
 And how did we manage to name the instrument of the human voice – the "larynx" – with a word that cannot easily be pronounced?!

Understanding at least a bit of the 4 quartets, by T.S. Eliot.

Blog date: 8/23/2022    Journal Entry: 11/18/2013

The Four Quartets of T.S. Eliot is a bit of a strange work, but it has some of the most gorgeous words ever written. I have read the Quartets numerous times, but I must admit that each time I come away with the enhanced calm that comes with reading a Spiritual work, but still with only a limited understanding of what I just read.
 Here's a couple of excerpts from the Quartets, accompanied with my humble interpretation of them:

From Little Gidding (one of the Four Quartets):

We shall not cease from exploration
And the end of all our exploring
Will be to arrive where we started from
And know the place for the first time.

What better way to describe the long journey that we make before we finally learn to accept ourselves - just the way we are.

From The Dry Salvages:

You are not the same people who left that station
Or who will arrive at any terminus,
While the narrowing rails slide together behind you;
And on the deck of the drumming liner
Watching the furrow that widens behind you,
You shall not think 'the past is finished'
Or 'the future is before us' . . .
At nightfall, in the rigging and the aerial,
Is a voice descanting (though not to the ear,
The murmuring shell of time, and not in any language):
'You are not those who saw the harbour
Receding, or those who will disembark.
Here between the hither and the farther shore
While time is withdrawn, consider the future
And the past with an equal mind.'

You just observe. You go to the shore of the lake and listen to the waves gently pittering against the rocks, each wave a word spoken by a vastly articulate Existence, until you become the lake, the waves, and the wind.
 The Buddha says that the self that we are so concerned about does not exist. From the departure to the arrival there is always and only the Time. You are not the self of the past nor will you be the self of the future.
 You are only the person living in the present, observing the birds.

Peace Comes When We Pause to Give Thanks.

Blog date: 7/19/2022    Journal Entry: 8//2022

I was picking some of my blueberry crop, while at the same time thinking "I should water the berries – when was the last time? Maybe I will take some extra rocks and add a second layer to the rocks surrounding the berries. Oh wait; I should go to the store this morning (for the week's groceries) before the crowds. . . ."
 And then for some reason – or no reason at all – I just stopped to thank the Great Spirit for these berries, some of which I had sampled during the picking. "Thank You, Spirit, for these delightful blueberries."
 When I did this, I was struck by how calming this act of thanksgiving was. All the mind chatter was for a moment halted, and time briefly became just the forward progression of events, and I could feel the shoulders drop and all the muscle tension drifting away in the cool sea breeze.
 Indeed, in the next few days I began to notice this calming effect at the times when I would pause before eating to say some sort of thanks. I suppose this is what is meant by "being Mindful".

If I were asked "What is the meaning of life?"

Blog date: 6/4/2022.    Journal Entry: Various

If I were asked "What is the meaning of life?"
 Well, that's the Big One, to be sure. And no, you probably should not expect me to provide the answer by the end of these few paragraphs. . .
 Judging from the entries I find in my Journals, I would suggest that there is an evolution in the question "What is the meaning of life?" In the earlier Journals, when I was going through some acute difficulties, the search was not so much "What is the meaning?" as it was a search for answers.
 Why am I feeling this way?
 "It’s because I’ve given in to my impulses."
 No. "It’s because I am trying to suppress my impulses."
 No. "It’s because I am trying to control my impulses and this has occupied much of my energy".
 No. "It’s because I am not trying to control my impulses and they are taking over and draining energy from ‘good’ activities."
 You get the picture.
 Later this evolved (thanks to various Buddhism and Eastern Philosophy tapes) to an understanding that change is the norm for all life. We should expect to experience different feelings from time to time. Who knows why this is – it could be serotonin; it could be the effects of success or failure or perhaps frustration in the current task at work.
 Nothing is to be viewed as the cause of this or that feeling. We feel good or we may feel bad – and Lao-Tzu reminds us that "good" and "bad" are learned concepts. (Maybe that’s why the usual greeting is "How are you?")
 And the biggest source of "suffering" is that the mind incessantly wants things to be different from the way they actually are!.
 From the Tao Te Ching (Steve Mitchell translation), 1st section:

"Free from desire, you see the mystery. Caught in desire, you see only the manifestations. Yet mystery and manifestations arise from the same source. This source is called darkness. Darkness upon darkness – the gateway to all understanding."

Perhaps one meaning of "desire" is the intense seeking of some sort of immediate "answer" when we are depressed, anxious, or otherwise "sick". So the quote may be saying that life is just not going to give up its mysteries when we are intently seeking them. Only later, when we are calmly present in the quiet times, does the understanding come.
 The "cause" list goes on and on. And the point is that it is asking questions that is the problem; it is looking for answers that is the problem, looking for something that can explain our lives and feelings, when perhaps there is nothing that needs to be done but observe. We just observe our changes, and perhaps we even let that observation be as if someone else were doing it.
 Still later, I wrote:
 If asked "What is the meaning of life?", perhaps the answer is highly dependent upon what a person is doing at the time.
 If I have just helped someone with affirmations about disease along with some practical nutrition tips, I might answer that the meaning of life is to be help and support for others.
 If I had just spent time in the wild areas, rebuilding my creative fires, I might answer that the meaning of life is supporting yourself – "They serve also who stand and wait."
 So the "meaning of life" could be said to change, depending on the time of life you are in.

And still later, I wrote:
 "What is it all about?/who am I?"
 "It’s sure not about my work. The work is just a dream. I have spent hours writing a program to move a piece of metal in a chip one micron further away from another piece of metal – and likely all because of a design "rule" that is probably not necessary.
 So what is it about?
 I will go to the Sacred Place that I have gone to many times in the past – a quiet state park in Oklahoma. I will get up early in the morning to photograph the sunrise, There I might become aware of a bird singing up in a tree.
 Why is that bird singing?
 It is singing because it can fly; it is singing because the cool morning wind is caressing the tree whose branch it rests on; it is singing because the sun is about to come up and the colors will be beautiful. The bird easily creates an endless variety of tunes that would make any composer jealous – simply because it is attuned to the creativity of the cosmos.
 And that bird is what is all about.
 And my observing the bird is what it is all about, for by observing it I see that it is savoring the bright warm moist Earth, and that is all I am asked to do myself.
 So I am the person observing the bird. I am not the person who has had the career, nor even the person who has nutured two kids and provided them and my wife a home with many creative touches.
 I am simply the person who has observed the bird singing in the tree, for that is what Spirit intends to convey:
 The whole business is a gift.
 So the Meaning of Life is simply to observe the birds.

What? A little too "poetical" for ya'?
 How about this instead:
 Perhaps it would be better to say that Life has no meaning in itself. Now before you think these are the words of a cynical old man, let me suggest that sometimes when a question such as "What is the meaning of Life?" persists in not being able to be answered, one creative thing to do is re-consider the question (and its inherent assumptions).
 Suppose we say instead that Life is neutral. The events of Life are only "Good" or "Evil" based on what we say about them. (Remember that Lao-Tzu suggests that Nameing is the root of particular things.)
 It is by our thoughts that we give meaning to what happens in Life. There are those who say, further, that by our thoughts we create the events themselves. The events of our lives will be successful if we image success, and will likely be failure if we image failure. By our affirmations of health we create health. But we can by our thoughts/fears of disease create sickness. The Universe is a neutral Entity - the "Intentionless Whole" (Alan Watts), and It is quite content to create failure, sickness, and lack as It is to create success, health, and prosperity.
 So we might say then that our own thoughts are the meaning of life.

As an interesting side note, while looking through my journals for what I might have written about "meaning", I opened up various Journals and searched for the word "meaning". My Journals are all Word docs, each spanning several years. So for each one, here's the ocurrences of the word "meaning":
 Journal document      # ocurrences

"journ_2008_2010"   15

"journ_2011_2014"    6

"journ_2015_2018"   14

"journ_2019_2022"   ONE

Actually, the best answer I have ever heard for Life’s "secret" is this sequence from The Martian Chronicles. It's from the screenplay version of Martian Chronicles (1979). (I looked in Ray Bradbury’s book and did not find these words, so they must be the inspiration of the screenplay writer.)
 Colonel Lander (Charleton Heston), has just driven to a place of concrete ruins and has encountered a Martian for the first time.

Lander states that he has "waited so long for this meeting…to learn the secret of your life on Mars".
 The Martian (an actor with an opulent "Shakespearean" accent) replies:
 "Secret? There is no secret. Anyone with eyes can see the way to live."
 "How?" (asks Lander)
 "By watching life, observing nature and cooperating with it. Making common cause with the process of Existence."
 "How?"
 "By living life for itself, don’t you see. Deriving pleasure from the gift of pure being."
 "The gift of pure being." (Lander repeats slowly)
 "Life is its own answer. Accept it and enjoy it day by day. Live as well as possible. Expect no more. Destroy nothing. Humble nothing. Look for fault in nothing. Leave unsullied and untouched all that is beautiful. Hold that which lives in all reverence, for life is given by the Sovereign of the Universe, given to be savored, to be luxuriated in, to be…respected.
 But that’s no secret. You’re intelligent. You know as well as I what has to be done.
 Now I must go."

What if There Weren't "Countries"

Blog date: 5/19/2022    Journal Entry: 6/16/2021

What if There Weren't "Countries"
 (Or possibly, "What if there weren't 'leaders'?")
 While listening to Flying Objects – A State Secret, Alain Juillet (former director of Intelligence DGSE) was talking about advanced alien tech, and said that "if we could acquire that tech, we could defend France". He smiled somewhat strangely when he said it.
 For some reason, I was so struck when he said this that I paused the documentary and pushed my chair away from the computer. I suppose it was the sudden reminder that we are a basically hostile species, given over to war and preparation for war.
 "Defend France?"
 Have we learned nothing from World War 1 and 2? Why are we always talking about defending? Defending from whom? Defending from Spain, from Germany, from Russia, China, Iraq, Iran?
 What if there weren't countries? What if there were just people living their lives in their own ways in different parts of the world? There would be no Spain, Germany, Russia, China, Iraq, Iran.
 Maybe John Lennon was right. . .
 The problem seems to be that we have separate entities - countries - and also that each country has an individual or group of individuals who manage ("lead") the country. And each of these individuals or groups has their own idea about what the country needs (or what they need).
 Because of this separateness, and concentration of power, countries, for reasons of “defense”, amass large and expensive military infrastructures. Within these groups are large numbers of soldiers and their generals who spend their time practicing for war. They make huge investments in weapons and war machines (War is, after all Good Business). They spend hour after hour, day after day engaging in war “games” and various battle scenarios – as if their entire lives were spent on the best movie sets in the business, in preparation for filming the Ultimate War Movie.
 So isn’t it only natural that these people are not going to be satisfied by saying “Well, we’ve done all this practice; now that we’re now prepared, let’s just park all this equipment and sit around in our barracks and play cards.”
 Those generals are going to be applying pressure to the current administration to go somewhere and put all this planning and practice to the test.
 This, for example, is how World War I started. Kaiser Wilhelm and Czar Nicolas exchanged letters in an attempt to stop the rising hostility and prevent a full scale war. But when Wilhelm ordered his generals to stop transporting soldiers on the railways, they replied "It's too late. We've set it in motion and we cannot stop it."
 Some time ago, I read a description of some sailors right at the time when WW I was declared. The German sailors were drinking beer with the French and English sailors in some port, and were showing each other their ships and machinery.
 Then the declaration of war was announced, and suddenly they were "enemies". . .
 People don’t want wars – leaders and their military entities do.

Just Taking Care of Cats

Blog date: 4/17/2022    Journal Entry: 4/13/2022

Recently a relative sent a text with a picture of a "cat tent city" in South Korea (Last year he sent a picture of another place where cats were sheltered.) He commented "People in South Korea are serious about their cats in the cold months."
 Here are some ordinary people taking time out of their busy modern lives to just tend to some feral cats. "How cool is that?" I said to myself. "And the folks in the northern part of their country probably do the same."
 Except that they're called "North Koreans".
 Too bad we are so enamoured of the idea of separate "countries" and their leaders. The "leader" of North Korea thinks people in South Korea are "enemies". So both sides construct large armies to defend against each other.
 And yet they're just people. . .
 Taking care of cats.

A Triplet of Essays About Time as the Forward Motion of Events

Blog date: 4/6/2022    Journal Entry: Various

2/25/2011: 1 Of Fires and Time
 (This came to me during our last trip to Beaver's Bend, the Oklahome state park. We were about to leave the Dallas, Texas area and move to Oregon.)
 I had been warming myself by my small campfire for some time that morning, fiddling with twigs, breaking small branches on my knee, scrounging around for some more small tinder, fanning the fire to keep it from checking out on me. It occurred to me to reflect that fires are not automatic – they are not like a thermostatically controlled heater that can be set with the twirl of a knob and then forgotten. Thermostats are a modern contrivance, one of many that allow us to easily adjust our environment so that we can pursue our other tasks.
 No, fires prompt us to sit down and simply observe time itself, rather than have time be a forgotten background process while we are busy with our projects.
 Observe time itself? How so?
 I am talking about the time that is nothing but the forward progression of events.

The logs slowly melt to soft white ashes.

The fish breaks the surface of the water in the distance, seeking its meal for the day.

The clouds slide past, marking the end of an atmospheric system and the beginning of the next.

The plane droning in the distance makes its way from its departure to its destination.

We never get to savor time as simply the forward movement of events because we are always trying to stuff events into an arbitrary slice of time.

1/4/2011: 2 Don't Want it to End
 Well, it’s the first day of work after the Christmas season. As I leave the house I look for the last Christmas lights still shining in the pre-dawn January darkness. “Oh, the big display down the street is still lit! Oh, there’s one down that street.” I think about turning down the next street to go back to see it, but keep driving instead.
 There is a slight problem with my vision as I sadly remember some of the good times that were had during the previous weeks – bringing the tree in, taking all those hikes in the hills and mountains, playing the games in the evening. I don’t want it to end.
 But I remember the lesson of the campfire: The fire prompts me to savor time as the forward progression of events; Savor the memory of the good times but release their ending.

1/8/2011: 3 More on Time and Simple Events
 When I went out to the car this morning for the drive to work (note that term “work”), I noticed a strip of bright cirrus clouds crossing the entire sky from one horizon to the other. “What a sunrise this will be – the clouds end right where the sun will come up.” I found myself thinking about how long it would take to drive up to the Sacred Place (this is what I called Beaver's Bend) to be on the peninsula overlooking the lake, and how great it would be if I could just “beam” myself and my camera to that point, well in advance of the sunrise.
 I found myself really wanting to be outside and observing this simple phenomenon, rather than driving to another day of interrupted and incomplete effort.
 “Why so strong an appeal?” I asked myself.
 Perhaps it’s the Time-as-the-forward-motion-of-events business again. Simple outdoors events ask that you simply observe them. Music does this too, You simply listen to the music (this morning it was Christmas music yet again while driving). The phrase of T.S. Eliot comes to mind:
 "You are the music while the music lasts.”
 So maybe that’s the thing about all this: You are the sunrise, the passing of clouds in the sky, the musical notes sprinkling about from the speakers. You are the forward motion of events. You are not crowding events into some arbitrary window of management-ordained Clock Time (when the work could have been so creatively pleasing if it just weren’t rushed and time-bound).

On Viewing Snowflakes

Blog date: 3/7/2021    Journal Entry: 2/13/2011

(This was after the snowfall during the first week in February, 2011. I had found a site that had 30 or 40 magnificent pictures of snowflakes, seen through a microscope.)
 “Can such beauty possibly exist?” I gasped when I saw the first page of the magnified snowflakes.
 “Surely there is an Intelligence that creates for sport, that creates even the smallest and most fleeting wonders that have never been noticed for eons until somebody with a microscope – an extension of vision – sees them and preserves that seeing with photographs.”
 Does that person by the act of making them visible observe the beauty or did he create the beauty?
 There are those that say that many of the “discoveries” throughout history are in some sense creations. Did Maxwell discover the equations of electromagnetics or did he create them? Some even might suggest that these electromagnetic interactions did not even exist in quite the same way until Maxwell discovered/defined/created them.
 This sort of thing sounds silly as hell until you get to quantum physics. In quantum physics, the observer is literally the creator. In the "wave-particle duality", the beam of electrons acts like a wave until it is observed. Then the act of observation "collapses" them into particles. It is the act of Consciousness that renders the event.

Recently I made a related entry in my journals:
 1/15/2022: The Big Bang as the "Great Observation"
 (This is after seeing a description of a science course on the Big Bang.)
 The Big Bang might be seen as the Act of Observing by the Timeless Formless One, who by that Act of Observation collapsed non-existence into existence.

Our Physical Functions are Meant to Support Enjoyment of Life

Blog date: 2/19/2022    Journal Entry: 10/13/2021

I was looking out our front door, to see if the Fed Ex truck was going to stop at our house and leave a "present". But I noticed the cirrus clouds in the distance, creating a delightful pattern against the cobalt sky above the trees. I was struck by the simple beauty provided by the cloud garlands draped over the straight jet trails, right above the horizon of golden-tipped hemlocks and alders in the setting sun.
 All this was a simple reminder to me that – amid all the goals and purposes that we occupy ourselves with – we are occasionally reminded to just savor life. And further, the various aspects of our physical form are intended to help us in this simple appreciation.
 Our eyes are intended to convey these scenes for our perusal.
 Our ears take in all the rustling leaves, the wind whirring in the conifer branches, and the birds singing to their own delight in the bright moist atmosphere. (The birds understand that Existence is to be savored.)
 And other parts of our physicality are also meant to help us in this appreciation of the Gift of Pure Being.
 Our muscles and bones – in their original state – aren't supposed to be in pain, arthritic deformity, or frailty, but rather are intended to enable us to plant those beautiful flowers we just bought, or cut wood for the campfire.
 Our stomach and digestive systems aren't supposed to be in discomfort, blockage, or tension. There not designed for being wrenched up in fear or worry. They're simply intended to help us take in food and convert it to life.
 Our nerves are intended to help us experience the joys of taking in the scenes and sounds that our eyes and ears provide. They weren't born dessicated and devoid of neurotransmitters. We dried them out with worry.
 Our brains are made to write helpful articles, to compose music, to create landscapes, to determine how best to refinish some cabinets, or just to take in the delights of our daily lives and convert them to pleasant memories. They weren't meant to agonize over and over every morning about what to do to fix The Problem. (Insert your own words here for "The Problem" – financial situations, success or failure at work, low self-esteem, depression, anxiety, scizophrenia).
 The Universe is Benign. The whole business is a Gift, and as such there must be a Giver of Gifts.

As you may have noticed, I tend to use words like "Physical Form" or "Our Physicality" instead of "The Body". We don't have "a body"!
 The Entity that supplies the senses and other functions is a Spiritual Entity.

They Are Not Soldiers

Blog date: 1/22/2022    Journal Entry: 1/10/2022

(Written after seeing a photograph in National Geographic of two Afganistan border guards).
 In the "2021 Year in Pictures" Issue, in the "Conflict" section was a picture of two Afganistans at a lonely outpost in the dry mountains. It was just an ordinary photo, like the hundreds images of war that most of us have seen throughout our lives. But the Caption on the left started with: "Three months before their deaths . . ."
 I looked at the image again, more slowly, and became aware that these two men who appeared so young were by now just dust in the same dessicated mountains. One was 28, the other was 17. Both had long youthful hair and the older one's hand showed a wedding ring.
 I thought, "These two were not soldiers. They're just people, people who just wanted to finish school, get jobs, raise families, and to live ordinary lives and have barbeque with friends and drink a few beers or glasses of wine and to listen to their favorite music.
 And the stocks and of their guns were made of wood. Beautiful wood they were, brown with black-accented grains. For some reason this wood reminded me of the Crucifixion, the archetypal event in which Jesus had come to interpret the Tree. We will never know whether or not that event actually happened or instead was symbolic writings by the Biblical authors.
 But the actual Crucifixion is actually an ongoing event. It will continue to happen for all the days of our lives, every time someone is killed in an unnecessary war, with a gun whose stock is made of wood.

The Snow is Flakes of Light

Blog date: 12/30/2021    Journal Entry: 12/27/2021

For someone who has lived in warmer climates most of his life, wintertime snow is a really big deal for me. It's just not natural to have a Winter without some sort of frozen precip! And being up here in Oregon at the 45th parallel affords much greater opportunity to experience snow/snow-grains/sleet than living at the 30th parallel.
 This year, I was treated to that most looked-forward-to event (the subject of almost all weather scuttlebutt around late December) - a White Christmas. (Well, it was more of a white Christmas evening, but that still counts. . .) And one way to get one's snow jollies is to watch the snow drift down in a street light. Makes up for not being to be able to see it in the daytime.
 I stood there on my front porch, not really noticing the Winter chill, listening to no other noise than the soft puff of weightless snowflakes brushing the ground, and I found myself watching - as if in a dream and no longer in focus - their passage through the bright light.
 As I stood there mesmerized by all the bright miniature falling stars, it ocurred to me that snow is drifting flakes of pure Light, almost as if it were the Light of Spirit Itself, the sifting of the Universal Consciousness through the cold night air, perhaps to remind those who gets a chance to watch it that they are part of the Spiritual Light, that they are part of the Universal Consciousness.
 Somewhere in there I remembered a quote from Ernest Holmes in his book 365 Daily Meditations, on the page just before the December 1 entry:

"In moments of deepest realization, the great mystics have sensed that One Life flows through all and that all are some part of that Life. They have also seen Substance, a fine, white, brilliant stuff, forever falling into everything; a Substance indestructable and eternal. It is at such times of complete realization that they have been blinded by the Light of which we have been speaking."

It Gets Better, Not Worse, as You Get Older

Blog date: 10/22/2021    Journal Entry: 10/20/2021

I have begun to understand in recent years that in many ways it's BETTER as we get older. (I write this at at the "age" of 76!) And as a side note, this understanding is the opposite of what we are constantly being "taught" by many articles, movies, and even ads.
 Medical Science also chimes in. It works from the assumption that we are sick, and that we have to take tests to prove that we are healthy.
 So here are some reasons for suggesting it's better and not worse with age:
1 All the things that were an effort when you were younger are much easier when older:
 Not eating so much fatty or creamy foods or sweets (mainly because you've become used to having these foods make you feel bad after eating them).
 No big dinner portions (for the same reason).
 In my own case, bacon and eggs or other types of heavy breakfasts taste great but would leave me drooping. Now it's hot cereals mixtures, sometimes with figs, dates, and/or dried apricots, topped with toasted nuts. (Although nothing beats a traditional breakfast of sausage, eggs, and hash browns from time to time!) Thus, what some would call "diet" is becomes mere habit. Habit is an advantage in many cases. In my own case, I have become used to simply not eating sweets - cakes, ice cream, and the like.
2 Here's a biggie: After retirement, you have finally have freed from doing what other people think you should be doing. Think about it: As soon as you start kindergarden and all through college, you are studying what others tell you to. Then when you start working, you're doing what your managers tell you to, and in many cases you're told to do it their way.
3 While on the subject of retirement, if you have managed to move to your dream place to live, you no longer have to "get away"! You're already there! In our case, it's the Pacific Northwest.
4 Improved vision. In my case, I can actually see better now, at least better than I did at the age of 40 and up - in this case due to the "Ocular Lens Implant" I received in 2006. (Medical Science is great about fixing our physical form, despite its propensity to make occasional assumptions that we "will" get sicker when we get older. . .)
5 Another biggie: No more chronic muscle pain!
 I experienced quite a bit of muscle pain when I was younger. Extended periods of driving forced me to stop from time to time and try to relieve my back muscles. And I always dreaded having "my back go out", because this meant a week of more of pain, along with intake of aspirin or anti-inflammatories.
 Now I take fish oil on a regular basis, and the Omega 3 compounds provide a buffer with which I make my own anti-inflammatories.
 The Omega 3s, along with regular morning muscle massage, have eliminated the muscle soreness. Did I overwork a set of muscles or irritate my back while carrying rocks or mulch bags while landscaping? I just get out the Theracane and work the affected muscles - relieving the discomfort in a few sessions. No aspirin or anti-inflammatories.

This business of experiencing life as better when you get older is not just about the physical. The real power lies in the Spiritual. When you get older, you have learned to defeat (or accept) your problems of youth. This is more likely to be the case if you have learned your relationship with the Universal Consciousness.
 From the 365 Science of Mind (Ernest Holmes) for Oct. 11:

"Our world offers us the opportunity to co-operate with it on a spiritual basis or to argue with it on a material basis. . .Spiritual teachers state that man has dominion over his world if and when he assumes it from a spiritual premise. They also state that the world is a spiritual organism."

In other words, the power in makeing positive affirmations is this: after you have made these affirmations of good health over the years, you begin to do the things which bring about that health. You are Spirit interpreting the Earth as you. The words you speak about health and well being are spoken with the same Authority that the Timeless Formless One had when it spoke the words of Creation of Matter and Form at the time of the Big Bang.

Consultants Just Like Snake Oil Salespeople

Blog date: 9/21/2021    Journal Entry: 8/29/2021

I answered a call from an unknown number (only because I was waiting on a shipping update). It turned out to be a rep from a Microfinance charity that I contribute to. They wanted to sell me on "Enhanced Giving" that would be more beneficial to them. Translation: they wanted me to give monthly – just like so many other entities nowadays. I tried to tell them I preferred to give once, during December, but the caller insisted that I listen to his argument for why I should do this. "If you'll just listen to what I have to say"
 In other words, he wanted to "sell" me on the idea.
 This sort of hard sell reminded me of several Work/Efficiency/Quality "Enhancements" that management had foisted upon us workers during my career. I can just imagine the scenario that might have ocurred between the sellers of these schemes and the company CEO:
 "If this is yet another teamwork scheme, I'm not interested."
 "But you need to let us explain our reasons." Translation: They wanted to use a very persuasive speaker to SELL the idea. And sometimes the CEO would BUY the idea. And then the rest of us had to waste time and attend meetings – often with a "facilitator" who essentially would continue to SELL the idea. All of this would go on for about 6 months and then would then fade away, and we would continue to do our work in the way that made sense to us.

Six Sigma

S.C.A.M.P.E.R. (You pick an idea from these categories: Substitute, Combine, Adapt, Modify, Put-to-another-use, Eliminate, Reverse)

Crazy 8s (Ideas are written on 8 pieces of paper – you have 8 minutes per idea)

The "Team" would have to decide between "Round Robin" (Facilitator calls on each team member) and "Popcorn" (each team member calls upon the other team members).

Time-Boxed (Calls for a fast pace to create a "Pressure Cooker" effect.) I can't imagine a better way to suppress creativity!

Blending Scrum and Kanban to Create an End-to-End Agile Enterprise. (That's THREE buzzwords at once!)

It ocurrs to me that this sort of thing is simply the modern incarnation of the Snake Oil Salesman.

The Plants Make a Demand on Existence

Blog date: 8/23/2021    Journal Entry: 8/5/2021

(While picking my blueberries in early August)
It is not as if "Nature" caused the blueberry plants to produce what their cells dictate, but rather that the blueberry plant has made a demand on the plastic Substance of which all things are made, and Substance gleefully created blueberries.
 This is based on the February 12 entry in 365 Science of Mind Daily Meditations by Ernest Holmes.

"Every idea you have automatically sets the Law of Life in motion in such a way as to produce the definite form of that idea. There is something involved in in a sunflower seed that acts upon the Creative Energy of the Universe in such a way as to produce a sunflower and not a cabbage or potato."

This is not all just semantics. The one who knows how to do this is the one who can create his or her own health and youth.

Some Humor on D.I.Y. Projects

Blog date: 8/23/2021    Journal Entry: N/A

Here's some Questions and Answers to help you in your next D.I.Y. projects:

How many bags (of river rock/gravel/mulch) do I need?
  A: About 10 more than you actually bought.

How much does each bag weigh?
  A: About 10 lbs more than you can lift.
  Corollary: Just about anybody can lift a bag of dry mulch.
  But it's always wet.

On a D.I.Y. scale of 1 – 10, how hard is this project?
  A: From manufacturer or internet site: 4
  Actual: 9

How much paint do I need for a 10 x 10 room?
  A: About 1 qt more than you bought.

OK then: I'll do it scientifically: How many square ft total is a 10 x 10 room with 9 ft ceiling?
  A: About 100 square ft bigger than you caculate (the 1 qt).

There are typically two sizes of ceiling boxes for hanging lights. Which one does this light fixture fit?
  A: The other one.

Will my extension cord reach the nearest outlet? OR: Will the "Shower" setting on my garden hose sprayer reach the tree I want to water?
  A: Both will be about 1 ft too short.

Will a 12 in braided line reach my faucet inlet?
  A: No. But the 18 in one you almost picked up at the store will.

"I need some information from a store associate. Can I find one?
  Yes you can, but she's currently with a customer who has just asked her to to explain Wave-Particle Duality in Quantum Physics.

What size nut/bolt/plug/fixture/electrical box/braided line/connector will I need?
  A: The one that’s out of stock in the store.

But what if my project can't be completed without it?
  Then it'll be out of stock online as well.

Bible Quotes that Support the Idea of Positive Affirmations

Blog date: 7/29/2021    Journal Entry: 7/8/2021

I haven't been a big reader of the Bible in the past. This is likely due to my strict Catholic school religious education and its propensity to depict a punative, judgemental God rather than a delightful loving Spirit who creates bright green moist planets for our enjoyment as well as its own.
 However there is a Bible quote almost every day in the little Spiritual book of daily "meditational essays" I read every morning (365 Science of Mind, by Ernest Holmes). Over the course of years and countless breakfast food stains on its pages, I began to notice, "Wait; there are actually positive verses in the Bible! It's not all 'Do good and avoid evil - or else'."
 "Ask and you shall receive, that your joy may be full."
   Really?
 "I have come that they might have life, and have it more abundantly."
   All I ever got was "Christ came to atone for our sins"

I have taken the liberty to change all the 'thou', 'ye', 'asketh', receiveth' and the like, and substitute our usual pronouns and verbs.
 I hopeth ye won't thinketh this to be amiss. . .

You shall also decree a thing, and it shall be established unto you.
 Job 22:28

Therefore I say unto you, What things soever you desire, when you pray, believe that you receive them, and you shall have them.
 Mark 11:24

(Note the present tense: "believe that you receive them" - not "you will receive them".)

Now faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen.
 Hebrews 11:1

According to your faith be it unto you
 Matthew 9:29

So shall my word be that goeth forth out of my mouth; it shall not return unto me void.
 Isaiah 55:11

(As participants in the Universal Consciousness, we speak the words of health, supply, success with the same authority that the Timeless Formless One when It spoke the words of creation at the time of the Big Bang)

For every one that asks receives; and he that seeks finds; and to him that knocks it shall be opened.
 Luke 11:18

I come that they may have life.
 John 10:10

(A lot better - and more POSITIVE - than "Jesus came to atone for our sins"!)

And Jesus said unto the centurion, Go your way; and as you have believed, so be it done unto you.
 Matthew 8:13

Ask and you shall receive, that your joy may be full.
 John 16:24

I will give to him that is athirst of the fountain of the water of life freely.
 Revelations 21:6

Prove me now herewith, saith the Lord of Hosts, if I will not open you the windows of heaven, and pour you out a blessing, that there shall not be room enough to receive it.
 Malachi 3:10

Ask and it shall be given you; seek, and you shall find; knock, andl it shall be opened unto you.
 Matthew 7:7

Now unto him that is able to do exceeding abundantly; above all that we ask or think, according to the power that works in us.
 Ephesians 2:20

You shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free.
 John 8:32

(This is the Big One. If we understand that it is the Spirit within Who fulfills our affirmations of health, supply, and success - even when we appear to be sick, poor, or failures - this is liberating indeed.)

For as he thinks in his heart, so is he.
 Proverbs 23:7

Give, and it shall be given unto you; good measure, pressed down. . . and running over, shall men give into your bosom.
 Luke 6:38

The Lord will take away from you all sickness.
 Deuteronomy 7:15

The Lord will perfect that which concerns me.
 Psalm 138:8

Ho, every one that thirsts, come you to the waters. and he that has no money: come you, buy and eat, yea come, buy wine and milk without money and without price.
 Isaiah 55:1

In other words, change your outlook on Supply - financial means - and begin to image abundance instead of lack. If you affirm abundance, you will find that you begin to do the things that bring about that abundance. Then learn to trust the Universe by buying something you need - or perhaps even want - so that you can observe that the Supply and financial means will follow.
 It only has to happen once. On this subject, please see "The Many Ways We Deny our Right to Good Health and Ease" below.

Behold I will bring it health and cure, and I will cure them, and will reveal to them the abundance of peace and truth.
 Jeremiah 33:6

Eye has not seen, not ear heard, neither have entered into the heart of man, the things which Spirit has prepared for them that love this Spirit.
 I Corinthians 2:9

The Many Ways We Deny our Right to Good Health and Ease

Blog date: 6/2/2021    Journal Entry: 5/10/2021

We are very good at coming up with ways to convince ourselves that we shouldn't have a life of ease – ease of health, ease of accomplishment, ease of supply:

We think we don't deserve it.

Our literature tells us that something tragic will inevitably take away the health/success/supply.

Many of our movies show the same thing.

Medical Science is constantly reminding us of sickening or deadly scenarios.

We can't afford it.

And the big one: We're all getting "older", and deterioration has to happen.

And a corollary to this, written on 5/19/2021:
 Spending money becomes easier (and the Supply somehow keeps up) when you decide to spend money!
 In early 2020 when the Stock Market was down, I was able to add to three stocks that I have had for quite a while. I ended up with 4000 shares of each one, purchased from $2 to $4 a share. By 2021, this resulted in significant gains. Further, all the Coronavirus relief checks kept coming in.
 So here was all this unexpected Supply and, having all this "extra" money, my wife and I decided on making some fairly expensive home improvement purchases:

Cabinet reface, kitchen and bathrooms: $4200

Bathroom countertop replace: $2400

Bathroom sinks and faucets: $1500

Somehow these kinds of purchases have suddenly become easy. $550 on some light fixtures to replace the builder grade standard globes. $500 on a pedestal lavatory/faucet for the lower bathroom to replace the builder grade white sink and $20 faucet.

How can this be? I recall that in the past such purchases were simply out of the question - except for the year in which we received an inheritance - more "unexpected" money - and bought some decent furniture for the first time ever.
 My wife and I have (almost) always been hoarding our money. We have always been stingy with our purchases. It was always about the cost, and not the quality and/or our desire or need. I have always bought used cars - and used cars with high mileage - until 1998, when I purchased a new Jeep using funds from company stock options - more unexpected money.

So the $550 on the Kichler light fixtures and the $500 on the Thunder Grey Kohler sink are purchases that were out of the question in the past and somehow have become easy now. And the Supply – which in the past seemed so limited – is now plentiful.
 It is almost as if the act of being stingy with one's money somehow restricts the flow of money!
 We make affirmations to the Universe for abundance, but it's easier to act as though we actually "have" abundance when there is unexpected money. Maybe the difference now is that we think of Supply as expected rather than wait for unexpected Supply.

The Life of the Machine

Blog date: 5/23//2021    Journal Entry: 12/13/2013

It was only me and a handful of other drivers on the road this morning as I drove to work in the cold mist amid the pre-dawn darkness. The speakers were conveying to me the calming words of the Tao de Ching, spoken by the soft voice of the former Zen student.
 Somehow it felt like my trusty Jeep was taking it in as well, just like it has acquired a bit of the quiet music that I have throughout the years been playing through those speakers. I looked out over the droplet-covered hood and for a brief moment imagined the pistons of the engine rising up and down in the process of conveying me to my destination, somehow in tune with the conveyence of the words through the Zen master.
 But then I thought:
 "You’ve have many times had this silly impression that the environment inside this machine is somehow different because of all the Eastern philosophy and soft music that has circulated about it in the 15 years that you have owned the machine.
 Dummy. Nobody’s gonna buy this sort of claptrap. And yet those that don’t are likely the same ones who think that people feel good simply because the ratio of norepinephrine and serotonin at the synaptic cleft is normal, or that a human creative act is simply the rewiring of neural nets in the brain.
 But those same people neglect the action of Consciousness. Who knows? It might be said that, just as Consciousness alters the activity of elementary particles, perhaps that same Consicousness can over the years somehow influence the metal and bolts of a machine, imparting some part of Life to that machine.
 It is said that the space where one regularly meditates soon becomes slightly sacred. Perhaps that can also be said about a mechanical object after years of being exposed to quiet music and inspiring works.
 After many years, the iron remembers."

Nameing and Conferred Reality

Blog date: 5/1/2021    Journal Entry: 7/10/2020

We are a nameing species. Once we give a name to a condition or event, that condition or event immediately acquires a reality of its own. And "disease" is one of the most efficient words with which we confer reality to conditions or events.
 And Medical Science is one of the best producers of names.
 One example of Medical Science's art is "Tachycardia". So, instead of simply saying "You are experiencing a temporarily fast-beating heart", the doctor asserts that "You 'have' Tachycardia."
 The first thing that comes to mind about "You 'have' Tachycardia" is that this statement makes the experience an "it", a "disease", whereas "You are experiencing a temporarily fast-beating heart" keeps it a temporary experience - an experience in Time.
 And in Time all things pass. . .
 Why use the word "experience" instead of "Disease"? Isn't this just more nomenclature - more nameing? No, "experience" is preferred, because it infers that we really want to refer to energy than things. We can counter negative energy with positive thoughts, but we're helpless in the face of things.
 Note that our language is fundamentally limited. I can't even make an assertion about an experience without using the word "it", as in ". . .keeps it an temporary experience" (3 paragraphs above). I could have said "The first statement makes something a "disease". But "something" is "some thing"!
 And did you catch the phrasing "So the first thing that came to mind" (also above)?
 Other examples of nameing abound.
 How about "Essential Tremor"? That is a particularly insidious one. "Essential"?
 And "Seasonal Affective Disorder". That's certainly an expert way of describing a temporary sadness associated with being somewhat cooped up inside during colder weather.
 Experiencing a period of reduced energy suddenly becomes a disease if we use the phrase "Chronic Fatigue Syndrome".
 My shoulder operation in 2006 made me aware of excessive muscle soreness due to a temporary increase of inflammation. This is when I learned three big things:

Taking Fish Oil on a regular basis can provide you with Omega 3 compounds with which you can make your own anti-inflammatory Prostaglandins as needed.

Having 3 or 4 months of "Trigger Point" muscle massage sessions, followed by daily self-applied muscle massages, can eliminate the source of muscle soreness. (I discuss these two points, with lots of photos, on my "Eliminating Muscle Soreness" link from the home page of this blog.)

Getting Chiropractic treatment once a month maintains the good posture and spinal alingnment that helps keep Trigger Points from forming.

So today I have only intermittent muscle soreness, and a few sessions of self-applied muscle work easily eliminate it. But what if I had allowed an expert to condemn me with the "D" word ("Diagnose") and told me "You 'have' Fibromyalgia"? Would I have ever tried these simpler and more direct methods?
 And don't get me started on the big ones?
 You 'have' Bipolar Depression.
 Or, You 'have' Scizophrenia. They did use that one on me many years ago.
 And in Time all things pass. . .

The Use and Mis-use of Energy

Blog date: 3/4/2021    Journal Entry: 2/27/2020

If I go to sleep thinking about home projects or creative hobbies, I find that I often wake up during the night with ideas to write down on my "creative notepad" beside my bed. Often I wake in the morning and in the first few minutes a couple of new ideas and solutions rush into my head, and I am presented with new and creative methods to try out later in the morning.

"If I stretch a string along both both top and bottom of my new fence posts instead of just the top, I can more accurately line them up before adding concrete."

Or: "If I place the decorative 2x4 on the top of each post - butting them up in the center of each section instead of butting them up right on top of the posts - I can greatly strengthen the fence against the strong winds."

Or: "What if I used the 'Chorus' synthesizer gizmo to add some high note accent to this piece of music I am composing."

So I have made use of the creative Energies of Life, which present themselves during the night.
 On the other hand, if I go to sleep regretting something done during the day, I might just find that I wake up with even better reasons to regret my actions!
 For example, I drove to one rocky inlet on the Pacific beaches in order to see the wave action due to a higher than normal tide combined with strong winds. Although the beach was completely covered with thick foam whipped up by the waves, and the action appeared to be imminent, I for some reason decided to leave the beach and go to another area, which proved to be a big disappointment. So I found myself really regretting this decision – regret is quite strong when you have have missed a rare opportunity. And that evening, despite my efforts to think about other things, I let the bitterness rise up again and again just before I went to sleep, and sure enough, as soon as I woke up in the morning I had not one but two realizations which made the regret stronger!

"It was right at the time of the full moon and maximum tide."

"It was one of the few times that a 'High Surf Warning' was issued rather than the weaker 'High Surf Advisory'."

About that time, I began to realize that I had (mis-)used the Energies of Life and found ways to make myself feel worse!
 The Universe is delighted to share its creative power with us - the Energies of Life - but the same Universe is a Neutral Entity. It is perfectly capable of helping us take ourselves up or take ourselves down.

And who knows how often we have (mis-)used the Energies of Life to build – that is, to create – a devastating disease out of a benign one.

Medical Science and its "final" answers

Blog date: 2/4/2021    Journal Entry: 11/15/2020

(Based on the 11/15 entry in 365 Science of Mind, by Ernest Holmes.)
  Ernest often speaks of the "body" as Spiritual Substance. Thus, the November 15 entry:

". . . Every action, every organ, every function of my body is created in the wisdom of Spirit and maintained by the power of Spirit. . . Every breath I draw fills me with perfection, vitalizes, upbuilds and renews every cell of my body."

Medical Science has a different opinion. Our physical form is an electrochemical organism that has evolved to become "conscious" (little "c"). This model has allowed Medical Science to do many marvelous things. So for example, I have an "intraocular lens implant" which allows me to see at the age of 75 just as well as I did in my 30s. A surgeon effortlessly "rebuilt" my shoulder joint. Medical Science does these sorts of things with ease due to its knowledge of our physicality simply as that electrochemical organism.
 But when Medical Science doesn't have an answer for a given condition, its official stance is that "nothing" can be done. Your condition is "terminal". Medical Science even confidently predicts how much life you have remaining.
 There is a lot of difference between this stance and the one described in the first paragraph!!
 Elsewhere in the book, Ernest writes:

"Those who have had true Spiritual understanding have always taught us of the unity of good, that we are one in essence with the Spirit. They have told us that 'the unreal never has been, that the Real never has ceased to be'" (Latter part is from the Bhavagad Gita).

If I were to imagine that I were Ernest giving a "Sunday Sermon" on these sorts of things, what would I give as some examples of the "unreal"? An easy one is Monetary Lack. People might say "I'll never have enough money to buy that house on my salary." Another easy one is Failure - or Lack of Success. People might say "How will I ever be like those successful folks that I see"? These are examples of the Unreal. The Real is ideas/thoughts/affirmations of Abundance and Success.
 But speaking about Health and absence of life-changing/threatening conditions is a much harder one to "sell" to a audience that has one or two cancer patients.
 And yet if we have a full understanding of our physical form as Spiritual Form, this becomes easier.
 Our physicality is not an electrochemical organism that has evolved to become "conscious" (little "c"). Instead "it" is Consciousness ("Big C") that has evolved into an upright bipedal organism.
   

Wine, music, and the Creative Inspiration

Blog date: 1/19/2020    Journal Entry: 8/11/2020

This is a little description of one of those inspirational episodes that occasionally occur in the evening while listening to some quiet music (wine usually has something to do with it). In this case, the music was Nightwalk, by Hazy.
 "And the music begins to drip from the ceiling, and the shoulders drop, and the cells begin to float. They float out to the stars, where they mingle with the Timeless Formless One. The ideas start to form now.
 Maybe a musical tune.
 Maybe an idea for a story.
 Maybe an imagined conversation.
 Or, maybe some extra insight about how it all works, how it really is.
 Pick one. Each idea presents itself as if a dream. There are infinite possibilities, and the time has stopped. Each is briefly present with every heartbeat pushing the lifeblood through the head, now in sync with every note of the music.
 Soon the ideas just flow out of the hands, and you scramble to write them down.
 Pick one, and do it pretty quickly, before they are all forgotten and before the heartbeat is decoupled from the music and the time starts back up and the hands are quiet again.
 Too late. The inspiration fades and the muse falls silent before you have managed to capture all of it in words.
 And yet, the memory of the brief creativity is still life-giving."

Removing the Christmas Decorations

Blog date: 1/2/2021    Journal Entry: 1/2/2021

This morning I brought out the green and red plastic storage containers, having succumed to that sudden bittersweet decision with which one turns against their Christmas Decorations – the wire pine trees, the bronze bells, the manger scene surrounded by cotton and smaller wire trees, the black and white metal wall sculpture with its stylized conifers.
 The bright and festive Day has come and gone and it's two days into the new year.
 And I'm itching to see our Standard Décor again – the stone vases, the wooden bowls containing rock crystals, the framed montage of lighthouses – with almost but not quite the same enthusiasm that I gave to the wire trees and the bells a month ago.
 We are a restless species.

While removing our Christmas decorations, I put on some Christmas music(!)
 Why not. Milk it for another hour or two.
 Some of the older Winter Solstice albums. George Winston's classic December album with its inspired version of Carol of the Bells. The Carols of Christmas with David Darling's chord-drenched O Holy Night. Teja Bell's equally inspired rendition of Carol of the Bells. And John Serrie's dreamy synth album Upon a Midnight Clear.

After an hour or two I have my Standard Décor back. In the case of the dining room liquor cabinet, it consisted of an arrangement of beer coasters to take the place of the festive bowl.
 Whoop-de-do.
 Outside a cloudy and rainy Pacific Northwest storm is underway, and the room seems a bit darker than it has been recently. Except for the Christmas Tree lights.
 I left the tree up one more day. . .

Getting the direction right/The true meaning of Christmas

Blog date: 12/26/2020    Journal Entry: 8/28/2014

(Actually this is a combination of the Journal entries on this date as well as those from others.)
 When we make a positive affirmation, we thank the Spirit of Existence rather than ask this Spirit for something. "Thank You for supply and financial means." "Thank You for health and youth". And the like.
 We thank rather than ask because, in terms of the Timeless Formless One, the thing won't be done in the "future". The thing is already done.
 And, further, we want to get the direction right.
 We are not thanking Spirit “out there” or “up there”. Instead we are thanking the Spirit within.
 If we really say that we are part of the Universal Consciousness, that we are Spirit interpreting the Earth as us, and if we really want to close the gap of separateness between us and Spirit, then we move closer to saying that we have the power to create supply, to be physically perfect, to retain youth.
 So this is what Christmas is all about.
 Christmas is not just about the single Incarnation. It’s about the incarnation of each of us.
 In other words, in a certain way of speaking, each of us is the Christ.

The Physical Analogues

Blog date: 5/20/2011    Journal Entry: 11/27/2000

I had been listening to a Buddhism tape which describes our constant desire to resist or modify change or undesired events. We want to get rid of the “82 problems”. (The author of the tape describes an imagined conversation with the Buddha, in which he has the Buddha saying "We all have 82 problems, but the biggest of them all is the 83rd problem, which is that we want to get rid of all the other 82.")
 For some of us, a few of these 82 problems are "mental" issues, some of which we have given names like Depression, Schizophrenia, and the like. I had a lot of those way back in the distant past during my college years, and spent way too much time trying to figure out "what" was wrong, and how to "cure" it. After many years of this sort of thing, I finally realized what the Buddha was trying to say:
 There are no answers, and it is asking questions that is the problem.
 Back then I did learn however that, regarding these "mental" problems, we can learn from what I called The Physical Analogue.
 So for instance, in my “advanced age” I go through a common set of recurring physical issues from time to time. Each of them is painful – probably more mentally than physically – when it occurs. Sometimes I have a bout of vertigo dizziness, with the attendant uneasiness. Or I might be hit with the pain in the middle of the shoulder blades that is hard to massage out. I might have jaw pain that interferes with the enjoyment of food.

But the point of listing these recuring physical issues is that from time to time one of them comes up, but that's fine. I have long since accepted that “physical stuff happens” and (to the extent that I do accept this) I do not let the occurrence “get to me”. This is the Buddhist precept of just observing without categorizing, dreading, trying to find the “cause” of the problem.
 Take the back pain as an example. Sometimes one or more muscles tense up in the lower back. The results are pretty profound (even though the condition is very simple):
 It hurts. And the pain adds to the tension.
 It interferes with normal daily activities.
 We find it somewhat satisfying to look for "causes" for the muscle contraction. "Well, I worked too much in the yard this weekend". "I have been sitting at the computer too much".
 And so on.
 And sometimes this can produce helpful information, and can perhaps help prevent such episodes in the future. Nonetheless, too much searching for causes and reasons will only add further tension to the current problem, which is really quite simple: one or more muscles has developed a trigger point, or area of contraction and tension.
 So the best statement that can probably be said is that "muscles do that" from time to time, and that the tension will soon pass, as it has done many times in the past.

Muscle Soreness happens.
 So when "mental" problems come up, as they surely might for someone who has a higher degree of sensitivity and self-awareness, we take the cue from the Physical Analogue.
 Mental Soreness happens.

P.S.: Most of the above was penned in my journals in 2011. Even back then I was still introspective enough to be a little more aware of "problems" than most folks. So I made notes, in the hopes that others might learn from my experiences. I was still learning to just observe the things that come and go in their time, and not to dwell on them - as the Buddha suggests.
 Now, at the age of 75, the rather intense introspection is gone, and I simply look up past notes from my journals and pass them on to my readers. If you haven't "been there", if you have never experienced the "Death-in-Life", feel free to ignore all of the above. For some of us we learn about the ease of life only after the Second Birth.
 As such we have learned that the whole business is a gift - and if it is a gift there must be a Giver of Gifts. . .
 In any case, muscle soreness is basically a non-event (in part because I do 30 minutes of muscle self-massage every morning). And there's no more thinking about absence or presence of the Life energies (depression and such). I understand now that time was the secret all along. We are temporal beings:
 In time things arise; they change.
 And in time they pass.
 The key is that all problems start small, and we should simply keep them small.
 

consciousness vs Consciousness

Blog date: 9/3/2020    Journal Entry: various

It's early morning. You are in the midst of a dream of walking lightly - almost floating - on a gravelly trail. Your footsteps don't crunch but rather sound more like water droplets falling on dry leaves. This goes on for a while until you begin to wake up.
 "Oh. It's raining".
 You have awakened and become conscious - aware of your surroundings.

That's ordinary consciousness - with a little "c". That's what our "minds" are good at: Being self-aware. Being aware of our surroundings. Thinking. Planning for the future. Sometimes our minds are also good at worrying about that future, or fearing some condition in the present.
 So what is Consciousness with a big "C"? To answer this we might consider some version of the Creation Stories that appear in The Upanishads or the Rig Veda.

The Great Oneness meditated and contemplated the creation of matter and time.
 But immediately the Great Oneness knew It had a problem:
 "How am I, the Timeless and Formless Being, going to participate in this matter and form?" But being the great Smartness, The Spirit immediately solved Its own problem.
 "I will speak the Words of creation, and will impart my own Consciousness to that matter and form, so that it can evolve to become more like Me. All the stars and planets will be a part of my Consciousness, even the elementary particles of which they are made."
 Here is where we might allow the Poet within us - our Intuition - to imagine further what the Great Spirit might have asked Itself at the Time of Creation:
 "There will be planets with bright moist atmospheres scattered throughout this space I create. And how shall I fly in these delightful atmospheres?
 I shall impart My Consciousness to the birds.
 And how shall I know patience amid the exhuberance of life?
 I shall impart my Consciousness to the trees, to the rocks, to the mountains."
 Thus we say that there are no inanimate objects. (People who lived in former times understood this. The Native Americans spoke of the Great Spirit, of Mother Earth and Father Sky, and knew that the Earth is alive. If our leaders and company executives today viewed the Earth as a living organism, maybe they wouldn't be so rough on it.)
 So we distinguish between consciousness and Consciousness. It's a bit like the difference between Western Philosophy and Eastern Philosophy. Western philosophy states that we are material organisms that have evolved to become conscious. Eastern philosophy states that we are Consciousness that has evolved to become the physical forms that we are now. Why is this distinction important? It’s because the Eastern way allows us to have control, to know the "Truth that sets us free". As Participants in the Universal Consciousness, we can speak the Word of healing, and it will be spoken with the same authority as was the Word spoken by the Great Spirit at the time of creation, of the Big Bang.
 So "consciousness" says "It's raining", but "Consciousness" says "I speak the words of Health, of Success, of Abundance, of Life."

Galaxy Flowers

Blog date: 8/14/2020    Journal Entry: 8/14/2012

(I had just pulled in to my normal parking space at work, which was adjacent to a small lake in our scenic industrial area.)
 During the last few weeks, the field around the small lake has become covered with white flowers. Each of these looks like a saucer-shaped galaxy of small white stars, and the whole lot of them were suspended in many directions and heights, looking like those Hubble shots of the universe.
 So, I gaze on this mini-galaxy, perched atop a small sloping field between two buildings and a small lake, all of this occupying a small spot on a large continent of a green and blue planet that is itself small in the vast eternal cold.
 On this little field, Existence (or “Life”, or “Spirit”) has chosen to create small objects of great beauty, noticed only by the birds and the insects and a few people who are prompted to stop and observe them. The raw material was simple dirt, rocks, and some carbon compounds from last year’s flowers and grasses.
 And the Great Spirit created these galaxy flowers – fractally self-similar to the universe itself – just for the fun of it, just for no purpose whatsover, in spite of the fact that they will in a few weeks be mowed back into the ground.
 No purpose at all, (unless it was to remind those who chose to observe them that the whole business is a gift.)

Plants create form out of "nothing"

Blog date: 7/19/2020    Journal Entry: 7/15/2020

I was standing in the dry field overlooking the lake, with the summer breeze stirring all the flowers. The small pathway revealed a dry, dusty, rocky dirt which crunched with each step. I have a picture of the soil - it's the first one below.
 "Pretty sterile soil", the gardener in me mused. The number one rule – as I understood it – was that your soil had to have high amounts of rich organic material and be nice and friable. This tan gravelly material couldn't possibly grow anything.
 "Wrong!", said the numerous plants surrounding me – some as tall as I was.
 One vibrant tall plant with bright green leaves and big white saucer-shaped flowers tinged in lavender was example enough that plants can produce life without any (apparent) raw materials. (This would be the second picture below.)
 "How can that be", I mused. "How can all this plant material rise out of such dessicated dirt?"

I had noticed this phenomenon in the past. I had brought home a tiny paper cup with a seed and a bit of soil from somewhere - perhaps a garden exhibit or something. In a few days a two foot high plant had risen out of that pitiful amount of dirt.
 I remember being amazed, looking at all that stalk and leaf structure topped by a giant sunflower, and the only apparent source of material was the 5 or 6 tablespoons of soil in the paper cup.

So there I was, watching the lively green tall plant with the big saucer-shaped flowers, as it danced in the summer breeze along with countless other types and shapes of plants, each violating the principles of known good gardening rules, and just enjoying the exhuberance of life.
 I remembered the term "photosynthesis". "Oh, of course, it's photosynthesis," I thought. "Isn't that supposed to mean plants can synthesise (i.e. create) material from just sunlight, carbon dioxide, and perhaps a few minerals?" What is further interesting about this photosynthesis is that the wording usually goes like this: "Photosynthesis involves the conversion of light energy into chemical energy." It's a lot easier to imagine "miracles" when one is talking about energy instead of material.
 (We would do well to think of "disease" in this way.)
 In any case, when I woke up the next morning, the nighttime creativity yielded a thought: "Perhaps this creation of life out of apparent 'nothingness' is a fractal microcosm self-similiar to that of the Great Spirit creating the macrocosm out of nothingness at the time of the Big Bang."
 Later in the morning another understanding also came to me.
 "Oh, that's right. If we say that all things are alive, that all things are participants of the Universal Consciousness, then of course it would be expected that plants can easily create "material" form out of nothing."
 So there are signs. . .

Words and Desires. (More on Just Observing the Birds)

Blog date: 6/27/2020    Journal Entry: 8/11/2011

(Follow up on "Our Purpose is Just to Observe the Birds" - just below.)
 The Buddhism tape this morning discussed our constant dissatisfaction with life. Why? Mainly because of our mind and its constant desire to have “reality be something other than it is.”
 When I arrived at the corporate parking lot, I looked out at the field between me and the small lake. A group of black birds were lurching around in the flowers and the dry grasses, searching for insects I suppose. Some looked up and about; Some looked at me in the car.
 Suddenly they all jumped up and flew off in unison, to alight on the top of two distant pine trees.
 Then I found myself imagining - as I have many times before - what it would be like if my wife and I were birds, maybe eagles. I imagined the two of us talking, since this seemed pretty natural for two humans that have been converted to birds.
 I briefly thought about what it would be like if we really couldn't talk - "We'll just scratch out our sentences in the dirt".
 That didn't make for a very engaging daydream, so I went back to the idea that we would be two "talking birds".
 And what were the first words that came to mind as I imagined my wife and I as “articulating birds"? They would surely be something on the order of “OK, where do you want to go? Anywhere but this industrial area with all these buildings and all this racket. How about a place in the coast range overlooking the ocean? Or up in the tall Cascades?”
 That is, the first thing that come to mind were words about changing the situation we were in as Birds in a Company Parking Lot.
 And yet the real birds did just fine right here, by a lovely lake which happens to be next to a semiconductor plant and an often noisy parking lot.
 And further, they acted in unison without a single formal act – something the we as a species have never done.

Our Purpose is Just To Observe the Birds

Blog date: 6/11/2020    Journal Entry: 1/30/2011

"What is asked of us? What is our 'purpose'"? (I was musing one morning about what I would say when asked these types of questions.)
 Suppose I imagine that I am out at the lake in the pre-dawn early light, setting up my tripod in preparation to extend the time of the sunrise - by photographing it. ("The lake" is Broken Bow, in an Oklahoma State Park we used to to to when we were living in Texas. It has always been my Sacred Place.)
 So while I am setting up my camera, the birds are singing with their typical exuberance of life.
 And why are they singing? They are probably singing because they can fly (I suppose I would be singing too if I could fly). They are singing because the sun will soon rise and it will be beautiful. They are singing because everything they need will be provided, and they won’t have to work for it.
 Perhaps I would imagine that Existence is saying to me:

"Unconscious nature understands this. You people that are conscious just don’t get it – with all your plans, goals, timelines, and other distractions.
 There’s the birds, Conscious Boy. Listen Up."

Here comes my sunrise treat. The clouds are just beginning to show some pinks and oranges. Sunrises are best when there are clouds that portend change, – the high cirrus and altocumulus. A new weather event is coming. If the event is already here, and the clouds are thick, you won’t get a sunrise treat, and if no change is coming, and the sky is clear, you won’t get one either.
 "So what should I do?", I imagine myself asking the Spirit of Existence.

"Just observe all this, Conscious Boy. Just observe the birds. Someday maybe you’ll get it: All this beauty is a gift, and it is your office to just accept it.
 I have created all this for your enjoyment and Mine. Your life is not a test. It is a gift.
 And do not be afraid.
 I will not punish you for anything that you did.
 I will not punish you for anything that you did not do."

P.S.: We always have to watch our language, lest we unknowingly say something that is out of line wtith Life. Thus I would want to amend this line: "Unconscious nature understands this." In 2011, I didn't quite have a handle on "consciousness" with a little "c" - vs "Consciousness" with a big "C". So nowadays I would be inclined to point out that there is no "unconscious nature".
 It's all alive, and it all participates in the Universal Consciousness.

Unworthiness Was Actually a Prayer

Blog date: 5/18/2020    Journal Entry: 3/14/2020

In my (Catholic) education as a kid, unworthiness was actually a Prayer. It was the "Act of Contrition", and we were to say it daily. It went like this:
 "Lord I am not worthy but only say Thy word and my soul will be healed." If I recall correctly, it was the first bead on a Rosary.
 But wait. It gets worse: You could get Points for Using the Rosary(!) When I was thinking about the Act of Contrition, I remembered that you got "points" for saying prayers or using the Rosary. The phrase "Plenary Indulgence" came to mind.
 So I looked it up, thinking to myself "Surely this silliness has been put to rest!" Well, I quickly found it hasn't. By saying certain prayers you can reduce your punishment!
 Here's a quote from the Catholic site, catholic.org/prayers/indulgc.php:
 "Indulgences are two kinds: partial and plenary. A partial indulgence removes part of the temporal punishment due for sins. A plenary indulgence removes all of it. This punishment may come either in this life, in the form of various sufferings, or in the next life, in purgatory. What we don't get rid of here we suffer there."
 Is that what I really was taught?!? Is sickness or mental suffering a punishment from "God" (the Punitive, Judgemental God that many of us learned about as kids)?? How many people are accepting Fibromyalgia, Rheumatic Arthritis, Irritable Bowel Syndrome, and other chronic "diseases" because they think they are deserved???
 So now I would reword the Act of Contrition like this:
 "Lord I am worthy, and I will say the word, and my word (though it is not "me") will bring about my healing."
 That is, the healing words are not spoken by "me" - the person who was born on the East Coast. Nor are they spoken by "Thy" - a Being "out there" or "up there". Rather, the Spirit within - the real "me" - speaks the words of healing. As Participants in the Universal Consciousness, our words of healing are spoken with the same authority as were the Words of the Timeless Formless One when It spoke the words of creation at the time of the Big Bang.
 Oh, and also I replaced "my soul will be healed" with "I will be healed." We are not a "soul/mind/spirit/psyche" imprisoned in an materialistic electrochemical "body". Instead we are a unified entity, a "body/mind", and our physical form is the Incarnation of the Great Spirit, and as such is a Spiritual Entity whose natural state is one of health and ease, that is, absence of "dis-ease".

Our physical form itself speaks the word of health

Blog date: 4/27/2020    Journal Entry: 2/12/2019

From the Feb 12 entry in 365 Science of Mind:

"Some part of you exists as pure, unmanifest Spirit. This side of your nature has never been troubled. Since you are fashioned from the stuff of the Invisible, its nature is incarnated in you. Because of this, your word has the power in your world of localizing itself, of manifesting itself in concrete form. . .
 There is something involved in a sunflower seed that acts upon the creative energy of nature in such a way as to produce a sunflower and not a cabbage or potato."

I penciled in a comment near the last sentence about the sunflower seed: "(It's not the other way around)". That is, the seed does not become a sunflower because Nature acts upon the seed but because the seed acts upon Nature. The sunflower speaks the word of its own creation: "I call upon You, the Creative Energy of Nature, to create a sunflower."
 Sounds goofy, doesn’t it?
 But not if we understand that everything is alive, that everything is part of the Universal Consciousness. The sunflower seed speaks the word of sunflower creation. The creation of the sunflower is somehow not just a process of Nature, or an act of Nature’s Spirit. It is an act of the sunflower seed as Spirit interpreting the Earth as a sunflower seed.
 And if we say that the nature of the Invisible is incarnated in us, that we are Spirit interpreting the Earth as us, that we are participants in the Universal Consciousness, then our word is spoken with the same authority as the Word of the Timeless Formless One when It "spoke" the words of creation.
 And if we say that our physical form (our "body") is the incarnation of this Spirit, then our physical form speaks its word with the same authority. Our physical form, then, wants to speak the words of health, not sickness, for health is the nature of Spiritual entities. We are born with perfection of physical form. We become sick only if we speak the word of sickness or are are influenced by an entire society speaking the words of sickness.

A Better Way to View Spending Money

Blog date: 4/6/2020    Journal Entry: 3/3/2020

I have spent a week or so making "expense reports" for the last 5 years, using my wife's hand-written data. When I totaled them all up, the amount was a bit of a shocker.
 "We have spent too much money from the retirement account!"
 Well, that was the untrained thought. The thought that might arise from a spiritually trained mind - a mind which accepts that money ("Supply") is handled by a generous Spirit - might have gone like this:
 Instead of saying "We spent too much money", what if we said "The money was there when we needed it and, having spent it, received 'too many' gifts".
 The money was Spirit's way of providing.

Not "Up There"

Blog date: 2/26/2020    Journal Entry: 1/16/2020

I was daydreaming about telling someone about my experiences during the weeks after my dad passed away. Things that we used to do together would come up. "Oh, it's April. The Boat Show is next week. I'll call dad. . .
 Oh wait. Now that he's 'up there', no more going to the Boat Show."
 A thought then struck me about the "Up There" part.
 Over the years I have begun to think differently about the "location" of the Great Spirit. When giving thanks or making a positive affirmation - "Thank You for health and youth", "Thank You for prosperity", and the like, I began to use the phrase "It's important to get the direction right. We are not thanking some Being 'Out There' or 'Up There' (in some imagined 'heaven'). We are thanking the Spirit within."
 So it was the "up there" phrase that struck me during this daydream.
 It then ocurred to me to say the same thing about departed loved ones as I now do about the Great Spirit: Those who have gone before are not "up there".
 If we say that all is One, and if we say that the Great Spirit is not "up there" but within, then all those people are also within.

While writing this, the words 'gone before' reminded me of a journal entry from some time ago. I opened all my journals looking for that entry, and didn't find it until I got to the one from 1997:
 12/10/97, Death and Going Before
 We say that people have “gone before”:
 “Oh Spirit, please accept those who have gone before us”.
 But what about this phrase "Gone Before"? Perhaps that only applies for us who are in time. For spirit, not in time, no one has gone before. . .

Cycles of Birth and Death as Eternality

Blog date: 1/18/2020    Journal Entry: 12/22/2012

From the 365 Science of Mind (Ernest Holmes):
 “The grass withers and the flower thereof falls away: But the Word of the Lord endures.” (Peter 1:25).
 “The unreal has no being. The real never ceases to be.” (Bhavagad Gita)

Ernest then says “The unreality of appearance lies not in the thing of itself but in our interpretation of it.”
 We say that the grass dies and that the flower fades and decays. But is this just our interpretation of it? If we were to ask Spirit about this sort of thing, Spirit might reply: “Well, when I create Space and Time, the things of that creation must move and they must change. You see these things as being not like me, not being changeless. To you, the blade of grass cannot exist unchanging forever. The blade of grass had a beginning when it sprouted from the seed and it will have an end when it turns brown and becomes part of the soil, leaving behind its seed. Later the seed becomes another blade of grass.
 You call this a movement through time, since this is what you know.
 I call it the eternality of the blade of grass, because this is what I know.
 You experience something similar.
 You are born as a perfect being with flawless skin, bones, muscles, and joints. Throughout your life you age, dry up a bit, experience decline, and then become part of the soil. But you too leave behind your seed.
 You call this life and death.

I call it the eternality of your being. I call it the Incarnation.”

The Christmas Cards

Blog date: 12/19/2019    Journal Entry: 12/2012

Alas, I no longer do Christmas cards, but I did back in 2012, and made this entry in my journal:
 I decided to do Christmas cards yesterday, probably for the last time. Almost talked myself out of it: “Aw, they're just gonna' be briefly perused, possibly perched up on a shelf for a bit, then pitched.”
 So that afternoon I checked my stash of unused cards and found them to be depleted, so. . . off to the store to get a pack of cards.
 My first stop was Target, usually a purveyor of cards that meet my preferences – a nice nature scene on the front and a “sentiment” inside that is somewhere between “Happy Holidays” and “Jesus Loves You for Remembering His Birthday” – usually something that has a scene on the front which might represent a Spiritual Place to somebody. But Target’s own stash of cards had already been raided, leaving me with nothing but the two above-mentioned extremes.
 So Fred Meyers was my next stop. Freddies came through with a nice deck of cards with foil-lined envelopes and a beautiful Oregon mountain scene on the front. But wait. The text inside was “To thank you for your business. . .”
 Holy humbug! Business Christmas cards!
 There was simply nothing else, except a box of small cards with a pleasant sketch of a tree with lights on a snowy hill with a fence in the foreground, and a “sentiment” that suited me just fine. But they were still a bit small. But wait. I could glue one of those cards right on top of the “Thank you for your business” lines on the bigger card.
 I bought both packs of cards.
 I sat down at my desk that Wednesday evening. "Oh wait. This will not do. I need something to to sip that will help me be the Claus for a while". So I went downstairs and procured a glass of wine.
 So there I sat, writing notes on bits of paper with the Christmas music tinkling from the speakers, ignoring the occasional voice in my head that said "people don't do this anymore", and yet noticing that the list of recipients was growing - my kids, my sisters, my aunts, the long-time dentist back in Dallas, my chiropractor, a couple of work colleagues from the past, the software reps at work - and soon the stack of new cards began to get smaller while the addresses began to get sloppier as the evening (and the wine) progressed, and for a while - with the Christmas music dripping from the ceiling and the dessicated memory serotonin becoming more moist - I was the Claus.

What do We Mean by "means"

Blog date: 11/22/2019    Journal Entry: 10/30/2010

The morning began with a gorgeous sunrise, with orange clouds and azure sky on the horizon, fading to bright red clouds and cobalt sky above my head. I imagined being asked by the neighbor's kid "Why is the sunrise like this on some days?"
 "Well, it means there is more moisture in the atmosphere. . ." That is, my first thoughts were the scientific explanation about sunlight reflecting on the higher moisture content before an approaching storm. "Red skies in the morning, sailor take warning."
 But then I found myself thinking:
 "I don’t know what we mean by ‘means’. All we do when we say ‘it means. . .’ is to use some other words to explain something. Philosophy is a lot like that. It goes even further and makes up words to help create meaning.
 And once created, the new words acquire a life of their own.
 The ceramic of the coffee cup is the material cause of its existing. The shape of the cup is its formal cause. The image in the consciousness of the sculpter is the final cause.
 Blah, blah, blah, blah. . .
 And then the philosopher says he/she has explained something.
 If I don’t know what I am talking about, I will use bigger or fancier words.
 If I do know what I am talking about – like the Budda or a Zen Master – I will use fewer words, or perhaps no words at all. I might invite the listener to simply observe the sunrise."

Appearance vs Reality

Blog date: 11/11/2019    Journal Entry: 4/13/2010

 I was to have a minor operation on my shoulder, and as part of the preparation had an MRI of the area. The results, however, showed some unusual anomolies, and the surgeon asked me to obtain an analysis from an oncology specialist prior to operating - "just to be sure".
 Well, I made the mistake of popping the image CD into my computer and taking a look for myself.
 Big Mistake. The images of my bones looked like slices of an iron pipe that had been subject to years of rust.
 So this was the material "reality" that I observed with my eyes.
 I reminded myself of the words of Spiritual writers like Ernest Holmes, who speak of "Appearance" vs "Reality". As an example, when I was approaching retirement, Appearance was apparent lack of funds due to investments that have gone sour, bad financial decisions in the past, and the like. There was "no way" I could afford a decent house near the Pacific Ocean because my house in Texas was only worth $115,000.
 Reality is the Guidance I received from the Universe to purchase a "short sale" 1600 sq ft home for $165,000 in 2011, close to an incredibly high growth technology area in Hillsboro, Oregon. By 2014 I was able to sell that same home for $325,000!
 So there I was, back in 2010, asking "What is the really real?" Was it the appalling images of devastation in my arm shown in the MRI, showing a bone being eaten away by some apparent process? How could I, in the face of these visual images, say that my belief is in another reality in which I trust the same Universe for a benign outcome?
 I walked into the oncologist's office, painfully aware that "oncology" means the "C" word.

"Oh yeah. That's an Enchondroma. We see those all the time. It may have even been there when you were a kid, but becomes dormant in adulthood."

I had to compose myself for a minute or two - and the vision failed.
 So, after four days of waiting for Medical Science’s analysis of these images (and alternating between feelings of confidence and nervous gnawing in the gut), the report was benign: there is a non-aggressive, stable, "lesion" from a past process.
 I forgot about Spirit’s best tool, which is Time. This is something that has happened in the past, not something that is. Like all other conditions that we do not want, it has passed.
 And "lesion" sounds like a much better term than "tumor", "cancer" and similar words.
 So perhaps the words that I had spoken and the affirmations that I made – even if they were spoken along with the words "Help Thou mine unbelief" – had in fact tapped into the power of that Consciousness.

I made another journal entry on 5/20/2010 which perhaps is related:
 I was (in an imagined reverie) saying that "life is fragile, and the merest abberation of cells can take it down." But having said that in my imagination, it immediately ocurred to me that such words are "standard speaking", Perhaps I would call it "theatrical speaking" - the stuff of movies and novels.
 That is not the correct way to speak, if we say that we are Consciousness that controls our physical form rather than is controlled by that physical form.
 I have often said in the past that we do not have a body, but that we are a body-soul. Now perhaps the reason for this intuition is finally clear. We do not have a body any more than we have this or that disease. We are Spirit interpreting the Earth as us, and our physical form is the Incarnation of that Spirit.

Turning Food into Energy

Blog date: 10/11/2019    Journal Entry: 10/9/2019

The little magazine started an article with the words "Our cell mitochondria are responsible for turning food into energy. . ." I paused, looked out the window, and thought:
 I suppose that is what happens when we eat. One of the remarkable things that our physical form does is to turn our food into thought, words, ideas, and other forms of energy.
 I look around the room. The electrical parts spread out on the table for my next project were created as a result of concepts from the energy of scientists and inventors in the past. The words that I am writing in this journal have in part come from the cheese, the whole grains, and the spinach that I ate for lunch.
 The food I have eaten today and in the past has become the energy of activity, good cheer, excellent health, and indeed the exuberance of life for me.
 If this is the case, then it would make sense that I eat the best food I can. The organic fruits and vegetables, the grass-fed milk, and the wholesome grains have produced calm, balance, patience, and peace for me. They have brought about well-being and great depth of feeling.

But what then what would I expect from the products that the Food Industry has produced?
 Would I expect peace and calm from the meat of chickens and cows that have known fear and force from birth?
 Would I expect good health from the same chickens and cows who are so sick they have to be feed antibiotics every day?
 Would I expect to energize that health from vegetables and grains that have been grown so fast they haven't even had time to draw up minerals and nutrients from the soil (which is itself exhausted and overextended)? Can plants whose health has been elicited by chemicals and pesticides confer immunity to me when they haven't needed to provide it for themselves?
 If we create energy from food, then maybe we should ask if the food that permeates our supply has the right kind of energy to provide us. And maybe it is that very food which contributes to high incidence of "degenerative" (lacking energy) diseases that affect our society.

Everybody Wants to be a Superhero – Except Superheros

Blog date: 10/6/2019    Journal Entry: 8/15/2019

We all have probably secretly wanted to be a superhero, at least at some time in our lives.
 Watch any kid as he/she runs around adorned with some sort of cape, zapping "bad guys" with imaginary weapons. And how many of the rest of us have at least briefly wanted some sort of super power to allow us to change something beyond our control.
 What if I could just point my finger toward the neighbor's barking dog and temporarily lower its core temperature (Just enough to get it to go inside)
 What bullied kid has not had vivid daydreams of slinging their arm out in a big arc to slam some bully into a wall?
 What if I could just temporarily stop the breathing of the cranky clerk who is sending me back home for an unnecessary form after I just spent 2 hours in line – just long enough to get him to change his mind?
 And yet the irony of today's superhero movies is that often superheros themselves don't want to be superheros anymore. For one thing, they're getting blamed too often for the collateral damage that ocurrs during battle with the arch-enemies. Or maybe they screw it up trying to help someone.
 And what's worse, the arch-enemies seem to be getting too bad-ass. The superheros are starting to find themselves right back in the same boat as all us common folk:
 And what is that? It's that the superheros can't change things beyond their control either.

Our Consciousness and the Consciousness of the Cosmos

Blog date: 8/27/2019    Journal Entry: 12/6/2009

In the Science of Mind "Year of Daily Wisdom", for 12/5: "Hermes tells us that Spirit has everything in Itself as thought, that the whole cosmos itself is a thing of consciousness".
 Then on the 12/6 lecture we have: "As consciousness extends its vision it extends the possibility of its objective experience" (this "meditation" is talking about expanding our life and accomplishments by envisioning more, by "pushing out the horizons" of our previous experience).
 So two thoughts arise from this chance juxtaposition of insights:
 We create by our consciousness, in the same manner as the Spirit of the Cosmos creates by Its consciousness. That is, if we say that we are participants in the Universal Consciousness, that we are Spirit interpreting the Earth as us, then the words and we state about our lives are spoken with the same authority as the words of the Timeless Formless One when it spoke the words of Creation.
 Spirit’s self-awareness and consciousness constantly expands, and this expansion is creation. The Cosmos is the result of the Consciousness of Spirit.

OK. Maybe three thoughts:
 We are the means by which the Great Spirit expands its Consciousness in Space/Time. That is, Spirit creates form (paintings, stories, architecture, music, and the like) through each of us. We are the aperture of the Cosmos.

Flowers and Weeds

Blog date: 7/31/2019    Journal Entry: 5/24/2019

I’m out in the back yard digging up some weeds growing in my raised beds and some more that were poking up among my river rocks.
 I Just did some more of the same a few weeks ago.
 But somehow his time it ocurred to me that this was a bit silly: I’m pulling up this lovely low growing plant with clover-shaped leaves and which was recently covered with cute little yellow flowers.
 Why? Well, because I’m calling it a “weed”.
 Right next to the "weed" I am trying to remove is a plant which is a mound of cute little white flowers. So why am I arbitrarily watering and caring for the mounded plant with white flowers and digging up the one with yellow flowers? Well it’s partly because those plants are prolific and might soon take over much of my garden.
 But it’s mainly because I didn’t choose the yellow-flowered plant. I chose the white-flowered plant. I didn’t plan for the yellow plant which I got for free; I did plan for the white plant, which cost me $5.00 each.
 So I find myself irritated because I’m spending all this time eradicating the yellow-flowered plant – it forms a dense mat and is so difficult to remove that I resorted to spraying it with some isopropyl alcohol. I’ll have to come back later and remove the desiccated remains.
 It ocurred to me that the Buddha would have something to say about fiddling with weeds.
 He might suggest that this is yet another example of my “mind” needling me because I won’t accept a situation that I do not want.

Another Road Trip and Mindfullness

Blog date: 7/1/2019    Journal Entry: 4/29/2019

I was dealing with my computer in the morning, on some aspect of transitioning to Windows 10. “Transitioning to Windows 10” should give you some idea of the difficulty of what I was doing!
 I decided to drive into town to get some groceries.
 During the first part of the trip, my mind was racing with things to try when I get back. “What was that command-line program that might help me to do this? Maybe I could try. . .”
 Somewhere down the road I began to notice that I wasn’t noticing.
 “Do what?”, you say. Since I live outside of a small town on the Oregon coast, The drive takes me though a heavily forested countryside, with scenery that most folks don’t see unless they’re on vacation – and I wasn’t aware of a bit of it. My “mind” was concentrated on the Task-at-Hand, the Purpose, so that I wasn’t being “mindful” of the things going on around me.
 To be mindful means you are paying attention to the forest, the mist rising out of the ground, the tips of the trees made bronze by the sunrise.
 In the audio tape Buddhism Plain and Simple by Steve Hagen, he suggests that you might consider the words of Thich Nhat Hanh, who suggests that you might imagine that you were an astronaut who was stranded on the moon, your lunar lander damaged on landing. You would stand there on the dusty rocks and gaze upon the distant blue Earth with no hope of returning. Then you might imagine further that you managed to repair the craft and return home.
 Imagine the intense awareness you would then have of walking in the green forest with the wind whirring in the trees and the clouds drifting overhead as if they were the air breathing into the sky.

Guilty Until Proven Innocent

Blog date: 5/31/2019    Journal Entry: 5/26/2019

I remember the phrase "Innocent until proven guilty" from past times. I took that to mean that people are innocent until someone/something proves them guilty. This used to mean that the "burden of proof" was on the "prosecution". The prosecuting lawyer was the one on the "offensive", and had to present evidence proving that the defendent was in fact guilty.
 If it were the other way around - if people are "guilty until proven innocent" - the defending lawyer would have to be the one on the "offensive": they would have to locate and present proof, such as DNA samples or witnesses, that the "guilty" defendent was in fact innocent.

Several years ago I began to sense that in certain instances nowadays it is the other way around: In some common everyday scenarios, we are guilty until proven innocent.
 First example, drug tests at work:
 At the chip house where I worked, each of us were periodically tested for drugs. The tests were random and ocurred about once a year. I came home one day and told my kids, "Well, there's a bottle of your daddy's pee on some plane up there on the way to a lab on the East coast."
  So, in other words, all employees in certain jobs are users of drugs until the machines prove otherwise.
 Second example, travel on airplanes:
 Doesn't take much imagination here. Before entering the main section of the airport, You are scanned. Your clothes and shoes are scanned. Your carry-on bags are scanned and subject to inspection. Your checked luggage is also scrutinized. For example, I find that I can no longer brings boxes of my favorite tea because they consistently trigger an open-bag inspection, presumably because they might contain drugs.
 So everybody on the planet who wants to fly on an airplane is considered a criminal/terrorist/drug user until the machines prove that they are not.

Corollary: There is a corollary regarding our physical health and well being.
 I remember that in earlier years (the 50s, 60s, 70s) most of us thought of ourselves as healthy. It was suggested that we all get physical check-ups from time to time, but these check-ups were mostly non-specific and routine. We were healthy until proven unhealthy.
 Nowadays, we all have hypertension, diabetes, iron deficiency, and the like until the blood test machine proves otherwise.
 Men all have possible prostate cancer until the machine says our PSA count is “normal”.
 Women all have breast cancer until the mammography machine says otherwise.
 We all have possible colon cancer until the colonoscopy machine says we don’t.
 In other words, as far as Medical Science is concerned (especially as we get older) we are all diseased until the machines prove otherwise.
 We are urged from all media to get specialized tests - magazines, TV, the Internet, even ads. One has to wonder how much of the proliferation of "modern" diseases is due to the constant warnings that we may already have them.

From the journal entry on 2/5/2019: Additional note on "You don't have a body":

Blog date: 5/20/2019    Journal Entry: 2/5/2019

Excerpt from Richer Living (another Ernest Holmes book), the Feb 3 entry:

"We are not under the law of material problems and world beliefs. We are under the law of the Spirit, which maintains us in freedom and in peace."

And the feb 4 entry:

"Those who live without spiritual vision and understanding are forever trying to solve their problems by manipulating (with) their human minds and exerting their human wills. . . The recognition of Spirit as Cause and as the creative Power of this world brings victory to the soul. It does this because all problems begin and end within the individual’s own consciousness. As we realize that Spirit’s Mind is in us as the basis of our individual Consciousness, we begin to solve our problems at their origin, which is within ourselves."

That is, if we do not say we "have" a material body, or that we are a "spirit" or "soul" imprisoned in a material body, we can then begin to use our Consciousness to control the cells of our existence.
 "consciousness" vs "Consciousness":
 "consciousness" with a little "c" is how we refer to our daily self-awareness. It is usually what we think of as separating us human big shots from what we call non-aware things like trees, animals, and the like. It is also the activity of our "mind" when we worry about sickness, failure, or lack of monetary supply.
  But "Consciousness" with a big "C" is that ability that we have as participants in the Universal Consciousness. With this Consciousness we speak the words of health, success, supply with the same authority that the Timeless Formless One has when It spoke the Words of Creation (bearing in mind that our language is often flawed: we really don't say the Great Spirit "spoke" the Creative Words at some time in the distant past - the "Big Bang" perhaps - but rather that the Great Spirit speaks the Words of Creation.)

Our physical form itself speaks the word of health

Blog date: 5/16/2019    Journal Entry: 2/12/2019

From the Feb 12 entry in 365 Science of Mind:
 "Some part of you exists as pure, unmanifest Spirit. This side of your nature has never been troubled. Since you are fashioned from the stuff of the Invisible, its nature is incarnated in you. Because of this, your word has the power in your world of localizing itself, of manifesting itself in concrete form. . .
 There is something involved in a sunflower seed that acts upon the creative energy of nature in such a way as to produce a sunflower and not a cabbage or potato."

I penciled in a comment near the last sentence: "(not the other way around)". That is, the seed speaks the word of its own creation: "I wish to become a sunflower", or "I wish to become a blueberry plant".
 Sounds goofy, doesn’t it?
 But not if we understand that everything is alive, that everything is part of the Universal Consciousness. The sunflower seed speaks the word of sunflower creation. The creation of the sunflower is somehow not a process of Nature, or an act of Nature’s God. It is an act of the sunflower seed as Spirit interpreting the Earth as a sunflower seed.
 And if we say that the nature of the Invisible is incarnated in us, that we are Spirit interpreting the Earth as us, that we are participants in the Universal Consciousness, then our word is spoken with the same authority as the Word of the Timeless Formless One when It "spoke" the words of creation.
 And if we say that our physical form is the incarnation of this Spirit, then this physical form speaks its word with the same authority. Our physical form, then, wants to speak the words of health, not sickness. We were born with perfection of physical form. We become sick only if we (or Medical Science) speak the words of sickness.

Just listen and observe

Blog date: 3/8/2019    Journal Entry: ??/??/2009

My wife and I were hiking at Beaver's Bend, a State Park in Eastern Oklahoma - our sacred space.
 These words came to me during that hike:
 And when the footsteps stopped, there would be nothing but the birds singing and the distant waves speaking to us from the shoreline, each wave a word spoken by a vastly articulate Existence . . . until it gradually became apparent that the simple request of the forest was that we listen and look – that we just observe.
 There was nothing else asked of us in the silence between the footsteps.

Billy’s software (A Ditty on Windows)

Blog Date:2/25/2019   Journal Entry: 9/10/2009

(Time for some humor):
 For some time now, I have used the "appointment" tool in Microsoft Outlook to set alerts for upcoming appointments, such as visits to the chiropractor. But once I create the appointment, I have never been able to figure out where it went! So I could never edit an appointment once it has been created.
 Finally one day a tech-oriented "Power User" of the tool said "Oh, they go to your calendar." Since I had never used the calendar, I never knew that.
 "How do these people learn about this stuff?", I said to myself. After some thought I figured that it must have gone like this:
 In the beginning Bill created the Software. He looked at it and said "This is good."
 He gave the Software to Adam and Eve, but they were seduced by an Apple, so they were banished.
 After Adam and Eve, Bill gave the Software to his chosen people, but they wandered lost for years and soon began to worship false OS’s.
 So Bill sent his Rep to Earth. The Rep gathered the 12 Anointed Ones, and told them "Go forth and spread the word about the Software, so that the Infidels will be saved."
 Thus it is told in the Holy Documentation, both the Old Version and the New Version.

So Power Users are decendents of the original 12 Anointed Ones.

The Crickets, The Birds, and Purpose

Blog date: 2/15/2019    Journal Entry: Various

9/17/2004: The Crickets
 After I arrived to the company parking lot in the early morning darkness, I turned off the engine and rolled down my window. Although I was vaguely aware of the sounds in the past, this morning the insect noises impressed themselves on my consciousness.
 Chirp, chirp, chirp, chirp, chirp, chirp, chirp.
 It was the steady beat of the crickets (or cicadas), quite loud despite the equipment humming and groaning, and the car tires fanning the pavement on the nearby highway. I found myself wondering how they managed to make this sound in unison, apparently all night long.
 I imagined asking some scientist how this could be, and then immediately retracting my question. "No. maybe I don’t want the scientific explanation for this phenomenon, compelling though it may be. I’ll settle for another type of understanding."
 "Life, in its simplest organisms just wants to sing. It’s just part of life’s natural exuberance. We, on the other hand, inured of all our activities and strivings, have forgotten how."

7/12/2004: The birds and I
 I am standing in my neighborhood listening to the usual noise, barking dogs, distant lawn mowers, and the occasional under-muffled truck. Up in the trees was a bird chirping. I looked at the bird and said "Stupid bird. You can fly. Why are you here in this noisy neighborhood?
 If I were you, I would have long since flown to the countryside. Maybe that park in Southeastern Oklahoma. No, maybe even to the Oregon coast."
 On the other hand, there I was, dissatisfied and wanting to be able to move to a quiet place by a stream or by the ocean, and there was that bird, up in the tree singing in pure delight.
 So who’s the stupid one? Me or the bird up in the tree singing?

4/4/2009: What is It All About?/Who Am I?
 It’s not about my work (writing software for chip design). The work is just a dream. I have spent hours writing a program to move a piece of metal in a chip one micron further away from another piece of metal – and likely all because of a design rule that is probably not necessary.
 So what is it about?
 I will drive to the Sacred Place that I have gone to many times in the past – a quiet state park in Oklahoma. I will get up early in the morning to photograph the sunrise, There I might become aware of a bird singing up in a tree.
 Why is that bird singing?
 It is singing because it can fly; it is singing because the cool morning wind is caressing the tree whose branch it rests on; it is singing because the sun is about to come up and the colors will be beautiful. The bird easily creates an endless variety of tunes that would make any composer jealous – simply because it is attuned to the creativity of the cosmos.
 And that bird is what is all about. And my observing the bird is what it is all about, for by observing it I see that it is savoring the bright warm moist Earth, and that is all I am asked to do myself.
 So I am the person observing the bird. I am not the person who has had the career, nor even the person who has nutured two kids and provided them and my wife a home with many creative touches.
 I am simply the person who has observed the bird singing in the tree, for that is what Spirit intends to convey:
 The whole business is a gift.

Two Entries on What It is All About

Blog date: 1/25/2019    Journal Entry: Various

(From 4/4/2009) Afterlife is here
 I have just listened to some delightful music, and I imagine a small conversation with my 80-year old aunt about it:
 "If there were an afterlife of bliss, I would imagine that is what it sounds like."
 "You don't believe in an afterlife?", she asked.
 "I suppose I believe that it is not elsewhere but here," I imagine myself replying, knowing she isn't going to buy any of it - having been bgought up in the traditional Catholic Education. "We have been taught all our lives that heaven is something that happens after this life. This life has trials and tribulations; it is a veil of tears; we all have our cross to bear. And heaven is our reward for putting up with it all.
 Is that really what it is all about?
 We do have problems, problems with physical health, issues with work, financial problems, but might it be that we have them because we can't believe that we are physical perfection or that we can create with the ingenuity of the cosmos or that we are worthy of the abundance that Spirit is trying to give us.
 We have problems because we are unwilling to believe in ourselves, to believe that we are Spirit interpreting the Earth as us, to believe that there is a Giver of Gifts who will not punish us like we punish each other.
 And if we could believe these things, this could be heaven, if we would let it. Spirit just wants us to savor the bright, colorful, and lively Earth just as It does."

(From 7/25/2005): Our Lives as Being Loved
 OR: Our lives as Being
 Wouldn't our lives be so much easier if we accepted that the Spirit of existence is benign? The Spirit creates the warm bright moist green planet out of the eternal cold and wishes to participate in its richness - and the only way It can do so is to give Itself form as us. Spirit creates each one of us so that It can interpret the Earth, so that It can experience Time.
 Spirit is creating us as a way of experiencing the opulence of Its material creation.
 So Spirit says to each one of us (if we will listen):
 "I have created your existence for your enjoyment and Mine. Your existence is not a test. It is a gift.
 And do not be afraid.
 I will not punish you for anything that you did.
 I will not punish you for anything that you did not do."

Two musings on Spirit, Time, and Us

Blog date: 1/22/2019    Journal Entry: Various

1/4/2006: On the "Omnipresent" and "Eternal" Business
 If we say that Spirit is, that Spirit is the Great “I am”, that Spirit is beyond Time, then we’re going to have trouble with statements like “Spirit created the Universe”.
 From the viewpoint of the material universe, we say that it had a beginning sometime in the distant past – or at least we think it had a beginning.
 But from the viewpoint of the Timeless One, if we can’t say that Spirit created the Universe at any given time, then perhaps we then say that Spirit is creating the universe.
 And if we say that Spirit is omnipresent, that Spirit is everywhere, then we can not say that Spirit is here and not there.
 So you are Spirit. And you, and I, and each of us.

We are consciousness that has learned to become a physical organism – the Eastern statement. It's different from the Western statement that we are a physical organism that hae evolved over time to become consciousness.
 We are an incarnation of Spirit that has learned how to be in Time.

(From 5/8/2006) Me and the Universe (Thoughts on incarnation):
 I am Spirit interpreting the Earth as me. The Great Formless One experiences form through me. The great Timeless One experiences time through me. (You can substitute any word for Spirit that you like. Some may prefer God. Others may prefer The Great Spirit. After all, language is just a collection of symbols that try to describe Reality.)
 Conversely, this physical form of mine (my “body”) is my interpretation of Spirit.
 I participate in the perfection of the Great Universal One.
 I am Earth interpreting Spirit – I am the Fractal Boundary between Earth and the Cosmos.
 The mediator between Earth and Spirit is this physical form of mine.

Four Christmas Reveries

Blog date: 12/16/2018    Journal Entry: Various

11/25/1988: Spirit Becomes the Gift
 If we say that Spirit is infinite, would that possibly mean that It is the sum total of our finiteness?
 If we say that Spirit is timeless, might we say that means It is the sum of all of our times?
 And if we say that Spirit is the Word, would that possibly mean that It is all the words spoken by us?
Do we say then that Spirit does not give gifts, but that Spirit becomes the gift?

12/24/1997: Christmas
 We celebrate the day of Spirit becoming incarnate. Years ago, Spirit, did You visit us? How did You experience this life of ours?
 How did You understand time - so foreign a concept for a Timeless Being? How was Your life, knowing as you did the time and manner of your death, knowing that you had come to interpret the Tree?
 Was it You that became incarnate, or was it the rest of us that became Spiritual?

12/2003: Christmas Thoughts
 This is the season of Christmas beliefs. This is the season of Santa Claus. But do we just believe in Santa Claus, or health, or opulence?
 Or do we create these things?
 You visited our planet, Spirit. You allowed Yourself to become manifest in time and place and we celebrate this Incarnation every year at this time.
 And how did you find this planet of ours? And how did you find our propensity toward violence toward one another? But of course You would understand, being perfect love. You love us despite ourselves – indeed “despite” is a human term.
 Perhaps You find it harder to understand why we cannot love each other.
 “The Lord giveth and the Lord taketh away” Was this really in the Bible? Maybe it should be “The Lord giveth and we taketh away.”

12/25/2008: Christmas Prayers
 Thank you, Spirit, for your visit – and how did you experience Time while you were here? Thank you for having visited us and participating in our time and space on this bright green planet you created. Thank you for your Incarnation.
 And yet if we say you are the Timeless Formless One, then you did not experience time in the past – for that would be finite human words.
 The words should be: “You are experiencing time, and this is the planet that you create.
 The words that we should speak, then, are: “We are the incarnation, and each of us is Christmas.”

It’s the fear of the relapse that extends the disease

Blog date: 11/13/2018    Journal Entry: 1/4/2015

And here's yet another related entry:
 This is regarding “colds”. I still have not fully recovered from the respiratory issues that I encountered during our November/December Texas trip. There is the slight congestion, the slight runniness, the dry cough (from time to time – still can’t add pepper to food sometimes!).
 So yesterday there was an apparent – or at least a perceived – slight sore throat with an attendent increase in throat “tickling”. I imagined myself saying to my wife “I just can’t get rid of this congestion and cough”.
 That’s how I felt during the day yesterday. I thought I had yet another relapse, and I ran with it, saying the words that solidify into the form, the words that change the cells: “I just can’t . . .”
 I did the same thing a week ago when I had the first couple of days of well-being and confidently took the car out to a car wash despite the cold temperatures, as well as going to a couple of stores. The next day I had (or created) a slight relapse because I was worried that I acted too soon after my apparent recovery, just like I acted too soon on muscle exercises after a shoulder operation.
 So one might ask “How many diseases are extended because we take a slight perceived relapse and run with it, saying the negative, disease-promoting words”.

On the Power of Ideas

Blog date: 11/13/2018    Journal Entry: 2/5/2008

The following entry, made 2 months later, is related to the 12/2007 entry above.
 Earlier in the week I missed an exit on the way to a distant store. This put me on a stretch of freeway with no quick exit or turnaround. After I was finally able to turn around, I made a bad decision about which way to go, and ended up going back on yet another long stretch of freeway. Needless to say I was fuming on my way back - leg-slapping fuming. I had to calm myself when I finally arrived at the store.

2018 note: At least this was in Texas, where the roads are flat and have many turnaround exits, even if some of them are somewhat far apart. Here in Oregon, if you miss a turn, you may just have to drive to Idaho to turn around!!

Another morning, after getting in my car, I misplaced a cassette tape and had to unfasten the seat belt and go back inside to look for it, only to remember that I had absentmindedly placed the tape in an unusual place in the car. I then became quite irritated at this – running instead of walking back out to the car and fumbling with the seatbelt and other items.
 On the way to work I began to think that these two instances of “flying off the handle” might be related to the recent change in my life (releasing the “old crutches”, embarking on new intellectual activity, and the like).
 As this idea began to take form, I found myself anticipating more times of quick anger and wondering how I would deal with this. “Well I’d better watch myself and not do this around my wife or kids. Well, how am I going to handle these fits”, and so on.
 But then suddenly it occurred to me that two isolated events have just become an “idea”, and that the idea was rapidly acquiring more strength than the two events had. Immediately after formulating the idea, the explanation, I was about to establish a reality in my life that wasn’t there before. Instead of just observing these events in my life, I was moving to defining my life, making it more probable that future similar events would occur.
 In such fashion is "madness" created.

Well, there really are a couple points to the above possibly petty sounding ramblings:

That's why the Buddha suggests we just observe.

It's important to understand that the Universe is a neutral entity. By the power of our thoughts (as participants in the Universal Consciousness) we can create health; we can create prosperity; we can create success.
But we can also by our thoughts create sickness, lack, or failure.

On Not Lettting Fear become Reality

Blog date: 11/6/2018    Journal Entry: 12/19/2007

In the early morning, I noticed some pain in my upper back, a tightness of muscles around a vertebra or two, that had a familiar “ring” to it, a familiar “tone”. (Why do we use sound-type words to describe familiar or “deja-vu” sensations?)
 "Oh no, not again", I found myself thinking, having spent the last half of 2006 and a good portion of 2007 dealing with severe muscle pain following a shoulder operation. Were the problems coming back – after a period of absense? I even found myself “gnashing” the teeth and working the jaw while these thoughts occupied my mind.
 Perhaps this is how fears are actualized - made manifest. The fear of something persists in the back of our mind, slowly converting to physical tension, first in the jaw, then in the gut, and finally in the muscles themselves - perhaps adding to any muscle pain or soreness that we might already have.
 So, being mindful of Ernest Holmes’ suggestions to watch the mind-chatter, I stopped and made a quick affirmation: "I speak the words of release from tension and contraction in muscles." Then I went about my business, after working the sore area with my Theracane (a tool that let's one reach muscles in the back). After a while the whole incident was forgotten.
 After we have developed the habit of making positive affirmations, we find that we can "de-fuse" fears before they become part of our physicality, before they are "internalized" - before the fear settles into muscular tension or tension in the gut.
 The Appearance is "I've got chronic muscle pain", This is "reality" with a little "r". We replace this with Reality - "As a participant in the Universal Consciousness, I can change the very cells of my physical form."

Some Humor on Telephone "Menus"

Blog date: 9/26/2018    Journal Entry: 4/3//2010

To hold for 5 minutes and then be disconnected, press 1

To hold for 30 minutes and possibly speak to an actual human, press 2

To listen to nice music for a while and then be disconnected, press 3

To actually hear a live human breathe, press 4

To listen to the 23rd psalm, press 5

To hear an assortment of other caller’s 4-letter words about us, press 6

To hear our staff rolling on the floor in raucous laughter, press 7

If you feel that our phone service is too slow, and want to get frustrated faster, try our web site. www.we-care.com

Jimmie's Version of ISO 9001

Blog date: 9/16/2018    Journal Entry: N/A

It's time for a little humor: Here's Jimmie's Version of ISO 9001
 Back in my high-tech job working days, I noticed how the typical company really implements ISO 9001 certification: The ISO 9001 inspector typically visits the company once a year. When the inspector is scheduled to visit, management sends out an email to all employees involved in production. What it says is essentially this:
 "Everybody is to hide all the printed documents that they have in their possession. These are to be put away and instead you should be prepared to show the inspector that you can easily find our online System Documents from the Quality Control Department."
 Translation: Stash all the printed docs and all the hand-written notes that you "really" use to do your work.
 And what are these "System Documents"? These are highly precise procedures that have the word "shall" repeated no less than 50 times:

"The green and red wires shall be attached as per System Document W-2501, and shall be wrapped in sheathing #345. . .

. . .blah-blah-blah-shall-blah-blah-blah. . .

 When printed, this becomes an uncontrolled document." (They all ended with this phrase.)

The pre-visit email also urges all employees to "shut up"! That is, they are to answer the inspector's questions only, and not to offer any extra information (lest they slip up and reveal how they really do their work)!
 So what does all this mean? It means that everybody in the plant has a desk drawer full of "uncontrolled documents" - dog-eared, covered with hand-written notes. Why is this? Because the System Documents have been written by somebody in QC who doesn't have a clue about the real steps necessary to do the given task.
 Corollary: All System Documents have "Rev D" (or a higher letter) as a part of the Document number. Why? So it will look like the QC person who wrote the document actually did keep up with the actual procedure that everybody used!
 So on ISO 9001 Inspection Day, I don't know about everybody else, but when I saw a stranger in my area carrying a clipboard or laptop, I would quietly slip out of my area to go check the air in my tires, take an early lunch, or go for a walk (having already hidden all my scribbled notes).
 So there you have it - "Jimmies Procedure on the real procedure to attain ISO 9001 certification. Use this document to make YOUR company ISO 9001 certified."

 When printed, this becomes an uncontrolled document.

Blaming External (or Internal) Things

Blog date: 8/30/2018     Journal Entry: 8/7/2007

(While listening to the Rig Veda). I notice in the Hindu Rig Veda many “externalizations”: the writers and story tellers would speak of “bad” gods and demons as being the cause of ignorance, sadness, poverty, and other negative things.
 There were the Rochesas, the “malignant, manevolent Miriti”, and other nasty beings.
 And the “good” gods were constantly beseeched for protection against them. These were Indra, Agni, The Additias, Saraspati, Sivistri, The Maruts, and others.
 So this tendency to blame other causes apparently goes back a long way.
 And we have the same thing today.
 Today it’s Seasonal Affective Disorder, Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder, Bipolar Depression, Cholesterol, and a host of other demons of modernity that we seek to blame for our ills – physical and mental.
 And indeed we are encouraged to seek help from the gods of Medical Science to protect us against them – Prozac, Paxil, Librium, Valium, The Statins, ACE Inhibitors, Alpha Blockers, Beta Blockers, and countless other medications.

The 'Secret' to Digging up Grass

Blog date: 8/3/2018    Journal Entry: 6/12/2018

Over the course of several months, I have been digging up the grass in the back yard, in preparation for replacing it with gravel or rocks. The grass was one big thick, impenetrable mat, and I had finally evolved a way to dig it up after trying many methods over the last few months.
 “Well”, I said, “I’ve finally found the secret to digging up grass.”
 ‘Secret’? Why do we call these sorts of things ‘secrets’? A secret is something that someone knows and is witholding it from others.”
 “I know a secret about John and I’m not telling”, says one child to another.
 So is a secret then something that the Universe knows and is making us figure it out? Or instead maybe I should just say that the technique of digging up grass is simply something that I haven’t yet learned to do or found a solution for, prior to today.
 And what about the big one? “What is the secret to Life?”
 Is it really a secret or is is it something we haven’t tried hard enough to learn?
 Better yet, is it something we have tried too hard to learn?
 The best answer I have ever heard for Life’s secret is this quote from The Martian Chronicles. It's from the screenplay version of Martian Chronicles. (I looked in Ray Bradbury’s book and did not find these words, so they must be the inspiration of the screenplay writer.)
 Colonel Lander (Charleton Heston), has just driven to a place of concrete ruins and has encountered a Martian for the first time.

Lander states that he has “waited so long for this meeting…to learn the secret of your life on Mars”.
 The Martian (an actor with an opulent “Shakespearean” accent) replies:
 “Secret? There is no secret. Anyone with eyes can see the way to live.”
 “How?” (asks Lander)
 “By watching life, observing nature and cooperating with it. Making common cause with the process of Existence.”
 “How?”
 “By living life for itself, don’t you see. Deriving pleasure from the gift of pure being.”
 “The gift of pure being.” (Lander repeats slowly)
 “Life is its own answer. Accept it and enjoy it day by day. Live as well as possible. Expect no more. Destroy nothing. Humble nothing. Look for fault in nothing. Leave unsullied and untouched all that is beautiful. Hold that which lives in all reverence, for life is given by the Sovereign of the Universe, given to be savored, to be luxuriated in, to be…respected.
 But that’s no secret. You’re intelligent. You know as well as I what has to be done.
 Now I must go.”

Evolution as a Reaction to Events

Blog date: 7/4/2018    Journal Entry: 7/21/2006

OR: Eastern vs Western thoughts on Evolution
 In the July 2006 National Geographic is an article about the upright stance. “Our bodies are a mosiac of features shaped by natural selection over vast periods of time – both exquisitely capable and deeply flawed…many of the flaws in our ‘design’ have a common theme: They arise primarily from evolutionary compromises that came about when our ancestors stood upright.”
 This passage is interesting because it reminds us that our favorite theory of our existence is based on a reaction to events. The way we are today is due to countless reactions to life. There is no hint of Consciousness as active.
 In other words, the Western way says that not only are we physical organisms that have evolved, but that we have not evolved in a particularly intelligent manner.
 So, if I speak in the "Western way", I would say that we are all physical organisms that have learned over countless years to become conscious. (This is consciousness with a little "c" - being "self-aware".)
 But if I speak after the manner of Eastern Philosophy, I would say instead that we are Consciousness that has learned over countless years to become a physical organism. (This is Consciousness with a big "C".
 This manner of speaking puts us in control: We are not some sort of self-aware being which is imprisoned in a physical organism. Instead we, as participants in the Universal Consciousness - the Consciousness of the Cosmos - can speak the words of healing and can change the cells of our physicality.
 In other words, we can be as healthy or as ageless as we create ourselves to be. . .)

Absence Rather than Presence

Blog date: 6/12/2018    Journal Entry: 6/1/2006

During my morning “meditation” (or what passes for meditation for those of us with little discipline), it occurred to me that there could be a different way of expressing life issues, and that this way would speak to the absence of something that should be there rather than the presence of of some “negative” condition.
 For example, We don't have poverty/lack – we are experiencing the temporary absence of supply.
 We do not "have" disease – we are experiencing the temporary absence of health.
 We do not have fears – we have the absence of confidence, the absence of trust, the absence of wholeness.
 We do not "have" depression. Instead we say that we are experiencing a temporary absence of Life.

So, by emphasizing a temporary absense, we do not give the negative condition a life of its own. We say that it is simply a lack of something “positive”.
 On the other hand, we do give life and form to the "positive" things we want by our affirmations:
 "Thank You for supply."
 "Thank You for health and youth."
 "Thank You for articulation and confidence."
 "Thank You for well being and great depth of feeling"
 And don't forget to get the direction right! We are not thanking some Being "out there" or "up there". Instead we are thanking the Spirit within, for we are all participants in the Universal Consciousness.

Lastly, we give deference to our Eastern friends who remind us that the Universe is neutral, that terms like “good” and “evil”, or "positive" and "negative" are from our human standpoint.

From the Tao Te Ching:
"Nameing is the root of particular things.
If we say that some things are 'good', then we must immediately say that other things are 'evil' ".

Words, body, and mind

Blog date: 5/26/2018     Journal Entry: 5/4/2006

Our language really should be watched, for our words hold us in thrall. Words, after all, have great power.

“In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God and the Word was God…”

So we might find ourselves saying something like “My shoulders really hurt, and I’m anxious about this.” In other words, “something is wrong with my body, and I’m anxious.”
 There are significant problems with that statement.
 “Something is wrong.” That makes the problem a physical “thing” over which I have no control.
 “Something is wrong with my body.” That now casts both the problem and my body as physical things. My body is a separate, biological entity, and “I” am stuck inside, subject to anything that might happen to this physical object.
 “I’m anxious.” Even that is wrong. Does that mean “my mind is anxious?” Or, should I associate the mind with the brain? Is my brain anxious?
 “Anxious” is a scrunching up of the muscles in the gut. “Anxious” is a needle-like sensation over all my skin. “Anxious” is sweating when it is not hot or shivering when it is not cold – an inability to control the temperature of my existence.
 In other words, if “my body” is anxious, “I” am anxious.
 There is no separation between body and mind, or body and soul. I am Body-Soul. I am Spirit interpreting form as me.
 What this means is that the part of me that is conscious, the part of me that is Spirit, can understand “things that are wrong” in a different way. “I am the thing that is wrong, and I can change that lack of order in my existence.”
 So the words that I say to myself about these thoughts are:
 “You will not explain.
 Instead you will understand.
 Medical Science explains.”

Value

Blog date: 5/21/2018     Journal Entry: 5/6/2005

For reasons that I may never understand, my college studies were cut short by "mental issues". So I missed out on the succesful career in science or engineering.
 So for a long time now I have been trying to create something, some body of work, that is valued.
 But what is this “value”? I am finally coming to believe that a person’s value is not dependent on whether or not they have been a success. I have value even if I am a “failure”, or a “loser”.
 And I would even ask further, “value to whom”?
 Am I of value to the Spirit of Existence? I have long since come to believe that we are all of infinite value to Spirit. Why? Because the Spirit creates this warm bright moist green planet out of the eternal cold and wishes to participate in its richness – and the only way It can do so is to give Itself form as us. So Spirit creates each one of us so that It can interpret the Earth, so that It can experience Time.
 Am I of value to others? This is the one that I have been most concerned about, and lately the one that I am beginning to care the least about.
 So there is only one person whose approval I have really been seeking all my life.
 Maybe, sometime before I die, I will finally believe that I am valueable to myself.

The Six Powers

Blog date: 5/15/2018    Journal Entry: 4/1/2005

At the time I had just been listening to "Black Elk's Vision"- an audiotape. The narrator is describing the "6 Powers" in the Lakota Indian Tribe tradition. I have always found it relaxing to hear someone talk about simple beliefs like this, on the the part of people who used to see more magic in the earth than we ever will in our modern society.
 So may the Six Powers guide you.

Father Sky (mak-pia-ha-te)
 Mother Earth (e-na-ma-ka)
   And the Four Directions (ta-te-to-pa):
 The West Power (we-ok-pay-ata) – The source of rain but also storms. Source of the Spirits (from the darkness when the sun goes down). The color black.
 The East Power (we-ok-hay-ya-pa-ta) – The source of peace, knowledge from the red dawn. The color red.
 The North Power (wa-zay-ya-ta) – The source of cleanliness, truth, strength, and rest. The color white.
 The South Power (ato-ka-ga). – The source of medicine from roots, stems, herbs, and fruits. Father sky and mother earth come into communion and the plants grow. The color green.
 This is the way the Great Spirit (Wo-ka-ta-ka) intended it to be.

(It might be noted that other references give different colors for these directions.)

The Oregon Move

Blog date: 4/11/2018    Journal Entry: 3/5/2011

(Background: After many years of drooling over the Pacific Northwest, I was finally offered a position in the Hillsboro, Oregon headquarters of the company I was working for. We were living in Garland, Texas at the time, and this represented the achievement of a 40-year dream.)

 We invited our kids over today for lunch and dinner, so that we could tell them since the events are now more “firmed up” (i.e. more believable to us of incomplete faith).
 I pulled out our four big DeLorme state maps.
“You can always tell where we are wanting to go by the collection of DeLorma topo maps. Here’s Arkansas. Here’s Washington. And here’s Maine. Remember Maine, an early heartthrob.
 And here’s Oregon.” I held the map up for them to see.
 “So now it’s Oregon, eh, dad.”
 I felt a shiver go through me as I replied:
 “Well, this time it’s different.”
 After some jaws dropped for a bit, my oldest daughter said “I knew there was some reason you invited us over!” A bit later I was talking about our recent trip - the last one - to the Sacred Place (a state park in Oklahoma). “What a memorable and emotional trip this was." I told them. "There were no people – we had it to ourselves. You remember that place we drove to over the rough road, hoping each time that when we reached the peninsula, there would be no cars already there. That's where we were, by ourselves.
 Suzie asked me if I wanted to say a prayer. For a while I couldn’t do it.. . ."
 That’s about all I got out with a normal voice.
 At that point I had to leave the room and walk into the kitchen, ostensibly to fiddle with some dishes.
 Well, that tipped my two daughters over the edge. As I left the room I could see that their vision failed, too.

 On a humorous note, I made note of some things that went on while prepping our house for show:
 Cleaning the bathroom walls: "How do all those white spots get on the wall?" I imagined myself asking my wife in mock irritation, “Whaddya brush your teeth facing the door or something?”
 I think “Wait. I’ve got an idea.
 Colored toothpaste!
 You could get it in colors to match your walls.
 I can retire on this one.”

 My wife said that she had read somewhere that you should “Make it look fun”, referring to staging the house.
 “Make it look fun”, I thought. Well that’s easy. We’ll just put a box of condoms in each bedroom.

 My wife and daughter shopped most of the day looking for staging props for the two bathrooms. We had put up the shower curtain and towel in one bathroom. “You like my towel?” she asked.
 “Sure”
 “It cost $50”
 “$50?!? For $50 you can stage your ass right on out of here”
 That brought a laugh.

 “You want to know what moving is? it’s fixing all the s_ _ _ that you have put up with all these years so the house will look good, and so that someone else won't have to put up with it.
 The crack between the front sidewalk and the garage.
 The scratched bathtub.
 The shower faucet that is hard to pull.
 The mildew in the corner below the washer water outlets where they leaked a long time ago."

The Toll Tag Experience

Blog date: 4/7/2018    Journal Entry: 2/16/2005

After years of fumbling for change to toss in the toll booth, I finally decided to make the move from the Rotary Phone of tollway driving to the Touchtone Phone – I ordered an RFID tolltag.
 So there I was, the first morning, approaching the toll booth with my new beacon freshly installed on my windshield. I had just noticed that the classical music station was playing a lively piece of music – Stravinsky’s Rite of Spring I believe.
 I coasted toward the funneled opening with the music stirring to its climax, feeling distinctly odd because I had no money ready to satisfy the official requirement. There was even a slight panic in the pit of my stomach because I was about to pass right by the coin basket with my window closed, the red light glaring right at me, the radio cranked up with Stravinsky’s music at its peak.
 I looked over at the attendent watching me from the adjacent booth. Was I not going to stop and pay? Was this really going to work?
 I waved.
 Bink. The light turns green.
 Blat. The trumphets and kettle drums are at their finest.
 In slo-mo, I slide past the empty coin basket and brightly-lit passageway, into the early morning darkness beyond.

The Crickets

Blog date: 3/27/2018    Journal Entry: 9/17/2004

When I arrived to the company parking lot in the early morning darkness, I turned off the engine and rolled down my window. Although I was vaguely aware of the sounds in the past, this morning the insect noises impressed themselves on my consciousness.
 Chirp, chirp, chirp, chirp, chirp, chirp, chirp.
 It was the steady beat of the crickets (or cicadas), quite loud despite the equipment humming and groaning, and the car tires fanning the pavement on the nearby highway. I found myself wondering how the insects managed to make this sound in unison, apparently all night long. I imagined asking some scientist how this could be. “How do they do this, as if they were synchronized?" But immediately I wanted to retract my question. “No. maybe I don’t want the scientific explanation, compelling though it may be. I’ll settle for another type of understanding.”
 “Life, in its simplest organisms just wants to sing. It’s just part of life’s natural exuberance. It’s the same with the birds; they’re always singing (I suppose I would be singing too if I could fly). And on a windy day Life wants to dance too; watch the trees sway in the moving air, their arms outstretched and embracing the flow. The grasses join in too, forming liquid, undulating seas.
 We, on the other hand, inured of all our activities and strivings, have forgotten how.”

Imagined Conversation: "Well, why are we here?"

Blog date: 3/15//2018    Journal Entry: 3/8/2005

My imagined response:
 “I suppose that the older I get, the less an answer I have for that one. There is no theory that can supply a satisfactory explanation of life.
 Behaviorism is not it.
 How about Freud or Jung’s ideas? Nope.
 Any philosophy? Not found here either.
 Maybe the closest anybody has come to an “answer” is the Budda, who said “I don't have any answers. You do. Don’t be listening to any authority or religion, including me.”
 My own journal entry, written after some years of searching for the "cure" for "mental problems" was: There are no answers and it is asking questions that is the problem.
 Perhaps it would be well to go out by the lake in the morning with the mist floating over the stainless steel waters and the clouds airbrushed to a bright orange iridescence, and just listen to the great universal ‘DUH’.”

The Birds and I

Blog date: 7/12/2004    Journal Entry: 3/9/2018

I am standing in my neighborhood listening to the usual noise, barking dogs, distant lawn mowers, and the occasional under-muffled truck. Up in the trees was a bird chirping.
 I looked at the bird and said “Stupid bird. You can fly. Why are you here in this noisy neighborhood? If I were you, I would have long since flown to the countryside. Maybe that park in Southeastern Oklahoma. No, maybe even to the Washington coast.”
 On the other hand, there I was, dissatisfied with the place where I was living and wanting so much to be able to move to a quiet place by a stream or by the ocean, and there was that bird, up in the tree singing in pure delight.
 So who’s the stupid one? Me or the bird up in the tree singing?

(During meditation) What are the Real Questions?

Blog date: 2/21/2018    Journal Entry: 12/4/1998

What are the real Questions?
 One is “Who is the Spirit of Existence?” That’s a tough one, and always has been. And the I AM WHO AM business doesn’t really do much for the human imagination.
 So how about “Where is the Spirit of Existence?” In Earth? In Air? Everywhere? Well the answer to that one is a place, and we all know that Spirit is placeless.
 So if life is too mysterious for answers, then perhaps our search should be for something other than questions. . .
 Maybe we should pay attention to the Buddha.

Prayer, Time, and Spirit

Blog date: 2/6/2018    Journal Entry: 3/28/1997 and 3/9/2001

It occurred to me (during meditation) that I was experiencing a morning of calm. My back soreness was gone, and I was in a state of peace. I had asked for calm and received it. This is the usual protocol of our dealings with Spirit. We ask for something and then there is the expectation of receiving it at some future time.
 So it's the time business. We are Beings-in-Time. We arise, have breakfast, go to work, call someone and make a request, and then later the person responds. All of these things take time.
 Yet in prayer we are dealing with a Being-Not-in-Time. We recall the saying "Put yourself in another person’s shoes”. Spirit is not in time. There is no before and after for the Timeless One. We often thank Spirit for something we received in the past, and yet in a sense it seems just as appropriate to thank Spirit for something in the future.
 So we thank the Universe instead of making requests to It. Why? Because we have been given all the things we were given from time immemorial. We have a disease and then we have remission from the disease.
 But the remission was granted billions of years ago...

No Big Signs

Blog date: 2/2/2018     Journal Entry: 2/12/2011

We keep looking for "big" signs from the Great Spirit, the Sovereign of the Universe.
 In an earlier journal entry, I describe what I call the "return to life" after a period of profound absence of feeling.

(9/1972): There is no experience - no experience - more wild than to participate in the life of the world around you with all of the feeling that you see others participate in it. If you feel something and say what you feel, and say all the words that you feel and omit not one, then you are alive. Where life is there is speech, and the words are one with the life.
There is no more absurdity if you have lived the deepest absurdity - if you have died - for every event thereafter, every event, has meaning.
The whole business is a gift, and if it is, there must be a Giver of gifts.

So we do have some signs of the existence of some sort of Formless One, some Spirit who created and is creating Life. There just aren’t any “big” signs.
 Sometimes we imagine ourselves wanting to say “Could you give us just one ‘proof’? Throw us a Belief Bone, Spirit Guy. Take a cue from Hollywood. Watch some of our movies. You’ll get the idea.
 OK. so You have already gotten the Idea, but You know what I mean.”
 And the imagined answer might be:
 “Now you know that’s not going to happen. That’s what Life is all about. Hello. That’s why it’s called ‘Belief’”
 “Oh, right.”

In a subsequent journal entry (2/23/2011):
 Maybe it's because Spirit - the Great Oneness - can't Communicate.
 From the Brihad Upanishad: “He who is One speaks without speaking, for there is nothing separate from him, hears without hearing, for there is nothing separate from him, sees without seeing, for there is nothing separate from him. . .
 . . .Where there is separateness, one speaks to another, hears another, sees another. . .”
 So is this the reason there are no “obvious” signs?
 We keep wanting the Great Spirit to give us signs. “Show us some proof, Spirit. Throw us a Belief bone or something.” (We overlook all the miracles that happen all around us – the plant arising out of a tiny pot of soil which could not possibly hold all that raw material, the leaves of a fern unfolding out of a circular coil that can’t possibly hold all that mass.)
 We want a “Hollywood sign”. “Come on, Spirit, if Industrial Light and Magic can do it, You certainly could."
 But perhaps Spirit is stuck with that Oneness problem. The Great Oneness can’t communicate to others, because there are no “others” to communicate with – no separateness.
 Perhaps the reason Spirit can’t give us a sign is that we ourselves are the sign.

Of Fires and Time

Blog date: 1/16/2018     Journal Entry: 2/25/2011

(This came to me during our last trip to Beaver's Bend, the Oklahome state park. We were about to leave the Dallas, Texas area and move to Oregon.)
 I had been warming myself by my small campfire for some time that morning, fiddling with twigs, breaking small branches on my knee, scrounging around for some more small tinder, fanning the fire to keep it from checking out on me.
 It occurred to me to reflect that fires are not automatic – they are not like a thermostatically controlled heater that can be set with the twirl of a knob and then forgotten. Thermostats are a modern contrivance, one of many that allow us to easily adjust our environment so that we can pursue our other tasks.
 No, fires prompt us to sit down and simply observe time itself, rather than have time be a forgotten background process while we are busy with our projects.
 Observe time itself? How so?
 I am talking about the time that is nothing but the forward progression of events.
 The logs slowly melt to soft white ashes.
 The fish breaks the surface of the water in the distance, seeking its meal for the day.
 The clouds slide past, marking the end of an atmospheric system and the beginning of the next.
 The plane droning in the distance makes its way from its departure to its destination.
 We never get to savor time as simply the forward movement of events because we are always trying to stuff events into an arbitrary slice of time.

Driving to Beaver's Bend

Blog date: 1/11/2018    Journal Entry: 1994 and 1997

(While living in Dallas, Texas, our family took many memorable trips to an Oklahome State Park called "Beaver's Bend". Here are some reveries that came to mind while driving along the country roads to the park.)
 10/29/1994:
  We drive at sunset through the countryside. The trees and the grasses are brilliantly lit by the setting sun. The plants and trees grow quietly and slowly. They await the change of seasons just as other plants and trees have here for thousands of years. Existence shows the infinite patience of its Creator.
 For one who is out of Time, the whole thing is just a blink, I suppose.
 Our passage through the fields is not noticed. We are just noise in the quiet modulation and rhythms of existence.
 Are our lives that way too?
 The loveliest time of the day is at its beginning and its end. Why is that? Are we that way as well?
 It is said that the prettiest fall colors occur when it has been dry. When the trees are satiated with plenty of water through the summer, they do not produce the best colors of the fall. Also, it is said that pine trees produce more pine cones when they are stressed. Is it true that some of the brightest and most lively of things are produced when life is under stress?
 And yet the quartz is produced by quiet, patient sifting...

7/14/1997:
 The mist rises out of the ground, as if the Spirit of Earth was sifting itself through the grains of the soil, to be seen perhaps only by those whose eyes see magic. The Earth and the Spirit of Earth have been doing these kind of things for time utterly beyond our comprehension of time. Earth presents itself for us to view during our brief blink of existence.
 We see these things and take them in; we internalize them, and in so doing become Earth.

Believing in the Visit

Blog date: 1/4/2018     Journal Entry: 12/12/2009

A recent (2009) National Geographic article “Are We Alone” describes the increasing possibility of other Earths – other planets that could sustain life. “More than 370 planets outside our solar system have already been discovered…. our Milky Way gleams with more than 100 billion stars – and billions of those are likely to possess planetary systems of their own.”
 So the first – and logical – reaction is to wonder “Was there a Christmas on each of these? Did Spirit become incarnate at some time on these countless planets during some period of their evolution? How can this be?”
 Reason prompts us to disbelieve.
 But then we get a prod from the Other Side, saying “Well but this is, after all, Spirit – the Timeless and Spaceless One. This is the same Spirit whose consciousness dreams about all those stars and created, no – is creating – them. So maybe all those other bright green rocks with their sensuous waters have – in their time – evolved to the point where they needed a Sign, and were blessed with a symbolic Incarnation.
 It’s sort of like the Santa Claus business.
 “Do you believe in Santa Claus?”
 “No. Of course not, silly. I mean get real. How can one being bring gifts to 1 billion children in 24 hours? That’s 1 microsecond or less per house.”
 And yet each of us did believe in Santa Claus before we learned how to reason.

Christmas Prayers

Blog date: 12/18/2017     Journal Entry: 12/25/2008

Thank You, Spirit, for your visit - and how did You experience time while you were here?
 Thank You for having visited us and having participated in our time and space on this bright green planet you created, and thank you for your incarnation at the time you visited us.
 And yet if we say You are the Timeless Formless One, then perhaps our words should not be 'You experienced time in the past', but that 'You are experiencing time right now',
We should not say 'this is planet you created', but that 'this is the planet you are creating',
And not that 'You experienced incarnation at the time You visited us' but instead that 'we are the incarnation'.
 Each of us, then, is Christmas.

Rain, Air, Clouds, and Words

Blog date: 12/6/2017    Journal Entry: 9/1980

It has just rained heavily, and the air is opulent with rich moisture and the heady fragrance of damp grass. The air seems renewed - having caressed the Earth and the trees with its gift of life-giving water - and now is free to clear off after several days of cloudiness.
 But did the rain come only because of the air - or was it because the earth demanded the rain; all the plants and trees and insects and animals, and we who live in parched climates, desired the rain - insisting that the air bring the water. Are not the earth and the air one?
 Or is the air perhaps part of the ocean? Go down to the seashore and hear the roar of the waves and then go up into the mountains and hear the roar of the wind - they are the same sound. The air brings the water up to the landlocked land and all its inhabitants who have moved too far away from the sea.
 So the air is alive then, and the clouds are the air’s breath.
 What are the clouds if they are not the air breathing into the sky?

 Do we who sense the Life speak these words, or are they demanded of us, like the earth demands the rain? Existence is alive, and it draws the words out and demands that they be said...

The Seasons, Earth, Air, and the Tree

Blog date: 12/1/2017    Journal Entry: 3/1975

There are not 4 seasons. There are only 2: the season of the Earth and the season of the Air.
 The season of Earth is Spring and Summer. During this time the Earth is predominant. It is alive and you can hear its riotous life out in the fields - the raucous insect party buzz.
 During the season of Air, the air is alive, blowing cold over the land, sometimes covering it with a soft white blanket - as if in apology. Air is the quiet season.
 Air, during its season, removes the leaves from the trees and gently gives them to Earth, later to become its food. During the season of Earth, the leaves on the trees give the air the gases it needs.
 So the mediator between Earth and Air, then, is the Tree.
 And in the Winter you can see the trees for what they are - blood vessels of the air.
 We are of Earth and Air. The part of us that is of the air thinks, dreams, and occasionally soars. But the part of us that is of the earth understands...

Wind over the Water and in the Trees

Blog date: 12/1/2017    Journal Entry: 1/5/1975

The wind wanders over the earth and meets the water and sifts itself through the trees in its travels. There are no strangers to the wind - all are its friends.
 The wind spins the water and weaves the leaves, and both the sea and the leaves reply to the wind in the same language, so that the wind over the waves and the wind in the trees is the same sound.
 He who hears the wind know this. He who walks in the forest hears the sea, and he who stands on the shores of seas hears the leaves in the trees. For he is no stranger to either, having memories from earlier lives in the water and in the forests.

The "Teepee Dreams" tea and the music

Blog date: 11/20/2017    Journal Entry: 11/23/2008

(Author's Note: "Teepee Dreams" tea was available back then, and contained chamomile, valerian, and other calming herbs. It was similiar to Celestial Seasonings "Sleepytime Extra". Update, 4/2018: It's still available! You can order it from "Native American Herbal Tea Company".)
 I am sitting in my chair listening to Deuter’s exquisite music just before going to bed. But there is a nagging desire for some “Teepee Dreams” tea, which put me in a trance the night before.
 “Don’t want to become dependent on it”, I said to myself.
 “I’m just about ready go to bed”.
 But the cells are insistent. They demand the tea – “No” won’t do for an answer – for they apparently wish to float again, to have another waking dream.
 So I go brew a mug of the tea and sit back down to take in the tea and the music. The music drips from the ceiling in little tinkling drops that are felt as well as heard. I am reminded of T.S. Eliot’s words, “You are the music while the music lasts”.
 Surely I am sitting not in my chair but by the shore of a quiet winter lake and each note from the various instruments is as a wave lapping on the shore, each wave a word spoken by a vastly articulate existence. The cells float out over the waves and into the sky toward the stars, where they mingle with the Quiet One.

More floating (this time after a Michelob “Bourbon Cask” beer)

Blog date: 11/20/2017    Journal Entry: 12/13/2008

Time stops while the music is playing.
 There was time before the music, with the passing of events – I heated dinner, ate the dinner, put up the dishes, got my beer and turned on the computer. All these events can only go in one direction – I can’t unwash the dishes or reconstitute the food in its original form (it is already becoming “me”), and it is this forward direction that is time. The quiet ticking of the bedroom clock only goes along for the ride.
 But as I sit in the chair, and as the music drips from the ceiling and dissolves the day’s thoughts and concerns – time-related concerns about what was done and what will be done – the shoulders drop, the cells float again and I become the music, and the clock stops ticking.
 So there was the time before the music and there was the time after the music, but while the music plays, time stops.

Little contacts

Blog date: 11/16/2017    Journal Entry: 11/10/2017

I was waiting outside of the dressing room (while my wife was trying on clothes). The saleslady, who I would guess to be in her 50s, passed by me, saying “I remember you two from other visits”. She touched my arm with two outstretched fingers - just a simple little contact as she glided by - and I caught a glimpse of her slender fingers with tendons stretched under soft flesh.
 Perhaps the background music playing was quiet for once, and I found myself deeply moved by this simple act, gently imagining how the bare bones of the hand would look after the passage of time and flesh. Old men do this, sometimes, being a bit more aware of mortality and time's passage.
 My vision failed a bit as the force of the thoughts continued to move me. “You should take note of all those little touches, boy”, I sermonized to myself. “They should be acknowledged, if only in a small way, for this is how we give Life to each other during our days on Earth.” (Usually, if I have enough warning, I will clasp my hand over the hand which touches me – flesh upon flesh – but the saleslady crossed me up – she was too quick for me.)
 The words continued: “This is how we support each other, one Compassion touching the other Compassion, and these are the things that somehow abide, drifting over the Earth and among the stars, beyond the time of the flesh on the bones.”

It is the spirit that quickens   John 6:63

Ernest Holmes Daily Meditation Book For years, I have used Ernest Holmes' Daily Meditation Book (my dog-eared copy shown on left). It's titled "365 Science of Mind", and the writings inside it have inspired many of my journal entries throughout the years. Indeed, there will be many quotes from it scattered throughout this page of excerpts from those journals.  Ernest Holmes is the founder of Science of Mind, and his writings show an uncanny intuition about Life, Spirituality, and our relationship to the Universe.  Why "Science of Mind"? The term comes from Thomas Troward and Emerson, who taught that when we make an affirmation (for health, supply, success, and the like), our word is invoking a Universal Law which will - indeed must - respond to our word, spoken as it is with the authority we have as participants in the Universal Consciousness  A link to purchase the latest copy is on the right, if you are interested. And doing so helps support the Wracklineblog.

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