Kung Fu Chicken
It’s the weekend, and nobody’s reading this anyway, so here’s a fun commercial that had me rolling for a long time when it first came out. I love the last line… “Oowaaaaaaahhh.”
Junk
This is my “junk post”. I don’t know if it happens this way with the rest of you regular bloggers, but starting Fridays, the views, or the number of visits jumps off a cliff. Since hardly anyone’s gonna read this… oh what the hell? I don’t write as if I have a huge audience anyway. As a matter of fact, up until November 26th, 2007 all my writing had been to myself in the form of journaling.
I don’t know if I still have it or not, but the first journal I ever kept was inspired by my 7th grade English teacher. Inspired may not be the right word because it was a mandatory assignment. Anyway, Ms. Parker (who, oddly enough, became my wife’s English teacher about 10 years later on the complete opposite side of town) made us keep a journal in those composition notebooks (which, oddly enough, are manufactured at the company I’ve worked for since July). I don’t remember what we were to journal about, but after her class was finished I kept it up.
Journaling (notice I’m not calling it a diary – sissy stuff) was something I found to be very therapeutic. I joined the Navy right after high school, and I was thrust into an environment where I knew nobody and the only ones who were talking weren’t really talking. They were our drill sergeants (Navy calls them company commanders, or CC’s, but you guys wouldn’t have a clue what I meant unless you’d been in the Naval boot camp), and they were LOUD and very, very MEAN! We had two of them. One, a Chief, was on his way out of boot camp duty. This was his last company. The other, a Boatswain’s Mate 1st class, was just starting. We were his first go-round. Can you imagine how that went? Simply? The guy on the way out (Chief) was training the guy on the way in (Boats). So Chief had to really show Boats the ropes, and we paid severely for it. They had this thing called mashing, where, as punishment for some vile crimes such as starting a march off on the wrong foot, or looking down at your feet at attention, the CC would say, “DROP”, and we’d all hit the deck in the push-up position. What happened next was called getting mashed.
These guys invented all sorts of cruel calisthenics with which to violently, and inhumanely painfully punish our bodies. ”Down an inch” was one of my favorites. In the push-up position, back straight and level with the deck, up on your toes, elbows locked so the arms are forcing your shoulders into the air, and our dog tags hanging outside our shirts, the CC would say gently, “Down an inch!” That’s what we did… went down one inch. About oh, I don’t know, a minute or so later came the next command, “Down an inch!” We’d do this until our dog tags touched the ground, then laid flat on their sides. Once that happened, the commands changed a bit; “Up and inch!” Sounds easy, huh? This went on forever!
Another one they liked was called “watching TV”. Similar position to the push up, but instead of supporting your upper body with outstretched arms, you put your elbows on the tile floor and cup your head in your hands. See why it’s called “watching TV”? The only thing touching the ground was our toes and elbows. Then, that little pain in the ass Boatswains’ Mate would say, “I don’t like what’s on. Let’s change the channel.” Whatcha think happened next? We leaned on to one elbow, then reached our now free hand out in space in front of us and pretended to change the channels on an imaginary TV. If Boats didn’t like the channel we selected, we had to keep changing it. It SUCKED!
There are probably dozens more of these wicked exercises I could tell you about. I won’t. It was NOT fun at all, and I wondered why I didn’t just go ahead and sign up for Seal training instead. Anyway, the point is that the Navy was sometimes isolating and very cruel. I’d developed some fast and close friends, brothers even, during those times, but none ever as close as my real brother who was thousands of miles away. Nobody to really talk to. So I wrote. Writing let me get it off my chest, so to speak, and I didn’t have to justify what I was writing, or edit it for political correctness. I’d written some fairly harsh stuff about my experiences. One rant in particular found its way to my boss’s boss, who decided to interrogate me about it. The rant was about HIM too! That was uncomfortable, and I didn’t write much after that until the divorce.
I wrote a damned book during that 3 plus year ordeal. We had a 2-year-old daughter at the beginning of it, which made things incredibly painful for me. ”Incredibly painful” does not even begin to describe it either. I had nobody to talk to, and writing was unbelievably therapeutic for me. That period of my life was really the most extended and ungodly painful – up to and since. I did a lot of my spiritual searching during those 3 years and was able to discard a lot of my religion as a result. So, from that perspective it was worth it. As painful as it was, it was necessary, and it was exactly what I needed. Sooooo glad I went through it because it’s because of that crap that I am now who I am. I have a beautiful life now, a life that would not have happened otherwise. I’m very thankful for the pain.
After the divorce was final I stopped writing for the most part. I wrote in that divorce journal every once in a while, but just out of a feeling of needing to bring things up to date. I haven’t written in it since before I met my amazing wife Kelly. I never felt the need.
A discussion with my good friend BJ about what we were going to do after we finally got laid off led to me starting this blog on November 26th, 2007. I’m glad I did. I’m glad I have that good friend. I’m glad I have this life, its ups and downs, the pain, the pleasure… all of it. I love it!
Wu Li, and… It’s Our Anniversary
A rational mind, based on the impressions that it receives from its limited perspective, forms structures which thereafter determine what it further will and will not accept freely. From that point on, regardless of how the real world actually operates, this rational mind, following its self-imposed rules, tries to superimpose on the real world its own version of what must be.
This continues until at long last a beginner’s mind cries out, “This is not right. What ‘must be’ is not happening. I have tried and tried to discover why this is so. I have stretched my imagination to the limit to preserve my belief in what ‘must be.’ The breaking point has come. Now I have no choice but to admit that the ‘must’ I have believed in does not come from the real world, but from my own head.”
What kind of book do you think that came from? Spirituality? Buddhism? Advaita? Nonduality? Close, but not quite. I’m re-reading Dancing Wu Li Masters: An Overview of the New Physics
It’s true. Everything we have believed (and in some cases, like mine, continue to believe) is not based on reality. What we believe is based on our thoughts about the interpretation of reality; a reality that we will never, ever know first-hand. Everything we know and sense is nothing but here say. Think about that. You live in your mind after all, don’t you?
(Our 4 year anniversary is today. 4 years ago, around 4 o’clock pm, I pledged my love and devotion for as long as I live to my beautiful wife, Kelly. I’m as happy a man as you will ever meet in your life because of that pledge. Everyone should be so lucky as to find a companion to share this incredible journey with, and to share in the everlasting creation of this beautiful life.)
Pulling Right Along
There’s been a gentle tugging throughout my life. Many of you that have been with me (reading da blog) for a while should already know that this tugging is there. It never tugs more than a little, but my mind takes a hold of it, latches on to the tugging sensation, and just goes ape shit sometimes. The tug? Plainly put, it’s a constant pull towards a “knowing”, for lack of a better description.
I was a Christian for a very long time. I’d heard it forever – “Let Jesus into your heart. Just ask Him to enter your heart. You can have a personal relationship with the Lord Jesus Christ.” I believed it, too. I really wanted to feel God in a very powerful way. I wanted to know God! And, as it turned out, God came in the form of Jesus in the religion I was raised under. Fine with me… God, Jesus, Holy Spirit; however that whole triumvirate of God was supposed to work, I figured if they’re all the same guy, then one would do just as well as the other. Why not Jesus? So I prayed, asked forgiveness for the sins I’d committed, then asked Him to come into my heart. I felt much better afterward, like my whole outlook on life had changed. I was a child of God.
After a while it started waning. I loved going to Church because that’s where all my friends were. Girlfriends, too! We were there practically every time the doors opened, and it was cool with me. We sang, had a Boy Scout troop, did the youth camp thing, which was wonderful, and just had a great time. At some point, though, the tugging started. The relationships and fun and games at Church were not enough. There was some kind of a void that needed to be filled. I knew what it was… God! I wanted to know God. Like shake-his-hand-and-have-a-long-conversation-with-Him knowing. It never happened, and it became frustrating. These preachers would say things in Church like, “God said to me…”, or “I was walking, when I heard the voice of God.” That was cool! That’s what I wanted. If God talks to these guys, I figured I could get some of that too. It wasn’t happening though. I decided to talk to some of these preachers about it, and all I ever got out of those conversations was that it wasn’t a literal conversation, but that “still, small voice inside your head.” Oh, I’d been fed a line of bologna (say baloney).
So what did I do? Ignore them! OK, so maybe God doesn’t really talk to them, but He’s out there somewhere. Maybe I won’t be able to talk to Him either, but surely I can experience Him. That’s been the pull ever since. The desire to experience God. Now, admittedly, my views about God have changed drastically, to say the least, since the early days, but the essence of what I’m going for is still there. Call it God, the Truth, Ultimate Reality, Self, Oneness, Nonduality, Moksha, Satori, whatever, there apparently are some of us who have experienced that, so it means that I can too. The problem is that getting one of these Clowns to come back down to your level to ’splain how it works is a bit difficult. There are some who give it a good go, but it seems as if their perspectives have shifted to a point where it’s silly to explain what was never not there to begin with. And how do I know these Clowns “got it” anyway? I don’t. I just have to take their word for it, and stay away from those who are trying to sell me something.
Reading Sri Ramakrishna yesterday (never heard of him before yesterday either), I came across a couple quotes that I thought were worth writing down. Here are a few (and these are for me, ya know?):
“One should not reason too much. Too much reasoning throws the mind into confusion.”
“If there are no desires, the mind naturally looks up toward God.”
“He who from the depth of his soul seeks to know God will certainly realize him. He must. He alone who is restless for God and seeks nothing but Him will certainly realize Him.”
“God cannot be known by reasoning. By faith alone does one attain everything – knowledge and super-knowledge. By faith alone can one see God and become intimate with Him.”
There ya go! In my face, huh?
Pondering Oneness Again
This oneness thing must be a perspective-specific anomaly. If you can back up enough, you can start to see how it makes some sense.
Take the intestines for example. In the intestines reside many bacteria (lactobacilla, eubacteria, clostridium, bacteroides and the spifida bacteria for example) – I don’t know this because I’m a gastroenterologist… I just looked it up. These bacteria do us a huge favor, you know. Without them we wouldn’t be able to process certain starches and complex carbohydrates and so on. ”We” wouldn’t live very long without them, and if they get out of balance the other way (too many), it causes other problems that threaten our survival. Yet we do them a huge favor too. We eat, they eat, they live, we live. Mutually beneficial operation goin’ on down there. Can we say that these bacteria are not “us”? If we take ourselves to be our bodies, then we must include them in that definition, right? Remember, without them our bodies don’t really work too well.
What about from the bacteria’s perspective? One little bacterium, sitting in a pitch-black, zero oxygen environment, making methane (you know… that smell) as it devours the leftovers from lunch. Does it know it exists? Is it conscious? Can it think about its predicament? Does it ponder the nature of reality? Who knows? But we, up here in the macrocosm of the body, don’t even know they’re there. If someone were to rip the intestines from your body, you would die. So would our little friends! I think we could safely argue that these little bacteria must be included in our definition of “me” if we still assume we are our bodies.
Back up to another perspective. Earth. Is it conscious? To us it seems like a ridiculous question. If the bacteria are conscious, do you think they ask each other if they think the world they live in is conscious? I guess for argument’s sake it doesn’t matter if the Earth is conscious or not. The point is we are like these little bacteria in our own intestines. The Earth’s job is not to support human beings, although it does that as well. The Earth, just like our intestines are to the bacteria, is a very comfortable environment in which we humans can thrive. We eat from it, and our waste ultimately leads to the production of more stuff to eat. We breathe oxygen from the plants and trees, remove this toxic waste from them, and they, in turn, remove our toxic waste (CO2). Again, like the bacterial-human relationship, it’s mutually beneficial. How perfect!
So from the Earthly perspective, we could say that there is one Earth. It is one, and we are part of it. We are Earth. Right? It doesn’t take much of a mental leap to back all the way out to a universal perspective then. It gets really dizzy looking and thinking about oneness from this perspective. To a point, it’s not very helpful to do either.
I get stuck trying to understand the claims of nonduality when I can sense that I am an individual. That individuality cannot be shaken. Like I’d said in a previous post, I want to believe, but I’m also very pragmatic about it all. It has to make sense to me and be something I can experience directly. That pragmatism and need to know the truth is what’s pulled me out of many of my old beliefs. I find I have very little use for beliefs anymore, but do recognize there are still some I haven’t been able to negate. I live to fight another day.
Bodhisattva On The Subway. Funny!
Don’t feel much like writing about deep things right now. I’m not thinking deeply here lately, not since the meme thing. I saw this video this morning before I came to work, and thought it would be cool to put here. Kind of fits. Imagine how you would react to somebody on the metro, tube, subway that behaved like this. I think I’d get off on the next stop!
The End, The Beginning: A Silent Post
Inspired by an inspired post at http://blogwithoutaname.com/a-silent-post/. Please check out what the others have “said” as well.
Autumn Tree, Single Leaf
Takuin’s post yesterday inspired me to look at some trees just outside my window at work. Read his post, and maybe you’ll understand. I certainly do not, but the beauty of it struck me nonetheless. Thank you, Takuin.
Autumn trees outside my window
Zooming in on something... what's that spec up top?
Atumn tree with a single leaf... Takuin understands this tree completely.
What Did I Have To Do With Any Of This?
What did I have to do with any of this? And where in the world did that sentence just come from?
Kelly and I were giving the boys their baths last night, or maybe it was the night before last, who knows? Anyway, Owen, the newborn was wailing away in his mini-tub, goin’ on about not being able to feed right at that particular moment. I’m sure he didn’t think it was funny, but Kelly and I got a good chuckle about his loud mouth and impatience. She said, “Look what an email did”, pointing to Owen in his naked glory. I said, “Look what the Universe did.” Took it 13.73 billion years, give or take 0.12 billion, to wind its way into being this little human being. Awesome!
Back to that first sentence then (and now I know why it was written – I’m telling you, I just start typing, and the words come… really weird). What did I have to do with any of this? I guess there are two ways of looking at that. Little Owen was sitting in that bathtub, making hell about being naked, wet, and starving, and Kelly made me ponder it all. Can you imagine the innumerable coincidences that had to happen in order for this little life to be here? I’ll just plug in somewhere… watch:
If my mother’s parents could have had children of their own, then they wouldn’t have adopted a baby girl in Miami, Florida who was born to parents who couldn’t take care of her. That little girl would not have moved to Jacksonville, Florida with her adopted parents, and she wouldn’t have grown up next door to her best friend who introduced her to her boyfriend’s Navy buddy (Jacksonville is a Navy town). If this man she was introduced to hadn’t joined the Navy all the way in Placerville, California, he wouldn’t have been in Jacksonville to meet this friend of his buddy’s girlfriend. This man and woman would not have gotten married, nor moved to San Jose, California, to have two little boys, only to divorce a few years later. Had they not divorced, then mom and the two little boys would not have moved back to Jacksonville, Florida to live with their adopted grand/parents. These two little boys wouldn’t have been raised in a church where their adopted grandfather preached at one time, and one of them (me) wouldn’t have met his future wife in the back rows of that church. These two wouldn’t have gotten married, and their marriage wouldn’t have ended as a result of… uh, nevermind that… at nearly the same time that the son’s mother’s long-time friend’s daughters marriage ended (follow that?). The mothers of the hapless, downtrodden, beat up by love, man and woman wouldn’t have thought to introduce them, even though they lived 300 miles apart.
My mother, the adopted baby from Miami, called her son (me) one evening and said she’d been to lunch with one of her best friends and her daughter. She said I should email her; that she had coaxed this young lady into giving up an email address. With nothing to lose, I emailed her. That was 5 years, 9 months ago. We fell in love, and now we have two beautiful boys.
Imagine the chain of events I didn’t go into. Imagine if one thing in the universe didn’t happen exactly the way it did. Owen would not be here. I probably wouldn’t be here. Who knows what all else would be much different from the way it is. So… what do I have to do with any of this? On the surface, everything. Realistically, nothing. Kind of makes it easy to just go with the flow when you can look at it from that perspective.
Not related, but interesting…
My brother killed himself in the home we grew up in sometime in late September, 2006. My mother came home from vacation and found him. Can you imagine? He has two boys also. One, he named after him, the other carries my middle name. We were pregnant with Wyatt when we got the call from mom that he was dead. We’d already picked the name, Wyatt Shane. Wyatt because I made a promise to my dad before he died, and Shane is my middle name. That unborn baby’s name is now Wyatt James… after my brother, 2 years and 6 months old.
We wanted Wyatt to have a brother, and we wanted them to be about 2 and a half years apart so that they would be close like James and I were growing up. Now we have Owen Joshua. Eugene is my brother’s middle name. It’s been passed down at least from as far back as my great-grandfather. James despised the name, so it stopped with him. I had to explain the meaning of the name Owen to a friend of mine in Japan, so I looked it up. Check this out:
- Owen, from the Welsh “Owain”, which comes from the Latin “Eugenius”, which comes from the Greek “Eugenes” (I don’t need to go on , do I?)
- Eugene, from the Latin “Eugenius”, which comes from the Greek “Eugenes”, meaning well-born… noble
Looks like Eugene survived after all. What did I have to do with any of this? Amazing… tears running down my cheeks.
Self-Realization & Enlightenment
In all my reading on spiritual matters I thought I understood what enlightenment meant. I’m not so sure anymore.
I’d assumed that “enlightenment” and “self-realization” were one in the same. The questioning technique of Ramana Maharshi and Nisargadatta Maharaj, the “Who am I?” question, seems to tease out the “self-realization” aspect. Having tried this question on for size myself many, many times, I think it would be better to ask “What”, or “Where” am I? ”Who” always results in either the obvious answer of “me”, or, if delved in deeply enough, the scariest answer of all, “I don’t know”. ”I don’t know” screws with you on many levels, and tends to make you shake your head whilst your lips hang loose and slap against opposing cheeks making a sound like whacking a wet turkey with the palm of your hand. Try it if you haven’t already (the question, not whacking a wet turkey). Seriously. Go look for yourself. Ask yourself who you are, then look… really look. It’s so obvious to say that you are your body, but that’s just not true. I’m stuck with being inside my brain somewhere, but I’m working on it. I can’t quite accept the fact that “I” am not in here at all even though I have had that terrifying realization (which I have put under the bed for now). ”What am I?” is a little more forgiving. It allows for there to be a who, but at the same time, gives you an out by allowing the who not to matter. You can be something other than this body with the “what am I?” question.
Either way you go – “who” or “what” – the ultimate answer to the question reveals the “self-realization”. After all the exercises in who or what the hell you are, the ultimate answer is supposed to be that you are this space-like awareness in which all of this happens. Thoughts, sensory inputs, vision, the world, other people, war, coffee, whatever… it’s all happening in and because of that which you truly are. Well, it just so happens that that’s where I’m stuck. I’ll call that point zero, or the starting point. I’ve become very accustomed to the housing I believe myself to be (or be in), and whatever noticing that is supposed to happen that points me to see that I am that space-like awareness is turning out to be an extraordinarily difficult task. And I wonder, if I finally realize my true nature, become self-realized, what then? Is that the end of the road? Is there no further spiritual development? That’s where I begin to wonder if “self-realization” and “enlightenment” are two different things.
Self realization, if I’m right, just means you figure out that you are not what you thought you were all along. I like think there would be an “ah ha” to go along with that realization, but maybe not. Whatever. Now you know that you are not this body, that you are this no-thing that is aware of everything, but can’t be pointed to. Good. What about “enlightenment” then? Is it enough to realize your own true nature? Is that enlightenment, or is enlightenment a further realization that occurs after self-realization?
Alright. Shop’s open. C’mon with the c’mon. Talk to me, Goose!
Said heads...