Monday, October 31, 2005

the map is not the territory

so often i read or hear someone say that something has to be true or false because science or religion or whatever monlithic information system says it is. very often this is valid and true. we can rely on electricity to come out of the wall plug and the sun comes up each morning and the street lights come on at dusk. where this breaks down is in areas where people are struggling with thier versions of reality. there are those who say that they can`t lose weight or that it is difficult to stop smoking because it`s an addiction or that women won`t date them they don`t have this, that or the other thing. these presuppostions become a map that people use to guide themselves through thier lives.
you have used a map before. a street map will allow you to find your way around cities you`ve never visited before. a menu is a map of a reastaurant`s food choices. a telephone directory is a map of the phone numbers of a given region. these guides are reasonably accurate and are useful places to begin to explore new territories, but here`s the thing. new roads and buildings are constructed all the time and this makes an old map redundan,. you can`t eat a menu and people change telephone numbers all the time. what happens when these things occur? we have to exercise flexibility by looking for new information or by replacing the maps with more current ones.
why would this be any different with a map used to run our lives?

Thursday, October 27, 2005

the problem with religion.......

well here it is folks. the problem with religion. it was right under my nose and i never saw it until it was pointed out by a friend of mine who`s cynicism makes mine look like a charming sense of humour.
his point is that religion, and science for that matter, never allows us to remain in the moment. we are constantly being measured against some imaginary standard created by imaginary entities that force us to work toward developing attitudes and outcomes at some point in the future. if we do certain things and become a certain person and by default get certain recognisable things then we will be good enough to be allowed to go to a certain place when we die.
when we die.
not before.
where it actually matters.
so, by default it really doesn`t matter to the religious types what happens to us here as long as we meet some standard that prepares us for the next life in this imaginary place. so we get no instruction about how to actually do the nuts and bolts things that will make us effective people here and now. this minute. and this one.
it`s all to work toward some future outcome.
meanwhile we are still depressed, anxious, uncertain, confused, somewhat scared and not so confident about the future, truth be known.
not a good state for the majority of the population to be in all the time. it`s no wonder we are hostile, agressive, resentful, bitter , whiney, miserable and tired all the time.
but the church keeps telling us that they have the answer as long as we come back next week for an update. the breaking news. the bombshell that will make it all so clear and we won`t feel like shit anymore.
o.k.
staying in the now stops the doubt. there is no doubt about now. it needs no explenation. and there`s another now right now. no doubt about it. the more time we spend here the more opportunity we have to draw our own conclusions about life and what it means to be alive. which is what life is about.
and remembering to give the gift of smiling.

Tuesday, October 25, 2005

do doctors heal?

i was discussing knee surgery with my brother the other day, as he was due to go for a minor arthroscopic surgery to repair the maniscus, or cartilage, in his knee. i have had two similar procedures done to my knee, one of which was a failed reconstruction attempt of the acl of my left knee.
knee surgeries have improved over the years to the point where they are vitually completely successful. the major reason why has been that the procedures are less invasive than they used to be. years ago to do even the most basic exploratory or repair operation meant a major incision and opening of the join it`s self causing major trauma to the join and necessitating months of recovery time. nowadays the tools are so small that even reconstruction can be done through pinhole incisions with little disturbance of the knee capsule allowing for brief recovery times and a better chance recovery.
what i realised in our discussion is that the human body knows how to fix it`s self as long as there isn`t to much damage done by means of surgical procedure. the doctor`s job isn`t so much healing as not damaging.
the human body does the rest. perfectly every time.

Wednesday, October 19, 2005

how to lose weight.

how to lose weight is pretty straight forward. intake less calories than you are using to run your system each day, exercise a bit(move around.) and learn to actively relax by meditation, self-hypnosis or yoga and if you aren`t already drinking two or three pints of water a day start now. choose to do these simple things now and relax knowing that like the beating of your heat and the in and out breathing of your lungs your body will automatically do precisely whats needed to drop unwanted pounds.
how does the word diet make you feel? no kidding. hard work, discomfort bordering on pain and little results. so don`t diet. eat when you are hungry. you can eat an enormous amounts of salad with little effect on your wieght.
and here`s the magic. see yourself thin.
create a fantasy in your mind full of details about what you are wearing and doing and feeling while you are as thin as you want to be. as you remember yourself possibly. see your self looking in the mirror and smiling comfortably about how good you look and how great you feel.
this image and the feelings generated in this simple exercise will draw you magically toward your goal. it has to happen. it`s the way our mind works. there are many other articles on this blog about how our consciousness operates and it would be instructive for you to poke around and see some of the amazing things that we constantly do each day creating our reality with our minds.
your slim reality is only one aspect of the massive potential you have in your mind once you get the idea that you are in the driver`s seat.
the choice is yours. it always has been. now you recognise it. now you can get what you want.

Monday, October 17, 2005

childish or childlike?

whenever we play as children we become free of restraint. the restraint is the adult robot telling us how to behave. when we choose not to be a robot for a while we start making associations in a different way and all of a sudden, hey, things are funny and we relax and laugh and the answers come. and the new questions that we never thought to ask before, or we gave up looking for the answer a long time ago and forgot about it.
childish or childlike?
you decide.

fear.

fear. we are born with a fear of loud noises and a fear of falling. everything else is learned.
we have learned to be afraid of everything but loud noises and falling.
that means everything we are afraid of is created in our heads without direct stimulation. reaction to direct stimulation is isn`t fear. it`s a reaction. the memory of a reaction can become a fear though.
so what do we do about all the fear going on?
look at where we get it from.
t.v. , newspapers, government, unfounded beliefs of others, outright lies meant to manipulate, accidental imprints(rare) and assumptions we make that can become accepted as fact about threats.
once we understand the delivery system for fears then we can begin to edit the process.
stop watching t.v. and reading newspapers.
when someone makes a fear-inducing statement, challenge the statement. this includes government.
avoid outright liars.
how do you tell a liar? accept all statements from a human as factual until they are proven wrong. if a person persists making erroneous statements..........edit them.
the most difficult area of fear delivery is the erronious ideas we use to run our lives. these pre-suppositions can be hard to detect and therefore hardest to change.
watch the language you use to describe your reality. it is obvious in others. some people are positive, others negative. which are you?
editing your own language can be the most effective means of eradicating fear from our lives.
we talk ourselves in and out of our lives.
why choose to nag the shit out of yourself and create rotten outcomes?
just habit. though so.
choose the happy, irrational optimism. i know you will like it. i`m positive.
if your internal nag won`t stop, tell it to shut the fuck up, laugh and choose a positive outcome.
fear can`t survive without willing participants.

Sunday, October 16, 2005

endgaming

we strive to live in the moment when we practive meditation and spiritual developement toward divinity. we are surrounded by challenges that push our consciousness away from the now, into this created state we know as the future. the future contains all the victories and defeats that we create in our minds so that we recognise our future. the power of this process is that we manifest the strongest of these images as real events and objects and people that occur in the the next present moments that we experience.
an example of this that we decide to visit a friend. we see the friend in our mind and where she lives etc. so that we can plan the trip. when wew arrive and ring the bell, if all goes well, we will see her smiling face. simple stuff. so simple that it illudes us as a process for concern.
the same mechanism operates out of worry. we fret about a negative outcome and sure enough we are right.
we cannot process a negative. try to not picture an elephant. you see an elephant. same with an angry boss or a failed business plan or crappy golf swing.
we get what we see.
all of this jumbled uncertainty goes away the more we stay focussed on the moment and minimise the endgaming.
endgaming means discounting the now for for a future gain. it leads to burnout, physically and mentally. it leads to heart attacks, strokes, arguements, fights, lawsuits, gun fights, divorce, and war.
a practice of meditation for a few minutes a day, building comfortably to fifteen minutes or more will allow you to have more strength on the now and you will be able to recognise and switch off the endgame dialog whenever you find yourself going there.

Thursday, October 13, 2005

what is raining?

if you notice rain falling down from the sky and someone asks what is going on, you automatically say"it`s raining". nothing wrong with that except for the ghost we`ve just created with a few words. the ghost becomes evident when we ask what the "it" is in the phrase we just used to describe the weather. IT is raining?, what is IT?. the answer is that we`ve just got used to using this way of decribing things by creating another definite article in a sentance when we didn`t need to. now, can you become a ghost hunter in our language?this creation of layers of things in language lead us to seperating ourselves from all that we are here in this conscious realm. we aren`t born into the world, we are of the world and we are of nature. we aren`t a threat to nature any more than we are a threat to ourselves. if we are a threat to ourselves then we naturally stop being a threat as a matter of survival. if we create a seperation from nature then we can damage it without risk of threat to ourselves.when we realise we are natural and part of all that we see then we become responsible.

Sunday, October 09, 2005

energy.

there is a lot of talk about energy. there are those who have lots of energy. we are told that we are heading for an energy crisis. everything is made of energy. the physicists say energy cannot be created or destroyed merely changed.
what is everybody talking about?
there are so many different discussions relating to energy, from the physical to the material to the spiritual. people talk about working out and eating healthy food so that they will have more energy. why? so they can do more..... o.k. so that`s about work and play.
people talk about energy in terms of non-renewable resourses for cars, factories and heating. that is political. people talk about the power of prayer and the benifits of meditation. spiritual energy.
people talk as if they are seperate from all this energy. it is as if we are born into the world and are not of this world. it is as if we are seperate.
we are of this world precisely because we are made up of energy too. the whole of everything is energy. a swirling mass of something moving about, creating effects that we recognise as life. we live this life believing we are seperate from it and that we have to create energy somewhere by force of will. all the work and working out we do is to create energy? it was there all the time, right inside.
once we recognise that we have this energy in us too, then we can be the resourse that we can use to live our lives......to do anything we want to. instead of waiting to have enough energy, in some magical way that we`re not even sure about, just go and do what we need to do anyway.
if energy can`t be destroyed then what`s to worry about?

Wednesday, October 05, 2005

addictive?

the manufacturers of cigarettes love to have you believe that thier product is addictive. it warms thier hearts to think that you think that it`s impossible to stop consuming thier product.
but what if smoking cigarettes isn`t addictive?
the word addictive makes a person imagine controlling behaviour. to believe one is addicted to anything is to relinquish control to whatever the substance makes us do. pretty disempowering.
no wonder cigarette companies love the mere thought of the word and they`re going to allow the word to be used as often as possible.
so part of stopping smoking is to stop using the word.
what does an addicted person do?
we have a general idea of how an addicted person behaves. they will do anything to get what they`re addicted to. the will spend thier money. they will lie, steal and cheat. they will destroy friendships. they will risk life and limb to get what they need. generally these people are doing serious drugs or are gambling to behave that way. these people are addicted and are likely to cause themselves serious harm quickly as a result.
if nicotene, the chemical in cigarettes that smokers respond to, was addictive then there would be people that would be lying in ditches covered in nicotene patches.
thats not what happens.
i`ll discuss more about what does happen in the next post.

Sunday, October 02, 2005

responsible cigarette manufacturers.

i have a proposition for cigarette manufacturers. even though they are selling a lethal product they have the law on thier side. they make and sell a legal product. they have been selling cigarettes to people since they were in thier early teens and new smokers are starting every day. the market is enormous and perpetual.
what i propose is that cigarette manufacturers put together a fund so that when one of thier loyal clients decides that they need to stop smoking they can get thier treatment paid for. this would be seen by the community as a good will gesture on the part of the manufacturers, and those who want to stop can do so without incurring the cost of the many therapies available.
it would be the beginning of more active awareness of the dangers of smoking. it would help people feel as if they have true choice in stopping.
if the cigarette manufacturers refuse to involve themselves in such a project then they would suffer the embarrasment of being seen to refuse to provide this service, which would be a fraction of the profit made off the people seeking the help.
what do you think.