Meditation

(via IvaShiva)

Uneven

"We do not grow absolutely, chronologically. We grow sometimes in one dimension and not another…unevenly. We grow partially. We are relative. We mature in one realm, childish in another. The past, present and future mingle and pull us backward, forward or fix us in the present. We are made up of layers, cells, constellations.“ -Anais Nin (via JulesOfNature)

Gilded Cages

The article below was copied from R World, who found it on The Huffington Post:

Everything that follows is a quote from Johann Hari writing about research by Bruce Alexander, a professor of psychology at Simon Fraser University in Vancouver, BC.  I don't feel the need to elaborate.

Get a rat and put it in a cage and give it two water bottles. One is just water, and one is water laced with either heroin or cocaine. If you do that, the rat will almost always prefer the drugged water and almost always kill itself very quickly, right, within a couple of weeks. So there you go. It’s our theory of addiction.Bruce comes along in the ‘70s and said, “Well, hang on a minute. We’re putting the rat in an empty cage. It’s got nothing to do. Let’s try this a little bit differently.” So Bruce built Rat Park, and Rat Park is like heaven for rats. Everything your rat about town could want, it’s got in Rat Park. It’s got lovely food. It’s got sex. It’s got loads of other rats to be friends with. It’s got loads of colored balls. Everything your rat could want. And they’ve got both the water bottles. They’ve got the drugged water and the normal water. But here’s the fascinating thing. In Rat Park, they don’t like the drugged water. They hardly use any of it. None of them ever overdose. None of them ever use in a way that looks like compulsion or addiction. There’s a really interesting human example I’ll tell you about in a minute, but what Bruce says is that shows that both the right-wing and left-wing theories of addiction are wrong. So the right-wing theory is it’s a moral failing, you’re a hedonist, you party too hard. The left-wing theory is it takes you over, your brain is hijacked. Bruce says it’s not your morality, it’s not your brain; it’s your cage. Addiction is largely an adaptation to your environment.[…]We’ve created a society where significant numbers of our fellow citizens cannot bear to be present in their lives without being drugged, right? We’ve created a hyperconsumerist, hyperindividualist, isolated world that is, for a lot of people, much more like that first cage than it is like the bonded, connected cages that we need. The opposite of addiction is not sobriety. The opposite of addiction is connection. And our whole society, the engine of our society, is geared towards making us connect with things. If you are not a good consumer capitalist citizen, if you’re spending your time bonding with the people around you and not buying stuff—in fact, we are trained from a very young age to focus our hopes and our dreams and our ambitions on things we can buy and consume. And drug addiction is really a subset of that.

~Johann Hari, Does Capitalism Drive Drug Addiction?

Kim Davis and the Just War Doctrine

"Just following orders" is the Get Out of Hell Free card that allows soldiers to kill, maim, and loot, but still go to heaven when they die. Things that would normally be a sin are instantly forgiven, so long as it's part of their official duties.

The idea that a government can supersede the will of God seems a little theologically iffy to me, but every major denomination has signed off on it so it must be true.  They even pray for "their troops" every Sunday.

So, that being the case, it seems like Kim Davis could issue marriage licenses with impunity and need never devote a second of worry to the state of her immortal soul.

Choices

From  The Haunted Mesa by Louis L’Amour, ©1987:

Slipping into his coat, Mike Raglan knew he was arguing with himself to no purpose, for he was going back. He was not even sure if he was making a free choice. It might be that all his years of becoming what he was were dictating the issue.

How much choice did a man have, after all? Are we not all conditioned to certain expressions of life? Do we have a choice, whether we run or fight? He slipped a notepad into his pocket and went out to the car.

I think we've all been there.

"This is stupid.  This does not advance my goals, and is likely to end in heartbreak.  I guess I should bring a jacket."

Amusing

"Of one thing only can we be sure:  What is today accepted as truth will tomorrow prove to be only amusing."  ~Louis L’Amour, The Haunted Mesa ©1987

Long Proved Absurd

"Men have never readily accepted new ideas.  Our schools and general thinking are cluttered with beliefs long proved absurd by contemporary knowledge.  Man has demonstrated over and over again that the last thing he wants are new ideas, even when they are desperately needed.  Ideas are welcomed as long as they do not contradict theories on which scholarly reputations have been erected."  ~Louis L’Amour, The Haunted Mesa ©1987

Preconceived Notions

A friend recommended this book to me quite a while ago, but I put off reading it because I’m a snob.

I saw the author was Louis L’Amour and I thought “Dime-store cowboy novelist.”  I saw the title The Haunted Mesa and thought “Ooh!  Just like The Hardy Boys!”

And being a snob almost cost me something wonderful

It’s an imaginative, well written book centered around how we unconsciously shape new ideas to fit our preconceived notions, and what a mistake that can be.

It’s worth your time.

Hakuna matata

"Can any one of you by worrying add a single hour to your life?"  ~Jesus (Matthew 6:27)

"Don't worry, be happy."  ~Bobby McFerrin (YouTube)

Other Ways

"Ours is a world that has developed along materialistic, mechanistic lines, but might there not be other ways?  Might there not be dozens of other ways, unknown and unguessed because of the one we found that worked?"  ~Louis L'Amour, The Haunted Mesa ©1987

Time Stood Still

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A beautiful song for a Sunday Morning.

From SongMeanings.net:

“I suppose I (writer Van Morrison) was about twelve years old. We used to go to a place called Ballystockart to fish. We stopped in the village on the way up to this place and I went to this little stone house, and there was an old man there with dark weather-beaten skin, and we asked him if he had any water. He gave us some water which he said he’d got from the stream. We drank some and everything seemed to stop for me. Time stood still. For five minutes everything was really quiet and I was in this ‘other dimension.’ That’s what the song is about.”

If

 "If you walk into a dark, black hole with love and joy, you’ll find love and joy there. If you walk in with fear and anger, you’ll find fear and anger. Go into situations with what you want to find there."  ~John-Roger (via)

1,2

My favorite poem is Things I Didn't Know I Loved by Nazim Hikmet:  LINK

My second-favorite poem is Ulysses by Lord Tennyson:  LINK  (and hear John Gielgud read it HERE.)

Pockets

These are the things you typically find on me or with me.

My wallet, of course.  Mine is hemp and I got it at a little Fair Trade store downtown.  I don’t like leather, partly because it’s made out of dead things and partly because it’s bulky.  Hemp is lighter weight and lasts longer.

My wedding ring.

My car keys.  I have the veterinary tags from my favorite cat, Alice, and my favorite dog, Gracie, on the ring.  They’re both gone, but they’re both still with me.

A magnifying glass, because there are lots of things that warrant a closer look.

Ear plugs, because I seem to have more sensitive hearing than most.  It would be impossible for me to go to the movies without them.  Usually I can take them out after the previews, but those booming explosions you hear from the Coming Attractions can trigger massive, painful headaches.  I keep little stashes of them in my car and in Mona’s car, too, so I’m never without them- they’re that essential.

I typically let my long hair flow free, but I keep a band to tie it back on windy days.

I need to wear the “Penicillin Allergy” tag, and I wear the others because if I’m unconscious I want people to know more about me than just my medical peccadilloes.  (”Peccadillo” isn’t the precisely right word. I just wanted to say it.)

The glasses are the latest addition.  They’re tinted to minimize the problems all the floaters in my eyes cause.  They aren’t as dark as they look- they don’t work like sunglasses- but they do make the sky just a tad bluer.  I like that.

Walking

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I loved this movie.

I don’t want to spoil it for anyone, so I’ll wait to talk about until after it’s left the theaters.  (It’s a movie for grown-ups, so that probably won’t be long.)