Can i get a witness?

i still want to get the credit! I still want you to notice me. But don't notice me. What do you notice about me? Do you like me? Do you think the words i speak are unintelligent? Are you attracted to me sexually? Emotionally? I know i am cooler than him. I am winning. I am better than you. Smarter than you. Faster than you. I win. I win. I fucking win. I die. You die. We same.

The Immune System

I was talking with my friend Micheal today about violence. I have been struggling for an opinion on the idea. Something he said brought some much needed clarification. He raised the point that violence isnt always evil. In some cases it is a balancing force. He compared it to the violence the Immune System generates when attacking a virus or bacteria. The whole day i have been thinking about this idea. The idea of war is everywhere, all the way down to the cellular level. We fight. We fight for all kinds of reason. And now i see that its the motivation behind our fighting that really justifies our actions. I guess this could open even more debate with regard to using violence. Who is justified to use such a force? Good question! I think we almost instinctually know when the force is evil or good. A general rule of thumb would be to take a look at the fruit of violence. Is the fruit benifiting all or a select few? Is the violence being used to perpetuate fear or love? Is it protecting or destroying? There are no easy answers but we must try our best to find them. I plan to continue refining my opinion with regard to violence. I hope to reach a conclusion before i turn 72. SAT NAM ;-)

Only one sin

My good friend Stephen said one day that there is only one sin...the sin of ingratitude. At first glance, it seems like there would be many many more "sins" out there. However, i think any sin you could name would have this one as its father. Our ingratitude acts as a catalyst for all manner of distortion in our minds. We assume we need more, or better, or newer somethings, but is not existence itself astounding? Today is Thanksgiving Day. There are so many things to turn our attention towards that can give us a sense of gratitude. Did you eat today? Did your eyes blink 23040 times without failure today? Gratitude is in the little things, big things, all things!

Happy Thanksgiving!!!

The candyman can

"Oh keeper of the candy. You make the world sweeter and sweeter!" I was recently asked to fill in as the coveted "giver of the candy" at Eclipse where i work. Every year, all the business pass out candy and the townsfolk pass by with their children to fill bags full of candy. I wanted to call myself The Candyman, but it just sounded too petafilic. I sat on the front steps of Eclipse to monitor the candy bowl. I was just a body there to create some accountability for the youngsters. They have a tendency to not honor the honor system when it involves chocolate.

I was surprised by lots of things while i watched people attack the sugar bowl. Parents really encouraged their kids to get a few pieces...."so everyone could have some." Some kids regulated themselves, some kids grabbed as much as they could. I would tell them one handful is the limit. They complied. Then, i spoke to this little girl in spanish. Lots of spanish kids came up while i was there. I just said, "agarra quantas quieras". Grab as much as you want. She grabbed a super duper uper handful. Her mom just smiled! I felt sick. The poarch cats didnt care.

It made me think about how our desire to prolong a good feeling can create greed. Which could also be termed as fear of future lack. Greed is bilaterally dangerous.... I am always preoccupied with not having enough (discontent) and others do without because i am holding back(poverty). Not to mention i could be missing out on even cooler things but my hands are full and tight. A loose grip never slips when it comes to material possessions. The same goes for any "earthly treasure". We leave it where it falls when we die. I feel the strength of this world becoming less and less. The gravity of being a human is not nearly as heavy anymore. I fully embrace my spirit (mind). I want to give it priority in every situation. The "spirit" honors that loyalty with peace. We see through the wall of lack. We see provision everywhere when we stop thinking with fear as our guide. It's wise to store up for rainy days, but it doesnt rain every day. We imagine every tomorrow as rainy. The rain stops because the sun it out. Yet we still sit on our treasures.

I hope the little spanish girl gets the most out of her Halloween experience. That culture knows even better than ours the importance of dispersing wealth. They are almost forced to do so because of economic situations. How cool would it be if it was just a natural way of interacting with each other. I feel the times changing. i am hopeful we will strive toward this end.

Sharing....oh so easy...oh so hard...oh so rewarding

I am learning to share. I am sometimes afraid to share. I feel like if i share the "things" in my life i may not have enough provision for the future. I feel like if i share my "thoughts" i might be ridiculed for such strangeness. I sometimes calculate my words. I try to make sure i dont give away information that would allow "others" to gain an advantage over me. I with hold "my" truths that have brought me peace. I do so out of fear of being put at a disadvantage in this game of life. Oh my my! I do so at my own expense. There is no competition except my own invention.
I am learning to place confidence in Love, not my knowledge. The bible says love never fails. My experience says love never fails. I, for the first time ever, can line up the words of the bible with my experience. I feel like i am reading an August edition of National Geographic when i read the bible. I feel that way with any and all holy scripture that advocates Love. Love is where i find all the provision and peace i can handle in this body form. God is love. Love is God. I am love too. Carefully embrace that idea!! It has teeth!!

The strong oaks dance for themselves

I got poison oak the other day. It could have been poison ivy too. I was warned that my work area contained a small crop of the itchy plants. I did not take the warning serious. Partly because i didnt know what poison oak looked like and partly because i thought i was immune. Turns out i am not! So this blog is devoted to educating the minds of others what poison oak looks like and how to treat it.

Its quite a plain looking plant who disguises himself. He looks like an oak tree leaf to me, but he will never grow up and be big and strong. His role is to be natures prankster! He plays such funny jokes on us humans. He can get on your legs, genitals, throat, anywhere! Once he finds a suitable place he decides to dance. His little feet dance and dance. Thats the itch! The only way to get him to stop dancing is to ignore him. Dont touch him. Dont even look at him. His ego cant handle being ignored, so he leaves, and is off to find someone to watch him dance. If they entertain his dancing, he spreads all over them and causes such a mess from his wild dancing. There is a pink liquid that acts a his kryptonite. She sits on the prankster, giving you a beautiful hue of pink to focus on while she hides our eyes from noticing the dancing.

I much prefer the real oak leaves and the mass of strength they are attached to. Real Oaks are so much kinder. They invite us to dangle on their branches. We can climb as high as our bravery and they can support the weight. Feels like a limb massage as our tiny feet climb all over them. They never leave us itchy. They leave us strong.

I am going to heed warnings in the future by wearing long sleeves and pants and gloves until i am done working around such pranksters. Then when the work is done, i will go dangle from the oaks that decided to grow big and strong.

My my son

Oh what a joy to be such a strange animal?

Water bills , pink pills, and such.

Oh what mysterious minds we have?

Grandfather clocks, worshiping rocks,we just love their sparkle.

You thought you were and then you wernt

You thought there was more and then there was infinity.

Death never deceived you.

He was always truthful when he said he wanted to visit.

We kept him outside until he broke the door.

Oh no! Not my beautiful stained oak door from the 15th century!

Oh yeah! He broke that door.

My my son!

Onions in my eyes

Things are never quite as grand when they leave our imigination and lay prostraite in front of us. Fears are some how ordinary looking when they escape captivity and get real close to our eye. Some how the rain just wasn't as cold as i had imagined. It is so bewildering to arrive to that elusive future and feel like, "Is this it?". More moons than not, i gave the creature much bigger teeth than he actually had. I also gave that road trip two thumbs down before i even put the key in the ignition. I really ended up having a great time. I am an illiterate politician who cant get an erection for the election! You know, right? Its not anything in particular or even spectacular. Its just one more mind numbing miracle that is life. The free flowing, snow blowing mystery of what it means to know the trees. I am surrounded on all sides, at all times, by fucking amazing blazing paraphrasing cool shit. I feel like a quadriplegic getting his head scratched while having a sex dream. Then i feel like an evangelist who only had 19 people show up to his Holy Ghost Tent Revival. What do you want? What do you need? More glue to hold this dilapidated ship together? She is coming apart Captain!!! What do we do? Lets ride her down boys. So i ride down with the captain.You know whats at the bottom of the abyss? That was a trick question. I love being here on Earth! I love laughter. I love your sisters shoes. I like the way you curl your hair and making faces in the mirror when you think no one is watching.We were watching though! We watch each other in paranoid suspicion. We traded T-rex for other peoples opinions. Our eyes tear up at the onion breath of our fellow man! And i am still thinking about having to fix lunch today instead of typing to you my friends.

"Next Blog"

Have you ever clicked the ''next blog'' button? I just had the most amazing idea creep up my lower lumbar, wiggle up onto my shoulders and whisper into my ear. I decided to go on a "next blog" rampage. I must have viewed maybe 12 blogs before i noticed a pattern. Everyone was exactly like me. There was all these tiny bubbles of life. Each one an independent ecosystem of values, beliefs, pursuits, rants, tears, happiness, experiences, laughs, and all thinking the same thought....i am so important. Worlds within a world, doing our best to carve out a niche in the minds of others. We want to feel like people recognize us. We want them to look at our shoes. "Oh, wow what nice shoes"!! We want them to look at our pictures. We want them to look at our minds, our words, and our accomplishments. "Wow, your so awesome!!!! I want to be like you." I admit here before the congress of subscribers....all 5 of you die hard Electric Milk followers...that i am guilty of posting blogs with that motivation. I have broken the 11th commandment of the sacred Jones Manuscript found in lost caves of Zanzabar. I stroke my ego!!!
I feel like my mom just caught me masturbating. I feel like she caught me and there is a sense of "now what"? Now what am i supposed to feel? i was afraid she was going to catch me, now that the fear is over, what should i be afraid of next?
Your in the Now when you say,"Wow i have been off in my head for the last 20 minutes, i want to come back to this moment" Likewise your free of the ego when you say, "Boy i have really been focused on how others perceive me, i must remember that how others see me has nothing to do with my self-worth." All that is needed is awareness. Just turning an eye onto the creature allows you to control it. For us humans, our minds tell us to open outwards. Mind chatter: "Look around you and gather the information provided to you by neighboring humans to evaluate your worth. What do they say about you? How do they treat you? Do they smile or laugh at you? Do they envy or look down on you? Do they want you sexually or are they rejecting you? " We gather up all the feed back and based off our software (conditioning) we make an estimation of how valuable we are to the world or really just the world around us. This is only one aspect of our existence. This is an accurate way to access your "tangible worth" to others, but is only a fraction of what we truly are.
This "tangible worth" is like the stock market. It changes every 5 sec. If we lean too heavy at any given moment and build our life around a peak or a low, we are very foolish. The foundation is ever shifting! There is no stability. True stability comes in knowing that there is no such thing as stability! Our "self-worth" is just an illusion we are whole. We are composed of the same thing everything else is composed of, we are part of One, we are One. There is no division and no part is greater than any other part. We discover this when we open inward and search the depths of our personal ocean. And after you have plunged into the dark waters, and gone miles and miles into the icy abyss, keep an eye out for a creature with an icon in tow that says ''next blog''. Its the indicator that you crossed into someone elses ocean.
And so i blog for you and me, for my ego,
for your ego,
for my Now, your Now, to know my ocean,
to know your ocean
To tell my story so that you can see its yours too
To listen to your story so i can see that its mine.

Happy MLK day!!

Yesterday i celebrated Martian Luther King Jr. day by taking a civil rights hike instead of a march. A friend and i spent the entire day enjoying the holiday. We toasted Martin with Dos Equis and lime. I have never really celebrated the day. Being from Alabama and also being a white boy, the day is kind of glossed over and the importance of what he did is always in the shadow of him being a black man. He was a black man. His skin retained more pigment than mine. His facial features were different than mine. He had a different culture than mine, but we shared this planet together. Martin had a mother and a father like me. Martian experienced fear, joy, sadness, happiness, disappointment, and victory like me. He wore shoes and suits. He had friends and they talked about the things they liked. He had sex and ate good food.

When we were buying the beer i told the cashier "Happy MLK day". She looked at me like i was crazy. She was an older white woman and probably lived through the 60's as the civil rights movement was developing. Obviously she was not very fond of African-American heros. I wonder what she was taught growing up as a little girl? How much fear was instilled into her to cause her to dislike someone based off of skin tone? I am by no means an activist for racial issues, but i do believe in challenging stagnant thought. I am sure that lady was not aware that she had adopted a dangerous thought as her own through the influence of others. I dont think she could even give an answer as to why she didnt like Martian Luther King Jr. For her he probably just embodied the idea of what she was taught to dislike, nothing personal just skin.

And thats how those thoughts work. They are programed into our baby minds and we live out the values of those thoughts. They bring us suffering at times and we are clueless as to the cause. Well i encourage Cashier Lady and anyone else to take time to reflect. Take time to confront pain and trace it to its origin. Take time to get to know yourself and gain a sense of control. It will be challenging but also highly rewarding.

Thanks for the story Cashier Lady.

Television

I no longer have cable television. I still have a TV but it will only play movies. I made the decision to cancel the cable for two reasons. One, I want to save the $60 a month that it costs to have it and two i want to minimize the sources for excuses that make it difficult for me to realize my goals.

Life is full of excuses. Its easy to sabotage our goals without even being aware that we are doing so. T V takes away from the available awake hours of a day and offers us the excuse of not having the time to develop our dreams. I heard on NPR that the average American watches 34 hrs of television a week. What could you do with an extra 34hrs a week? Develop a hobby? Start an exercise program? Spend time in nature? Spend some quality time with your family?

It is a scary thought for most people to imagine life without TV. Their only experience of not having it is when the power is out. Those days of boredom are locked into their minds as something to be avoided. I will admit there is an adjustment period and how long it lasts depends on the depth of the addiction, but before long we find things to do. All of a sudden the excuse of not having enough time disappears and we start making things happen. When we string enough days of being intentional together we soon find ourselves manifesting our goals. We do not have to just cope with feelings of inadequacy and defeat. We can do something about those feelings. We can bring about any change we would like!!!