Tag Archives: Self actualization

Think About it?

2 Replies

We will all loose and we all will be lost.  It is an existential question.  The terrible limitation on our little mortal lives.

We all know this to be true.

I have heard it said, more often in movies and stories than in real live conversations that no one wants to die alone.  The reality, I think, is that we all do.  Though there may be people around us who care or whom we care about and possibly that we all start to travel this road as a group, in the end it is a journey that we take alone.  It is the same way that we cone into the world.  There are people there when we finish but we still take the voyage by ourselves, even in the case of twins.  These processes produce in us a great unknowing.  We know that we came from some place and we suspect we are going someplace, possibly the same place, but these regions are beyond our reckoning as a group at the very least.  As an individual one or many of us may have has some experience that causes us to know or believe we know something of one of these places or possibly both.  This is individual knowledge and this knowledge is difficult to translate into the shared reality, that is the nature of the Mystical Experience.  This is why I hold various ancient religious text within a narrow gaze.  What ever experiences generated said text have been lost to the efforts of other more scheming individuals,.  This topic is about as popular as death and politics.  But it is important none the less for us living today.

We remain silent on these things mostly as rooted in them is the most powerful fear any human, except the foolhardy, experiences, the fear of the unknown.  Our defense is to ignore.  Humans with certain noteworthy exceptions, myself included, possess an amazing power hidden in their ability to concentrate, to focus.  They can ignore so profoundly as to blot conscious knowledge from their minds.  But that doesn’t change the fact that it is still there like a great stone wheel slowly grinding toward us from behind.  We cannot out run it and we cannot hide from it.  We do the only thing we can, we ignore it.  The result is a creeping stress.

Add on top of this the stress of every day life as most of us experience and it becomes easy to see why people are getting sicker and sicker.

I have no idea what if anything can be done about it.  Even if something can be done will the greedy powers that be take the time to even consider it?

We shall have to see.

I’ve said it before and I will say it  now.  We each have to find that thing we love and make time for it, be it thing, hobby, place or person.  The only other suggestion is spend as much time as you can in the moment, after all we have only a few and it is best not to waste them.

Have a better than average day.

Comments Inspired by the Last Post

Leave a reply

Art is about the process, they say.

I suppose that this is true.

When I mess around with visual art.  Old fashion Art which is mixed media on board or paper, generally, the idea of the process seems obvious, to me.  It is a struggle to get a image, a thing, from my mind’s eye onto paper.  It is a struggle between the mind which can be crisp and clear to the hand which, in my case, is far less certain.  What comes out at the end, whether I like it or not, is the result of this process or struggle.  Sometimes I surprise myself, not to say that I am particularly good at it, just to say that the end product is both pleasing to my mind’s eye and it comes with a sense of accomplishment.

Growing up and through into my late twenties I also had a love affair with the written word.  In this case reading it for leisure or escape.  I was always interested in the act of writing.  It was a thing that I was passionate about.  Well as passionate as I can be.  I was just never very good at it.  It seems that English wasn’t my strongest suit so when I wrote it was simply for the love of the act, the process.  I think that it is this love that keeps me working on a thing in which I fully realize I lack real talent.  In the case of writing, skill counts as well, but skill takes time.  It has been a serious education.

Here is the strange thing.

After I washed out of college and the work force I found that I had nothing but time.  I certainly didn’t want to spend my days sitting in front of a television set or later a computer monitor.  So I continued messing around with drawing, mixed media and writing.  From my experience, for what ever that is worth, schizophrenia, I think, is an ailment that in part effects that way one thinks.  We like terms like chemical imbalance or genetic defect and we avoid idea about states of consciousness and the power of world view.  World view in this case being about how thoughts are ordered, logic and the underlying assumptions that structure that logic.  I used to like and think that being schizophrenic was like having a waking dream.

It took time to get my head together well enough after breakdown to begin to tinker with words again.  I think it took several years before I started to put pen to paper with any regularity.  It was a challenge that I enjoyed and over time I could see my words and their use improve.  The better my writing became the clearer my thoughts grew.  I don’t want to undervalue medication in my case, but medication alone is not enough.  Meds aside, the decades that I have been working on writing whatever thoughts I may have on my mind, mostly fiction, have led to a certain state of clarity.  Not to say that I am as clear as a person free of Schizophrenia, simply that I am far clearer than when this whole hootenanny started.  I have reached a point where all of the people I knew personally with this diagnosis are now passed, the last being Meta’s sister.  That makes me the last person standing.  This leaves me with a weird feeling.

I can’t say that this path will work for anyone else.  My conclusions are drawn from purely anecdotal evidence.  Instead I forced to admit that I am lucky.  This is so because of my interests, studies, experiences and college course work before my breakdown and my relationship with Meta after Breakdown.  Change any one thing in that mix and I may not have survived to 30 much less 50 something.

It is times like these that leave me wide eyed with wonder at the staggering complexity of any individual life.  That every life has something nearly unique about its existence.  This is not a question of God or not God, but rather the wonder we each should struggle to maintain so that we may get the most out of each life.  It is a way for baffling the mundane, the bad days, the less than adequate work, short comings and failures we are all confronted by.

I hope you have a better than average day.

Meta’s Sleep Workings

Leave a reply

While writing out my 60s jokes for this blog, because it had been so many years since telling them last, I just couldn’t remember the second stanza of the elephant trilogy.  I asked others and then scanned their lists of elephant jokes on the internet to no avail.

Finally I thought of my memory aids.  The first ones that I had learned in a memory course that I took during the 70s.  As I cozied into my bed for the night I thought about what I wanted to remember then let myself forget it and relax into sleep.

Sure enough, still in bed the following morning it came to me without bidding.  If you are puzzling over a project or choice think over the problem – forget it- sleep – the answer will occur to you shortly after waking.

If you have things on your mind that you want to accomplish the next day that are keeping you awake try writing them down.  Afterwards forget about them as you cuddle back onto your pillow.  Rest soon follows.

Another technique to bring rest – picture yourself lying in the sand on a warm beach with sea breezes keeping you totally comfortable – feel your body grow heavy – sinking into the nice warm sand.  You will soon fall asleep.

My grand mother taught me that if I concentrated on the time I wanted to wake – then glanced at the clock – I could wake at the time I wanted with out the use of the alarm.

These sleep workings have rarely failed me – nor Iba after I taught him.

Enlightened

Leave a reply

We study words written

a piece of tapestry

A fragment from the long forgotten

Through eyes

with lenses trained by today

They struggle to see

Blinded by the brilliant moment

The Dragon, Lion and Camel

humbled

before a child

unable to stand or speak

wide waiting for the moment of creation

to be taught

or untaught

There is much talk

about the long road

many claim to see the end

of the impossible

a treacherous journey

Where am I along this road?

Is it paved, gravel, a trail or trace?

against the earth or sky

they claim to see backwards

they will show you

for the price of a paperback

or your soul

It seems no one truly knows

in the end

we each must decide

our own next step

Millennium

Leave a reply

Days passed one into the other

as pages in a calendar

Through this year and into a new

One

ten cycles past the new

Century

and Millennium

adding to an ever increasing anxiety

People jumping within their

skins

Insides tickled by

a creature crawling

alone

The distance between I and the mirror

Like the gulf between galaxies

To speak unheard

to see unseen

in isolation

I Love You

There,

I just wanted to say it

It is not important

I work

making a study in your eyes

for a light long lost

an almost remembered condition

a connection

to a singular moment full of forever

The Power of Hesitation

Leave a reply

It is easy, I have found, to get caught up in the moment.  The mob is both frightening and enticing.  Once caught in its grasp there is this shifting of responsibility away from the individual  to the seething throbbing whole.  In this surrender of free will one find’s themselves trapped without feeling trapped,  Now if you are into this sort of thing then you can feel free to stop reading,  This is a piece about exercising free will and its not for everyone.

Any given individual is either a part of an event, acting with in their own sense of agency or in a neutral, observer state.  Rephrase, we are reacting, acting or hesitating.  The professor who taught the Action Theory class I suffered through back in college, one Doctor Robins, might have referred to this as a folk analysis or a folk understanding.  Well everybody has to start somewhere.   We do not just live in a world of events, we also live in a world of agents.  This is why an understanding, in an individual sense, is so important.  This debate, in my limited experience, breaks down between Predestiny (Determinism) verses Free Will (Action Theory).  Determinism is the idea that whatever choice you make today, at this second is based on all of the previous events, experiences and choices that you have made in the past.  Action Theory is dependent on the idea of Agency.

Agency means that some entities are actors and that they possess a thing or an ability that allows them to act that is known as Will.  There is an intellectual tendency to choose a camp but I prefer the quantum equivalent.   That any given individual exists in two states simultaneously.   The predestined state and the free will state coexist and that our resting state is the predestined state.  In the Predestined state we are simply reacting to the events taking place around us.  There is no exercise of free will.  Think of it like breathing.  You do it with out thought, it requires no exercise of will, it simply is.  A person simply breaths because their body demands it.

On the other hand there is Agency.  We are all born with this ability, we are all made to be Free Agents and we all have Free Will.  The choice, though, is like a muscle, it has to be exercised.  There is where the problem lies.  How can any individual tell the difference between a reaction and a choice, choice in this case requiring the exercise of Free Will?

This is where hesitation becomes important, the previously mentioned third state.  If one carefully observes others they have the opportunity to notice instant reactions when they occur, like the knee jerk response.  I swear to you I have seen people jerk their knee when they hear something or see something that they instinctively react to negatively.  Hesitation takes a great exercise of will.  It also involves some risk.  When The Christ stated turn the other cheek, he is talking about denying the reaction and concentrating on the action.  The act of Hesitating has to become trained, instinctive, it is through the act of Hesitating that any individual might be able to begin to detect the difference between reacting and acting.  Hesitating is an exhaustive process as it denies the instinctive response.  It also requires that part of the individuals attention constantly be cast inward in a semi reflective state.  Any one following this path needs a quiet space where they can just be.  This will give them the opportunity to rest and recuperate.  The path of Hesitation takes discipline and patience.  In time the difference between the two states, reacting and acting, will become easily discernible.  This will give the individual the opportunity to act when they think or feel they must and save their energy for pursuits closer to the heart.

The test is a simple one.  People, especially educated people, are experts at pushing other peoples buttons.  That is saying or doing something that will provoke a reaction.  So the next time some one hits you, out of the blue and for no apparent reason, or says a thing that cuts deep, that causes your body to scream and demand a response, hesitate.  While hesitating watch the reaction of the provocateur.

That is where the real education begins.

Not So Smart

Leave a reply

I still remember this old cast iron wall hanging that use to be in the kitchen of my maternal grandparents house many years ago.  It seemed old to me at the time, a single color, something akin to a bright yellow with flashes and streaks of the iron underneath showing through.  It hung there high on the wall across from the chair that my grandfather sat so that he could see it when he ate.  If he cared to tip his head just slightly. It was written in German with the image of an old man wagging a thoughtful finger at what I assumed then and still today to be a grandchild, probably a son.  In my minds eye I can still see one word clearly, Schmart.  Of course my mind, being what it is might have twisted that a bit but I still think it is probably correct, after all it was some time ago.  I still have a rough translation of what the little cast iron thingy had written on it, “The older you get the more you find that the less smart you are.”

This was a big topic for Grandpa whom seemed quite old to me at the time though I personally knew many people who were even older.  He would get into detail about books of knowledge and how when you were young the book of what you knew was such and so big.  Then he would hold his fingers far apart to indicate a book of great thickness.   He would go on to explain that when you get older you realize that the book of what you actually know is only this thick and he would squeeze his fingers together to indicate a book to thin to draw even my interest as an eleven year old.  I did read quite a bit by that time.  I think that summer was my first encounter with To Kill A Mockingbird, Lord of the flies and Atlas Shrugged.  The last title well beyond my ability to properly appreciate.  So I liked the book reference and I thought that I understood what he meant which was that so much was being added to the body of knowledge that an individual just couldn’t keep up.  Sort of the standard point of view of youth which I have heard often through out my life pointed at me as well as my wife which is old people don’t know anything.  Mom’s don’t know anything, just pick your group and stick “don’t know anything” behind it.

So I thought I understood when I was young and in a way I did when I was young and that understanding was, as repetitious as it is, young.  Being that I have some formal education, a mental disability and nothing but time I do a lot of thinking and reflecting which is probably one of the reasons that I deal with schizophrenia as well as a do.  As a growing person has experiences and sometimes those experiences contradict what we were taught in school, college or at university.  When we accept a thing as known with out having tested the idea to be sure, assuming that the thing is knowable, then it is an assumption.  Believe me when I say that assumptions are everywhere like land mines.  Assumptions extrapolated from, built on top of other and piled high and deep.  Even when you know its an assumption you rush to defend it like the love of your life.  Sometimes you think you now when you don’t.  There are plenty of things of which I am fully well aware that I know nothing about and that’s not the issue the issue is the shit I think I know something about when I know nothing at all.  I keep stumbling over these things, things I accept are so with out really knowing.  Its getting to be a major pain in the ass and in the end that is what I think my Grandfather was talking about.

Its strange to me what I remember, those strange scant moments like shadows, vague an hazy and the ones that are sharp like yesterday’s morning.  Why would my young eleven year old mind latch on to those conversations.  Was it repetition?  My brothers heard the same as often as I yet the have no recollection.  It is odd what one remembers and how it effects them and influences their lives.  So that “Not so Smart” was a joint project between myself and my Grandfather.

Look for your Muses and don’t be afraid to be wrong as much of a pain as it is, you might find a pleasant surprise on the other side of that fear.

Have a better than average day.

Develop Your Psychic Abilities

Leave a reply

Try and predict which side of a Lays Classic Potato Chip has the most salt on it.  I have chosen Lays Brand chips because in my own experience the difference in the amount of salt from one side to the other is very noticeable.  If you can find some other chip that works for you then don’t let my recommendation keep you making your own choice.  The process is simple, focus on the act and keep the desire of tasting the salter of the two sides first, choose a chip and eat it, if you have made the right choice you should know immediately, don’t stop with one though.  The process must be repeated.  The participant should concentrate on and carry out the process with deliberate intent  My Calculations and the Calculations of other people state that after ten thousand hours of practice any individual should have attained expert status.

If you are going to eat the chips any way you might as well get something out of it.

May today and tomorrow be better than average days