Thoughts and theories

Get over the past, accept the moment, and don’t needlessly worry about the future.

2011-05-07T21:35:00.000-07:00

Try to just be in the moment, to allow yourself to enjoy this moment. Allow yourself to get over and accept the past, and not let the future worry you so that you act in a way to sabotage this great time in your life. A very easy way to destroy a great moment is to try to force or wield your vision of the future on another in a selfish attempt to make this moment last longer. Another easy way to destroy this great moment is to act in a self-destructive manner fulfilling a deep-seeded belief that you don’t really deserve to have a nice life. Accept your past and this great moment, live in it, enjoy it, acting in a way that maintains your good standing, but also allowing others to have free will to be with you in their great moment. In short, get over the past, accept the moment, and don’t needlessly worry about the future.

Truthfulness Language

2011-04-04T21:39:00.000-07:00

In non-violent language a person works to say things that do not cause internal conflict. Marshall Rosenberg has set forth many strategies to going about doing this in his works, but I would like to in addition talk about the possibility of adding a truthfulness component to non-violent language. The practicality of such a way of speaking would mean serious changes to the grammar of the English language and therefore would make it not only awkward, but also alienating to some. This would be counterproductive towards the original intent of creating peace. Still though while the concept is not fit for this time, it needs to be explored and considered so that a complete system of peaceful language could one day be attained.

As human beings communicate the listener is constantly hearing each new word, fitting it into context and constantly predicting what the next word or even sentence might be. But in doing this, different possibilities arise, some of which are violent. One among many goals of a truthful language is to help curb this; that essentially by speaking in a truthful manner, a person might be qualifying sentences in a manner as to limit possible meanings, and therefore limit possible violent meanings.

The way this is done is by organizing the words in a sentence so that more important words come first, thereby restricting the meaning of the words that come after them. In doing this, the language also is more truthful. Let’s look at the following common expression.

Example 1:

A. Did you talk to your friend?

B. I didn’t talk to my friend.

In Example 1, the language is not truthful in many respects although this might be a very common thing to be heard and said. Here are some problems with the sentence. First of all considering the question, for a person to be a friend it is assumed that the two people must have communicated. So, immediately we know the question must not be taken literally and must be meant in context, but to understand a bit of language in context probably creates many different possibilities of meaning, some of which as I mentioned are violent. While one clear context might usually stand out as the clear meaning most of the time, it does not all of the time. Therefore, the question in this example would be much better qualified and could be taken much more literally by saying, “Today, did you talk to your friend?” Now a literal yes or no answer may be given. So by using the qualifying term of “today” the question now becomes more truthful and easier to answer.

The answer also needs to be qualified, although to a much greater extent. The problems with the answer are many fold. For instance, the sentence starts off with “I did……” But in the listeners mind at the point of hearing “I did” it would seem that the answer is going to be positive, only to quickly find out that it isn’t when the “n’t” is added negating the previous verb.

Furthermore, what if a third party enters the room after the question is ended but at the start of the answer and a person hears, “I didn’t talk”. Now the third party is hearing a person say they didn’t talk when they clearly are talking. This again causes some confusion because the literal truthfulness of this statement is in question and it must now be taken in context. To alleviate this, it would be better to qualify whom wasn’t talking before saying “not talking”, and before that to qualify the actors in the sentence to a certain time. This could be done in two ways by saying, “Today, my friend and I” or “My friend and I today.” But again for the sentence to be taken literally, then the negater should come before the verb and not after. Therefore an acceptable truthful way to answer would be, “Today, my friend and I not talked.”

As one can see, this is seriously rearranging the grammar of the English language and would meet resistance if practiced on unknowing participants. Still by setting a scene of actors, place, and time, and then going into actions that have taken place, a more truthful language that can be taken quite literally instead of contextually can be created and practiced ultimately causing less internal conflict and violence when trying to communicate.

thoughts on Africa

2010-09-29T16:38:00.001-07:00

It is the dirty windy season. The rainy season will come soon, and for a short while the land will be lush and green as the land comes to life once more. But right now it is dry and the wind pushes the grit into every little nook and cranny. Every time I got out of my house I need a shower when I come back. On the worst days, the sun is browned out by the dust.

Today I walk outside of my house. I see little Thabo playing. He is maybe seven but looks five. His nose is running as usual and nobody is there to wipe it. Nobody is there to give him food. Nobody is there to take care of him or tell him what to do. He is playing with his favorite toy, an old can dug out of the garbage pile. He rolls it along with an unstretched hanger. It reminds me of a person walking a dog. I think, “There is dirty little Thabo again walking his can.” It is a seen I have seen a dozen times and will see a dozen more. It is his favorite, one, and only toy. Later, I would buy him more, not much, but something more than a can.

That was almost eight years ago, and I wonder if he is alive today. Little Thabo would be a big Thabo now. I’m pretty sure he had HIV. He was always sick, as was his mother, and his father while being healthy, openly admitted his positive status. I wonder what happened to them. Did they make it?

When will Africa be free of this terrible disease? When will the rich and plentiful of the world give a helping hand of kindness to the poor. No doubt America spends more on pet food than most poor countries spend on regular food and medicine and school combined. I want to help, I really do, but I do little. I gather most people think it would “be nice” to do something someday, and go about eating nice meals out and buying new clothes, while doing nothing for Africa. I say give to Africa, give generously and without want for a return. Let Africa grow in her own way, with her own culture, taking what she wants, and leaving the rest behind. It is too late for Asia. Asia who has lost her Eastern charm, gone to only be replaced by materialism, bustling cities, fast food, and boy bands. I say let unconquered Africa not be beaten into conforming to Western culture, but don’t let it wither either. Give medicine, technology, and other aid when needed and wanted, but let the rest of the great continent, the motherland of humanity, grow and awaken to a new course and path. And then maybe the motherland of humanity will help us all to be human someday!

I prefer simple religion

2010-07-23T02:30:00.000-07:00

What is religion? People are making religions now as I write this. Religions have been around for thousands of years. And overtime they have changed, sometimes a little, but often dramatically. I gather that religions in the near future for some time will continue to evolve or be invented.

I think religion can be as simple as trying to dissolve ego, not exert one’s will on others or oneself in areas they are hesitant, and showing compassion for others. Within a certain perspective what I am saying here is not too much different than what it says in the KJV Bible when it says, “You shall love the Lord thy God with all your heart, strength, soul, and mind. And love your neighbor as yourself.” I say this because if a person is loving God, then they are trying to live within God’s will and do God’s bidding. In doing so, one’s own will is dissolved, one’s own ego is not intrusive or destructive. To me, a sign of loving God is that one’s ego may be sturdy but not impeding, nor destructive towards themselves or others.

And a sign of loving your neighbor is demonstrating compassion. The formula seems to be pretty simple. If a person is doing more for others than oneself, then they are compassionate. If on the other hand they are doing more for themselves than others, well then they are being selfish. Few people that I have ever met seem to demonstrate these signs and actions outside of their families. And while such religion might be practiced between, say for instance a mother and a son, isn’t the favor rarely returned?

In the Christian quote above, it is followed by this, “Upon this all the law and the prophets are written.” The message as I understand it means that loving God and loving your neighbor is the foundation of all religion, all the true laws of religion, and all the givers and explainers of such laws. I have also heard it said that real Christianity hasn’t ever been practiced. If my assertion is right, and that loving God means dissolving ego and living in the will of God, and showing more compassion for others instead of selfishness, then really I wonder how many times in my life I have I actually seen real Christianity, especially beyond close members of a family? And unfortunately, I can’t even say that I have ever even come close myself.

So what is real religion? I gather the explanation above is simple and good enough, and even fits on one paper. Even the quote from the Bible is small enough to be written on jewelry and carried with oneself at all times. Yet religions continue to grow, and change, in attempt to explain this message written above, or in many and maybe most cases to try to achieve some other goal. Religions often get multitudes of laws and customs, and modern day prophets have a multitude of teachings. Some of these get quite complex, and many of them for all their complexity might still be true and fair to the values of loving God and others. On the other hand, many might often drift or even purposely veer in their form into something that no longer practices a real and good religion.

Ride of Life

2008-11-18T01:38:00.001-08:00

I was thinking about how I got to Korea. Sometimes I guess we all need the willingness to point ourselves in the direction of the unfamiliar, unknown, and possibly even unsafe. But still to look in that direction and take those first small steps that will inevitably lead us to hopping onto the "ride of life" that will lead us down a mysterious path, sometimes for the good, sometimes for the bad, but always with wonder. For me, it starts with something small like a "hello" to a stranger, a quick read of job advertisements on the net, or a "why not" to a friend proposing an idea off the top of his or her head, but soon I find myself across the city, state, or even world totally inundated with an unusual variety of sensations and experiences. It has not all been for the good and I have missed out on many things. Not watching my niece and nephew grow are at the top of my list, but Africa and Asia and all the other adventures in between have also made me richer in ways I did not know, or couldn't have known before. And for me, it all started with a willingness to look into a path of life that I either thought was ridiculous or strange, but to take a few steps anyway just to see where it led me.

Purpose of life through values. A secret of satisfaction.

2008-02-15T19:11:00.000-08:00

The question a person needs to ask himself or herself in an endeavor is, “Is this pursuit true to myself?” I am not the first to say this, but I would like to explain it in a bit of a different way than others have. Why is being true to oneself important? What even is oneself? I ask these questions because it makes things clearer. “Oneself,” for the purpose of this essay, is one’s values. First, a person through experience and reflection needs to figure out their values. Such values can be things like fame, riches, power, or other things like peace, adventure, and understanding. These values are not goals. Fame does not equal winning an Oscar. Riches do not equal a million dollars. Power does not equal being a Governor. Peace does not equal not having a fight with your spouse over dinner. Adventure does not equal going on a vacation to an exotic place. And lastly, understanding does not equal getting a Ph.D. All these things I have mentioned are goals. People often choose a path in life because it is inline with their values, but then set goals and loose track of their values and thus their purpose in the first place. To live with one’s values in mind is to have purpose in life. This brings satisfaction and a sense of accomplishment and even sometimes joy. To live for goals brings disappointment when they are not met and oddly even sometimes disappointment when they are met. Often a person gets into a trap of goals. Make one goal, feel good, so then make a bigger one. It is almost as if happiness will always be right around the corner, but never is.

To be self-actualized is to know oneself. Part of this is to understand one’s values and to live by them instead of living by goals. If a person values joy, they can make someone else laugh by telling jokes. If a person values peace, they can learn how to negotiate between others. If a person values love, they can spread the gift of compassion to the world. What a person who values joy learns is that there are lots of ways to make people happy. A person can learn to tell jokes. If that doesn’t work, a person can take others to funny movies. If that doesn’t work, a person can try a new way, a new friend, a new place, until they have found a way live out and express their value. That is a beautiful thing about values. There are an infinite amount of possibilities. Where as with a goal, the possibilities get more narrow with more specific the goal. It is the opposite with values. The more values a person has, the more options a person has to fulfill some of the values and thus live with purpose.

For example, a long time ago, I wanted to be a Psychologist. I thought it would be a great job because I could heal people. More specifically at the time it was to help people. Later on, when I learnt that one of my core values was to help people. I learnt there were now hundreds of jobs that before had turned me off, but now I realized would be great for me. I could be a doctor, nurse, teacher, aid worker, counselor, social worker or other such job. There were just so many ways I could do a job one on one with a person helping them. Now they all made sense.

Yes, No, and Off? (The Opposite of War is not Peace)

2008-01-31T10:11:00.000-08:00

Some people say that the world is “black or white” or that an answer is either “yes or no” but I disagree. Some say that the opposite of war is peace. But I say there is another opposite, which is cold war, which is actually opposed to both war and peace. Let me explain more.

Here is an example. Look at a light bulb. It is either off or on, right? Well, for the most part, yes. But there is another option other than off (off=no) and on (on=yes). This option is, there is not light bulb in the socket to be engaged in the first place.

The same goes for war, peace, and cold war. In war, people are openly engaged and fighting. In peace, people are openly engaged and being peaceful. In cold war, there just isn’t an open engagement, just like a light bulb that isn’t in a socket in the first place. A person might say this is a bad example and give all kinds of points of how in a cold war countries are subvertly engaged and really hurting each other, but that is besides the point, I am just trying to make a general point about life and not the fine subtleties of cold war.

To me, what I am trying to say is that with any issue, with any question, the answer is not ever as simple as just yes or no. Sometimes the answer is one of absence of yes or no. For instance, a person might ask, “Are you a Republican or Democrat?” and then a person can say “Yes or No.” But a third option exists and that is one of non-engagement, or the answer of, “I am not registered to vote,” or maybe “I am Independent.”

Really, when I was younger I use to think that many situations in life were either “yes or no” type of situations. Now I realize that everything is “yes, no, or not engaged.” And if I have not made things confusing already, there is one more thing that needs to be considered, which is “How much?” So for instance with a light bulb that is on, how much or how often is it on? Is it a 45 watt or 90 watt? Is it on everyday all the time, or only an hour a day? These are questions of intensity. If two countries are in peace, how peaceful are they? Do they trade a lot or a little? How long have they been trading? These are important “intensity” questions because they describe just how real and stable the peace really is. The likewise for war, “Are they killing a lot of men?” and/or “Have they been killing for a long time?” The same goes for the Republican or Democrat issue. Maybe a person is a Democrat and always votes. Maybe they vote Republican sometimes. Maybe they don’t ever vote. These are intensity issues and are also very important to consider above and beyond a simple yes or no perspective.

Welcome a Mexican.

2008-01-22T11:46:00.001-08:00

Sometimes I wonder about America, this country I love. There are so many great things here compared to other places, I won’t even go into them not because this blog will be more than long enough as it is, but one thing I have seen that I would like to talk about is something I see discussed more and more today. “Illegal immigration” is a topic that is all over the news these days and I often here people saying that all the Mexicans should go home, or that the US should be a better fence along the border. I can understand some of the points that these people are making. They are after all logical. It should seem that the US should keep tighter control on the borders, and if the US needs more immigrants, than let them come in legally with visas. In a perfect world, maybe this would be the answer. Instead, the US government blatantly and openly allows companies to employ illegal aliens to do work that for the most part most Americans don’t want to do. This is in effect “inviting” them to come here.

These days there are more and more jobs that more established Americans who come from families who have lived in America for generations don’t want to do. A long time ago one’s grandfather might have been more than happy to be a factory worker, groundskeeper, or restaurant worker, but now more and more people are going to college and want service related jobs. This leaves a void in certain areas of employment markets that are currently being filled by undocumented immigrants.

I gather what I am trying to say is that the system is imperfect, but what is bothering me, what I am writing this blog about is not an imperfect system; it is the people’s reaction to this system that saddens me so much. I look around and I see a great country, rich with natural resources and blessed with a solid system of education for almost all (albeit not always equal, but for those who try, and those that want it enough, it is possible for almost anyone to get a solid education, even a Ph.D. if one wants.) But what I hear is the people saying that all the Mexicans should go home. African Americans are afraid the Hispanics will edge them out as the largest minority and compete for resources. Caucasian Americans are afraid that Hispanics will just someday be a plain majority. The poor in all ethnicities are afraid that the Hispanics are taking away jobs from them. So many groups seem to be voicing opposition towards the undocumented aliens, and why? Greed.

I said it. All of these groups are selfish. They have been given the grace of having been born in a prosperous country rich with opportunity for those who are willing to work for it and many if not most are doing okay. But instead of thinking of what they can share, give, and bless upon others, they think about what they might lose. I say so what if you lose a little, look how much the undocumented aliens have gained. They have earned 5-10 times the amount of money they could have back where they were raised. They are living with more amenities, and they buying better food and clothes. If America could welcome them, they could rejoice in this experience. Instead, they always fret and fear for the worst. But they send money home and their children go to better schools and the undocumented aliens continue to improve things here by doing work in America. This work they do, actually probably improves the economy. The Mexicans doing manual labor jobs frees up the job market for other Americans to do other things, like be nurses, doctors, and teachers.

I wish in America, a country where all Americans with the exception of the true Americans, the Native Americans, have all descended from immigrants and mostly been able to prosper to greater wealth generation after generation would be more welcoming to this new wave of immigrants. I do not think, feel, or believe that they will take away from America, but time will show that they make it better. I feel like they will bring more diversity and through their strengths will make America even stronger. And I feel like it is time that these poor immigrants who risk life to come here to work an honest days work start to be treated with respect and welcomed for the benefits they bring and will continue to bring to this great country.

The Serenity Prayer Examined

2007-10-25T16:36:00.000-07:00

When I was in junior college ten years ago, I had the pleasure of taking a class with and occasionally talking with young man named John who lived the majority of his waking life out of a wheel chair. I was sad for him as I would see his mom drop and pick him up in a big green van that had a special wheel chair assist device on it. I had pity because he was crippled and he was not able to do many things that I could and would. “He couldn’t even pee by himself,” I thought as I would see a bag that I knew that was connected to a catheter.

Sometimes I would talk with him and I know reflecting back that I talked with him with a your so sad tone and I am sure I was not the only one and I am sure it could be very irritating to cripples when they are talked down to in this manner. What I didn’t know is that at some point in our conversations he had sympathy towards me too.

One day he blurted something out after I went on to make some comment like how good he was doing to be going to school. Out of nowhere he hit me with, “I get up in the morning just to get up.”

What I didn’t know is that maybe John knew something about me. I hadn’t told him that I remember that my dad had just died, that I was coming off of a severe drug addiction, that I was still on probation and had been in a treatment facility for a year prior to this. I am sure he could tell something was wrong with me though. I am sure he could tell I was bothered, crazy, lost, and while I tried to show how healthy I was on the outside and that I had made huge improvements to be proud of no doubt, I was still very sick indeed.

I asked, “What?”

He said again but louder, “I get up in the morning just to get up. Do you even understand at all what I am talking about?” He was getting a bit agitated now in his questioning me.
I knew this was code to some extent and I tried to figure it out, saying, “I guess it means you have your day free to do what you want.”

He said, “kind of,” and try as I may, I was never quite given the explanation of what it meant as the whole conversation grew a bit uncomfortable. A few years later, I was in the Peace Corps, living a comfortable and exciting life and many mornings, I would wake up in the morning just to wake up, which is something that I feel like for the most part only young children and the elderly ever do.

Sometimes I wake up in the morning now that I am on vacation after I have been lying down and sleeping for ten hours (I sleep a lot). So for ten hours, I have not been bothering anyone else and nobody else has been bothering me. Literally, I have been at peace, a state of neutral, a state of not doing anything for ten hours. Nobody for the most part is directly harming or helping me and I the same to them. So when I wake up, if I wake up mad at someone, if I wake up loving someone, it is all in my head. It is a reality that I am making. Not only that, it is a reality I have chosen to create.

In doing this, in creating such a reality, I am not living in the here and now, I am already off in some kind of drama in my head. But when I wake up and I don’t create a reality of drama for myself, I can wake up, to simply just wake up. Move and act to simply just move and act. Again, I think the very old and very young are very good at this very thing. So why is that?

I would like to diverge for a minute to the serenity prayer, a prayer that time and time again has proven to be so wise and powerful in my life. It says, “God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference.” For children, it is so easy to do this because they cannot change anything really and haven’t been able to ever. This is one of the few things in life they know. While this wisdom on a child’s part might not be wisdom in the traditional sense as it is the fate they have fallen into, it is nonetheless a sort of wisdom all the same. For many children, it is quite simply, “I can’t change anything and I know it.” Other children, the ones that think they can change things often have such a harder time in life throwing tantrums, whining and crying for really in the end no change at all.

Old people are similar in a way. They too cannot change much as most of their life has already been decided. They still can change some things though and so the elderly sit and wait patiently to change those things they can, accepting that almost everything else they cannot change.

It is the rest of us, the middle grounders in life, those of us that are not too young or too elderly, off in the peace corps, or rolling around in chairs that have a hard time with this thing, this coming to terms with things out of our control, and striving to change the things we actually can, and having the intelligence to know the difference. It comes down to accepting our limitations and making the most of our abilities. Sounds simple but how confusing it actually gets along the way.

The person that gets out of bed in the morning in the here and now is a person that has indeed accepted all of their limitations. This person has figured out for the most part what they cannot get away with in life and is okay with it. Such a person might not know all of their abilities though, they might know that they are capable of getting out of bed in the morning but they might not also know what else they can do. At least such a person is on the road to discover the possibilities of what can really be done and not bothered by what cannot be achieved.

I guess another way of making this whole point is that it is good to know what oneself cannot do but even better to also know what a person can do too.

And here in lies the secret in the end, the wisdom to know the difference. Just a few words in a sentence arranged in way that if said it would seem like a person was asking God for just the smallest of favors but in reality, these few words when realized show represent a person that is on their way to having their maximum potentiality fulfilled.

The World is a COMMUNITY. We are all brothers and sisters.

2006-12-02T23:13:00.000-08:00

I realize my hands are very bloody. I can no longer ignore the plight of the third world human and their struggles. When they make the shirt I wear, or food I eat, we are then brothers and sisters. The world is a community. Before communities were on a village, city, and or maybe even a nation but these days with global communication and global trade, we are all neighbors. So when I buy goods that were produced by people who were are being taken advantage of, even to the point that they suffer and risk their own health and therefore lives, my hands are bloody. From the Mexican that tries to cross a desert so he can pick my bell peppers and tomatoes, to a garment worker in Nepal or Africa, to a factory worker in China making circuit breakers, they are all being taken advantage of. Why? So I can and others like me can have cheaper goods. If we refused to but such products then they would not be taken advantage of but we don’t.

It is out of my weakness that my hands are bloody. If I was stronger and others were with me, we could say no. The corporate types exploit the weakness of the masses that are willing to buy and the weakness of the masses that feel like they have no other option but to work in a factory. But if we the consumers were not weak and demanded better working conditions for our brothers and sisters, they the corporate types would oblige us. The power ultimately rests not with the factory workers making the goods or the corporates who enable the process but with the buyer.

Some argue that a life in the factory in which a person can work to buy some food and some medicine is better than a life in the village with little food or little medicine. This argument might be true but is still very flawed. This is like saying being half a slave is better than being completely a slave. Slavery is wrong in any amount and so is exploitation that takes place by the first world on the peasants. The only real solution is to allow the people from the countryside to have good jobs. That will only happen when the masses of consumers demand that their goods have been produced by people who have been fairly compensated. Yes, this would affect prices but I think not too much and I also believe that if consumers did demand better conditions for workers that such conditions would indeed arise.

Soul, Body, Consciousness?

2006-11-05T07:35:00.000-08:00

Question: Does Soul encompass our body?

My Answer: I am a clear separationist, for the most part, when it comes to the nature of the soul and body. I think that they, for the most part, exist on completely different levels of reality but that thought is a kind of go between that can somewhat exist in both of these things. I never really was able to come out and believe soul was body because I come out of a "Course in Miracles" train of thought that says. 1) God = eternity and good.
2) Body = not eternity and not good. 3) Therefore Body does not equal God.

Also, I believe and this is the real kicker that gets a lot of people, that God did not create us. I believe God created Adam and Eve, just like it says in the Bible, and that then Adam and Eve created other human beings as a curse put on them, as it says in the bible. Other humans were then a creation of the first humans, not a creation of God. Jesus to me was blessed by the divine hand and was in part created by God and so was Adam and Eve and therefore their bodies were divine too, the rest of us no. If God did create us, our bodies would be divine, like Jesus and Adam and Eve (or at least Adam and Eve before the expulsion out of Eden). So, I believe we are born "just people and only people" of and from our parents but that by faith in God and God's gift of grace, salvation, we can become more and our consciousness can become embodied in a soul and not only just in our body. And, or for the time while we are here and we are alive after we become saved, our consciousness can be embodied in our soul and our body.

Hmmmm, hope that wasn't confusing. I have been through this and through this with other people, always to make them mad. This is just my opinion and how I make sense of it all. If it doesn't make sense to anyone else, that is okay with me, I am happy that others have their beliefs whatever they are and have found something to believe in. I am interested in hearing others arguments on this topic and or replies to my statements.

Also I would like to note that I see it being more complicated though. I think that when a person becomes saved, the Holy Spirit becomes forever bonded with a qualified aspect of one's consciousness. Since that the consciousness is qualified, I believe one part is associated with body consciousness and one part with spiritual consciousness. I do believe it is possible for the spiritual consciousness to be becomes the primary consciousness and the entire consciousness but this takes ZEN like meditation and Mother Teresa like love. In doing so though, the body which is associated the holy consciousness can then also become a vessel for the Holy Spirit and thus holy. The problem is though when the meditation is broken, the times change and a body that is vulnerable to sin, (actually surrounded and inundated by it) falls back to a state of, well, the fallen.

This is why I repeated the phrase "for the most part" at the beginning of my writing because I think for the most part people aren't walking around in full meditation and love. I do on occasion try to do this. For example when meeting people so I can make a good impression but it is considerable effort and I haven't been to a certified ZEN school been able to take one on one lessons with Mother Teresa on how to practice love.

Root of All Evil Review

2006-10-12T08:56:00.000-07:00

Richard Dawkins wrote a genus book called “The Selfish Gene”. click here for more info I highly recommend anyone look at this book but it presents a heavy sided evolution explanation to the world but one that I feel is also very accurate. This book is wonderful like I said so I was interested in Dawkins other works. He has made a program called “Root of All Evil, The God Delusion”. I have viewed this program and would like to say the following in response to it.

Please bear with me for this one long paragraph. The evidence is clear to me that faith in itself is not bad but is often interpreted and guided in misdirection by many that makes it dangerous. Faith and religion are often hand in hand in this world but are not the same thing. Religion has often made life worse for people, I agree with that. But is there a place for faith outside of religion? I think there is. In fact, I think it is the good that faith does that is actually what keeps religion going for all of religions bad things. If religion was as bad and misguided as presented by Root of all Evil then what really keeps religion going? It is an institution that would implode and could not keep itself going. But instead there is something that is good which involves faith and spirituality but religion has confused and abused these. A belief in science's methods is needed but for thousands of years the faithful have been believers in something greater than themselves. Are none of these people natural born scientist? Are they not able to methodologically have experiences in their life that affirms their faith or are they all truly blind and misguided? If only one of these billions of faithful is right in their beliefs, then there is something greater than a mere physical existence. I myself, a very scientific person have had experiences that seem to have no natural explanation. I don’t expect anyone to believe me if I told my stories but it took such powerful experience to believe in something greater than myself. Before my experiences, I was a firm atheist and it took only such experiences to make me faithful. I do say that I am not associated with any churches because I do feel like these are obviously corrupt at many obvious points by scientific means. I conclude how I start. That this by no means implies that I believe faith in itself is a bad thing, only when faith has been interpreted by others and guided in misdirection does it become dangerous.

Law of Attraction

2006-09-02T22:19:00.000-07:00

Just saw a movie the other day called the "Law of Attraction". It is nice and is one of those power of positive thinking, manifest you destiny, you are what you think and believe kind of movies. I really believe in this kind of line of thought and highly reccomend other people to dig into it also. I personally like James Allen's book called "As a man thinketh" because it is one of the originals in this area but still a classic written over a hundred years ago and available for free on the internet at http://www.gutenberg.org/etext/4507 as well as many other places because its copyright has expired. It is only about fifteen to twenty pages and you could print it yourself and read it.

I also really like Wayne Dyer and the "Power of Intention". His work has also been instrumental in this field.

Lastly, I like Deepak Chopra's book "The Seven Spritual Laws of Success" the most. I thought it had the deepest understanding and the best metaphysical explaination of why positive thinking works.

Good luck and good day.

Why do people take an oath on a book against oaths?

2006-06-24T09:06:00.000-07:00

Here is a thought I have come across in my reflections from time to time. It is about taking oaths, making promises, vows, and swearing. It is right out of the Bible in Mathew Ch. 5, just a little after that Sermon on the Mount that says all the less advantaged people are going to have their rewards.

5:33 Again, ye have heard that it hath been said by them of old time, Thou shalt not forswear thyself, but shalt perform unto the Lord thine oaths: 5:34 But I say unto you, Swear not at all; neither by heaven; for it is God's throne: 5:35 Nor by the earth; for it is his footstool: neither by Jerusalem; for it is the city of the great King. 5:36 Neither shalt thou swear by thy head, because thou canst not make one hair white or black. 5:37 But let your communication be, Yea, yea; Nay, nay: for whatsoever is more than these cometh of evil.

And here is a little easier to read version for all the KJV impaired out there

33"Again, you have heard that it was said to the people long ago, 'Do not break your oath, but keep the oaths you have made to the Lord.' 34But I tell you, Do not swear at all: either by heaven, for it is God's throne; 35or by the earth, for it is his footstool; or by Jerusalem, for it is the city of the Great King. 36And do not swear by your head, for you cannot make even one hair white or black. 37Simply let your 'Yes' be 'Yes,' and your 'No,' 'No'; anything beyond this comes from the evil one.

Some people might interpret this as to mean, when you promise, do not promise on anything at all but just say, “I am going to ______”. But I tend to focus on the part that says “Swear not at all”. To me, this means people should not really going around making “promises” to each other but clearly explain what is going on. Saying things like “I am doing _____ and I plan on doing ______.”

The problem in life is like we do not have any power to even really change the color of our hair, we do not have any power to say what we will and will not do in the future. Things happen, life’s get changed, and promises that were made with full intention of being fulfilled are broken. Heart burn and stomach aches make us miss work and car wrecks and exploding buildings make us never come back. In a world of instability, you simply just can’t say “I promise to _____” and know for sure you can do really do it.

Take one of the most famous promises in current culture, the wedding vow, for instance. There is a 50% divorce rate, which means a lot of people think they will be married for their whole life but instead don’t do everything they promised.

Likewise, very commonly on TV you hear the whole phrase of “Do you promise to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, so help you God?” on court TV shows. Isn’t this going completely against what the Bible says not to do? I find it so ironic that people swear on a book that specifically says “do not swear”.

And how about all the fraternal organizations and secret societies, aren’t they for the most part suppose to have some kind of ritualized oath but at the same time claiming to be “Christian”?

Anyway, there are a hundred other ways that people claiming to be Christian do act in ways that seem to be not “Christian” according to my intuition but I know I don’t know it all and so I don’t condemn anyone but at the same time I wanted to bring this up to see what anyone else thought about this.

doing what I'm doing

2006-04-27T09:59:00.000-07:00

"People say I'm crazy doing what I'm doing,
Well they give me all kinds of warnings to save me from ruin,
When I say that I'm o.k. they look at me kind of strange,
Surely your not happy now you no longer play the game,

People say I'm lazy dreaming my life away,
Well they give me all kinds of advice designed to enlighten me,
When I tell that I'm doing Fine watching shadows on the wall,
Don't you miss the big time boy you're no longer on the ball?

I'm just sitting here watching the wheels go round and round,
I really love to watch them roll,
No longer riding on the merry-go-round,
I just had to let it go . . ." -John Lennon-

What a beautiful quote man, what a beautiful quote! Now there is a guy that is describing not getting caught up in other peoples' drama or other's expectations and impositions but lives life on his terms and decided to live it freely and peacefully. I got to respect that.

My banner

2006-03-25T08:56:00.000-08:00

Interesting Definition for Spirituality

2006-03-04T12:16:00.000-08:00

Spirituality exists wherever we struggle with the issue of how our lives fit into the greater cosmic scheme of things. This is true even when our questions never give way to specific answers or give rise to specific practices such as prayer or meditation. We encounter spiritual issues every time we wonder where the universe comes from, why we are here, or what happens when we die. We also become spiritual when we become moved by values such as beauty, love, or creativity that seem to reveal a meaning or power beyond our visible world. An idea or practice is "spiritual" when it reveals our personal desire to establish a felt-relationship with the deepest meanings or powers governing life.

From "Spiritual, But Not Religious,"

by Robert C. Fuller.

He said, "My way is better than your way"

2006-02-26T22:21:00.001-08:00

Sometimes I wonder about the state of religion in the world and the people who try to prove it or disprove it. My buddy Nate was eating lunch with me the other day when he started talking about a book he had just recently come across in a bookstore. The author, a devout atheist had decided through logic he could disprove any person’s logic that there was a God and therefore disprove religion. This is wrong in so many ways.

I can grant the author, whoever he is, that there are a lot of people in the world that believe in a religion and when asked why they believe, can’t give a good reason for their beliefs and that after a careful analysis of the argument, one can find flaws pretty easy. That does not mean a lot though. Did this author interview everyone? Did he even interview anyone with an in depth knowledge of religion? Actually, it does not matter.

Confucius once said when asked about religion that he had not even mastered all the ways of Earth so why even consider Heaven. But since his day, we have come along way, I can order a pizza and have it delivered to my house, I can fly in an airplane in the clouds, I can even talk to people on the other side of the world. To a person like Confucius or one of his contemporaries, this all might seem god like and maybe means we should start to think about religion a little more but in reality we all know these are simple things.

But for all we can do and have accomplished in the last few thousand years, we still have some very basic, let me say extremely extremely basic things we don’t know. We don’t know how big the universe is and in fact we are even not sure what it is made up. Sure, we got an idea, atoms or quarks or gluons but the theories about these are changing and will continue to dramatically change in the next few years.

We don’t even know how people came to be, in Kansas where I live they are debating evolution verses creationism and that is a whole nother story but I am talking mainly about our DNA, is it mapped out yet? The scientist say it is but really only a few genes have been identified and linked to actual traits. There is still a long way to go to find out which gene where actually makes this or that happen.

And the rough history of human development is still being mapped. We know that people came out of Africa, that people migrated here and there but the whole picture is still quite a bit unclear and is changing every day. Some interesting work is being done with the genographic project but its final results are still years away.

So I can go on but I am not, my point being is, we as people still don’t know much more than Confucius. We are still discussing who we are and what the world is made up of. After we get these basics down, we will be able to devote more time to what we will be after this world and where the other world is and is made up of. Until then, of course some pseudo-intellectual is going to be able to disprove a faithful’s claim on divine knowledge but this does not mean such a person is entirely wrong.

At the same time, who are these people going around, knocking on my door, telling me that they know for sure what the other world is about. I ask them how they know? They heard it from a girl, who heard it from a guy, who heard it from somebody else type of story does not fly with me. And at the same time really leaves openings for the atheist above to blow holes in their arguments.

I do believe in something though but my experiences are all personal. I can witness to someone else, I can tell them all I have learnt and know but in the end all my knowledge and experience about religious experience is all subjective. It is hard for me to physically, tangibly, give anybody any kind of evidence in a spiritual world other than my word. Why? Because it is a spiritual world. If it was a part of this world the evidence would be obvious. The person I was trying to explain all this too could just see my evidence and be convinced but the spiritual world can’t by any methods be gathered into a jar and put on display for all to see in today’s times.

The spiritual world is an “other” world, if it was a “here” world it would not be that big of a deal. So for each person to really know about the spiritual world, they just have to experience it, themselves. Seeing or experiencing is believing and it is that simple. So for me, I have a hard time trying to take some bodies word for something like religion when they can’t show it to me but they can’t show it to me because I don’t believe. It is a catch 22 that catches everyone at some point and for the atheist that writes his book, is ultimately his vindication. But I believe that this might not always be the case. How? Why? I am not sure but I hope for an easier answer and less controversy surrounding one of the big questions in life.

salvation in five minutes

2006-02-07T07:53:00.000-08:00

I recommend believing in some kind of religion or path in life. I came to this realization after have a Near Death Experience when I was younger and was not a believer. I believe a person can believe in any one of the many and common religions out there that promote justice, unity, and harmony but with in that religion must fully believe that somehow, someway they are "destined for a good afterlife" . If a person does this even once in their life, I think at least a part of their spirit will be saved.

What's love got to do with it?

2006-01-28T22:45:00.000-08:00

(This blog is extremely long but hopefully not too difficult to read for someone that is willing to give it a little time. It is long because it has to be long. I am talking about love and I have only picked really just a few things to try to discuss in relation to love but even just doing this, with a topic so complicated, takes a long time. That being said, I really hope this will be read because the information in this blog really deals with a very important aspect of life and something deep down inside we all really need to do, love)

Two people I know were arguing, one says love realizes justice, the other says that is wrong and that love really realizes forgiveness. Well, both articulate their point well but they are both right and both wrong.

The person who says that love precipitates forgiveness talked about the story of Jesus and the woman about to be stoned for adultery. Jesus refused to condemn her and let her be stoned. The argument was that he did not practice justice but forgiveness.

The people who argued this argument made many good points but I have a different view. First of all, what the Bible says Jesus practiced towards the woman was all of the above: love, justice and forgiveness. Jesus, in the example loves a person, forgives them, and by doing this and encouraging the person to turn away from their wrongs is practicing a very just form of justice.

But the story is complicated because the Pharisees wanted to stone and kill the lady. For them, this meant justice. That would mean justice is subjective, but this argument is false. The real argument, the true argument is that what the Pharisees wanted to enact was punishment under the guise of justice. No more no less. Punishment, revenge, and retribution are not the same as justice though many people get them confused.

For instance, there have been people falsely imprisoned, sometimes even executed. At the time, it seemed like it was justice. Later, these people were proven innocent. What had seemed like before was justice was actually not justice at all, it was a cruel and unjustified punishment? There are other times that people who were guilty of a crime walked free. My point being, punishment and revenge is not justice no matter what it seems like a person deserves in a situation. And also that religious and secular laws do not always equal justice, especially when applied incorrectly or when designed incorrectly.

Since justice is not revenge, what is justice? Justice, simply put is when things are fair. If a wrong has taken place there are many ways that justice or fairness can take place. One way is for the victim to be compensated by the perpetrator for the offence. This is true justice.

This type of justice is something that people do for each other all the time that love each other. In fact it is a requirement. Let me explain it like this, if I love somebody but I somehow hurt them, I need to try to make up for this. If I hurt people and don’t think twice about and do it again, this is not love but abuse. Love demands that if I hurt my girlfriend’s, mother’s, or sister’s feelings, that I not ignore the situation but make up for it. This

making up for it is justice.

The victim has a part in the act too, that is if they really love the offender. The victim must forgive. If they are not forgiving, then they are not loving. If they are not forgiving, then they are harboring resentment and it is sure to cause an unhealthy relationship.

See, loving demands that one person forgive and the other seek justice. If these are not done a person is not acting in a loving way. I can’t say for sure about anyone else but I know in every relationship I have ever been in whether it was big or small, at some point somebody messed up. It always happens. We are all humans and that is just the way it goes. It is inevitable that sooner or later somebody will do something wrong to another and when this happens, this is when we have to practice forgiveness and justice if we are going to continue on with a healthy relationship.

Love is not only as simple as forgiveness and justice though. Love demands honesty too. If I love someone, I will tell him or her the truth and if I don’t I am not treating him or her fairly. Not treating people fairly is clearly not loving them.

Love means not stealing from a person or harming them also for more than obvious reasons.

Love means doing each and everyone of these things, if even one of them is absent, there is no true love.

Some might say, I am talking about actions to other people and this is not the way they define love but I am convinced my definition of love as something a person does to another person and not something that happens to them is a very solid definition.

I have heard love described as many different things. Some for instance say love is a feeling you have for others when you feel like you need to be around them. I say when you need somebody really bad that is not love but a kind of addiction, a dependence on the other, an internal lack of wholeness that is filled by the other. This is not a necessarily bad thing, we all have it. I have it too. I need people, especially those that I am close too. Often times this needing leads me to be hurt, especially when in the end I don’t get what I needed. We all get hurt in something we call love but that is not real love because real love can never hurt a person. When a person is hurt, it is because they were not whole and were a needy person. I don’t mean this in a harsh and damming way because I myself get hurt often and this is just the way I see it.

Other people say they fall in love with somebody when they see a really attractive member of the opposite sex (for some it is the same sex, but it is all the same). To me this is not love but the old sexual drive kicking in. This is not love but infatuation.

When a relationship goes farther to the point of making love. To me this means having sex but a person can also practice loving another while having sex but the two are different. In fact having sex is very often times not making love at all but something completely different. Think of all the people that use sex for their own personal pleasure at the expense of the other, the people that objectify others during sex, the people that use sex for power, or even worse the people that use sex as a way to abuse people. How can any of these things that treat people so badly be love? They are not. (I am getting to what love is in a minute, hold on)

Others say love is when they really love something. It is their favorite thing or person in the whole world. Sure they are not addicted to it, they can live without it, but when they have it, they are really happy. To me again, this is not love, this is actually liking something. To me when I like something and I am close to it, it makes me happy.

Some go back to the Greeks and say real love is Agape. This is the most high love possible but to me that is just unconditional acceptance. This is closer to love than the other things I have just mentioned but is still not love, just an important part of it.

Others talk about love as affection, or brotherly, or motherly love, or attachment, or enthusiasm. The list goes on and on. I don’t feel like explaining it all and I am not sure if anyone would even read it but still to me, none of these are love.

Actually, almost all of these things describe actions that take place within a person’s consciousness or body. All these thinks affect our mood and all of these things, I think only really hint around what love really is. See to me, love is not something that happens inside of ourselves but is something we do to others. It is actions and a state of consciousness we take towards others. Love is a giving and not a receiving. It is an outward phenomenon and not an inward phenomenon. This is why a person can look for love all their life and never find it, because it cannot really happen to you. True love is actually something you do for others.

Love is something that when you do for others you are practicing all that is good towards another. You are being honest to another, you are unconditionally accepting them, you are trying to have justice in you relationship, you are being compassionate, you are practicing harmony and unity with the other’s essence, and you are providing an opportunity for the other to grow and become more than they are. Back to my original example of Jesus, if the story is true, he would have been practicing all these things and giving people an example of how to love others.

Now the reason why I think that love as I describe it has been confused with all the things described above. I am talking about love being confused with infatuation, liking, sex, forgiveness, unconditional acceptance… The reason is for many people, myself included don’t walk around all the time manifesting all that is good and thus practicing real love.

But in moments of our life we do come close and often times we are doing something that we don’t normally do, like for instance our sex drive has enabled us to be extremely nice to a person for a while. When we are being so good to the other person, we seem to be loving them and thus we get our sex drive confused with love.

The examples vary widely for the many different types of people in the world and that is why there are so many confusing definitions of what love is. Even the definition of loving as dependence, which is one of the most common definitions. I have seen a person, (this includes me at times too), that needed another person so badly that I was forced to treat them so well. By treating them so well, I was indeed in a way loving them but this loving I was doing should not be confused with the internal dependence I had that caused my outward actions of loving.

One last thing, true love, real love, full love is as I said I very difficult thing to do. To really do it, a person has to be doing all good things at once. Not exactly that easy of a thing to do for me, especially for a long time. In fact try as hard as I can, I have never been able to do this for more than a flash. Seriously, a flash is all I have ever been able to do it for. I would like to do it for more but up till this point I have not been able to.

See for me, the way love is practiced is actually very analogous to a cheesy commercial on TV. There is a commercial for a bank (I don’t know what bank, maybe somebody can tell me) that talks about how they like to process checks. The commercial talks about all the steps the go through to process checks and how complicated it is to process millions of checks a year. The point of the commercial though is that the bank does not try to set up an operation to process millions of checks a year correctly but to learn how to process one check correctly and then repeat it a million times.

For me love is the same way. In love, I do not set out to try to be a great lover over the course of my lifetime by doing all these good things I mentioned above to everybody, every time. I try to do all these great things, all the same time, just for an instance, just with one person. If I do it, if I can do it, then I try to repeat that same thing over and over.

I say this because it seems like to me people often times seem to try to make their love in a relationship last indefinitely. They plan out their lives and couples tell each other, if you do this and I do that then I will love you or we can always be in love. For me, this way of working a relationship just does not work. I try to live in the moment; each moment doing all of the good things that make a person have a healthy relationship, one second at a time. If I do this over and over, the months or years can pass by. But if I try to plan out the months or years, then my days, minutes, and seconds get passed by.

These thoughts I have here, they are by no means all I have to say on love. I could go on more and more.

Maybe sometime I will write part two to this blog but I think I have made some very general statements here and set the general tone for what I believe about love. A lot of what I explained here, I came up through my own personal reflection in life. I thought about it all a lot and came up with many of these ideas. Some of them were refined when I became a graduate teaching assistant while attending school at KU for the class “Loving Relationships”. The class was taught by Robert Shelton who is a great wealth of knowledge in this subject but not only does he talk about such things but demonstrates them in his daily life. His book written on the subject is called, “Loving Relationships” but if a person asks me, it might be better titled “healthy and loving relationships” as that is more of what it deals with. It is a hard book to find but I think that maybe Amazon might carry it if anybody is interested. It is an academic book and not a pop book on love but is not that difficult to read. If anyone is interested in pursuing more research on what love really is, I highly recommend Shelton’s book, as it is the most complete book I have found on the subject and sure has a lot of potential to profoundly change a person’s life in so many ways if they are receptive to its message. If it is not able to be found, a much more popular book, but in my opinion not as good as Shelton’s is Erich Fromm’s book called “The Art of Loving”. It is an old classic and a good place to start in the search for what love really is.

Well, that is about it on my blog about love. If anyone actually read and go through all of this, I would love to hear back from you and see what you think. Please, really leave a comment on something or anything.

Lesotho Arrival (on racism and being welcomed)

2006-01-28T13:34:00.000-08:00

Malcolm X in his autobiography pointed out that on his trip to the Middle East he had been so overwhelmed in his experience having been with black, brown, red, yellow and white people. These were the white man, the Arab man, the Asian man, and the black man all praying together. Some were poor and some rich, some conservative and some extremists, but all were brothers. It was the same with me. Even though I obviously was not racist before I went to Africa, I had still yet to experience such a profound experience as Malcolm’s. After just my first week in Africa I had such a profound change in consciousness similar to Malcolm’s; I would be forever changed. The people had been so kind and beautiful to me that I had all issues cleared in my mind concerning racism, deciding for once and all, for sure, that it is an ignorant practice of those who fail to see the truth and potential of the world and the magnificent people in it. I had been eating with, talking with, and even living with people of a different color, different religion, and different first language than myself but my days were going good, even better than good, they were unforgettable. It felt strangely like entering a completely different world and in part I was. I was on the same planet Earth but I was half way around and on the other side of the equator but surely in my mind, I had entered into a different planet in a different time. Things were magical again and life had its awe as it once did when I was young. The personal interactions I had with my new found African friends were each one stimulating, special and deep felt in my heart. The Basotho made me feel so at home even though I had not even heard of a country called “Lesotho” only a few months before. A country so poor, so small, that it did not even register on my narrative of the world.

I felt so welcomed and in my place that it was actually startling. It was vaguely like being a traveler and having been on a long distant trip for so long that one feels like the trip will never end. Finally after weeks, months, or even years one returns home to feel safe and comfortable only to find they have been gone for so long they have partially forgotten what it felt like to be home. That is what if felt like for me “coming home” but this was my first time in Africa. It was like I was coming home and it was all familiar and comfortable to me in a way that made me feel like I belonged to the land and the land to me. But it was also somehow unfamiliar as these people were different than any I had seen before and there language even stranger. It is so amazing just how good I felt coming to Africa and having her spirit in me even though at the time I suspected the people there would have many reasons to not welcome me so warmly like they actually did.

I was born in a prosperous land; they were born in a poor one. I had gone to good schools, received a fine education from intelligent teachers and the majority of the Africans I saw could not even read a newspaper. When I had been sick I went to fancy hospitals with expensive test and got the new and latest medicines and when they got sick, they wasted away and died. Our worlds were opposite and tragically so. They had every reason to hate me, be jealous of me, and be racist towards me but they only showed me kindness and love. After only a week, I knew unquestionably and undisputedly that the color of a man’s skin determines little about who he is, what he is able to accomplish, and how he is going to treat another fellow human being. It is more the choices a person makes and the choices the people around a person make that ends up helping to determine who a person is in life, not the color of their skin. The African people of Lesotho were indeed some of the friendliest, calm, and most generously accommodating people I had ever met and I am sure I will always love them for it.

games? not for me

2006-01-17T22:19:00.000-08:00

(Warning: This blog entry is long, a bit complicate, and difficult to read at times but ultimately makes my point, which is not an easy point to make. For something a little easier, check out some of my other entries)

I love playing. I love telling jokes and laughing. I splash in the water when I swim with my friends. I sing and I dance. Sometimes on a nice day, I play Frisbee catch with my friends and we do stupid tricks. I light firecrackers on the fourth of July and I am always up for going on an adventure. I tease my niece and nephew, tickle them and make them laugh. All of these things and many more are play to me. I can hardly get enough of play. I love it but I do not play games because games are a different kind of play than all these I just mentioned.

First of all in all the play I just mentioned, I play with other people (okay, sometimes I sing and dance when people aren’t looking and I am by myself). We all might have different roles in the different kinds of playing above but none of the roles is really anymore important than any of the other ones because all the different roles are needed for play. For instance if someone tells a joke, there needs to be another person to laugh. If a person throws a Frisbee, another person needs to be there to catch it. The roles are different but they are all important.

In the world of games like football, cards, tennis, Monopoly, and chess, the people play against each other. Sure they are also playing with each other in some ways because it is not exactly full blown war, is it? And even the people playing on teams are especially playing together but to some extent at some point there is always a “me versus you” thing going on and that is what I can’t stand.

Why? It seems so harmless and maybe it is but I try to work on absolutes most of the time. For instance, I am a vegetarian. I don’t eat meat and that means all the time. Being a vegetarian does not mean not eating all meat except bacon bits on salads or Turkey on Thanksgiving; it means never eating meat. Some people think it would be okay to eat a little meat every once and a while and still be considered a vegetarian. If they think that, it is fine by me if it works for them, but it does not work for me. I am a person who likes absolutes. Another case would be of stealing. Many people know it is not okay to steal a million dollars but it is also still not okay to steal a dollar. This is how I am. Eating meat, even if it is a little, is still eating meat. Stealing, even if it is only a little, is still stealing. And, participating in the division that games encourage, is still being competitive.

Let me explain more why I don’t like competition in a different way. A perfect example of a good type of play would be a band of musicians. Each is different and each has his or her own part and instrument. Each plays but not against the other. Each not only plays but tries to play as well as possible with the other. By playing with each other their music becomes beautiful. Imagine if you would what the music would sound like if two people were set on playing against each other. It would be a disaster. Diversity in this case is good. The differences in tempo, tone, and sound of the different instruments blend and add to each other. So is the case with many other types of play but not play of games.

In play of games the different players actually set out to destroy, smash, defeat, and ruin the other. Ideologically, the two different types of play are very different. One values harmony, unity, and support while the other values dominance, power, and immobilization of the other.

I am a peaceful person. I take the tacky old saying of “I am a lover not a fighter” to heart and really mean it. I do not engage in activities that seek dominance, power, and immobilization of the other, even if it is only play. I say this because I realize that on some level games are based on something more than the play that they are billed as.

Let me give an example. The more harmless games for instance, say, checkers or UNO are really pretty simple. They don’t really do a lot of harm, I don’t think. A step up from this can be card games like poker. Maybe no money is used but then sometimes money is used. A little bit of money lost might not be that bad, only a little bit bad, but a lot of money lost can cause a lot of damage. Even a step up would be full contact sports. I know these are fun to watch on TV and fun to play. I have even played them all on teams when I was younger: basketball, baseball, football, soccer and many more. But take football for instance. In this game people spend a good deal of their time trying to physically stop a person. Usually they try to do this by hitting the other person as hard as possible. This makes good highlights for replays and late night news but in reality people get hurt. Sometimes people that play games that are competitive get hurt really bad. Some, on rare occasions even die. A card game might be innocent but the line is vague between a card game and a game that permanently injures another person.

The examples could go on and get more serious but my argument is not as strong but is more intense. The same dominant type of thinking, the same willingness to go to any lengths for oneself at the expense of the other is demonstrated more seriously in business in America and even more so in cutthroat business. Such businesses when in competition with each other might see it as a game, not to score the most points, but to sell the cheapest products. These businesses cut costs, ignore safety and people get hurt. Some businesses hire undocumented immigrants and overwork them for too little pay. Some businesses that involve things like gambling, prostitution, drug dealing, and anything with the mafia really can abuse people. They often die or are treated very inhumanely. Lastly, if someone steps up competition one more level from the level of mafia or street gangs, one can reach the state of war where people plainly set out to kill each other.

Now I know what I am trying to do here is make a comparison to playing checkers to the permanent injuries of football to all out war. This comparison and connection might seem far fetched to some, especially how we are raised, but I really think there is a connection and there is no clear line to stop at and that is why I don’t play at all. Not with anything.

Another thing about games, actually a small issue compared to the one above is that games are not real. They are, in a way, make believe. I know that is why people play them sometimes but there are some pretty serious aspects that a person needs to understand when playing games. Games are pretty solid binaries most of the times. By this, I mean to make the point that one and only one person is completely and totally opposed to another. They are a closed off system. In games there is often only two players and that is why they are closed off. But nothing in the real world is actually closed off. The real game of life is a very open and fluid system. Life has no real set beginning or ending for the different acts and plays. Different players in life leave and or comeback and new players also come in. In games a person starts off in and ends up out, it is over, and that is it. The different games of life can be very infinite in many ways while competitive games have very narrowly defined starting points, ends, and rules that apply. Life is just simply not like that. People come in and out of jobs, friendships, marriages, and many other roles at their own will, at not at surely defined times. In all these relationships, we play. Sometimes we play and others play with us but sometimes we play and others don’t want to play, so we play by ourselves. Sometimes we might think we are playing but the other person is not (people get hurt like this sometimes). In a competitive game though a person has to play or forfeit. It is so much different. If a person plays a lot of games and then they think they can live out life the same way their games have played out, they might very well be in for an upset. I say this and many people might not take me seriously but it is very easy for a person, especially one that is young, to confuse the realities of games to the reality of life and not even know it is happening. This is kind of like a person watching family sitcoms all day and then not being able to figure out why in real life all their problems aren’t solved at the end of thirty minutes. It is just too easy to blur the reality between fantasy and real life.

A more dangerous psychological result of playing games in my opinion is the false sense of superiority that is instilled in the winners. One has to only have played any kind of competitive game or watch one to know how good winning feels. People scream in joy, soccer players rip off their jerseys, and Olympians even cry. Why does it feel so good? Because we worked hard, we struggled, and we overcame against the other. We were the best.

This is a fine feeling for many and if people like to feel like that I don’t have a problem with it. In American culture, we are taught doing this-feeling like this-is not only normal but good. But I don’t like to feel like I am the best. I don’t want to feel better than anyone else because I know that deep down inside I am not better than another other person. So when I play a game and I win, I am lying to myself, telling myself I am really the best one around. To beat down another, to put them aside and declare myself better through a metaphorical reenactment is a way of deceiving myself into grandness and falsely building my ego (And I surely know how I can’t help but have my ego stroked).

Worse though is the case when I lose. Now, I feel worse than the other. I feel like I am not sufficient and some how defective. I really don’t like feeling like this.

Actually, I can’t stand felling like this. Like I said, I feel like everyone is equal. We might all have our differences and these differences can be shown to be proficiencies or deficiencies in others or ourselves that boost or harm our ego. But these differences can also be used to help each other, and if we do this in harmony and unity, we can make ourselves better. I believe in working for peace, harmony, and unity and this is why I don’t engage in war, I don’t engage in the mafia, I don’t engage in highly competitive sports that could injure myself or others and yes, I don’t play games. I do this because like stealing even a little bit is still stealing, playing competitive games even modest games still causes division.

Sex and Sprituality

2006-01-17T10:28:00.000-08:00

(The following is from an email conversation I have had with a person concerning sex and spirituality and how some people might want to take advantage of others by saying a person can only really be spiritual if a relationship is sexual.)

To me in the spirit world there is no sex or sexes. This is exemplified in different religions at times but a good example is in the bible where a woman asks Jesus whose wife she will be if she has been married to many people. Jesus tells her that in Heavan there are not marriages or sexes. Therefore what happens here on earth concerning sex only effects the spirit in the same way anything else that was good or bad would. I mean it like this. If someone has a non-sexual relationship, any kind of relationship, and it is unhealthy then maybe his or her spirit will be hurt. If someone has a sexual relationship and it is unhealthy then also his or her spirit will be hurt. The opposite is also true that healthy sexual relationships can have positive spiritual consequences and healthy non-sexual relationships can have positive spiritual consequences.

But in a world of the spirit where the nature of reality is so much different than it is here, there are neither sexes nor sex and therefore sex in and of itself has no real direct effect to what happens in the spirit world. Only how the sex was engaged in has a spiritual result just like any other activity say like playing baseball, taking a walk on the beach, or talking to someone on the phone.

As for having relationships without having sex because some people will try to explain to others that they can not have a good “relationship” with out having sex. Of course we can. I have had hundreds of relationships with hundreds of people of different ages, sexes, races, and religions but hardly any of these have with a sexual partner. If I had to have sex with everyone I know that would really suck. When a person says that they can not have a good “relationship” with out sex, what they are really saying is “sexual relationship” and that is the goal of their interaction.

Sex may be used though to enhance a relationship or hurt it. In a case if a person said no and the other still persists, the persistence would cause damage whether or not actions are followed through with. If a person doesn't want to, and doesn't feel like it, I gather bad things would happen as a result if a person went through with the sex.

Just like sex can be used to enhance or hurt relationships, it may also be used to enhance or hurt spirituality. It depends on how a person engages it and what it is being done. As for a person wanting to have sex but not reach climax as some religions teach; that is a common idea and for me one that is plain common lies. (sorry if this offends anyone) The thing is that sex in many ways meant to bring a person to orgasm although not a requirement. That is the natural course of it. If a person’s friends wants to be physically close but not reach climax, just hold their hand. I am sure you can do that for more than long enough. :-) For me positive spirituality enhanced by sex would be enhanced by doing what people should do with any type of spiritual activity which is practice love. Now a person might also practice breathing to gain rhythm and a solid foundation of self. And yes develop spiritual discipline in some way if they were able to refrain from orgasm. If a person is wanting spiritual discipline there are other ways, some of which are arguably better but definitely better for a person because now the person is not being abused by another. I suggest if a person’s friend does not have a sex partner a far better practice to develop discipline would be to take up fasting. (oh wait that doesn't sound so fun, now does it).

criticism

2006-01-17T08:14:00.000-08:00

I do like to hear nice compliments. Lets me know what I am doing well at so someday I can make it great. I also don't mind an equal amount of criticism so I know what I am doing wrong so I can work on it really hard to make it better or just cut it out all together. I think the trick is things need to be balanced. Too much of one or the other is pretty destructive to a person's ego.