A Society Addicted to Addiction

"If they took all the drugs, nicotine, alcohol, caffeine off the market for six days, they'd have to bring out the tanks to control you" - Dick Gregory

"Early in use, all of the positive things that are said about cocaine are true. As use continues, all the negative things become true" - Frank Gawin.

"I prefer the natural sky to an opium eater's heaven" - Henry David Thoreau.

     Some people say that the way drugs remove inhibitions reveals the real person. Actually, drugs can only ever reveal the mind-altered person. Mind-altering drugs distort us. They often erase our humanity.

     Yet Americans in the tens of millions continue to get high and space out.
 

Why?

     People pursue goals for a payoff. When we do something, we want something.

     True, we may have no expectations. We may act out of habit. But we always act in the hope of achieving some outcome.

     People take drugs in the hope of distorting their awareness of the world.

     Whatever anyone may say about higher planes of consciousness, mind-altering substances change the functioning of our greatest survival tool: our brain. Although brains are not truth detectors, they are finely honed danger detectors. Our brains keep us alive. We screw with our brains at our peril.

     Many drug abusers have dangerous issues they are afraid to face. They use drugs to control their worlds.

     The drugs they take only create more chaos.

     Many people start out experimenting with drugs. They take them for fun. But what starts out as fun usually ends up as what amounts to a disease. Whether we call it a disease or not, addiction affects physical and mental health. Addiction is a serious medical problem.

     These facts are well known. But the motives of drug users - no different than our own on a basic level - are worth repeating in our current atmosphere of lies. The drug culture and those claiming to fight that culture in a so-called War on Drugs have distorted the evidence in front of us so much that it's easy to feel we are on drugs ourselves. Our government policies in particular are so disconnected from reality and so counterproductive it's as if our policy makers wanted to keep us on drugs.

     Contrary to the opinions we have heard from our "leaders," people don't use drugs because they are bad or weak people. People don't sell drugs because they are evil either. People buy, sell, and use drugs for the same reasons people do anything: to control their world. For a payoff.

What To Do?

     Once addicted, people lose control of their lives. They lose power. They lose hope. Many don't believe they have any chance of living fulfilling lives again. Even if they have an end in mind, they don't have the means.

     To stop drug abuse, it takes programs which encourage and empower the addicted to manage their lives in healthy ways. Once people see a better way to meet their needs and desires, they can change. But they will change only if they believe they can.

     We believe we can change, and we start to change, only when we see a clear path to change.

     When our problems are deep-rooted, we may need support. By "support," I mean people in trouble need independence-building tools and hope. Many of the tools troubled people need are just different ways of thinking. With tools and hope, addicts don't need to be given financial support. They can get that themselves.

     In short, we need to personally empower and encourage addicts.

What Are We Doing?

     Instead of empowering and encouraging addicts, we the people are dis-empowering and discouraging them.

     We keep drug users from success by saddling them with criminal records, and with the de-educating experience of jails and prisons. We also foist stigmas on them that hurt their chances of finding jobs, housing, even healthy friends. 

     We treat the suffering of addiction as a crime. We pretend that people choose to get addicted. Or else we treat the bad decisions that lead to addiction as if they could never be forgiven.

     We also mix up the crimes some addicts may commit with drug use. Yes, drug use can lead people to harm others. But drugs themselves only harm the user. Yet we criminalize drug use. 

     So addicts go to jails and prisons which don't have much in the way of recovery and rehabilitation programs. What these jails and prisons do have are many opportunities and incentives for addicts to become truly criminal.

     Once released, convicts find staying sober and crime-free even harder. Only the most determined addicts can fight through perverse drug policies to get and stay clean. 

     We the people do not want the addicted - we do not want anyone who has a criminal record - to rejoin society as productive, responsible citizens. We want them to keep failing at life.

What Now?

     Let's treat drug abuse like the public health problem it is. When addicts do commit real crimes, let's treat that as a separate issue ... but an issue that still needs to be dealt with by rehabilitation, not an eye for an eye.

     Yes, crimes demand stiff consequences. But our end goal should be to stop crime, not perpetuate it by creating resentment and by punishing convicts even after they have served their sentences.

     And drug addiction is not a crime, no matter what the government calls it.

     Let's stop helping addicts to stay addicted. Let's help them recover instead. Many addiction treatments have been proven to work. Let's use them.

Chance, Free Will, And Determinism

"One half of life is luck; the other half is discipline - and that's the important half, for without discipline you wouldn't know what to do with your luck" - Carl Zuckmayer.

Philosophers have argued for centuries over whether we really have free will, or everything is mechanical and determined. Many modern scientists believe they have resolved the conflict between these two theories by positing a world ruled by chance.

But free will and cause and effect are not theories at all. We experience our volition directly every time we agonize over a choice and then will a decision. And we experience determinism directly when no matter how many times we toss a ball in the air, it falls back in our palm. We know there are causes and effects and we know free will is one category of cause. What I just said is a summary of direct experience - a summary of facts. It is not a theory.

There may be some theory which puts all this together cleanly. As of now, chance isn't it.

But we do experience luck as well. Mathematicians can generate random numbers, and can prove conclusively those numbers are random. That's how slot machines work. We directly experience unpredictable outcomes in all areas of life. Luck is a fact.

Since we can only see with our own eyes, not God's, we cannot know whether there are blatant contradictions woven into the fabric of existence. So what if the world doesn't make sense to a puny human brain which is dogmatically clinging to its own limited notions of consistency and order? Facts don't care whether you understand them. They just are.

If we want absolute Truth, we should never deny that even if our perceptions don't accurately reflect ultimate reality, that reality is still definitely manifesting itself in the form we are sensing. Even hallucinations originate in some genuine phenomena.

Facts are facts. Facts are absolute truths. Our experiences are facts. So we can be sure that one aspect of whatever is happening is how it appears to us.

Therefore, in a sense there is no such thing as a hallucination.

Free will, cause and effect, and luck are all real. Attempts to pick one of the three and reduce everything down to it are doomed to fail.

Just as futile are attempts to discover a theory of everything.

Reality is not general like our ideas. Reality is a convoluted mess of ever-changing particular details.

So we should pay attention to what we see if we don't want to miss the bus. Or get hit by it.

At Home With God.

"It is a secret, both in nature and state, that it is safer to change many things than one." - Francis Bacon.

From whence comes motion?

Inaction, for example from depression, begets more inaction in a vicious circle. Unless, that is, the inaction provides respite from overexertion and thereby rest one to stir again.

Action, like that from mania, begets more action in a virtuous circle, until it wears out and produces rest.

But what about the initial shove?

Encouragement and criticism are self-fulfilling prophecies facilitating action or inaction ... Or else they react against each other.

But encouragement and criticism are not the origin of motions.

Everything in our minds and bodies, it seems, either reinforces itself or gives rise to its opposite. The complexities resulting from the interplay of these pushing or resisting forces become so convoluted that no human mind could ever decipher them.

But again: From whence comes the original push or pull.

Shawn Anderson has said that motivation is manufactured.

Yes, indeed, our free wills produce our motive power. Our volition gives the initial push ... to us.

We cannot accurately describe or explain this will as a theory. We experience it as a fact. We do know, however, from whence it comes: It comes from us.

But from whence comes the motion driving the world around us?

Scientists "explain" the source of the push as different forms of energy in action. But this just puts a label and a description on the source of motion.

From whence COMES motion?

Sparks don't grow on trees. They, like motivation, are manufactured. So far as anyone knows, motion originates in some Beyond. Some higher power or powers. A first mover of some kind.

So here we have God. Another empty label and description, apparently.

Or can the Source be experienced directly, like our own wills? Can a Higher Power, God, be known as a fact?

Yes. But we cannot experience God by arguing over theories about Him the way philosophers argue the visceral reality out of concepts like free will and determinism. If it is possible to feel God, it will only be by feeling Him with our souls, the same way we feel ourselves and our magic wills.

For we too are part of the external world. The universe made us of itself. In other words, God made us in His own image. We can sense Him through the Him that is in us.

But How?

What I call sensing God directly as a fact and submitting to His will is logically extrapolating beyond what scientists call discovering and obeying natural laws.

Science always begins with observation of the world. Divine science is no different.

Much can be learned of God's - nature's - will by active experimenting and reasoning with our minds. We also learn of nature's ways by following our feelings and intuitions. But these methods narrow our learning to our own interests.

Divine science cannot observe from within our conditioned preconceptions about logic and truth, no matter how reasonable they may seem. If we stick to investigating according to traditional scientific methods, we limit our God, our conception of the universe. We then only have our E.G.O.s: Edging God Out, as an addiction recovery saying I heard from Patty Sneed goes.

Whatever else nature is, it encompasses some kind of Big Picture. Perhaps not a Divine Plan. But at least a larger scale of operating principles than those of the individual human or other creature.

To access these large scale, basic truths, we still need active awareness. But it must be an entirely watching awareness. It is that part of us that notices we are thinking and feeling. It gets to the root of the observational basis of science.

A watching awareness is soft and accepting. It does not penetrate nature, it is penetrated by nature.

This watching soul is a listener which sees our thoughts and feelings and sensations and urges float by like clouds. This us is self aware.

A watcher is the real us. The us that just is. Not forcefully willing, just tenderly noticing.

What the watching us can notice - very quietly, in stillness - is not just our own machinations. We become not just self-aware, but also gradually sense a subtle backdrop to ourselves and to the noises and sights of the world. A spiritual realm. A sort of Kingdom of Heaven beyond words or other bounded identifiers.

We do not tune out the busy material world. We tune into it, but without attaching our minds to any little part of it. Ours becomes a mirroring mind. A lake aware of the ripples on its surface and the winds and dancing fish causing these agitations.

Yet as watchers, we are also bodies of refreshing water that see our own depths. And more importantly, we see the solid soil and intangible air and space surrounding our souls.

We have now, to paraphrase the old Zen joke, asked God the hot dog vendor to make us one with everything. And Jehovah has faithfully answered the unselfish prayer of His beloved children.

Yes, but I still don't know how!!!

We start by sitting or laying comfortably with eyes closed and keep our attention on our breath. We do not force our attention to stay on our breath; when it wanders, we very gently direct it back. This gives our chattering mind something to do so it doesn't carry us off into Disneyland.

If we experience discomfort somewhere in our bodies, we gently adjust ourselves to remove it. It is unwise for a beginner to use uncomfortable yoga postures. These distract. We want to be able to sit still and just watch and listen and feel. But if we have the urge to scratch our nose, it can sometimes be best just to scratch it for a second than to let the annoyance narrow our attention down and attach us to the nose.

As we make this a habit, we begin to notice more and more.

With practice, we can later revert to original us-noticers of both details and backdrop in a relaxed, but aware, standing position. We can open our eyes, but we must focus on nothing in particular. We see everything at once.

This kind of looking is a symbol of the whole process of meditating: Focus on nothing and everything.

Next, we can graduate to peacefully, but with intentional awareness, watching all and nothing as we do simple repetitive tasks like walking on a quiet road.

Then we progress to full awareness of ourselves and our physical and spiritual settings while doing something more complex, but still routine, like washing the dishes.

Eventually - this can take years - the larger and not just particular world informs all our actions and thoughts, even in the midst of involved, baffling struggles.

We maintain self-direction. We are not mere dust in the wind. Only we are directing ourselves very gently. And we are never contradicting experience. We remain in harmony with facts.

We are now officially going with the flow. Doing our own thing, but doing it together with the ever-changing present that is the only genuine reality.

Without losing our free wills and autonomy, we are blissfully submitting to God.

We are residents of the Kingdom of Heaven.

We are home, sweet home.

A Divine Ocean of Trust

     We can trust a friend. We can trust God. We can trust ourselves or an automobile or logic.

     What is trust?

     Here's what it is not: Trust, or faith, is not confidently and fearlessly standing on firm ground and fighting off skepticism.

     No belief should be a battle against doubt. That would be the opposite of trust. A fight against doubt is grounded in fear of the unknown. It is an attempt to control.

     That is called taking a stand. Control is defensive and terrified of surprise attacks. Battling doubt keeps us where we are and protects what we have.

     Trust, on the other hand, is open and receptive. We must listen to that which we trust to have faith. Trust is submission to the trusted.

     When we trust, we swim in an infinitely deep ocean. We also let ourselves be pulled into the murky depths at times. We remain buoyed, however, by our free will; we cannot sink and drown unwillingly. We must consent if we are to submerge ourselves in trust.

      We are not anchored to the dark bottom. Rather, in faith we drift with the currents of the Other. We connect. There is no way to tell where the liquid stops and we begin.

     Our perspective is looking down at the unfathomable mystery. Questions always pop up. For example: What is in the soul of the man or woman we trust? Where is s/he leading us? Does the logic we rely on really tie us to ultimate reality? Is God faithful and good? Is the car we sit in running out of gas? Will the lottery ticket pay off?

     The murky depths hold many mysteries, yes. But we have light above us, at our backs. We can see what's coming up at us more and more clearly the closer it gets. More and more is revealed the longer we trust and listen and look and open up our hearts to the Beyond.

     It's as if the light above us gets brighter, the more we trust. Our path into the obscure new becomes clearer and clearer.

     Trust by its nature has no boundaries. So it is not an island we can own and defend against marauding uncertainty and ridicule. We must submerge ourselves in the sometimes cold, sometimes comfortingly warm waters of trust.

     We accept the occasional doubt or pang of fear and foreboding. Then we remind ourselves that trust is an unlimited body of water we willingly dive into. We surround ourselves with the same waters that, in another form, nourish crops.

      So we cannot protect faith from change. On the contrary, faith protects us from stagnation. And from mechanistic inhumanity.

     It is not enough to say "I will trust." When we trust, we affirm, "I trust."

     In short, faith is as Divine as the endless night sky. Taking the plunge and trusting opens our eyes to the deep, mysterious, beyond-our-control Something many call God.

     When we experience that Sacred Something in another, we can experience love. In ourselves, it often manifests as a conscience, or a belief in the ethical principles and trust in human goodness we cannot see when standing only on an atoll of evidence and inferences.

     Whatever its forms, trust is holy. To violate it is profane.

Slowness Saves Sacred Seconds

You can save an endless amount of time by doing things slowly. And I do mean endless.

    Usually when people say, "Haste makes waste," they mean that doing a job quickly makes it more likely you will make a mistake and have to do it over again.

    But there are more important Truths buried in this saying.

    When we frantically rush through practical affairs, we miss out on noticing what we are doing. This wouldn't be such a big deal except that a busy mind gets less done. A preoccupied mind is an inefficient mind. By not paying attention, we can end up distracted and out of touch with the facts.

    But in the saying "Haste makes waste" lies an even more important insight. A profound spiritual Truth.

    When we are mindful of ourselves, our surroundings, and our actions, we not only save time, we get to keep it.

    Experiences we aren't conscious of are lost to us forever. This is more than cherished personal reflection time we sacrifice for the sake of making a living in a world that demands so much of us. When we mindlessly occupy ourselves with worries or tasks, we throw out minutes, days and even years unnecessarily.

    And I'm not just talking about how by being aware we can preserve our life experiences in our memory. This is not just about saving the good times so we can enjoy telling stories in a retirement home. I'm talking about conserving something Divine.

    When something takes place, it remains true forever that it happened. Truths may evolve. They may be relative to circumstances. But if you help a handicapped person cross the street, the fact that you did this will remain forever true.

    That means that even moments of time - even microscopic instants of whatever that fourth dimension of temporal stuff is - are eternal. Infinite. Boundless. Somehow transcendental. Beyond words.

    And if an inexpressible taste of infinity isn't Sacred and Divine, I don't know what is.

    So by going slowly enough to be present to life, we can, in a sense, talk to God. This is more than participating in a seemingly supernatural beauty. This is owning time - keeping it, hanging onto it as our personal property - in a joint partnership with the Lord. And knowing that our property rights will never be violated. We can possess a little piece of heaven forever.

    Or to put the whole matter in practical terms: There really aren't any worldly or otherworldly problems that can't be solved by taking a few deep abdominal breaths, exhaling them restfully, and then looking at the world with a fresh, open, childlike awareness that we then proceed to cultivate diligently and act in harmony with.

 

Courage, Cowardice, And Candor

     Because passionately charging a cannon in defense of an ideal we have not had the courage to examine honestly and critically is so out of touch with the Divinity that is reality, it is not brave or noble at all.

     The fear of questioning our beliefs with brutal candor, no matter how poor this search reveals our past choices to be, no matter what it says about our flaws, is a cowardly dishonor of our personal integrity.

     Determination in battle is not always a sign of valor. Fighting to the death can be not just unwise, but also a sign of craven terror of facing our responsibility to remain loyal to evidence of Truth about all that is within and around us.

     For this reason, during wartime the skeptic has the most reason for confidence.

     And as it turns out, true believers are usually full of very profound doubts about themselves.

     Still, we have all retreated from uncomfortable facts at different times. So we should have patience and understanding, at times even compassion, when we, or someone else, flees the field of battle in panic.

     And as I discuss on another website, compassion can actually arm us in life threatening situations. Love for an attacker, ironically, can empower us if we need to hurt him or her in self-defense.

     This ends up making perfect sense when you confidently trust in the goodness of the mysterious, ever-present Beyond-Our-Control-And-Understanding Something many label God. But to reach the point that you can place this trusting faith in the universe, you need to first ruthlessly discard most beliefs about God as ridiculous and incredible.

The Best Possible Decision

"The basest of all things is to be afraid." - William Faulkner.

                                                                 ****

I'd like to share the best decision I've ever made. The best decision I will ever make. The best decision I could ever make.

I made the decision at about nine o'clock yesterday morning. It turned out to be much easier than I had anticipated.

Because I've always known how important it was, I had built it up to earth-shaking proportions in my mind. After I made the decision, I wanted to take out a front-page ad in the New York Times to announce it.

And it wouldn't have been bragging. I acknowledge that the decision was as natural as the choice to sit down to a home cooked meal. And I acknowledge that the heavy lifting was done by a power I don't understand or control.

In my defense, it was a decision no power on earth could have forced me to make before I was ready. I had sensed the need to make the decision for a long time. But I just couldn't bring myself to do that.

A lot led up to that decision. Over forty years of feeling that existence, which God supposedly created, had abandoned and betrayed me. Four fifths of my life spent unable to fully trust anyone or anything, including myself. Or else blindly giving my trust to the undeserving in desperation.

Before I made the best choice of my life, I recalled the worst choice I had ever made: the fully conscious, aware, free will and determined choice, almost forty years before, to turn against the God I felt had abandoned and betrayed me on the most intimate, visceral, subatomic level.

I turned against the God I believed was responsible for the sexual abuse I had suffered since the age of ten. The God I blamed for the perpetual confusion and shame permeating my being.

Before I made the best choice I could ever make, I thought of how I had no idea whether the coffee I had sipped moments before would poison me. There was no way to really be sure.

There was no way to be absolutely certain of much of anything.

Before I made the best choice I could ever make, I thought of the appearances of this almost all-encompassing and unavoidable uncertainty: It appeared that a God so many people claimed was loving had created a world in which I don't control even my next heartbeat. A world I ultimately don't control at all, but feel the need to control in order to just survive, let alone prosper.

A world in which it is not possible to function without implicitly trusting in something.

This Higher Power, the universe, this uncontrollable and incomprehensible Beyond, whatever you want to call it, did give me the choice to trust in anything I choose: a slot machine, a woman, a political ideology, a statue of the Buddha ... myself.

But the universe did not give me the choice not to trust.

I realized that God was not asking me to trust. God was commanding me to trust. My only choice has ever been: What is it I place my faith in?

The game is rigged.

After a lifetime of trusting everything and everyone for all the wrong reasons, alternating with being afraid of trusting anyone or anything - after a lifetime of trying to trust my own puny powers and disappointing myself again and again - after a lifetime of feeling nothing was trustworthy, I made the best choice I could ever make.

The best choice I could ever make was to say in my heart, then write on paper, then say to the Divine Beyond,

"I trust God completely. No ifs, ands or buts.
"And I act accordingly."

I'm not sure of everything that means, but I know I mean it.

I know this, my best possible choice, implies I keep taking the next right step as I understand it; that I keep listening to the mysterious Beyond for guidance; that I keep taking the risk to act on what I hear from the this unseen Something Divine so that I grow in unpredictable ways, moving myself into the exciting but terrifying unknown, the Beyond control and Beyond understanding ... the new.

The wisest thing I've ever heard said about God comes from Isaiah 55:8:

"For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways, declares the Lord."

Putting that wisdom together with my best possible choice gives me the mission of accepting, no matter how hard it may be, that while God is the Beyond my control or understanding, I still must listen carefully to the silence so that His thoughts become my thoughts. Implied in this mission is also that I have the courage to make my ways conform to His.

Not conform to what some preacher or holy book says are His ways. Conform to what my conscience - the God within - tells me directly.

The next day - today - I sent out a group text to some of my friends and family. It explained my new understanding of existence:

"Even the sky can't limit the spirit armed with faith in its source, the Almighty Beyond we call God. Fear and the resulting despair, loss of hope, and mistrust of the goodness within and all around are the true roots of all evil."

Thanks be to God.

Fact Or Falsehood?

The most important characteristic of facts is that they don't care who believes them.

Facts just are.

That's why the best way to honor the truth is to constantly question whether you really have as much of it as you think you do.

Who Are We? Who Should We Be?

     Urges are not convictions. Though we may follow our urges rather than our beliefs at times, urges do not reveal the real person. They are one aspect of us, but not the defining aspect. Our chosen values define us more than any genetic predispositions or conditioned urges.

     Convictions, however, are not beliefs. We are convinced of many things we don't really believe. Some people feel certain they're not afraid to die, yet they continue steering their cars away from danger and gathering the money they need to survive. In reality, these people are so terrified of death that they cannot even admit their fear to themselves.

     Our convictions are what we tell ourselves. We are truly convinced of our convictions ... on a conscious level. Convictions speak to who we want to be and who we think we are.

     Our real beliefs, on the other hand, can only be determined by observing our actions.

     So urges speak to our genetic inheritance and our conditioning. The conditioning comes from many sources: culture, physical environment, and habits growing out of past choices are a few.

     Convictions speak to our self image.

     Beliefs - the values underlying our actual actions - speak to who we are from a dry, dispassionate, third person perspective.

     But who are we really?

     I don't have a God's-eye perspective on humanity. But I feel my "essence" is a combination of pure awareness and free will choices (within the bounds of the possible).

     If true, then "being true to myself" means staying in touch with reality and adopting attitudes and choices and behaviors in harmony with my highest, noblest conceptions of my potential (again, within the bounds of reality).

     But this presupposes I know what exactly I mean by noble, worthy choices and actions.

     As I've discussed before, the desirability of joy and the undesirability of suffering are absolute facts that can be experienced directly. They are neither theoretical constructs nor matters of opinion or taste. I explained in a previous post that a life spent pursuing happiness and preventing suffering for oneself and others is demonstrably a worthy life.

     Thus "noble" and "worthy" are equivalent to "healthy" in its broadest sense: psychological health, financial health, the health of society, and the health of the planet. Choosing and acting in healthy ways is living a noble life.

     Finally, If I am right that the most important feature of being human is having a greater range of awareness and a freer will than other life, then you cannot be a human "being" without stagnating.

     Free will choices and fully conscious awareness change and evolve and respond second by second. So a human being is a stillborn person. To actualize our highest, noblest potential, we must embrace our true natures: We are human becomings. Let's become healthy.

God and Ego

I have said that as soon as we accept that we cannot control nor understand everything, we have made a little space in our hearts for a Higher Power. This inexorably implies that our egos separate us from God.

Full Commitment To Realism Is Always Commitment To God

Many people reject religion. Some go so far as to deny that they have any faith. They dismiss spirituality as superstition.

Yet unless a woman rejects all of existence or pretends that she is in complete control of the universe, she already has a little bit of God in her heart whether she admits it or not. That's because acceptance that some things - like gravity - are out of our control is already acceptance of a Higher Power.

Ditto for mysteries; So long as you accept that you don't know everything, a bit of magic, a bit of Divinity, dwells within you.

The next steps are submission to, and love of, this intransigent, mysterious existence. That is, we move into closer contact with the reality we can never fully control or understand when we feel gratitude to the universe - when we embrace the new - when we grow - when we open our minds and souls - when we give our hearts to God.

You can only be realistic if you commit to and trust in the Beyond.

Real Suffering, Joy And An Objective Ethics

     Joy and suffering are immediate realities to all of us. The desirability of joy and undesirability of suffering can be experienced directly. There is nothing theoretical about them. The status of suffering as bad, and the status of joy as good, are not matters of opinion. Suffering and joy are right in our faces, slapping or caressing our cheeks.

     Pain and pleasure and their benefits and drawbacks are certain. Pain has its benefits in warning us of danger, or showing us the costs of growth. But those benefits are not desirable in themselves. Pain is a means to the end of a happy and prosperous life.

     You might argue that some people enjoy pain. To call these people authentically happy wallowing in their pain, however, seems rather absurd to me. I have been in their position. Abusing myself and others was not a truly fulfilling life.

     Good and bad experiences - all experiences - are objective realities. Most of what goes through our heads, on the other hand, is interpretation of these experiences. What we can be sure of is that something is happening, and that this happening appears a certain way to us. We cannot be sure of causes or a host of other things. But happiness and unhappiness are happening. And they really do appear a certain way to us.

     Objective reality starts with facts. The happenings and their appearance to us - our perceptions, like satisfaction and dissatisfaction - are such facts.

     So a life spent fostering true happiness and reducing suffering in ourselves and others is - objectively - a good life. There is nothing mystical or relative about it. Spreading authentic cheer, creating happiness in ourselves and others, preventing and treating suffering: this is demonstrably good.

     It is not a matter of taste. It need not be a commandment from God. We don't need a long line of reasoning, such as that I just gave, to justify battling evil harms and pursuing prosperity for all.

     I believe we all intuitively sense that this should be the ethical code that guides us. Let's stop listening to the "philosophers" and religious leaders who tell us otherwise. Philosophy literally means love of wisdom. Denial of what's right in front of our eyes is not wisdom.

****

    A final thought: All of life is literally life and death. Since we don't control even our next heartbeat, there may be only seconds of this life left for us. So let's define our lives carefully.

Seeing The Light

Just a quick thought:

If the train that is your life is sitting still in a passage someone else carved through a mountain with your ancient coal-fired engine idling and emitting smoke, then you won't be able to see the light down at the end of the tunnel.

Annoy An Intellectual: Think For Yourself

     On the drive to Phoenix the other day, the radio off, the hum of the tires hushing my mental static, the AC smooth and energizing, my mind started to wander and wonder. It occurred to me that there are a number of bumper stickers I'd like to see:

• Annoy a conservative: Support free enterprise
• Annoy a liberal: Support tolerance and diversity
• Support Clinton and Trump: Buy them prison cells
• Annoy an environmentalist: Use the Earth's resources wisely
• Support women: Fight feminism
• Be a man: Admit your vulnerabilities
• Support American business: Stop corporate welfare
• Fight ignorance: Stop knowing everything
• Fight crime: help criminals
• Fight ISIS: Stop killing Muslims
• Stop fighting for world peace
• Annoy a Muslim: Follow the Koran
• Annoy a Christian: Follow Jesus

     Hopefully, the pattern here is becoming clear: You can accomplish the stated goals of most groups by doing the opposite of what they are doing.

     After I got over my self-satisfaction, realizing that I can be just as hypocritical as the next person, I resolved to add a couple of questions to the list of affirmations I recite to myself every morning: "What methods are you using to meet your needs? How are they working?"

     Now just after sunrise each day, as I sip my warm and creamy, soothing yet stimulating coffee, I invariably see something I did the day before that worked against me. For example, this morning I thought of how the two dollars I wasted on a lottery ticket will not help with the budget I worry so much about.

     I'm not always strong enough to change the behavior that day. But I've increased my awareness. I've informed the little angel whispering into one of my ears of the problem.

     An annoyed conscience is a powerful force for positive change.

     If we truly believe in making the world a better place, if we truly want to live the most fulfilling lives we can, it's incumbent upon all of us to politely make our own and other people's consciences aware of all our ideological contradictions and counterproductive actions.

     Change usually won't happen right away, even among the most courageous and honest of us. But a little ruthlessly candid self-examination goes a long way in the long run.

     We all have room to grow. If we didn't, where could we go from here?    

The Secret to Life

I have discovered the secret to my life.

It's a simple four-step process:

1. Accept all the people and situations I cannot control
2. Accept that one thing I cannot control is that I might die at any moment
3. Ask myself, "If I were on my deathbed, what would I wish I'd have done more of?"
4. Start doing more of it

Some things I would NOT regret on my deathbed:

• I would not wish I'd have worked more hours
• I would not wish I'd have worried more
• I would not wish I'd have hung onto resentments longer and more strongly
• I would not wish I'd have taught more idiots lessons and proved I was right more often
• I would not wish I'd have acted more in line with society's expectations of me
• I would not wish I'd have accumulated more mementos, cars, gadgets, houses, and money
• I would not wish I'd have impressed more people whose opinion I don't value

Some things I WOULD regret on my deathbed:

• I would wish I'd have connected on a deeper level and more often with the Divine in the world
• I would wish I'd have connected on a deeper level and more often with my loved ones
• I would wish I'd have been kinder and more understanding to all people
• I would wish I'd have acted more on principles, and less on expediency
• I would wish I'd have believed in myself more
• I would wish I'd have lightened up more often and enjoyed the ride
• I would wish I'd have drawn clearer boundaries between my concerns and other people's concerns
• I would wish I had not hurt anyone unnecessarily
• I would wish I had lived a more meaningful and happy life
• I would wish I had gone for it and chased my dreams every day

The fact is, the last list above is not what I would regret, it's what I do regret.
What would you not give a damn about on your deathbed?
What would you wish you'd have done more of?
What do you regret?
Turn around your regrets, and you'll know your secret to life.

The Last 52 Years. This Moment.

All the matters I worry so about are just technique and derivative. The real issue to concern myself with is whether I can die right now without regrets, feeling my life has been enough.

The question is not how long I have gone on. The question is not whether I have sucked all the juice I could out of life. The question is: In the time remaining after seeing the importance of the question, has the life I lived measured up to a good life by my own standards?

What I did before this realization is irrelevant water under the bridge. What matters is: If I die ten seconds from now, will I be able to be at peace with the way I spent those last seconds? That's the only question truly worth worrying about. But if I spend the next ten seconds worrying, all will be lost.

To remain at peace with oneself is the only thing that matters. Everything else - whether one is living in the street, whether people like you, whether you have discovered the "meaning of life," even whether God loves you - are questions for superficial people. What matters most to the person of substance and wisdom is not, "Do I have a job," or "Where is my next meal coming from," or "Why is life kicking me in the head." What matters most to the Sage is, "Am I doing right by my own deepest values in this moment - or will I die three seconds from now having let myself down.  Will I spend my last moments having betrayed all that was dearest to me?"  Did I learn my lesson?

To the extent that I don't know what I want my life to mean in this moment, I am an ignoramus.

That is all there is to wisdom. The rest is mere technique.

Every crisis in life therefore demands an immediate come-to-Jesus moment. Can I truly make the best of this situation, be at peace with how it affects me and how I affect it - or do I take action to change things RIGHT NOW so I am not betraying myself? (The best such action perhaps being to wait).

That is all there is to practical action decisions. All else is derivative.

Yet we live and learn. And we compromise when necessary. We will all fail ourselves again and again. Live not in regret, for that is another failure. Live only in ruthless determination to be the person you want to be from now on. Any moment could be your last.

No one accepts fully that any moment could be her last. Hence, no one truly lives without regrets. Only those facing death squarely in the eyes every moment - with all the terror this implies - ever live a moment genuinely free from terror. In the rest of us, terror lives just under the surface. Morbid panic raises its destructive head whenever we become uncertain, confused, put upon, or face other trials.

Who can live at peace with terrifying truth every moment of their lives? Only those who know what they value and who don't betray those values. Alas, if one's highest value is life itself, one betrays that value the moment one dies. Then all is lost. That's why only the life well lived, the moment of complete integrity to oneself, remains an accomplishment throughout one's existence. Any old bacteria can cling tenaciously to life.

Animals with nervous systems have options. Animals with free will have responsibilities. The Sage chooses to fulfill her obligations to her own highest values. Only then can she say at the end of her life "I have been honest with myself all the way down. I may have made mistakes, I may have chosen unwisely or even immorally at times, but once I realized how trivial suffering is in comparison to being at peace in one's soul, I acted accordingly."

As Pablo Picasso said, "Only put off until tomorrow what you are willing to die having left undone."

Words to live and die by.

The Self as Happy Disciplinarian

          No matter how social we are, it seems a good bet that 70% or more of the talking we do is to ourselves. The talk may be silent.  It may not come in complete sentences or even in words at all.  It is self-talk nonetheless.
          This talk is important because it is often self-fulfilling.  It's even possible that all of our thoughts are self-fulfilling in a certain sense.  If you believe you can't do something, you usually can't.  Even if it turns out you can, your negative self-appraisal, your questioning of your abilities, has left traces in the neural networks of your brain.
          That is:  What we say to ourselves teaches our brains.  Self-talk teaches us how to think of ourselves and the world.  So we need to pay close attention to GIGSI: garbage in, garbage stays in.
          If the idea of self-talk implies self-teaching, what concept accounts for learning?
          Interestingly, a word meaning 'learning' is the origin of the two words 'disciple' and 'discipline.' Thus, we could say that a disciple is one who learns while a discipline is a learning.
          But what of our more common understanding of discipline?  We normally say things such as, "Teachers need to discipline students."  Or we say that self-discipline means self-control.
          Here now we get to the crux of the matter: self-discipline is self-control, yes.  But discipline is also how a person learns.
          How does this learning work in practice?  If you're like me, the idea of discipline brings to mind images of drill sergeants yelling at recruits.  Teachers putting dunce caps on misbehaving pupils.  People who have screwed up asking themselves, "Are you ever going to learn, you moron? Straighten up and fly right!"
          These approaches to discipline assume that we are stubborn mules.  We need to be whipped into shape.  If we could have done it right on our own, we would have done it right.  We are misfits.
          Is that true?  More importantly, are berating ourselves for mistakes and driving ourselves with a whip the most effective ways to teach ourselves self-control?  Or are there better ways?  Could it be that self-criticism does not help us control ourselves, but only makes us more likely to act like the stubborn mules we keep assuming we are?
          Consider the effects of saying the following to yourself:  "I act in noble ways, because I'm noble, and I'm going to prove that again and again.  I can do this.  I deserve the rewards of a job well done.  Do the right thing, because that's the kind of person you are."
          If self-talk is self-fulfilling, then telling ourselves we expect ourselves to do noble things because that's the kind of people we are should turn us into heroes.
          A discipline that encourages rather than tears down teaches us to strive to be better.  We might have to shade into a bit of negativity when we make mistakes because we do want to acknowledge that we erred.  However, even this finger-on-a-hot-stove learning can be framed more productively. Instead of, "Get it together - quit screwing up," we could say, "You're better than that."
          Which is more effective discipline ... which is more effective teaching ... which view of ourselves do we want to create in our brains?  What do we want to learn? Who do we want to be?
       

2016 New Year's Musings

          People with any appreciable amount of experience understand the truth of the saying, "Youth is wasted on the young."

          Here are a few extensions of the principle:

1. People with a good sense of value understand that wealth is wasted on the rich.
2. People who appreciate beauty understand that artistic talent is wasted on artists.
3. People who have known misfortune understand that luck is wasted on the lucky.
4. People who know the proper uses of force understand that strength is wasted on the strong.
5. People who see all that needs to be done in the world understand that time and effort is wasted on the efficient.  Others who understand the waste of efficient people are those who appreciate a job well done, and those who can sense the personal meaningfulness of mindful work.
6. The wise understand that brains are wasted on the intelligent, truth and knowledge are wasted on the educated, while libraries, pens, paper and word processors are wasted on the literate.
7. People with compassion understand that charitableness and tolerance are wasted on the touchy-feely.
8. Good people understand that morality is wasted on the righteous.

          I could go on.  I imagine the reader could add to the list.  But the point is:
          What are you doing with your gifts?  Using them isn't enough.