Monday Madness [The Myth of Freedom]

Hola Everybody,
I have a few job interviews set for this week, one being a second interview. I don’t pray, but you should pray for me. LOL

The Myth of Freedom

Falling Water, house designed by Frank Lloyd Wright

A man is either free or he is not. There cannot be any apprenticeship for freedom.
 -- Imamu Amiri Baraka (1934 - 2014)

Many years ago I once became lost in a national park in Connecticut. I was in my late teens-early 20s and a busload of us city kids planned a trip, and we all trekked up to some park in Armpit, USA. I am a dyed-in-the-wool city boy. And when I say city, I mean city. Please, I’ve traveled around this country and some places that use the term are laughable. Yes, I am a NYC snob: for a long time I considered anything above 14^th street Hicksville. Anyway, I grew up in the city and the first time I saw a pig live, I thought it was a cow! When I thought of pigs, what came to mind was that pig Arnold from the 1960s TV sitcom, Green Acres.

Whatever… 

Anyway, as soon as we reached our camp site, always the adventurous one, I convinced another poor soul to go exploring with me. Long story short: we became lost for close to 48 hours. What happened was that we kept walking in circles. There was this lake not too far from the camp, you see, and I (being the Brainiac of the two) decided if we followed the lakeshore, we would eventually end up where we started. 

The thing was we kept walking in circles, not around the lake, but within a confined space. We realized this after hours of walking because we kept seeing a rock formation that looked eerily familiar. The reason for that was that it was the same rock formation! By this time, it had gotten dark and there was a pronounced early October chill. To compound matters, my poor friend had inadvertently fallen into a cascade that hid a cave and he was freezing. After a little deliberation, we came to the conclusion that the cave was the best place to stay for the night.

We had nothing -- no matches, flashlight, compass, food, nothing. Even if we had a compass I doubt we would know how to use it. Eventually, we had to stop because of that annoying country tendency towards complete darkness. I mean, you can’t even see your own hand in front of your face. Fuck! To make matters worse, I swore I heard a wolf’s howl. I’m serious! Now, I don’t know if wolves actually exist in some Connecticut state park, but to this day, I swear I heard a howl. In addition, I didn’t make things better by voicing my conviction that the cave we had taken refuge in was very likely some Grizzly bear’s home.

So, there were, hungry, cold, fearful, and lost.

the next day we somehow found our way to a road, and by then our people had a whole posse looking for us, which ruined the trip for everyone else. We walked down the road until we came upon some ranger in a car who then proceeded to ask us if we had seen two Puerto Rican kids walking around lost… DUH?!?! Hellloooo?! Fuckin’ hicks… 

Of course, being philosophically inclined, I found all sorts of metaphors and meaning behind our little adventure, while my companion, who was freezing to death, cursed me the whole time. Still, it fascinated me that left to our own devices, we kept walking around in circles. Shit, we tried to walk differently, making lefts, where we had previously made rights, and still we walked in circles. What does that say about our own habitual patterns, I asked my friend, as he conjured new swear words for my edification.

For the next fifteen years of my life, that incident was to become a metaphor for how I lived: doing what I wanted, how I wanted, when I wanted, and mistaking that for freedom. I think many people mistake “following their bliss” for freedom when in actuality walking around in circles without a compass is the ultimate prison. It’s the ultimate prison because though we can’t see the bars, they exist as surely as real prison bars. In a very real sense, we’re all “doing time,” in some way or another.

True freedom, for me anyway, takes practice. Actually, it takes a set of practices that serve as a guideline and map to freedom. Walk around rudderless without direction long enough and you’ll find you’re creating the same mess repeatedly.

Habitual Patterns

I like to say that I became free while I was incarcerated and this is very true. Many years after that incident in the woods, I was incarcerated at a maximum-security facility. I’m not proud of that, but I have to admit there’s some irony in this story -- at least for me there is -- so I find some humor in all this now. It was early spring, my favorite time of the year, and I was in a prison yard looking at some mountains and feeling really depressed about being locked up.

Then it hit me... I was actually free. Just like that! I realized that though the state could control and confine my body, only I could give the permission to imprison my mind. It may not sound like a lot to you, but for me it was transformative experience. The fact that I could choose to be free no matter where I found myself blew me away.

Looking back, I understand now that it didn’t happen all at once, that my epiphany that day wasn’t something spontaneous. I understand now, my realization came about because of the work I had put in, but it hit me that day like a bolt of lightning in the middle of a completely dark country night: I was free. Free, right then, at that very moment.

It was amazing. I could choose to be free! This couldn’t be true. Nevertheless, I felt it in the very fiber of my being, this freedom was real, alive, a part of me, a part of my heritage as a human being. When I went back to my cell later that day, I shared my revelation with my neighbors and they all started laughing at me. They were, like, “Eddie, you in prison, bro.”

And they were correct, of course, at the gross (vs. subtle) level of reality, I was incarcerated. However, my realization was that while I could be coerced into prison physically, only I could give another permission to incarcerate my heart and mind. What I saw clearly for the first time that day was that I was giving the prison authorities this permission to take my mind, to imprison my heart. From that day on, I became free and my life, even within the prison walls, changed dramatically. I no longer felt at the mercy of sadistic prison guards or all the other insanity that goes on in prison. From that day on, I was free -- really free -- and all my interactions reflected this realized freedom. What happened was that people began responding to me differently: guards, who previously were able to press my buttons, didn’t know how to deal with the newer, free me, for example, leaving them confused and anxious.

Other people incarcerated with me would ask why I looked different: was I exercising more, did I gain weight? Eventually, my freedom permeated my immediate surroundings and those in contact with me began doing their own inner work, in the process transforming our collective prison experience. The effect was so palpable that I was eventually transferred from that location because I was deemed too dangerous. But by then it was too late, even in solitary confinement, they couldn’t take my freedom away.

I became free that early spring day and though there are times I choose to give up my freedom -- especially when I come into contact with people with hate in their hearts -- I have chosen freedom more often than not these past 25 years. My personal liberation, I have found, is not individual, dedicated solely to me, but instead it comes with a responsibility and an awareness that it affects everything around me. That other prison we all share, the myth that we are separate from others, has also dissolved and as a result your personal liberation is also important to me.

Ultimately, I have learned that my freedom demands I choose happiness. I never even knew I had that choice. It is my responsibility as a human being, actually, this choice. This is why I always say that everything we ever need for our happiness exists right here, right now, this very moment… this very life. This is true whether your prison is made of concrete and bars or psychic defilements.

My name is Eddie and I’m in recovery from civilization…

Interdependent Origination

Hola mi Gente,
I had an awful, almost crippling headache today. I almost never get headaches. I don’t know how I held it together.

Everything is Everything

The fear of letting go prevents you from letting go of the fear of letting go.

This is the doctrine at the heart Buddhism. You see, my dear reader, it goes this way: you are a unstable collection of coincidences held together by a desperate and irrational clinging. There is no center -- no center at all. Everything depends on everything else, your body depends on the ecology, your thoughts depend on whatever conditioned debris floats in from the media, your emotions are mostly from the reptilian end of your DNA.

Your intellect, dear reader, is a chemical computer that can’t add up a zillionth as fast as a pocket calculator. Even your best side is a superficial piece of social conditioning that will fall apart as soon as your significant other leaves with the money in the bank account, the economy fails and you get the sack, or you get conscripted into some village idiot’s war, or they give you the news about your brain tumor. To name this combination of self-pity, vanity, and despair self is not only the height of conceit, it is also proof that we’re a deluded species.

We are in a trance from birth to death. Burst the balloon and what are you left with? Emptiness.

It’s not only us -- this radical principle applies to the whole sentient world. Dependent origination is not exactly everyone’s cup of tea, I admit. But it does have a compelling point: stop for a moment, still yourself, listen -- in other words, meditate just a little -- and you will find yourself on a planet you no longer recognize. Those needs and fears you thought were the very foundation of your existence turn out to be no more than bugs in your software.

My name is Eddie and I’m in recovery from civilization… 

Sunday Sermon [Welcome to the Real]

Hola mi Gente,

One day I found myself at a maximum-security prison sitting in the mess hall mentally criticizing everyone else there. I did this daily. How stupid these people are, I used to think to myself. Every day I would observe their selfishness, and lack of awareness and how I wasn’t like “them.” I did this until the very real fact that I was there also became clear to me. If those people were so defected, then what did that say about me? That question right there was more important than any answer.

* * *

Reality and the War on Our Senses

We throw our hands before our eyes and cry that it is dark.

-- Unknown

We use one sense at the expense of the others. Ever since the invention of the photograph, for example, the visual sense has taken predominance over the others. We’ve become more and more insistent of having illustrations with stories, for example. Eventually movies became all the rage. Then television arrived in our homes, followed by video, cable, computer graphics, digital animation, and now, virtual reality. Imagine someone in the far future trying to explain our obsession with a piece of furniture... 

Our taste buds take second place. Fruits and vegetables are genetically engineered to satisfy our visual appetites, regardless of the sacrifice in flavor and nutrition. Poisons of every kind assault our biochemistry. Electromagnetic radiation zaps our natural bioelectrical fields that shape us.

Air pollution and synthetic fragrances dominate our sense of smell. Traffic, loud radios, and congested population over stimulate our hearing. In watching television, our right-brain hemispheres have to assemble the dots into a picture. As a result, we haven’t sufficient energy needed for left-brain discrimination. In actuality, heavy viewers literally become heavy; something in the habit of watching television slows down the metabolism.

“Natural flavors” are natural in name only, extracted from organic chemicals through harsh chemical processing. The multinational corporations that sell us these toxins call it “clean labeling” and the Food and Drug Administration co-signs it.

Our senses have become the pawns in a foolish game. Only when we awaken to our deepest, genuine sense will our intelligence flourish. I’m speaking here of a deep-seated common sense that chooses to remember, to know, to open up all the sensory channels and explore our intuitive common sense, what we call our imagination. Instead of asking, “Will we make it?” we should be asking, “What should we be doing now?”

As the historian Howard Zinn noted, neutrality on a moving train is not an option and we’re moving all the time, whether we want to or not. The wise among us are gathering their clues and direction from everywhere, even the knowledge of children and eccentrics, and those with whom they disagree.

The ability to question will be our saving grace. Our questions will be our liberators. When a large enough question has been asked, the lesson plan will appear. Years ago, a leader challenged the nation by asserting that in ten years a human would land on the moon. There is no such leadership available today (if there ever really was). Today we must take on the mantle of our own leadership, asking the questions needing asking and facing with creativity and innovation the challenges such questions pose.

It we are to thrive as individuals and as a society, the solution is the same: the deepest good sense to take leadership for ourselves. True visionaries identify with a cause that transcends personal ego, family, and friends. Causes and principles that transcend something larger than a mere grasp for personal success. And we can get there from here. We are a problem-solving species. When we finally make the decision to call upon our resources we make the impossible possible, and the possible inevitable.

I realize that during these challenging times that this might be hard to accept but the good news is that we’re living in a moment in time where we have the advantage of the fruits of the cross-fertilization of art and science, of spirituality and science, of analysis and intuitive flashes. By pulling together the scattered threads of our collective wisdom, we can consciously learn to tap into our deepest common sense. The next evolutionary leap demands that we, in fact, become the people we were always meant to be or become extinct.

My name is Eddie and I’m in recovery from civilization… 

Sunday Sermon [Superboy!]

¡Hola! Everybody...
Easter is my favorite Christian observance. It’s a redemption song...

* * *

-=[ Magical Thinking ]=-

I remember as a child I would tie a towel around my neck and pretend I was Superboy. It was a lot of fun, however, it never gave me the power to fly. People who sell the pop psychology “power of positive thinking, or shit like The Secret, remind me of myself as a boy, running around the house, ruining my mother’s towels, and pretending I had superpowers.

I recently posted a critique of the wildly popular, narcissism-enabling pabulum, The Secret. What is the “secret” of The Secret? You create your own reality! You are responsible as the source of whatever arises in your life. Got cancer?!! You created it! Were you raped? You brought it upon yourself! Moreover, if you’re a loser it’s only because you haven’t come up with the right affirmation or powerful positive thought.

It would be almost impossibly difficult to overstate how cruel and insulting such a notion is. It’s a sick premise. I would shut up if it weren’t for the fact that literally millions follow this snake oil “spirituality.”

There is a basic flaw in the “power of positive thinking” (and let’s face it, the Secret is just warmed over power of positive thinking bullshit), but it never stops certain people from getting rich selling it. There are many aspects of reality, different dimensions. The Secret is not only selling a shallow dimension of self and reality but it is also only acknowledges one aspect of self.

Let me be fair: The Secret works in one realm and it actually serves a useful function. Positive thought is important. We can change the way in which our thoughts and feelings work together produce healthier behavior. That’s a good thing.

::Martha Stewart Smile::

What pisses me off is that this isn’t the full story. We have an inside, and an outside. We are individuals, but we are also social beings. These aspects of reality are all part of who we are. All four aspects come together at once -- they co-arise as reality. No one aspect “creates” the others. Each is equally important. The interior of an individual (where thought occurs) does have parallels in the exterior of the individual (measurable as biological change). We are beings with inner and outer worlds. Fortunately, reality is not composed of individuals. We are also relational beings, with shared interiors such as culture, collective consciousness, and all that goes with the inner world of We. That shared inner world is accompanied by an outer world, the world of nature, the biosphere, and all that can be observed and measured in physical form. There are four aspects (Four Quadrants) of reality:

The Interior of an Individual (where thought occurs, for instance)

The Exterior of an Individual (the body, what can be measured and seen objectively)

The Interior of the Collective (Culture, invisible features of similarity, inter-subjective social)

The Exterior of The Collective (Biosphere, planet, infrastructure, the inter-objective realm)

While the positive thinking clique promotes it as the magic wand for everything, thoughts actually deal with one part of one realm, and misrepresents itself while doing it.

To claim any one of them “creates” the other is a disaster, and is, unfortunately, a common practice. Whenever you find a discipline which focuses on a particular domain (which can be healthy) you find it often claims that one quadrant is the only “real” one, or the only “true” one, or the only important one (which is unhealthy). That is the major defect of The Secret or “positive thinking.” It takes one perspective (The Interior of an Individual) and claims it creates all the others.

Wow!

YOU, your thoughts, create your body. And the biosphere, and the entire culture, and history of the planet, origin of species, all the cities you could visit, all the planets in the Galaxy, all the Galaxies, all... and you’re so fuckin powerful!. And so wrong. Terribly wrong. Your thoughts, your feelings, while being important and valuable, are but two aspects of a much more complicated reality.

Your thoughts and feelings are not the basis for reality, they are only two of its features. You do not “create” your reality, you participate in it, and in certain circumstances, under certain conditions, you can influence it. And it is good and useful to cultivate that influence, to positively nurture that as much as possible, in the interest of love.

It is seductive to a person’s desire to attain, achieve, and better their personal station. It is promising you a better personal narrative. And that is indeed one level of spirituality. But it’s the lowest level, and inflating it keeps people unnecessarily stuck in a cycle of suffering.

For me, a true spirituality includes all four domains (inner, outer, individual, collective) and does not advantage one over the other. It engages them as co-arising. It sees them as inextricably intertwined, yet distinct in important ways. Spirituality includes every level of every domain, and values each of them, but also understands their differences. Spirituality includes every methodology, every way of knowing, but it also understands what they do, and what they don't do. The Secret or the “power of positive thinking” offers but a method, and it will not set you free from your personal drama. In fact, it will probably suck you deeper into it. It promises money, power, increased attraction, and tells you it is “spiritual” practice.

Here’s a fresh idea: use the right tool for the right job. I think it is good to improve our financial situation or to have an exciting love life. That’s why I seek financial advice and why I’ve been to therapy. I want to improve my relative reality, but I don’t need to invoke a magical-narcissistic mysticism (or quantum mechanics) to do so.

Even if you could (as I believed as a child wearing my mother’s towel) bend reality with your thoughts and feelings, chances are you would still be a terribly miserable creature. For as long as you’re neurotically attached to the small story of your small self, you’ll never break free from human bondage.

Love,

Eddie

The Tyranny of Positive Thinking

¡Hola! Everybody...
The first time I posted the following, I lost all the “Power of Positive Thinking” crowd, most of the “Daily Affirmations” crowd, and “The Secret” crowd just continued to stay away... LOL! Last night I was “engaging” yet another “Power of Positive Thinking” disciple, who managed to call it Buddhist meditation. People? mindfulness meditation is not positive thinking!

::rolls eyes::

* * *

-=[ Thoughts, Emotions, Actions ]=-

Smile or die!

I have a favorite story that occurred when Sir Lawrence Olivier and Dustin Hoffman were making the Marathon Man. Just before filming the famous scene in the dentist’s chair, Olivier was waiting and not too pleased that Hoffman was late. In the near distance, he saw a running figure and was surprised to discover it was Hoffman, the Hollywood superstar. He arrived panting at Olivier’s side and the great British stage actor looked down at Hoffman and asked what he was up to. When Hoffman was eventually able to get his breath, he managed to get out that because the scene called for the character to be out of breath from running that was what he had to do to make the scene authentic. The haughty Olivier raised an eyebrow and said, “My dear, haven’t you heard of acting?”

The point here is that just as we can control and change our external behaviors, words, and actions, and our internal processes, thoughts and beliefs, we can also change our responses to our internal thoughts, feelings, emotions, and values.

In my work, I often run into the stiff wall of resistance that is expressed thus, “… because that’s the way he made me feel,” or “… because that’s the way I am!” Perhaps you have come across such phrases, or maybe you have uttered something similar yourself. We go about spending the bulk of our lives believing we’re at the mercy of our feelings, thoughts, and actions (“He made me do it” “My negative feelings defeat me”).

We all do it, period.

In fact, we all concentrate on one area of our perception whether they be our thoughts, feelings, and actions, at the expense of others. What we do here in our culture is concentrate on what we do well -- on the positive. My invitation/ challenge is for you to pay more attention to what you don’t do so well (the so-called negative) and develop more flexibility around those things.

Let me use “health” as an example to better illustrate what I am trying to communicate.

In the West, we believe that it is best to go for the burn, push ourselves to the limit; it’s all or nothing. This explains the constant flow of how to books touting the new diet or exercise program that will change your life. We have to go for one of these completely or it won’t work.

If we look at this from the model of thoughts, emotions, and actions, we get three different worldviews. In the interest of brevity, I will elaborate mostly on thoughts.

Thoughts and Health

In the thought-centered world, the way to health is through -- duh! -- our thoughts. Here we believe that we have created health or illness by the power of our own thoughts. All we need to do is change the way that we think about ourselves and our relationship to health. As long as we believe that we are healthy then -- voila! -- we are!

In the thought-world existence we have certain beliefs about ourselves and the world around us that we probably picked up from our toxic parents, our apathetic teachers, our repressive church, our disjointed community. We start to believe that these are true and in this way our perspective of health is developed. Once we have taken control of this we can then become healthy merely by thinking ourselves healthy. This perspective makes it imperative that we find the “right” (i.e., positive) thought, or the perfect affirmation and then repeat them ad infinitum in order to become healthy. Many New Agers love this world and have developed many techniques for transforming limiting (or negative) beliefs. Got it? In this world, you erase (kill!) negative thoughts and create (cling!) positive thoughts. Annie, go get your gun...

Let’s follow the logic of this worldview, or mindset: if you believe that your thoughts can create health, then it follows that if you’re not healthy then at some level you believe that you have created your illness. In this sense, you are a mind that exists separately from your body. Welcome to the world of The Matrix! LOL

If my analysis seems harsh, then consider the story of a good friend, Danielle. Danielle was a devoted mother of a 15-year-old daughter. She was known within my circle as a healer who had a transformative experience and spent the rest of her life running workshops in the area of personal growth and development. She made a huge difference in her life and the lives of others. People loved Danielle and what she did for them.

It was a shock for all of us when we found out she had been diagnosed with cancer and an even bigger shock when it became clear that the cancer was terminal. My memories of her during her last days are marked by the last time I saw her and she was still wrestling with her problems -- what had she done to bring on the cancer, what had she done to deserve the cancer? This is the legacy of the thought-world -- a good woman, a loving wife, a devoted mother, blaming herself for her cancer.

Emotions and Health

In this world, we forget the body. We disregard all the unnecessary exercising and dieting. Here we achieve our health through our emotions. Once we get in touch with our Inner Child (the one that was badly damaged and abused by our parents and society), we can heal all of the hurts imposed by a life that sucks and that controls us until we take charge.

In this world we believe that our blocked and unhealthy emotions created our own sickness. Only when we have realized this simple fact, we can start to heal. We need to revisit all the traumas that the world has inflicted upon us. We need to emote, emote, emote! in order to clear ourselves of these unhealthy emotions. We look for person-centered, or psychodynamically oriented counseling – or even better – find a group of like-minded individuals where we can share the catharsis.

Once we have sorted this whole mess out, we can then achieve the Eden-like state of childhood innocence and wisdom that was ours before we were defiled by modern society. Again, as in the thought-world, this world seeks to slay the negative emotions. Fight!

Actions and Health

In the action-centered-world we believe our actions and external behaviors are most important; we fall into the trap of believing that is all we need to pay attention to if we are to be healthy. We believe that all we need to do is buy the right equipment of the right video and we too can develop the body of an athlete of the supermodel in the ads.

We believe that if we join the best hi-tech gym with the newest equipment, it will take out the work of exercising (just 20 minutes a day… ). It’s almost as though we believe that a gym membership leads to good health.

The same is true of weight loss. We buy into the latest pill or latest book of the latest system that some celebrity (hello Oprah!) pitches. We all know deep down inside that the key to achieving an optimum weight is simply not putting more stuff into our bodies -- that only by eating more healthily will we be healthy. However, like exercise, this would be hard to maintain and would require work and effort. We know that balance and moderation will lead to a more integrated life, but we battle on regardless.

What we know, of course, is that none of these three worldviews -- thoughts, emotions, and actions -- alone holds the full picture. And no matter how well you affirm, how good you become at being positive, or how much you exercise, or get in touch with your emotions, eventually you will get old, ugly, sick, and die.

What then? What will you do then?

What we really need to do is utilize all three aspects of ourselves in our quest to be healthy. And even then, this is not the full picture. But that is for another time and another day.

I will say this much: if you’re engaged in an inner battle who loses eventually?

Love,

Eddie