Seaweed: Minor God

Setting my intention for the day.

Realizing I have no idea what my intention is.

Wondering why I listened to a guided meditation about setting my intention after finding out I still don't know what my intention is.

How about staying in the moment?  Right here - Right now.

How about building your own God?  Like he's a Tinker Toy.  Or an Etch-A-Sketch.  Try different combinations until you get one you like.  Then it's your God.  Maybe it's me.  It could be.  I think I'd be a pretty good God.  Why not me?  I return time and time again to the Bill Murray line in Groundhog Day when he's trying to figure out why the day keeps repeating in an endless loop.  He wonders if he's God.  His alarmed and skeptical co-worker says: "Let me get this straight - you think you're God?"  Bill says: "I didn't say that I'm THE God.  Maybe I'm A God."  I'm pretty sure that I'm part God.  God-like.  A minor God.  Not the lead.  Maybe I'd win Best Supporting God at the Oscars.  I'm too selfish to be the lead God.  I'd be skimming some good will and cash off the top of anyone I'd try to help in my role as minor God.  A consigliari.  A Gal Friday.  A fixer.  Got a problem?  Give me a call I'll see what I can do.

The worst thing about my church God - admittedly a pretty good God in most aspects - was that if I didn't believe everything God said or - especially - if I behaved badly then I was going to Hell.  This seems like an overreaction to me.  I'm a gossip so I'm going to Hell?  I'm lusty and selfish so I'm going to Hell? You install a powerful sex drive and then toss me into Hell for being lusty?  Holy shit, that's messed up.  There's no punishment from my current Erector Set God.  My life was pretty Hellish before I got sober.  I think I've done my time in Hell, served out my sentence, so now I'm shooting for Heaven.  Heaven-ish, anyway.  Someplace nice.  California weather with Missouri prices.

My God is kind of a doofus.  One of those characters that I thought was missing a few marbles when I ran into him.  The kind of doofus who had a goofy smile on his face while his hair was on fire.  He was trying to put it out -  he's not that doofus-ey - but with an amazing amount of good cheer.  "Hey, sometimes my whole head catches on fire so this is no big deal."  This so reminds me of Alcoholics Anonymous and the laughter and buzz of good vibes that hits us when we go down the stairs and burst into a church basement full of recovering idiots.

The Guy Formly Known As Rat Boy

Negativity Bias is a cognitive bias that results in adverse events having a more significant impact on our psychological state than positive events. Negativity bias occurs even when adverse events and positive events are of the same magnitude, meaning we feel negative events more intensely.

I get it. Life used to be hard and dangerous so we constantly scanned our environment for bad shit. I eat a tasty apple - great. I eat a poisonous mushroom and spend three days wracked with diarreha and a high fever - I remember that with amazing clarity. The problem for me occurs when I start spending all of my time imagining that bad stuff is just around the corner when - in fact - bad stuff isn't present in my life nearly as often as good stuff. Mindfulness helps me slow down and detach and look around. I see the good more easily and put the bad in perspective more quickly. I need to quit scanning for problems so often and start noticing what's right in front of me. A good example is The Guy Formly Known As Rat Boy (apparently management came down on him and the wood has mostly disappeared - wood that we surmised served as Rat Condos) is now Electric Saw Guy. He's building something back there. SuperK thinks he's one of those massive fuck-ups who doesn't have much of a job but fancies himself as some kind of visionary creative type. Cutting wood makes a distinctive noise. Here's the thing - the noise is rare and intermittent but I find myself tensing up. Is his car there? What's he doing now? It's quiet but he's probably going to start up soon. Right? Right? The end result is that I'm waiting for a problem - admittedly, goddammit, not that big of a problem - that doesn't usually happen.

Happiness is not hitched to things going my way but arises out of life itself.

Loss Aversion is another cognitive bias, one that is closely lined with the negativity bias, where the pain we experience from losing far outweighs the perceived benefits of acquiring the same amount. If I find $50 I'm kind of happy but if I lose $50? I'm turning the world upside down to find that $50.

Dee-Fense! Dee-Fense! Dee-Fense!

"When we stay in our safety zones where we feel comfortable and secure, we become firmly entrenched in a this-is-who-I-am mindset.  From this perspective, the worst thing imaginable is change.  The structure we've put so much time and effort into maintaining would all go away, and that would be terrible.  I have formed strong attachments which I am loathe to shatter.  I have confused this external thing or state of mind with who I am.  So . . . when the external circumstances change . . .  as all things do . .  .  how do I react?  When I've placed my sense of self in these things or this mindset what I do is try to defend it.  I argue for it.  I have to come up with definitions and meaning."

The Toltecs

Have you ever talked to a new person who's in the midst of burning their entire world down and been amazed at how they struggle to justify what they're doing?  It's talking to an insane person.  It's talking in a foreign language to an insane person.  When I'm so attached to a thing or a relationship or a lifestyle that I can't imagine changing it then the result is Suffering with a Capital S.

I like the idea of wearing the world like a loose garment.  I like the imagery of floating out of my head, up above my body, and looking down, watching myself interact with the world.  Most of the time I'm behaving reasonably but some of the time I'm an idiot; an idiot I cannot see well when I'm up inside my own head.  When I'm floating skyward I can see the whole scene from a larger perspective.  Not just my own stupid perspective and stupid it can most certainly be.

Mother Goose Speaketh

 For every ailment under the sun,                                                                                                          There is a solution or there is none.                                                                                                              If there be one, try to find it.                                                                                                                          If there be none, never mind it.                                                                                                                      Mother Goose

C'mon man, if Mother Goose speaks you best listen up.  It's fucking Mother Goose!

What difference does it make if things are left undone tonight?  Will it matter ten years from now?  Nothing is so important that we should carry tension and worry into our relaxation time.  What's important is our ability to accept the day's events by the time we're ready to sleep.

Everyone is afraid - it's what you do with the fear that counts.

Let life live through you.  Say "yes" to life.

Spending money on other people makes you happier than spending money on yourself.

Barney Gumbel

There's a theory in psychology called Confirmation Bias.  This is a tendency for humans to seek out people and sources that confirm what they already believe.  This is most apparent in politics, of course, where many of us look for "news" sources that say what we want to hear.  It's an efficient way to justify the stupidest, most ridiculous viewpoints.  Consider a group of drunks sitting at a bar at two in the morning, complaining about their spouses and their jobs and the courts and the general disorder in the world.  Show this to a impartial third party and they laugh and shake their heads at the insanity.  We drunks would shake our heads right back at the doubters.  We're with people who think that sitting in a bar at two in the morning is a great, great idea and they confirm our insanity.

There's a great scene in a Simpson's episode where Barney comes to in Moe's Bar after a long bender, complaining about the state of affairs, and then he looks down at his arm which has a handcuff that is attached to the door of a police car.  "And where the hell did this come from?" he asks.

His two fellow barflies respond: "Haven't you always had that?" the first one says.  "Yeah, I can't really picture you without it," says the other.

That's confirmation bias.  Listening to people saying what you want to hear.

"We are sure that God wants us to be happy, joyous, and free.  We cannot believe that this life is meant to be full of sadness and tears, although it used to feel that way for many of us.  Now we know that we made our  own misery.  God didn't do it.  So we take care not to go on creating more misery.  If trouble comes to us, we use it as a reason to think about the wisdom of our Higher Power."

Plain Language Big Book PP 118-119.

Quoting People Wiser Than Me

"The lesson I learned is that if you have all the fresh water that you want and enough food to eat then you don't have anything to complain about."

Eddie Rickenbacker (An airman shot down over the Pacific who spent three weeks floating in a lifeboat before being rescued.)

"The more attached you are to something, the more your vision is obscured and narrowed, sometimes to the point at which you are convinced that there is only one way to proceed.  Your attachment to a specific belief cuts off your ability to see beyond that one possibility."

The Toltecs

"Many of us have spent time thinking that our spirituality makes us superior people.  Eventually, we see that this is childish.  That attitude is replaced by a great sense of purpose, and a growing understanding of the power of God in our lives."

Plain Language Big Book PP 116-17

Spiritual Awakenings

 I wanted to write today about the concept of a spiritual awakening.  A good starting point is to Google something and shuffle through the responses, see if anything catches my eye.  One of the frequently searched terms if you simply type in "spiritual experience" apparently is along the lines of "am I having a spiritual awakening or spiraling into  psychosis?"  Did not see that coming.  (laughing, shaking my head emoji.)

Seriously, though, a spiritual awakening is characterized by a deep change in how a person feels, thinks, and sees reality.  Those of us so blessed will often display a clear mind, one that allows us to feel a deep sense of calm, joy, and love.   We feel grounded.  We know who we are and we stay connected to everyday life in a meaningful way.  We grasp the concept of humility in a deeply insightful way.  We feel more humble and this allows us to be kind to other people.  There is a profound shift in consciousness and a growing realization that you are not just your everyday thoughts, emotions, or ego, but part of a deeper, infinite awareness.

These spiritual awakenings may include a questioning of long-held beliefs and a strong need for occasional solitude.  We find an increasingly heightened intuition and begin to feel a deep, genuine empathy which leads to giant improvements in our relationships.  Peace in everyday life becomes not just a possibility but a reality.  We lose interest in material things.  OK, nobody loses all interest in material things - More money!  More sex!!  More power!!! - but we're able to keep those drives in a reasonable balance.

Here's a personal example of what I believe is a benefit of having some kind of spiritual awakening:

I always tip food service professionals.  In my humble opinion it's ridiculous that wealthy corporations try to shift their employee's compensation off of their balance sheet and into their customers' wallets but when I am elected Ruler of the World I'll get that squared away.  I bought a drink from a Starbucks that was inside a Kroger.  I paid with a credit card and was confused that there was no way to add a tip to the charge.  I opened my wallet which contained approximately zero dollars and then noticed that there wasn't a tip jar, either.  I asked the barista about this and she said that because the coffee shop was located in a Kroger that their policy of no tips took precedence.  I can understand this - you don't want cashiers and stock personnel hassling shoppers for money - but I wasn't thrilled with this policy.  I talked with the woman a bit about the difference between a no tipping culture and a tipping culture and agreeing that every employee should be fairly compensated for their work.  She was calm and reflective about the situation while agreeing that a little more money would be nice.

I left with my coffee.  (I should add that I was only at the Starbucks because the line at my regular spot was too long and I'm a busy, important guy.  That didn't stop me from using their bathroom before I walked home even though I didn't buy their product.)  I went to the bank and got some cash and walked back to the Starbucks.  I asked for some inspiration on timing and what an appropriate response would be.  The barista was alone so I stopped and said: "Excuse me, miss, but when you turned around this fell out of your pocket" and I dropped ten bucks onto one of the inventory boxes.  (Balance is my best friend!  I wanted to give her $5 but I could have given her $20 so the tenner was a good choice.)  She looked at me with a confused expression before she got it.  A smile and a mouthed "thank you" and I was down the road.

This was a few days ago and I'm still living on the fumes of the experience.  While the money was appreciated I bet that it was the kindness, the recognition that she enjoyed the most.  It's wonderful to feel seen, to be noticed.  I try to learn people's names and to remember a little, tiny speck of information about them so I can inquire after their pet or their family or their schooling.  I definitely do NOT talk on my phone when I'm in line.