Ganesh Is The Best God

I have spent far too much of my life letting my relationships with other people - my perception of these relationships, anyway - define who I am instead of letting go of what other people think of me.  Today . . . I don't really care.  That doesn't mean that I don't want to be loved and appreciated, that I stop trying to develop good, caring relationships or that I believe I can behave in unkind and unethical ways and still be comfortable in my own skin, but that people are going to come up with their own idea of who Seaweed is and I can't do anything about that.  Their ideas may be spot on and they may be way off the mark but it's all none of my business.  Today I work very, very hard at allowing other people to be who they are.  It takes a ton of stress off my overworked mind to let everyone live their own best life.  The miraculous payoff for me personally is that I've been able to detach more and more from their opinions of me.  I cannot emphasize enough how freeing this is.  I get to be me and not some articifial construct of who I think you want me to be.  It has become second nature for me to quickly slough off a perceived slight or disrespecting and think: "Oh, right, that has nothing to do with me.  That's their deal."  I don't have to engage or justify.  I go back to the incident with the woman in the pool who told me I'd better take another shower after sitting in the hot tub for ten minutes.  I quickly cycled through an angry response to a long conversation where I convinced her that she was an idiot to saying: "Whatever."  That was her.  That wasn't me.

The Toltecs talk about the process where parents, teachers, and society teach young people how to fit into the collective Dream of the Planet by using a system of rewards and punishments.  I bought into this perceived reality where these beliefs, world views, concepts of success, and moral codes were absolute truths rather than just agreements made by previous generations.  It doesn't mean that they're all defective and need to be tossed into the dustbin but that I don't have to hew to all of them.  I get to be me.  I don't have to "fit in."  I get to look inside and follow my own instincts of how to behave and respond.  The Toltecs detach from the opinions of others primarily by practicing the Second Agreement: "Don't take anything personally."  This is the understanding that nothing other people say or do is actually about you - it's entirely a reflection of their own mind.

God, for instance.  Whew, that's a big ol' can of whoop ass.  Humans have been chasing the idea of a Higher Power forever and this concept is always changing and it's remarkably different across cultures and regions while having some remarkable similarities.  The Christians and Jews and Moslems have this stern god and there's only one of them and what he says, goes.  There are 1.2 billion Hindus in the world who worship many gods but one of the main god-figures is called Ganesh.  Ganesh has four arms and an elephant head and is often sitting on an elaborate throne dressed in elaborate clothes.  You could spike a four year old's OJ with LSD and give him crayons and some paper and he might draw something like that.  One point two billion people!  There may be 500 million Buddhists alive who revere a fat dude who is mostly naked and has a vapid, vacuous grin on his face.  Frankly, he looks stoned.  Five hundred million!

Who gets to choose which is the "right" God?  Not me, that's for sure.  My God is sort of an amalgamation of a lot of different things but, I'll tell you this, he's in a good mood.  He's quick to praise and slow to anger, quick to compliment and never criticizes.  Who wants to believe in a pissed off God?  That's fear, that's control, the need to make people do what you want them to do.  My God is lazy and sarcastic and likes Black Sabbath and sneaks the occasional cigarette.

Rock a bye, baby, in the tree tops.                                                                                                          When the wind blows, the cradle will rock.                                                                                         When the bough breaks the cradle will fall.                                                                                           And down will come cradle, baby and all.

Here's a visual from a Simpson's episode:  Marge is putting baby Maggie to bed and she begins to sing this lullaby.  Maggie begins to peacefully fall asleep as a thought bubble in the background shows her in a cradle that is rocking gently in the top branches of a tall tree.  She's smiling and Marge's voice is melodic, comforting.  The line about the branches breaking begins to worry her and then the final thought bubble shows the cradle with Maggie in it speeding through the branches on its way to smash up on the ground.  She's terrified and after Marge kisses her and turns out the light we see her wide-awake eyes as she sucks furiously on her pacifier, too agitated to sleep.  

Who comes up with this shit?  What deranged, Dark Ages nanny came up with this song.  It should be in a compilation called "How To Make Sure Your Infant Can't Fall Asleep."

From the chapter "A Vision For You" in the Plain Language Big Book: "They can't imagine their life without alcohol.  And some day, they won't be able to imagine life with alcohol or without it.  They won't want to imagine life continuing at all  A person who reaches this place will experience deep and extreme loneliness.  We say they are at the 'jumping-off place.'  They will wish to end their life."

The last time I drank I consumed a large, huge volume of 12% cream ale.  My recollection is a case of it.  I was too drunk to walk and my speech was thickly slurred.  Fair enough but the wicked catch was that I experienced not one minute of relief.  I was aware - no oblivion - and awake.  At some deep level I must have understood that the game was over.  I must have understood that it was recovery or misery.

"It is the Fellowship of Alcoholics Anonymous.  It will help you find relief from boredom and worry.  Your imagination will come alive.  Life will mean something at last.  The most satisfying years of your life lie ahead."

The Saturday morning Keep It Complicated meeting is larger than normal.  I picked up a new guy who doesn't have a car - I didn't have to say a word because he talked a blue streak the entire ride, confirming the strength of my morning serenity which is the outcome from the calm, peaceful life I have - and we got to the meeting early.  The room was pretty quiet and it got louder as more members arrived.  Not bad loud - joyful loud, good energy loud, happy loud.

I like that loud.

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.