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.