The Animate Machine

One of the staff - Pepe with his master's degree and working on his doctorate - on our recent Antarctica trip came up to SuperK and me at the airport and told us how much he enjoyed our company.  This guy gave a lecture that we found so interesting that we corralled him after his talk to discuss the subject in greater detail.  We did it because we were interested in the topic but we also did it because everyone likes to be recognized, to be seen, to feel like what they were trying to say was heard.  We made it a point to do this after every lecture we attended - whether we found the lecture interesting and informative or not - and we were surprised at how often the presenter was left alone at the podium at the end, shuffling papers, while the attendees just stood up and walked out, talking among themselves about this and that - themselves, probably.  Even if I didn't love the lecture I could find something to relate to or some fact that was new and surprising to me.  Some thing that I could talk to the lecturer about.  I felt like I was saying: "Good job.  I heard you."

Joyous:  Extremely happy; extreme, exuberant, deep happiness.    

Another guy - Roddy with his two master's degrees and twenty years experience working as an anthropologist in the ghettos of South Africa - so intrigued SuperK and me that we talked to him on a number of occasions.  This is the animist guy, the guy who said: "Yes!  We need more animists!" when I told him I was thinking of converting to animism even though I don't really know what that means.  I'd be a Christian Animist.  I guess animism is an ancient belief system that postulates that  the rocks in my cactus garden talk to the plants while my dead ancestors whirl around miasmatically in the moonlight.  What's not to like?  I'm a big fan of rocks and cacti and departed ancestors and I really love a good beam of moonlight.  When we parted for the last time he said that he really appreciated our joyousness.    

And . . . the head of security for the ship - the Brit David - approached us as we were waiting to de-boat.  His staff was responsible for making sure only passengers got back on the ship when we were in port and also - more importantly, I think - making sure that everyone who got off the boat got back on the boat.  It wouldn't be great marketing to leave a guest on an ice floe somewhere and sail blithely off.  I always tried to say something cheerful or silly when I was getting off the ship and when I was returning, calling the staff by name, bitching about freezing my skinny ass off, taking shit with self-deprecation when I lost my ID three times - three times! Not once or even twice but three times! - and even encouraging the staff to pile on.  Just to be joyous.  I think most people looked at the security staff as animate machines.  I think most people would have been happy scanning their IDs into a machine.  David thanked us for this.  I hope it made a difference to the security staff to have someone treat them like real people; real people who are away from their families and their homes for four months at a crack.  That can't be easy.  Frankly, these people were much more interesting to me than the self-satisfied guests wallowing in their vaguely discontented ennui.

The Animate Machine would be an excellent name for a heavy metal band.

Problem V Solution

Problem:  A matter or situation regarded as unwelcome or harmful and needing to be dealt with and overcome.

Solution: A means of solving a problem or dealing with a difficult situation.

I often think about my kinda sponsee who got a DUI but cannot seem to get past his resentment that The Man is screwing him over somehow.  This may be true - what do I know?  Now, usually when I ask "what do I know?" I'm asking a rhetorical question while implying that I know a great deal which is usually not the case.  This is why I make so much stuff up.  In this instance, however, I've got some knowledge and I've got some experience and these two things combined lead to a schtickle of wisdom, and the wisdom in this case and to my way of thinking is that it takes a lot more energy to complain than it does to accept.  Life is often capricious and seemingly unfair so my tendency is to seize these contradictions as an excuse to complain that I'm being persecuted.  When things are going my way I spend very little time pondering how lucky I am that things are going my way but when things aren't going my way then I litigate and rehash the unfairness over and over again, in my own head and to anyone who I can trap into listening.  So I brought this "wisdom" to his attention after listening to his grievances over and over, in as kind a way as I could while trying to bring a little firmness to the process, and he took my thoughts well but I bet that the next time I speak with him that he's going to be stuck in the same trash-filled rut.  It takes time to internalize new behavior and he's not really going at his recovery hammer and tongs at this point, preferring to dabble when it's convenient.

Tong:  A type of tool used to lift and grip objects instead of holding them directly with hands.

Hammer and Tong: With great vigor and determination, energetically and enthusiastically.

So what's my game plan today?  Finding problems?  Or finding solutions?

It's All the Same, Man

 She respected his rich and hidden interior life, which she thoroughly expected to yield a puzzling exterior; she knew he was an interior man.  He had always been a daydreamer; now that he didn’t write, he seemed to daydream a little more.  Once, he told her that he wondered if he was an avatar. In Hindu mythology, an avatar is a deity, descended to earth in an incarnate form or some manifest shape.  Did he really believe he was the incarnation of a god? “Which god?” she asked him. “I don’t know,” he humbly told her.

That was the Parsis.  Here are the Toltecs: "Everything in existence is a manifestation of the one living being we call God.  Everything is God.  He saw himself in everything - in every human, in every animal, in every tree, in the water, in the rain, in the clouds, in the earth.  He said: 'It is true.  I am God.  But you are also God.  We are the same, you and I.  We are images of light.  We are God.'  Then he knew that he would forget all that he had learned."

As you know I've decided to become a Christian animist.  It's a new religion.  I'm the only member so far.  "Many animistic traditions include belief in a supreme 'High God,' but the focus of religious life is usually on the numerous lesser gods, nature spirits, and ancestors who directly influence daily life, rather than this distant creator.  Animism sees the world as filled with spiritual essences in everything (plants, rocks, animals, etc.), so 'gods' are often seen as powerful spirits, not necessarily the singular, all-powerful God of monotheism."

A 16th century mosque in the Indian city of Ayodhya was destroyed by a violent group of Hindu nationalists in 1992.  The Hindus believed that the mosque was built on land that had once held a Hindu temple.  In Jerusalem, the Christians, Jews, and Muslims all believe that in the past this tiny, teeny piece of land was sacred ground and should be claimed only by their monotheistic religion - which they're certain is correct and if you don't agree then you're going to burn on a Lake of Fire for all eternity - who comes up with this shit, this violent imagery, anyway? -  and that all other religions were to be excluded.  "Get the fuck off my lawn, infidels!" you can imagine them shrieking at the contending belief systems.  

I've read the Bible.  I can't find a great emphasis on burning in hell for all eternity.  I can't speak for the other monotheists.  Maybe Lakes of Fire are popular.  Maybe "Are YOU going to burn for all eternity on a Lake of Fire?" is a popular Sunday School lesson for impressionable young children.  "Suffer the little children to come to me so I can scare the shit out of them about burning on Lakes of Fire."  This is like eating potato chips.  I can't stop eating them.  There's so much great stuff I can hallucinate up on the topic of Lakes of Fire.

Let today's lesson be this: Be careful about how much LSD you eat when your brain is still developing.  Turns out there are consequences to my behavior.  Mom was right.  So were the cops.  

One Big, Vague God For All of Us

I have read a bunch about the different religions and moral philosophies that have served as spiritual guideposts for people over the millennia.  My Great Discovery! has been that at their core they all basically say the same thing.  I haven't found any written instructions on how to be a selfish dick or to use violence to get what I want.  No commandments along those lines that I've been able to uncover.  "If your neighbor has some shit that you want thou shalt go steal that shit and make it your own."  Nowhere to be found.  "Honor thy father and thy mother unless thou does not want to."  Etc. Etc. Etc.    

My conclusion is that there is one Big God floating around up there or over this way or inside us or something.  Maybe God is like a 60s tribute band: he plays a little of that and a little of this, nothing too outrageous, everything kind of pleasantly pleasing, nobody can remember exactly what was played but everyone leaves feeling pretty good.   A good riff is a good riff.  It's comforting to me to think that those of us who are seeking a spiritual presence all end up in the same place, praying to the same presence or force or being.  It's as if God changes outfits to please the intended audience but it's still God underneath the clothing.  Your God has an elephant head and six arms and mine wears robes and has a long, white beard and that guy is a fat dude sitting in the Lotus position with a goofy smile on his face.   It's all God!  It's all the same thing!  Can you imagine Jesus and Buddha and Ganesh and Mohammed getting into a violent argument about some picayune procedural minutia?  "Your God has the head of an elephant!?  Fucking ridiculous!  Believe in my God - he can walk on water and raise people from the dead or he lives in rocks or he doesn't really have any form at all.  THAT makes sense!" 

Smash the Delusion

Smash:  Violently break something into pieces.

Delusion: A false belief or judgement about external reality, held despite incontrovertible evidence to the contrary, as a symptom of serious mental illness.

From The Big Book: "We learned that we had to concede to our innermost selves that we were alcoholics.  This is the first step in recovery.  The delusion that we are like other people, or presently may be, has to be smashed."

Okay, then.

Here's food for thought.  If a tsunami kills thousands of people in India it's hard to assess blame for the disaster.  We're sad for the loss of life but no one did anything to anyone else.  There's no one to go after and punish.  But if a terrorist explodes a bomb in a public place and kills hundreds of people it's easy to assess blame and it's easier yet to gin up enough outrage to go after the perpetrators to exact revenge.  The interesting thing is that there was a large loss of life in both cases.  So what's the difference?  One was not preventable - or not as easily preventable, at least - and the other was?  It makes me ponder the motivation behind my behavior in the world today.  Am I nice or a shithead contingent on some internal sense of how things should work, of what is right or wrong, or am I looking to seek retribution, to lash out and take my pound of flesh from someone I hold responsible, correctly or incorrectly?  I've read that children generate ethics gradually: first, they behave well so they won't get punished; then they behave well even if they realize they won't get caught and punished, that they can probably "get away with it"; and finally they behave well because they've internalized good behavior, they understand intrinsically what good and bad behavior is.  They no longer need to be told what bad behavior is - they feel it in their bones.

"Smash the Delusion" would be an excellent stoner Rock tune.

Obsession for Destruction

I'm nearing the end of my Toltec book.  I'm going to miss it.  I like the message.  I like that the message hews so closely to the message of A.A. while coming at it from a slightly different angle.  As I say often: spirituality is spirituality.

A quick summation: "Through the power of forgiveness, you are able to move past the harm caused by others and see that they were doing the best they could at the time." (Ed. Note: I'd add 'with the tools they had.')  

"In the end, you know that you are already perfect and complete, more than enough, and you will always receive exactly what you need in every moment." (Ed. Note: Right here - Right now or 'One day at a time.')  

"You no longer try to control those around you with anger, guilt, or sadness in order to force them to believe or act the way you think they should for no one is more important than anyone else."  (Ed. Note: Live and Let Live.)

The phrase "power of awareness" comes up often.  Aware that you're doing the best you can, that you know who you are, that you don't need to distort the world around you to fit your warped perception of how things 'should be,' that you can act and speak with complete confidence and without apology, that you can face life with positivity and leave the negativity behind.

How exhausting it is to be negative!       

Talk about The Promises!

I'll conclude with this marvelous, marvelous quote from P. 21 in the Twelve and Twelve: "It is truly awful to admit that, glass in hand, we have warped our minds into such an obsession for destructive drinking that only an act of Providence can remove it from us."

"Obsession for Destruction" would be an excellent title for a heavy metal tune.

Relevance!

More bemused reflections on my state of being and place in the world.  When I was younger I didn't think much about how young I was.  I seemed to be in the world on many different levels.  I had many different hats to wear.  Today I don't have as many hats and this makes me less and less relevant in The Big Picture.  I grew up with a mother who mentally was always twenty years older than her actual chronological age so I'm careful today to opine on this subject, this phase, with what I hope is a good perspective.  I internalized her obsession with aging in an unhealthy fashion.  I no longer do this.  When I talk about getting older I do it as a very active dude who goes at life with a lot of vigor.  Nonetheless, I don't want to be stupid about it.  I am hiking still but for two or three hours instead of four or five.  Sometimes I still hike for four or five hours but I'm savvy enough to realize that this would be problematic at some point.

I walk with an A.A. member who is getting close to fifty but doesn't really grasp what this entails.  I think he looks at me like his father or mentor but considers himself still in the game with young women twenty years younger than he is.  A twenty year ago difference is a twenty year age difference.  The physical decline becomes more pronounced the older we get - no one was checking my drivers license when I was buying beer in my late twenties - but we have a tendency to hang on to this image as a person who is younger than we really are.  This guy runs for exercise.  Good for him.  Some of us can tolerate more strenuous forms of activity for longer periods of time.  But he couldn't run for a number of months because of some knee pain.  When you're in your twenties pain or discomfort is something we can power through.  No pain, no gain, right?  Pain is weakness leaving your body, right?  Except when pain is telling you that you're damaging something.  My recollection is that I could do almost anything I wanted physically until I was in my forties when I began to hve the sneaking suspicion that I was bumping up against some physical limits.  This dude is going to be replacing his knees before he hits his sixties.  Or his hips.  But you can't tell him something like this even though I'm speaking from a place of experience.  

Relevance:  The degree to which something is related or useful to what is happening or being talked about; important to the matter at hand.