Just Say No to Photobombing Sharks

"Smile, then bite."

Troubled Terra

They spun a web for us.  But alas, waking up is hard to do, isn't it. 

Terra, you'll never know what hit you when it hits.  It's just as well.
Enjoy the beautiful nightmare you've mistaken for a sweet dream.

Curse of the Cassandra Complexx

...because sheeplehood is such a tough nut to crack.

Rewire Your Brain to ENJOY Sobriety

Adopted from "Enjoy Sobriety," 
by Rick Hanson, Ph.D., neuro-
psychologist and author

  

"Sober traits are grown in your brain by actually

installing sober states. If you don't register your

positive states...help them sink in...then there's

...no improvement in neural structure or func-

tion, and thus no lasting benefit."   --Rick Hanson

          By "sobriety," I mean healthy self-control, a centered enjoyment of life, and an inner freedom from "drivenness."  We typically apply this sense of balance and self-care to things like food, drugs and alcohol, sexuality, money, and risky behaviors. And if you like, you could bring sobriety to other things as well, such as to righteousness, contentiousness, over-working, or controlling others.

          At bottom, sobriety is the opposite of craving, broadly defined: you're not going to war with what's unpleasant, chasing after what's pleasant, or clinging to what's heartfelt.  You might think of sobriety as a kind of loss, but it's actually fueled by a sense of gain. Sure, there's a place for using your will.  But studies show that willpower gets depleted fairly quickly in most people.  Instead of willing yourself to avoid the bad, enjoying the good - the benefits of your sobriety - will naturally draw you in a higher direction.

• Set yourself up to succeed. Do what you can to take care of your deeper needs so you feel less driven to distract yourself, numb out, or get high.  

• Reduce temptations. If you're trying to stop drinking, don't have alcohol in your home. 

• Get support from an honest conversation with your partner to a 12-step program (or secular alternatives) and/or counseling.

• Don't underestimate the power of craving.  If you've tried to change in the past and not succeeded, recognize that you'll need to increase your inner and outer resources for sobriety to have a different result this time around.

Help the Experience "Sink In"

          As they say in Tibet: If you take care of the minutes, the years will take care of themselves. Take it a minute at a time, a day at a time. When you have a chance to enjoy your sobriety, really help the experience sink in, which will gradually incline your mind and brain toward the high road instead of the low one.  Sober traits are grown in your brain by actually installing sober states. If you don't register your positive states -if you don't take the dozen seconds or so to help them sink in- they make little or no difference to your brain: then there's no learning, no improvement in neural structure or function, and thus no lasting benefit (for more on this, see Hardwiring Happiness).

          So, to support and maintain your sobriety, enjoy and really take in its benefits.  At the start of a day, an evening, or even a minute, commit to and enjoy the anticipated positive results of sobriety.  While you are being sober in some way, enjoy the results.  After being sober, looking back, take in the sense of its benefits.

• Enjoy the bliss of blamelessness. The feeling that there is nothing to be ashamed of, that you are taking an honorable path. The knowledge that you are putting distance every day between yourself and problematic past behaviors. Enjoy the sense of worth, of self-respect.

• Enjoy the pleasures of a clear mind and a healthy body. Be glad about not putting toxins - the source of the word, intoxication - into your body and mind. Feel good about the gift you are giving your future self.

• Enjoy the results in your relationships. Enjoy not feeling embarrassed the day after, or hung-over, or tired because you stayed up too late. Savor the respect of others. Be glad you avoided needless quarrels. Feel good about not harming others. Be glad you've cleared the field so you can focus on getting your wants met in the relationship.

• Enjoy learning how to manage stress and have fun in more wholesome, psychologically mature ways.

• Enjoy the freedom in not being compelled to drink, etc. The pleasure in feeling in charge of your own actions, mind, and life.

• Enjoy the opportunity to learn about desire by not fulfilling it. Be more realistic about the actual rewards of indulging desires; enjoy waking up from the spells cast -Drink this! Smoke that! Eat these!- by addictive hungers.

          Enjoy how sobriety supports your practices in the upper reaches of human potential, including in spiritual life.  Most deeply, enjoy relating to the world and to your life not gripped at the throat by desire.  Enjoy the inner peace that comes from not being compelled to do things that may feel good in the moment but have big lingering costs for you and others.

Bankster Bacon

"Piggery," by Belinda Berger

Amusing is that greed-driven, mad dash they do to be Boss Hog, the 
one that's oiled the blind machinery of the American Dream for so long. 

Meditation Retreat Hacks

Cultivating Your Inner Monk
...the Smart Way

          Nothing like focusing your energies at a meditation retreat, whether for one day, one month, or what have you.  It's a great way to recharge your spiritual batteries, no matter how many years you've been meditating.

          I often see tips on the internet for getting the most out of the spiritual aspect of the retreat experience.  But rarely do I see helpful advice for dealing with the more, shall we say, earthy aspects of the experience, simple ways to avoid easily-avoidable inconveniences.  After all, when your body is free of distracting discomforts, your mind is freer to relax and meditate.  So, here are some things that may help you better enjoy your meditation retreat, and to a certain extent, help people around you better enjoy theirs, too.

Manage Your Methane

That pesky methane molecule, 
bane of meditators everywhere!

         Yep, I'm gonna' go there.  [sigh]  OK, I'm glad to finally get this off my chest.  For the past few years, I've been meaning to blog about this issue, but I always forget.  Seriously.  I don't usually beg, but please, if you know need it, for the love of all humanity, pack some Bean-o or other gas relieving product in your suitcase...and remember to use it at the retreat.  There ain't enough Buddha Dharma Love in the world for anyone to have to tolerate your "outs" during their otherwise-blissful meditation sessions.

          You will be eating lots of methane-producing beans (the "magical fruit"), as well as vegetables for the duration of your stay.  Unless your body is already well-acclimated to a vegetarian or vegan diet, and you have learned to artfully master the management of your methane, you need to make plans for this.  If you don't, no matter how meek and nice people seem at these things, inwardly they'll think of you as a thoughtless barbarian when they see you coming.  I can't help but make up names in my mind for such folk and allow myself to laugh under my breath to decompress from my disgust: "Oh boy, there's Freddy Fartsalot,"  "Here comes Silent-But-Deadly Girl --does she really think we don't know it's her?"  I know, I have to work on my sardonicism issues.  But, just...yeah.

          Maybe you didn't already know that most meditation retreats follow the traditional Asian tendency to serve vegetarian food.  Or, maybe you're a retreat veteran and already know this, but you've been forgetting to, um, "prepare" properly in the past.  Either way, consider this a  friendly reminder.

Love Yourself with 
Lower Back Care

          The other issue on my mind is managing insidious lower back pain.  Oh, that all meditation retreats had back massages as part of the program, mmmmm.  Most, however, view bodily pain, unless it's a medical issue, as a dandy time for one to practice one's equanimous-mind-over-matter skills.

          "All painful and pleasurable sensations are 'impermanent,' after all, so just suck it up" is the thinking.  Yeah, whatever.  Call me whacky, but I don't see how self-torture is a necessary ingredient for "enlightenment."  I say, take good care of your back and it will take good care of you.  Here are some things that have worked for me:


Ibuprofen.  Pack a bottle of ibuprofen, and pop a few fifteen minutes or so before every lonnng meditation session.  Take enough to last the entire session because it's toward the last few minutes of the sitting that you'll be in the most excruciating pain.


Hot Showers.  Take a hot shower before the sitting (if possible, around 15 minutes beforehand), turning your back to the showerhead and aiming the hottest water you could stand at your lower back for 5-10 minutes.  If you share shower facilities with several others (who might have the same idea as you do, lol), it may be tricky to swing this, but it's worth a shot.


Heating Pad.  At the last retreat I attended, I was glad to see I wasn't the only one who packed a heating pad.  This one person brought one of those pads that require hot water, so she had to keep heating water in an electronic hot pot.  I knew beforehand that all the beds had electrical outlets next to them, so I had brought an electronic heating pad.  The essential oil she put in the water smelled really good, though.

Meditation Bench.  If you choose to meditate on the floor, you will have to try all manner of cushions and/or benches until you arrive at what works for you.  Personally, I like meditation benches because they lift the body's weight off the legs (no numb "pins and needles legs" afterward).

The rounded bottom design of the bench at right allows one to ever-so-slightly adjust one's angle from time to time, easing tension on the spine and hips (and be sure to buy a bench with some padding on the seat).


Gentle Stretching.  Try to do some stretching before a sitting, and afterward, if possible.  I find that the yoga posture halasana, "the plow," makes more blood circulate in the lower back area, and feels wonderful [caution: I don't suggest doing inversions like this if you have any cardio-vascular or eye  problems, nor immediately after a hot shower even if you don't have any cardio-vascular problems...it may make your chest hurt, or worse].  A low lunge is great counter-pose for the plow (every yoga pose needs a counter pose, to balance the muscles).  The lunge is also a good way to stretch, or "open" the inner hip, which also tenses up from sitting.

Well, hope these suggestions help.  Happy meditating!  :)

That Gay, Gay, Gay Psychic Elephant in the Room

It's gay.  It's psychic.  It's an elephant.
And it's been in the room a loooonng, long time.

Freedom of the Press

News reporters and politicians, mind-controlled 
talking heads of the Matrix Clown Show, once 
in a while glitching in their programming, like
 this, and this, or like this, and  these, and this
...yeah, it can get pretty disturbing sometimes.
Here's why this happens.

          John Swinton, editor of the New York Tribune in the 1880s, is known to have said at a banquet of his fellow editors:

          "There is no such thing in America as an independent press, unless it is in the country towns.  You know it and I know it.  There is not one of you who dares to writes (sic) his honest opinions, and if you did you know beforehand that it would never appear in print.

          I am paid one hundred and fifty dollars a week for keeping my honest opinions out of the paper I am connected with  –others of you are paid similar salaries for similar things–  and any of you who would be so foolish as to write his honest opinions would be out on the streets looking for another job.

          The business of the New York journalist is to destroy the truth, to lie outright, to pervert, to vilify, to fawn at the feet of Mammon, and to sell his race and his country for his daily bread.  You know this and I know it...and what folly is this to be toasting an 'Independent Press'?!

          We are the tools and vassals of rich men behind the scenes.  We are the jumping-jacks; they pull the strings and we dance.  Our talents, our possibilities and our lives are all the property of other men.  We are intellectual prostitutes."

          And thus spake the Oblahma clone to this esteemed conference of well-dressed, keenly-educated and fine-smelling intellectual prostitutes:

Good afternoon.  Uh, blah.  Blah, blah, blah, blah, and blah, blah.  HOWEVER, uh, blah, blah, blah, and uh....blah, and blah, blah. THEREFORE, blah, blah, blah, blah, and blah, blah.  IN CLOSING, blah, blah, blah, and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, and blah, blah.. And, uh...blah.  Thank you.  I'll take your questions now... 

          And they take notes on this nonsense and submit it as lamestream news --dutiful little mama birds regurgitating worms for the eager consumption of we, the hungry birdie masses.   We lap it all up every drop, day after excruciating day, 'cause we want to stay "well-informed."  Nope, absolutely nothing's changed since your day, Mr. Swinton.  The tools, vassals and jumping jacks still do the same dance, and we clap our hands to the beat.