Archive for the ‘Behavior’ Category

>    This week the International Tracing Service, administered by the International Committee of the Red Cross, unsealed 50 million pages of documents collected by the Allies near the end of WWII chronicling the atrocities committed during the Nazi era. The documents are housed in the German city of Bad Arolsen where it’s index references 17.5 million people in 16 linear miles of file space.
    This is not a good day for Holocaust deniers (Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad to be sure)…although that’s not the focus of this entry.
    The more difficult topic to address is the Nazi within each of us. Just writing that sentence causes me to wince.
    It’s not easy, or pleasant, to think that it might be true…that each of us is capable of doing what the Nazis and the German people did. And while I do believe that under the “right” circumstances each of us is capable of morally reprehensible acts, I do not mean to say that each of us is capable of committing the same acts committed by the Nazis. Rather, that we each have a propensity to rationalize and justify hurtful behavior…even morally reprehensible behavior…in the misguided belief that such behavior is key to our own survival and, therefore, somehow excusable and acceptable.
    It’s often said that Hitler’s psychological strategy played upon the disgrace and humiliation suffered by the German people following WWI. He gave them hope and, what’s key here for our purposes, he also gave them an excuse for their unhappiness. That excuse led to the oftentimes brutal deaths of 13 million people. No matter, it was justifiable (not to mention vengeful).
    We all do it, you know. I can tell you I do.
    I have a disagreement with my husband and while it remains  unresolved from my perspective, it’s seemingly resolved for him. Rather than accept the non-resolution, I harbor ill feelings around it and him. At some later time, that harbored ill feeling turns to anger. When an opportunity arises (related or un-reacted to the original disagreement) to express that built-up anger…I let it rip. Of course, my justification is that he hurt me by ignoring or refusing to see what was of significance to me
    And so the beast is fed.
    You may be thinking that my personal anger at my husband hardly rises to the level of Nazi genocide. But be careful, for what exists within the microcosm of our personal lives is but a fraction of what we project, and therefore create, within the macrocosm of our culture.
    I read an eye-opening quote yesterday in “Writing Spirit” by Lynn V. Andrews.
         “Your Einstein searched and searched for truth,
         and finally, it came to him. If he would have
         misused that wisdom he could not have conceived
         of it. All great scientists agree on that. What
         lesser people do with that knowledge is some-
         thing else. No one who has abilities and has
         grasped higher laws could ever hurt anyone.“

    So, whether it’s genocide or a marital spat, the intentional infliction of pain (mental, emotional, physical or spiritual) upon another is the shortcoming of the one causing it. It is our own limited understanding of the highest laws of the Universe that not only causes us to behave in such ways but also to justify our behavior in the name of self-survival.
    The reality, and the irony, is that with each hurtful act perpetrated upon another person or thing, we eat away at our own flesh and assure that the path to enlightenment and God remains obstructed with the refuse of our own misguided actions.
    Next time you have the opportunity to be angry or disappointed with someone else, go deep within yourself instead…drop the story you are telling yourself about their behavior, and ask yourself what you can do to break the chain of pain.
    I can assure you from personal experience that you will garner much more progress with that approach than with any other.
    You can ask my husband and me.
    
    

>While there are probably as many advantages as there are disadvantages to the internet and related technologies, I think the one that causes the greatest stress, and does the most damage, is the one least talked about. The media, through technology, constantly brings into our personal lives events and news that are not actually occurring in our lives in real time. The damage that results from this onslaught is not only constant, it’s repetitive.
  Take, for example, the daily events in Iraq.  While it’s true that we are at war, and equally true that the ravages of war occur on a daily basis, they are none-the-less not occurring daily in our personal lives. Yet through the internet and television our own lives, which are already overloaded by stressors much closer to home, have the added burden of needing to process tragic events not immediately relevant to the tasks we have at hand.
    I’m not saying we shouldn’t care about events and suffering occurring outside the perimeter of our immediate lives and environments. Compassion is the hallmark of an enlightened Being. What I am saying is that all we can handle at any given moment is what is immediately in front of us in that given moment. And while the internet and TV are a great example of how we get distracted and seduced and manipulated by fear, they are both just external manifestations of what we do to ourselves internally within our own minds.
    When we linger in negative thoughts of the past or long for imagined futures, we too are distracting ourselves from the only thing that matters…the moment at hand…by living in realities that are no longer a part of our immediate and present experience. There is so much value in the adage that “the past is gone and the future is not yet here.” Unable to change the past or participate in the future before it’s time, what a waste to miss the infinite potential of this moment mired in one or the other.
    Our tendency to be past or future oriented has to do with discomfort. The past is known and the future can be anything we imagine…but this moment is the true unknown. It’s the unknown that makes us so uncomfortable. Just look at how we respond to differences in race, culture, gender, or the whole subject of death. We react with our defenses up and our denials fully turned on precisely because what we do not know makes us uncomfortable. Yet, we all have one thing in common. We all run from the very thing we want most, for it’s only in the unknown potential of the moment that connection, unity and a sense of oneness can be fully experienced.
    So, whether it’s too much time on the internet, or too much TV, or longing for days gone by, or wishing for days to come…all are escapes from and avoidance of the sense of purpose that can only be had by fully living in the moment.
    Funny thing about the moment. It’s followed by another moment and then another and another. So, once you can perfect living fully engaged in each moment as it is occurring, you will find yourself alive in the way you were created to be…in the image and likeness of a power and source that endlessly recreates and experiences itself and all we are… moment by moment.

        >With Thanksgiving just a day away, I’m thinking about how the holiday provides a time for us to STOP and give thanks. What a wonderful change of pace this is to the endless “make and consume more” mode most of us find ourselves mired in. Now, if we take this thought just a little further we arrive at a less obvious and more insidious mode.
    Every minute of our lives is an opportunity to STOP the endless mental chatter that goes on in our minds as we worry over, plan or anticipate past and future events that are either long gone or likely never to occur. What captivates us, and hold us captive to the mental chatter, are the stories we tell ourselves about ourselves and our lives. It’s in these stories that we get caught up and lose sight of the fact that we are not our stories…but rather the consciousness or awareness behind them. Once you remove yourself from the story…with all it’s drama…you also remove the stress and pressures that accompanies your stories and are more able to be grateful and joyful in the moment.
    Just for a moment, think about what causes you emotional pain or  suffering. Now, take away the story you thought about to generate the pain or suffering and just experience the emotion itself. What soon becomes apparent is that without the story the emotion quickly loses energy until it’s gone! So while it is, at times, important and necessary to deeply “be” in the negative emotions you are feeling…it is never important or necessary to replay the story around those emotions and thereby perpetuate your pain and suffering.
    When you STOP telling yourself and others your stories, what you create is an opening in the present to fully experience whatever is available in the moment instead of living in the story of your past or as yet to be future.
    STOPing is not supported in our society. We live in a world where doing and getting and advancing are exalted…where motion is the prized activity. But motion is too often our escape from emotion. It’s in fully being present in our emotions as they are occurring that makes us capable of truly knowing ourselves and others.
    The trick is to STOP when you are having an emotional experience and, without either reacting to it or running from it, fully experience the depth and breadth of what you are feeling. Trust that whatever that emotion is, and however powerful it’s intensity, the pure experience of it is the very thing you are likely both looking for in your life…and running from, as well.
    So, not just on Thanksgiving, but on every day of your life, STOP and express gratitude for your ability to deeply feel…for it is through your feeling self that you have the most direct path to knowing the Oneness of It All.
    Gobble. Gobble.

>    Some blogs are more personal than others.
    Recently I visited my 91-year-old mother who lives in Florida alone and, for the most part, still independently. She is quite fit physically, although her cognitive skills are deteriorating more rapidly as of late. While there is much written on the challenges of caring for the elderly, and especially those with decreasing mental capacity, I prefer to make a somewhat different observation.
    What was most striking to me about my mother’s behavior was that it has become pretty much a “microcosm” of what used to be a “macrocosm.”  By that, I mean that while she now spends her days and nights mainly in or just outside her condominium, the things that matter to her and how she spends her time have not changed, they have simply gotten smaller and more intense in scope.
    For example, my mother was always straightening up our house as I was growing up and so now she is still straightening up her “house”…even though there is virtually nothing to straighten. (She has a professional cleaning woman weekly). She also watched a lot of television, as I recall, so now the TV is on every waking hour, whether or not she is watching it…and she watches it hours on end. She was always insecure about her ability to manage her personal matters and paperwork, and so she daily reviews the mail scrupulously and repeatedly…even bulk mail. She was always mistrustful of others and so she shreds every envelope into narrow strips so no one can steal her name or address. And, sadly, she always had difficulty being close and intimate…or making conversation…so for three days we did lots of task oriented chores, watched TV, and spoke little.
    Interestingly, I saw this same macro/micro transition in my father the year or two before he died.
    Which brings me to my observation.
    As we age, unless we have spent a great deal of time open and committed to change and the willingness to confront our personal demons, we will likely end our lives mired in the same patterns in which we lived them.
    The good news is that there is a way out of this cycle of patterns. It’s called self-inquiry. Self-inquiry is an ongoing, spiritual practice of moving more and more inward towards the Truth of who we each are. It seeks neither justification nor explanation, excuse nor escape…but rather silence, relentless honesty, and a fierce desire to receive the gift of knowing that what we spend the most time running from is the very thing we seek: Oneness. It’s the realization that every attachment is a loss waiting to happen and the only thing that’s real and eternal is who we are beyond our bodies and beyond our attachments.
    Who you are is the awareness that is reading this blog. Not the eyes that are seeing it, or the mind that is processing the message, or the body that is sitting in the chair, but the awareness that you have eyes, a mind, and a body.
    I feel so blessed to know this much about my life with time still to live it. I wish it could be different for my mother, but she has made her choices and held on to her patterns as she has…and I suspect there is a certain amount of comfort for her in having done so.
    I seek growth, not comfort, and growth does not come without the tension created by expanding boundaries. I hope I remain focused on this inner journey throughout my life.
    I also hope that if my daughter writes a blog some day about the last days of her mother, it will be about how until the end I was surrendering to Truth and embracing change.

         >In Bangladesh, 1100 people have died from a cyclone with 600,000 people fleeing from their homes with the possibility of more flooding on the way. Last week extreme weather off the coast of Russia was the cause of 10 ships being sunk, one an oil tanker that spilled 1.5 million gallons of oil. The Southeast United States is in the middle of an historic drought with no end in sight.
    Do we really think that the greatest threat to our continued existence is Al Qaeda or the Taliban?
    While there is no doubt that radical militant groups pose a threat to world peace, there is a less obvious but more important issue that we need to address. It’s the imbalance within Nature and its effect upon the planet.
    I am not saying that humankind’s behavior and seemingly endless appetite for and consumption of natural resources are the direct causes of this imbalance, although a pretty good argument can likely be made for the case that they are. Personally, I think that what we are witnessing is more the natural environment’s reflection of where we’ve allowed ourselves to drift.By drift, I mean the way in which we so willingly abdicated responsibility for our thoughts, words and actions for the past several thousand years. You simply cannot act with disregard for your own integrity while living in denial regarding the connection between that kind of behavior and outcomes.
    Just as I believe we get the leaders we deserve, so too do I believe we get the reality we deserve, or perhaps, the reality we support.
    Among spiritualists, and mystics of all religions, meditation is the practice of going inside yourself to focus upon breath or God or Oneness to reach a higher or broader view. But what happens when the meditation that is practiced daily is constantly putting thoughts upon achieving more…acquiring more…winning at at all cost…having the newest car or the biggest house? This too is practicing a form of meditation. If where you put your thoughts and words and actions for most of your waking hours is upon such things, then this is your meditation and the reality you’re supporting.
    So much of our time and energies in both the West and the East are devoted to acquisition and consumption, or control and conquest, that we have created a “view”…a reality…that is out of balance. Where are the thoughts, words and deeds that bring us together, foster peace, create harmony and teach respect for all forms of life? Where is the balance?
    We are the determining factor in the world in which we live for we have been gifted both the ability to reason as well as free will. When we use these gifts unwisely and create a reality that is out of balance, that mis-creation can be seen in reflection by peering into the natural world.
    Earth is also a living thing and it too requires harmony and balance. Lacking both, it responds by upheaval and with extreme acts such as cyclones, drought and wildly brewing seas.
    Can we learn, now and finally, that we and Nature are partners, arm in arm? That while we may subdue Nature, we may not destroy it…for in the face of its own destruction, it will gather its own forces and by so doing, make Al Qaeda and the Taliban look like child’s play.

>     Most of us were not raised with all of the information that is readily available today. By that I mean the “consciousness” available. Most of us were raised during a time when, for the most part, humankind was in a kind of sleep state from which it is now collectively awakening. In that sleep state, we were not only self-centered and lacking personal responsibility, but also tended to use one of two types of mechanisms to get what we wanted from others…either manipulation or seduction. Neither technique was confined by gender, although seduction will most easily come to mind as used by women to get what they wanted from men. But that’s a cheap and easy out, since advertisers and media have long used the art of seduction (via sexually contrived advertising) to manipulate us into buying what it they’re selling. Manipulation and seduction have been the bedrocks of a materialistically based society and have been the “tools of the trade” of humankind for these millennia.
    The casualties of using manipulation and seduction are truth and intimacy. Rather large prices to pay for short-term satisfaction, wouldn’t you agree? Whether in personal or global relationships, when one feels manipulated or seduced into less than desirable behavior there is a residual feeling that the “other” cannot be trusted. Without trust, intimacy is impossible. And again, intimacy is so much more than sexual intimacy. Intimacy is defined as “a close association with or detailed knowledge or deep understanding of a place, subject, period of history, etc.” Without intimacy it’s impossible to transcend the apparent
differences between individuals and nations in order to reach the higher levels of trust-based exchange and relationship that are needed to create peace. Lack of trust and intimacy breeds fear and sustains separation. the hallmarks of the sleep state in which we have been living.
    The really good news is that we are awakening to a new realization and commitment to a more productive and life affirming way of getting what it is we want. Rather than through manipulation and seduction we are choosing to turn inward and attempt to perfect out own thoughts, words, actions and, ultimately, behavior, to create the world we desire rather than trying to bring it forth through deception.
    The odds are with us now as more and more of us awaken. A structure built on a weak foundation, which is what deception is, must inevitably crumble. However, one built upon an enduring and secure foundation will likely stand the test of Time.
    In case you haven’t noticed, we live in a world of Time and so it would be best to remain conscious and build that which we create in light of it’s, and our, need to endure.

>    The cholla cactus, indigenous to Southern Arizona, has a bud that when ingested slows the absorption rate of glucose into the bloodstream. One
tablespoon of buds from the cholla cactus has as much calcium as eight ounces of
milk. The buds are rich in soluble fiber that help regulate blood sugar. >The Native American Pima and
Tohono O’odham tribes, also indigenous to the region, suffer from disproportionately high rates of obesity and diabetes due to externally imposed lifestyle changes that occurred around 1940. Now, members of the two tribes are returning to their roots, so to speak, and beginning to use the cactus, Mother Earth’s gift, to treat their health challenges.
    The Native tribes of Southern Arizona are not alone, although they may be an extreme example of what we do to our bodies and our health when we stray too far from Nature. Obesity, for example, is not confined to the Native tribes of Southern Arizona. The American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry has found that between 16-33% of adolescents are obese and, all told, there are an estimated 40 million obese Americans.
    The causes of diabetes and obesity in the general population are not much different than those experienced by the Pima and O’odham. A diet of rich, refined foods high in fat and low in fiber plus a sedentary lifestyle brought on by technological advances are, literally, a deadly combination. To date, our response to this has been to medicate the symptoms with even sometimes deadlier prescription drugs rather than address the “root causes.”
    One could hypothesize, with a little humor, that the best treatment for root causes is roots! That is, after all, the wisdom that the Native Americans of Southern Arizona are about to access. It’s a wise approach that should be acknowledged worldwide.
    Nature, in the form of Earth and all Her bounty, likely provides us gratuitously with cures for what ails us. The only condition seems to be that we live in harmony with Earth…recognizing our interdependence with all things Natural. Given our abysmal record in this regard, it’s no wonder we have strayed so far, become so stressed, and, oh yes, gotten obese, diabetic and cancer riddled along the way.
    The Earth’s rain forest, with only 250,000 of it’s plant life cataloged and an estimated 1,000,000 yet to be completed, has provided us with 1 in 4 of the medicines used worldwide. Tropical forest regions alone have provided over 2000 plants with anti-cancer properties.
    What I find so amazing, and compassionate, is that Earth continues to hold and relinquish to us the cure for what ails us, despite the fact that we have created the dis-eases…and continue, daily, to heap pollutants upon Her surface and contaminate Her air and water with abandon.
    The Native Americans of Southern Arizona are now embarking upon remembering what was once common knowledge and common practice to their culture. Earth is our ally and benefactor. If we treat her with the respect She deserves, She will in turn sustain us in a healthy and life-supporting manner.
    I’d say a good step in that direction might be to forgo the Big Mac and episode of “24” and instead…fry up a little cholla, olive oil and garlic then go outside for a walk…and if you see someone desecrating the Earth, offer to share your cholla.

>    Writing to my blog 5 days a week, I like to publish each day’s entry between 6-7 A.M. It’s 10 A.M. and I’m just beginning to write this so it has me thinking about the concept of time; how we perceive it and how we respond to it.
    Recently I read that the human brain can process 24 “flickers” a minute. A “flicker” is the rate at which independent images or occurrences are registered by the brain. Once you get beyond 24 flickers per second…well, that’s how movies are made. Today, by way of electronics and quantum physics, we have reached a point where computer chips pass on information at a rate of 100 GHz per second! A “hertz” is a unit of measurement, a frequency, at which energy is transmitted. One MHz is 10 to the 6th power. 2 MHz would be 100 million pieces of data per second. One GHz is 10 to the 9th power. It’s quite literally mind-boggling…incomprehensible to the human brain.
    How does all this speed impact our everyday lives? It’s the source of most of the stress and illness we experience. The stress comes from our efforts to keep pace with the technology. The illness comes from that plus, our almost complete removal from Nature…from all things “natural.” If you have any doubt about it, just head outside and take a walk in a park or wooded area the next time you’re about to scream at work. The calming effect of removing yourself from the rate of speed, the frequency, of the technological pace of things is immediate and undeniable.                    
    But I digress. Let’s get back to this blog entry and the pressure I was feeling for “running late.”
    Actually, I’ve been running late most of my life. I went to college at age 24 and graduated at 27. I went to law school at 33 and graduated at 37. I married at 41 and we adopted a child when I was 45. At age 54 I stopped practicing law and went in search of a new career. Still searching, although the search created the room for me to realize that I’m a writer and so…here we are…in the Now…right on time.
    Each of us has our own timetable for living our lives. While I know there are people who actually sit down and make “5 and 10 year plans” for their future…as the saying goes, “we plan and God laughs.”  Life has a way of delivering opportunities and challenges that open doors and create obstacles unimagined by those who plan. So, from my experience, it’s best to live life fully in the Now, which more times than not means adjusting to what’s presented…which is more often than not…the unintended. It’s really how we get to live our creativity through adaptability.
    Besides, Einstein taught us that time is relative. So, relatively speaking, this blog is right on time and so is the rest of life.
    The next time you’re feeling stressed, take a walk outside, come back in, re-read this blog, then attend to whatever is in front of you at the moment. Let go of the rest of it. Assuming you’d want to…you couldn’t wrap your brain around it anyway.
    I can assue you, your life will turn out just fine and, oh yes, on time.