Learn: January 2008

Believe in The Moment
http://www.garynullforum.com/forum/viewtopic.php?p=163&highlight=#163

Be present in your own life.
Pay attention to the tests life is offering you.
Let everything in your life simply cease to be significant for a moment.
Watch people throw garbage onto the streets without any concern.
Treat others with dignity and respect.
Learn some lessons and change yourself.
Stop looking over your shoulder to see how you’re doing.
Break through your drab routines.
Evaluate your friends.
Whatever you’ve done, be present in the moment and judge it in the moment.
Rest, repair and visualize before your journey.
Enrich your environment by enriching the challenges that you’re faced with so you can grow.
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Be present in your own life.

Now what does that mean? It means that most of us try diligently to maintain a sense of identity. We do this by establishing some order, certain boundaries, and by trying to match our thoughts and actions to our conditioning, to be acceptable to society. Why not? We all want to be accepted, but it’s better to be accepted and appreciated for who you are than to be a poor example of what others think you should be.

Your “self” is an illusion. Illusion often enters into the mix when you think you are only as valuable as your credit card, your employee ID, or your mate. We even tend to “identify” ourselves with out pets. Props such as these, and for many, they are props, become an extension of what one thinks of as a “self.” You may even perceive your diamond engagement ring as your self. Or these may all be perceived as “parts” of who “I” am.

When other people become objects for your use, you are present in your own life as a puppeteer, pulling as many strings as possible, a master manipulator. In such cases, these “objects” are illuminated in your sight, and you fail to see anything that does not serve your narrow purposes for satisfaction. People who never notice service people, unless they are at home in their condominiums are an example of this. These people are pleasant at home because they are known and want a good reputation. The minute they are past the doorman where they become fairly anonymous, their world expands and they become myopic toward sales help, cashiers, and even cab drivers. These “service people” register as “not me.”

Pay attention to the tests life is offering you.

Through life’s many transitions, passages and crises, we’re often oblivious to the tests we’re offered as guidance. Busyness, fear, uncertainty, and insecurity can block our awareness that a test is at hand. All of the above indifference to the “not me” is a test. Your alertness is tested in these non-encounters. Few specific details are of interest about a not me. Who cares? Can’t be used – can’t be relevant. Why is it important to be alert? There can be no qualities of character without being present. Locked into the definition of “character” is awareness.

Let everything in your life simply cease to be significant for a moment to regain perspective. Allow your attachments to dissolve and fade, and allow “not me’s” to fade, too. Notice that, beyond their masks, they are one and the same. We have arbitrarily separated people from people, and people we like from people we don’t like. They merge in the light of awareness into unity. Dropping defenses brings rest.

Have you ever wondered how busy physicians who are under duress manage to stay calm and focused? Dr. D., one of the most poised physicians in the world, was the Chief of Pediatrics at a major metropolitan medical center, and Professor of Pediatrics at a prominent medical school. He was a very tall thin man in his 50s, with a pipe, a Sherlock Holmes type, who played squash a few times a week with a colleague at a neighboring research institute. That would burn up some stress.

An emergency call came through for Dr. D. at the office of his colleague, but they had already left for the courts. Six emergency calls regarding the same little boy came through because his parents were in a panic and Dr. D.’s office was trying to locate the doctor for them; he was paged throughout the institute he was visiting.

As Dr. D. returned from squash, the young secretary, by then frantic and almost in tears said, “Dr. D., there’s an emergency, six urgent calls about your patient. It’s very important.” Dr. D. looked right into the young woman’s eyes and said quietly, with a calm steady voice, as a hypnotist would, “Thank you for your concern, my dear, but nothing is important.” “What?” she asked. He repeated slowly, “I said that nothing is important. Nothing. Not one thing.” Dr. D. then phoned the child’s parents to reassure them, and he left.

There was not a crisis throughout the rest of that woman’s life, which did not remind her of that riveting instruction she received, which kept her calm and steady for many years. Dr. D. had shared with her the secret of taking a moment to let the significance of everything disappear. It is only from that vantage point that you can proceed objectively, effectively, and in peace. Otherwise, we go on automatic pilot and flail about wasting energy under stress.

More often than not, when we are thrown a curve ball in life, we respond first by feeling helpless with acute anxiety. We don’t know how to handle all those balls going into the air. We’re afraid of dropping them. There comes a point in life when you simply have to step back and let everything fall.

Watch how the leaves gracefully spiral and drift from their branches in the fall. That’s what they are made to do; that’s why the season is called “the fall.” They allow the wind to carry them where it will. They never try to cling desperately to their branch in life, as we do. Their beauty goes on, as they continue giving to the earth.

Let everything in your life simply cease to be significant for a moment.

What happens when you do that? Your breathing becomes more relaxed. You may smile. You suddenly become aware in that moment that you have a moment.

Take a moment to be present for your life by considering the effect of your speech and actions upon others.

Recently, I attended a reunion where people were asking, “Where has time gone?” The reality is that everyone has the same identical time. No one has faster or slower time. Then why does it seem that when we’re busy time goes quickly, and when we have nothing to do it goes more slowly? Why are there times in life when we don’t want to be burdened, but prefer to just rest in the moment and relax?

My generation, the baby boomers, have mastered the art of hyper-speed. We’re overly fast at everything. We want everything instantly. It’s not just fast foods or quick-read books. We want to take classics and boil them down to their essence. We are the headline generation. You have to go deeper than that to find substance.

They call it “hurry disease;” people glancing at their watches constantly, pulling their dog’s leash before he’s finished his business, letting their children trail way behind them frantically trying to catch up on the city streets or in department stores, as they go rushing forth inconsiderately. We used to call this “impatience,” and that’s just what it is. You can call it a fancy disease, but it’s still impatience, plain and simple. And it comes without awareness. It’s automatic. To stop you must catch yourself at it and see that it is ugly.

Now, in fancy restaurants, they are so aware of customer impatience that they even remove the paper sheath from your straw before they serve you your beverage to save you time. On the evening news, they are so conscious of viewers’ time that they now say, “We’ll be back in 60 seconds,” instead of saying, “We’ll be back in a minute” because if you speak to viewers of “seconds,” since it’s a smaller increment, they may stay put and wait or even return.

Unfortunately, the patience and determination to understand life is frequently lost in the frantic process of juggling many speedy tasks. When you wake up every day and all you have is a schedule to which you owe allegiance, you must do as much as possible as capably as possible, but minus the hassle factor. You’re not going to do anything that’s going to make you feel so uncomfortable that it burdens the quality of your consciousness. So what isn’t done, for many, is thinking of the consequences of their words upon others, and considering how what they’ve said might impact upon another human being.

Was I gracious or humble? Was I supportive or sharp, caustic and critical, or was I sarcastic and demeaning? It depends upon how you are feeling about yourself because how you feel about yourself impacts directly upon how you feel about others. We often see that when Mom reprimands little Jennifer, Jennifer turns around and scolds her dolly, or her baby sister or Fido. It’s a trickle down effect. If you don’t feel good about yourself, you’re not apt to like others. And we do tend to copy what other people do and their attitudes.

If you don’t feel good about yourself or others, you’ll tend to view anyone else who does feel good about himself as a threat. There’s not a real threat there. You just think there is. One person’s happiness does not in any way undermine another’s, but we’re overly competitive. So to be charitable and respect other people by supporting their success feels like we’re helping the enemy. When you look at this generation, not that it’s unique or exclusive, one of the things that you notice is that we don’t spend a whole lot of time looking at the consequences of our actions.

We have seven million children taking medication each day. That didn’t happen in my parent’s generation or with our children, but with our grandchildren it’s certainly this common. I remember when I came home from school there was someone at home. I remember having dinner with my family. I remember every single weekend after church we had to sit down and have a meal together, and whatever we discussed, we discussed right there.

Now, in retrospect, there’s a time when you don’t want to be eating and talking about anxious or problematic things; but because we dealt with problems on a daily basis, they didn’t grow into something beyond a daily problem. They were kept in perspective. More often than not because we took the time to deal with things as they were happening, there was not a psychic accumulation or an emotional build-up. There was a sense of shared responsibility.

That is not the case in every family, however. Food can often be an escape for adults, beginning when they are children. Marie was an eight-year-old little girl who was an only child living with her parents in an apartment in the Bronx. The kitchen table was in an alcove so that little Marie sat facing a huge wall, while her parents, Raine and Jim sat opposite each other at each end of the table. Marie’s table partner was that blank wall, and against that wall sat the porcelain breadbasket with a cross at the top and a rooster painted on the front.

Every evening for the first fourteen years of Marie’s life, she sat facing the wall and the rooster breadbasket, first in a high chair, then on a shaky, uncomfortable bridge chair because the family could not afford a dinette set. From seven onward, Marie’s father, Jim, would ask in his deep voice, “Marie, how was school today?” Marie would feel a tug in her tummy, and her throat would tighten, then she would say in a tiny voice, “Okay, sir.” For the next seven years, this occurred every evening except during summer recess.

Usually Jim would ask follow-up questions like, “What grade did you get on your spelling test today, Marie?” Now Marie’s pulse would race and her temples would pound. She would reach for the Taystee white bread and Hotel Bar butter nearby. Then more bread and more bread from the rooster. Marie often wished she had a brother or sister to take the spotlight off questions focused only upon her. Not every child will feel this so deeply, but they will feel it. Marie reached for “filler” to “stuff” her fear down her throat, whenever she faced the hopelessness of a blank wall, or the aggressive cravings of the rooster, the barnyard instincts blindly practiced.

When you use food as an escape, you are not being present for your life. When you serve food to others and to yourself, share your appreciation of how it comes to us through work of human hands and fruit of the vines from many parts of the world. Think of how many people make it possible for you to eat and enjoy your food. Teach your children at the table and in the garden to respect the bounty of the earth, not just their grades.

You had to be present for your own life in my high school because we were not allowed to be indifferent to the needs of others. We were taught social responsibility. In my high school of five thousand students, Parkersburg High School, if you decided you didn’t like a teacher and you went up and slugged him or smacked her, you would have been dealt with immediately. There wouldn’t have been a Board saying, “You can’t touch this child. This child has a right to express himself.” Well, yes, but not in violence and not with contempt for the teacher.
Now all of us, all five thousand of us, went through school liking some teachers, disliking others, but we all had something in common: respect for our teachers. That school was a proving ground for developing our character and our sense of social responsibility.

If someone threw something on the ground, I can promise you someone else would say, “Pick it up. It doesn’t belong there.” If you were a pregnant woman or a senior citizen and you got on a bus, immediately, someone would give you his or her seat. Yet, go on a subway today and watch a teenage boy or girl race a pregnant woman or a senior citizen to a seat. Just sitting comfortably while a pregnant woman or a senior citizen or a disabled person stands right in front of you means you are indifferent to others. This is the opposite of being present for your life.

Watch people throw garbage onto the streets without any concern.

As I walk past Manhattan skyscrapers, I have had lit cigarettes carelessly tossed at my feet by employees who go outside for a quick smoke in front of their office buildings and then thoughtlessly throw away the cigarette toward passersby, as if to blame us for the law that sends you outdoors to smoke.

I have seen young people toss their lit cigarettes off their balconies on the upscale streets of Boston. As I was walking down the street, I actually saw students throw a large wooden desk out of a fourth floor window of a Boston tenement. Look at the percentage of teachers who are violently assaulted, and yet nothing happens to those students. We have lost respect for our fellow human beings.

Now we have the problem of antidepressants inducing college students to implode and commit mass murder, then suicide, on our campuses. Luvox speaks.

Standing up for your principles means you are alert to what is happening in your life. I even remember teaching at a college in New York City where two students, two women, sat outside the classroom and smoked, drank, and defied the school by proving that they could go through college and graduate without ever attending a class; and they did it. They succeeded. I left because of that. I was told that I would have to pass them. I said I would not pass them. It’s disrespectful to all the students who are in that class studying, doing their homework, asking questions, and actually caring about what they are learning.

Now these two students were saying, “We feel we can defy the system because you’re afraid of us,” and everyone was. So I put in a failing grade for each and I went out and I talked to these students. I said, “Can I help you? Do you want tutoring?” “No. We don’t want anything.” Their point was and they were very clear about it, “We have power, and you don’t.” They were right. Everyone acquiesced. The day that I was told I would have to pass a student who never attended a class in the New York City system, I left. I would not do that. I could not compromise my character or principles. The system is now utterly corrupt at every level.

It’s no different from putting a vending machine from a fast food company into a school and wondering why you have kids bouncing off the walls from having sugar overload. The link between sugar and behavioral problems has long been known, but schools get money for selling junk food. They don’t care about the consequences to the kids. What about putting fast foods into a hospital, then wondering why patients are dying of malnutrition there? Why are we surprised?

Treat others with dignity and respect.

Being able to disagree courteously means that you are maturely in charge of your own life. Character development and moral guidance must be nurtured in the home and encouraged by society so that we will treat each other with dignity and respect. Even if you disagree with someone learn to differ with respect. You don’t have to attack a person to challenge their ideas. Mine was the last generation, possibly forever, that stood up for some principles that simply do not exist today. Today we bend over backwards to apologize for people who commit conscious acts of emotional or physical violence against their neighbors and friends. Then we wonder why our society is so fractured and why we have so many crimes and why we have so much fear. Where’s the mystery?

Take away character and moral values and you have a vacuum into which people tumble bearing no sense of responsibility for their vicious actions, even toward themselves. Who makes excuses for the person who smokes for twenty years, despite warnings, and gets lung cancer, but says it’s not their fault? This complete abdication of responsibility for oneself begins with being absent from your own life. If you have no sense of connection, if you are unattached to the outcome of anything you say or do, then you can say or do anything to anyone because you know there will be many people making excuses for you.

Three types of people tend to be absent from their own lives: those who are insane, those who are chemically dependent, and those who are only present when they are being mean. So let’s put Jack the Ripper in rehab. Send him for counseling. Let’s see. We’ll place him in a drug addiction program since only the insane (who’ll be out directing traffic next week), or the chemically dependent perform acts of savagery against others. They never know what they’re doing and cannot ever be held accountable. No sane or sober person would ever harm another human being. Want to bet? What kind of recidivist rate do we have? Astronomical.

They call it “the anger disease.” Today, if you have a foul temper or you scream a lot or you curse viciously at others or insult them; it means you must be ill. People cannot believe that sane people can do and say evil things, and be aware of the debilitating effect they are having on others. A thrill-seeking awareness of the warped power of inflicting harm may be the only alertness these people have.

Do you know that just about every senior citizen center and nursing home has at least one Jack E. Leonard or Don Rickles, one heckler who goes about insulting whoever they can? Only this isn’t comedy. This is real attack. Notice there are no women comics to speak of who fall into this abusive category. They’re in the senior centers, though, a woman heckler here and there to insult passers by. Ugly as sin within, though perhaps normal looking, this is truly the old witch of your childhood fairy tales come to life. Cruelty is an art form in these hags, often with foul language added on. They include all the techniques of gossips, but they are worse because, in addition to speaking behind your back, even if you are a stranger, they humiliate you publicly to your face in front of others.

If the heckler is a member of a center, they are never expelled because the centers’ social workers trade on their data files. If they attend the social and educational functions of the center providing a head count, they will never be admonished or even gently corrected. They can go around hurting others with impunity until they die. For these living landmines, old age is a license to kill your neighbor’s spirit with venom stored up for a lifetime. Assessing their victims’ “faults” is often their only state of awareness, and no, they are not insane. These bullies are fully responsible for their targeted jabs.

While it is true that the insane and the chemically dependent are historically absent from their own lives, many sane, sober people of all ages are also on leave of absence much of the time.

When you are not present for your own life you imagine, knowing little of life, that all problems can be solved by writing a check or popping a pill. Crisis is an opportunity to change. We keep approaching the problems of America from a naïve point of view. We seem to think that cancer is due to a deficiency of chemotherapy, and that heart disease comes from a shortage of bypass surgeries. We just can’t get it right.

Who supports those who decide it’s better to smack a teacher, beat a teacher, throw objects at a teacher, than to communicate with a teacher? Who believes that all you have to do in America is throw money at a problem or label it and suddenly that clarifies it? Who says it’s not your fault you’re fat? How did you get fat? Did you wake up one morning and think, “My God, I’ve been bitten by the fat bug? How did this happen?” You’re terrified of suggesting to that friend, “Don’t sublimate. Self-actualize. Look at your crisis as an opportunity to change.”

We have been hearing a lot about childhood obesity. It is a health hazard, but we do not hear enough about overeating with little or no exercise as a social hazard as well.

Candy’s mother named her daughter Candy because Candy’s mother loved sweets. She always had to have several packaged frosted cakes in her house and a cookie assortment. She told herself it was in case of unexpected company, but it was really for her and Candy. Her way of sharing her love was to always hand Candy a whole one pound package of Oreos and a quart of whole milk, instead of pouring her a glass of milk and placing a few cookies on a plate for her, or better yet, teaching Candy to place them on a plate and put the rest away, and to pour the milk and put the container back. That way Candy would be learning portion control. Fresh fruit, applesauce, or a handful of raisins and nuts could have replaced the Oreos for better nutrition.

Once Candy got access to that whole package of cookies, she couldn’t stop eating them mindlessly one after another, as she poured more and more milk because it was there. And soy, almond or rice milk would be a better choice than cow’s milk for Candy and for her mother.

At age eight, Candy would come home from school, where she was usually reprimanded for being restless and disruptive in class. She’d have junk snacks. Do her homework, and then watch TV. Her only exercise was gathering her books together to do her homework because Candy’s mom had a maid in who cleaned Candy’s room and made her bed for her every day.

One day Candy came home from school crying. Her mother, who was home from work that day, asked her what was wrong. Candy sobbed, “The kids at school call me Fatso.” To which Candy’s mother replied, “That’s because they’re jealous of you.” “Why?” asked Candy, “Because I’m fat?” “No,” said Candy’s mom, “Because I’m your mother.” So it was all about mom, and there were always shallow nonsense answers to urgent questions.

Some mothers stuff their children with junk food without thinking of the dreadful physical, behavioral and social consequences. Not just health consequences, but blacklisting by teachers recommending Ritalin and social fallout. Already, Candy had no friends. If Candy is still fat into her teens, a tragic lack of social life could ensue. Candy may miss her prom or have to invite Newt, her cousin, to be her escort. Ideally, to help Candy and herself, Candy’s mom should purge her home of sugar and wheat snacks altogether and the milk. Fresh fruit, as mentioned, but not three large bananas at a time, would be a far more nutritious after-school snack than Oreos for Candy.

Then Candy needs to get some fresh air and exercise every day. Instead of having the maid walk and feed Fido, why not let Candy walk the dog or at lest go along for the dog walk every day to get some exercise, and instill a sense of responsibility in Candy for her dog-sitting achievements.

If there is a child in your family who is overweight, do not hound them about it, but do not take it too lightly, figuring it’s just baby fat that will melt off without any help. Let them eat healthfully and sensibly, but creatively. Get exercise, plenty of rest, and give real love and time, not just cookies.

Learn some lessons and change yourself.

First, pay attention to what is going on. Now, you’re not stupid. You’re very smart. So instead of blaming society for all of its ills, instead of staring at our systems and being confounded by the problems, start your journey with yourself. As an individual, you can learn some lessons and change yourself. You can ask if what you do is constructive and authentic or is your contribution destructive and to what degree? You can’t see that until you slow down long enough to look at it by being present.

Cleaning people may bliss out while scouring your kitchen. Repetitive jobs require extra vigilance for you to be present. At least be awake. How many times have people done cleaning for you and then you went back and saw that they didn’t really clean? In fact, if they hadn’t clocked in, you would have had no evidence that they’d ever been there. Then you think, “There’s all this dirt here. Why didn’t they see it?” They weren’t looking for it. They were just looking to get through with it. They weren’t even conscious. They weren’t in the moment. Be present for your own life.

Stop looking over your shoulder to see how you’re doing.

That distraction is an easy way to remain oblivious to your own life. The only way you can be present is to stop constantly looking over your shoulder to see whether or not you are doing it right. Everything you keep referring to from your past could be misaligned. Your beliefs and your values could be wrong. If any of that is wrong, then everything you are going to do in this moment will be wrong. Then you will feel this sense of “why me” when anything goes wrong. Why not if all you’re doing is repeating patterns of behavior that weren’t constructive to begin with?

Are you just going through the motions of your life without even knowing what they are? Or are you blazing new paths and paying the price? When we were young we couldn’t understand either intellectually or viscerally that our conditioned responses were self-defeating. We just did what was expected of us because there was reward if we did and punishment if we didn’t. Still today, if you follow society’s dictates, you’ll be rewarded, even if what you’re asked to do is immoral. You have to do as you are told. If you challenge it, then you’re considered wrong and you’re punished.

How many physicians today have been reprimanded or reviewed or threatened because they were seeking to help patients by using alternative methods? They actually succeeded in curing patients or improving the health of patients who had not been helped by more traditional means. Yet their reward was to be challenged and punished. Let the same physicians injure or kill their patients, but do it within an orthodox model, and they go unchallenged. Now, it’s a bit confusing, isn’t it? It’s as if the whole world were upside down. Well, we’re a part of that world and that means we’re upside down. So we have to reverse that.

I’m going to raise some questions here and each question that I raise is meant to allow you to think. Take off on it. Spend time with it. You could spend at lest an hour just focusing on any one of these questions. I’ll give you a bunch and then you take a quiet, meditative moment to see what you want to do.

Break through your drab routines.

Try something new and evaluate it. First, what is the significance of the experience? We all have experiences and they have significance. Now they don’t all have to be life changing, but with every single experience we have there is a message behind it. It can be something as simple as trying to go into a different restaurant and have a different type of food. It could be going down to a market that you’ve never shopped at before and buying something you haven’t bought and then trying to work with it. It could be reading a book that is different from any you’ve read before. It could be changing your routines throughout a day. It could be opening yourself up to new friendships to see if there are people of different backgrounds, ages, and genders with whom you could associate.

There is something wonderful that happens when we start making new connections that feel right, when there’s a fit between that new person and your needs, and vice versa, but you have to break a pattern to find that. Frequently, people think, “Well, all I need is one or two friends.”

How do you know the friends you have are your friends? Have you tested them? No? Why not? How often do we fear being tested or fear testing someone else because we don’t want to know the results? We don’t know if there will be truth, honor and character there or if we’ll find excuses and weakness. You won’t know that until you’re put into a test situation or you put someone else into a test situation, and then determine that.

Evaluate your friends.

Are they too cheap to lend you a dime without interest? Maybe life is giving you a hint about them. Definitely be present. Also, don’t turn your back. I remember I had a friend who had many friends. He told them that he was going through a rough time, and could he borrow some money. Not one of them just said “yes.” Then I asked, “Are those people your friends? You shouldn’t have to beg from a friend to be given a loan. If they were really your friends, they would have asked if they could help you before you went to them.” A real friend is there whether you are going through thick or through thin. They are there at the bottom and not just at the top. It’s easy to say you’re a friend when there’s no challenge. It’s a different story when there are hard times.

Imagine the people who would still be friends with the McMartin family if they had not been falsely accused of child molestation. The whole media had them guilty, and the American public had them guilty. As they said in one of their interviews, their friends had them guilty. Well, in the end, they weren’t guilty. I wonder if any of those fair weather friends ever stopped for a moment to think, “They were innocent people and we all abandoned them.” That shows a lack of character, not in the McMartins, but in the other people.

Do you learn from the mistakes and weaknesses of others? You can learn someone else’s lesson. If they couldn’t learn that they were cowards, not friends, and that they were false. So you learn from them. You can learn from everyone else’s weakness even if that person doesn’t learn from their own weakness. You can learn if they’re dishonest about the significance of dishonesty. So if it’s in you at any level you can bring it up. You can examine it. You can see just how you’re being dishonest, and you can correct yourself.

What experiences do you avoid because you’re afraid of the consequences? What, specifically, are you afraid of? Some experiences that people avoid, although they could really only help you, are: exercising, eating right, mediation, seeing the world, and introducing yourself to other cultures, people and their values. What could possibly be threatening about those? Several things.

Is everything you’ve been taught to trust in one little bound book or in one little neighborhood of the world or in one limited family or in one dicey medical system? If so, the first thing that you might find threatening is anything that challenges what you were told about the safety of your bounded experience. Now the trouble with a bounded existence is this. You’re told what to believe, how to believe, how to live, and that everything you’ve ever questioned is answered inside a very limited perspective.

When your bounded existence proves too small and fails you, do you panic and attempt to run away in your mind? Then imagine what happens when, one day, you wake up in a crisis and you find that the tools you were given don’t work. You are disempowered. You feel anxious. At the point of acute anxiety, people start making really foolish judgments. That’s when we start doing self-destructive things: gambling, overeating, drugs, overworking, over-responsibility, hiding, denying, and going a mile a minute. We do anything to keep from feeling. So in effect, we put life into distraction mode.

Are you in a relationship to distract yourself from your life? If so, instead of growing in maturity, you may be abdicating responsibility for your life. One of the best ways in the world to distract yourself is to be in a relationship, especially a bad one. It’s not that relationships are bad. They’re not, but if the reason you are in a relationship is to distract yourself, then it’s not a good relationship. You will tend to be with very immature types, either a screaming, jealous, possibly violent dominator to give you angst. Or else with someone who constantly needs your help with decisions, including finances, as would a child. Anyone weird who disrupts your peace keeps you from being present for your own life and growing. Can you see how you chose that person so you could run away from reality into a chaos of your own making?

There is a poignant metaphor about a bored woman walking a long distance along a road. She sees a wounded snake by the roadside, feels sorry for him, and picks him up seeking companionship, stimulation, and appreciation for her kindness. After a mile, the snake bit the woman, who was about to die. “Why did you bite me?” asked the woman, “I was good to you.” The snake answered, “You knew I was a viper when you picked me up.”

Do you procrastinate to avoid life? We become chronic procrastinators. We work around problems, but never face them. You must face a problem for what it is if you want to change. You have to look it right in the eye and not blink, and realize there’s nothing there to be afraid of because, in the end, there’s nothing there. It’s all an illusion.

Do you copy others, even strangers (including advertisers), taking their word for just about anything to avoid making your own decisions? Most of life is an illusion. Success is an illusion. How is someone successful? People are gullible, and many would just as soon be told what to do, as in childhood, without the stress of decision-making on their part.

This wish to avoid responsibility is especially strong now that each brand offers 20 types of bread: low carb, low fat, no fat, no salt, extra fiber, fiber white, toasting, thick slice, thin slice, country style, with raisins, with seeds, no seeds, and split top. We’d just as soon close our eyes and grab the first thing we find or buy what the consumer ahead of you chose or comply with a TV jingle recommending Snowflake packaged rolls. The trouble is that in so doing, you miss a chance to purchase what is best for your family’s health by taking a moment to read labels and make wise choices by being alert. Please don’t shop by rote or jingle. Wake up so you can grow up.

The only way anyone in America becomes successful is by convincing you that they have something that you need: designer clothes or a movie or a book or a car or a place to live. Then you seek those people out. If they’re promoted well enough, then one day we don’t ask whether or not we really need them or what they’re offering, or whether or not it’s the best. We just buy.

Everybody’s in line to go to a restaurant, but no one asks if the food is good. We just assume that if everyone else is on this line, then we ought to join them. Then we go into a defense mechanism. If you’ve accepted something, then you had better defend what you’ve accepted. Then our ego comes up, and we have to defend the merits of something even if it’s not in our best interest to do so.

Do you make decisions on your own observations or did someone tell you it’s the right thing to do? Think of how many times you’ve wasted money on something or kept someone in your life just because it was considered to be the right thing to do. Right by whose standards? The people who created the box that you’ve been placed in? Then one day, because you are a woman or you’re black or you’re a Latino or you’re a senior citizen or you’re rich or you’re poor or you’re middleclass or you live on the East Coast or the West Coast or in Mid-America or any one of a million different differentiations that we have, you no longer have any identity. You’re simply a consumer. After all, isn’t that what we’re called?

Now consumers do what? They consume. Which means they do what? Buy. Now people who consume are economic what? Indicators. Yes. Well, there’s another word not quite as polite – slaves.

Do you evaluate the quality of people by how famous they are or by how many degrees they have instead of by your own experience with them? Do you discriminate between Ivy League schools and others? If you don’t have a degree and someone else does, then you’re not considered as smart as the person who has the degree. Remember that in The Wizard of Oz, the Wizard gives the Scarecrow an honorary Th.D., Doctor of Thinkology diploma, to prove that he has a brain; and the Cowardly Lion is awarded The Courage Medal to show that he is brave. We only feel that we’re somebody if we have something that says so.

You always hear about the accomplished pianist. You never hear about the un-accomplished pianist. Who wants to go hear an un-accomplished pianist? The accomplished pianist is known. The un-accomplished pianist is unknown. We dismiss the un-accomplished pianist not so much because he can’t play well, but because he is not famous.

When people at a party ask what you do and you say, “I’m a writer,” the first thing they ask is, “Have you published anything?” If you say, “Yes,” then they ask if you are famous. If not, they move on to the next guest.

We live in a culture dedicated to the worship of fame wealth and youth. If you are no longer young, you had better be famous and wealthy.

So we extend hyperboles to people. How many times have you heard someone called The Most Beautiful Woman in the World? People’s Magazine’s famous marketing and publicity campaign, The Sexiest Man Alive, has been drawing the public’s attention to its cover for over 20 years. Why? Because we want to know who we’re supposed to like this week?

Or we go see someone in a movie because they’ve had another movie that’s been successful. We always want to follow whoever has been successful at something. Someone who writes a book is successful so we want to go buy the next book. This breeds contempt for anything that’s not successful.

Nobody wants to go to a mediocre doctor. You never hear, “He’s a nobody doctor who charges moderate prices and he’s on 42nd Street.” No. He’s my doctor. He’s a genius. He has a title and they haven’t even thought of it yet. He’s on a floor that’s so high it hasn’t even been built yet. He charges who knows how much, and I can’t even afford to go to him, but everyone who does says he’s the best. Isn’t that the way they talk about their doctors? How do you feel? Not so good. Why? Costs me a fortune. How much? You can’t imagine. Are you going back? Of course, I’m going back. Who do you want me to go to, a nobody?

Go watch a film by nobody actors from a nobody director, nobody writer and nobody plot and nobody publicized it. Nobody’s going to see it, right?

Harvard University is supposed to be better than Kentucky Sate, why? It’s not. It’s an illusion. In the end, it’s an illusion. The Federal Government requires that in order for an institution of higher learning to qualify for accreditation, it has to meet certain standards. So Harvard University and Kentucky State both meet the same requirements for accreditation, but we’ve made Ivy League synonymous with meeting a higher standard.

The mystique about Harvard and other Ivy League schools comes mainly from the enormous donations that are made by alumni to fund research, new campus facilities, professors’ salaries, stipends for visiting professorships and for speakers from around the world. They also have more money for library resource expansion and for student scholarships through alumni. Ivy League schools attract students because of these resources and the reputation of the institution. That is not to say that you cannot get as good an education at Kentucky State. You can.

Most of the people convicted of crimes in the Watergate scandal were Ivy League graduates. So do we now say that Ivy League schools promote criminality? No. Ivy League graduates get close to power in government, with all the perks and risks that may entail.

Do you discriminate between designer jeans and Lumber Duke dungarees? Are you taken in by advertising voodoo? Think of how many times you’ve done something because of the image that you’ve seen advertised about it. Ads even get you to travel. They promote illusion. Perfume. What’s one of the perfumes now, Opium? Opium. That’s a perfume. You see Cindy Crawford and the hair. You look at your hair and it looks like a broom. I don’t care how much of that glop you use; you’re not going to look like Cindy Crawford. No. People vote for Schwarzenegger because of his muscles and because of his success. What if he looked like Mr. Peepers, that tiny little guy? I want you to vote for me, and then kick sand in my face and watch me run. We want big Arnold.

We like big things. Big Mac, Big Boy, and big bosoms, why? Why would anyone want bosoms that look like balloons? They don’t look real, do they? I’ve never met anyone who actually said they look good. None of this stuff looks good. Look at all the plastic surgery. Does any of it look good? No, it doesn’t. If you’re honest, it doesn’t. Las Vegas doesn’t look good either. Wayne Newton’s hair is up to here, out to here, and down to there.

All of Las Vegas is just pure tackiness. A volcano is not a volcano. New York City is not New York City. The Eiffel Tower’s not the Eiffel Tower; but they pretend it is so you can lose money and watch stupid shows.

Everywhere you look someone’s trying to tell you that you’re not good enough or smart enough or pretty enough or happy enough or strong enough or healthy enough or intelligent enough or successful enough, on your own. Only by following them and giving to them will you ever be acceptable. They have to create the illusion and then sell it to you. You have to buy into it and once you buy into it, you’re committed. Now they’ve got you.

How do you think we end up spending more money than what we make and we end up with credit card debt higher than it has ever been? Do we really need everything that we buy? No. We don’t. Do we? But we think we do. There’s some urge.

There’s something that reaches into your pocket to get that credit card and put it down. I need this. What if there was some kind of behavioralist there at the checkout counter to ask you, “Why are you buying this? You already have a pair of jeans. You don’t need another pair of Lumber Dukes. Now think before you buy it.” “You’re right,” you’d say. “I mean I do have three pairs of jeans. So what’s another one?” “Well, I just felt like buying them.” “Why? How are you going to pay for them?” Wouldn’t it be great if there were someone to talk us out of every sale or even to assail us on the road? “Why are you talking on the cell phone while driving? Is that call so important?” “No. It’s not.”

Why is there no one to help us at the checkout counter or to save us on the road or to help us whenever there’s a choice to be made? The answer is that there would be no need for you to be present for your own life if you had a guardian of the sort I’ve just presented. You need to become self-reliant to grow and mature. You must be alert to ask yourself the questions that will help you to find balance in each situation. If Jeeves were always there with you, prompting you, you would become dependent on him, and never find out who you are.

When you feel out of control in your life, you tend to make temporary choices that cloud your perception in subtle ways. When you are upset, for example, you may overeat, and the choice to binge may give you a sugar high that boosts your mood, but only temporarily; then you are worse off when your comfort wears off and you feel the full weight of the issue you were avoiding. You want to get a clear perception of what is happening in your life, even if what you end up seeing is ugly. I’d rather see an ugly picture that’s honest than an artificially induced picture that is temporary and deceptive.

The significance of experience is that every experience can be a lesson: a good lesson, a bad lesson, a positive lesson, a painful lesson, or a joyful lesson. Whatever we ultimately want to do with the experience, at least it can teach us something. In life, it’s ultimately how many times we’ve made the same mistake that ends up being the problem. It’s the accumulation of mistakes that wears us down.

How much better it would be if we only made a mistake once in a given area and learned from it and didn’t have to make it again. But we are serial repeaters. We make all these mistakes over and over again. So what we have to do is look at the experience and ask, “What experience do I choose to bring into my life today to allow me to be more present to my life, and then let me judge that experience afterwards?” That way you can say, “Well, I liked it or I didn’t like it, but at least I didn’t stop myself from experiencing it.” What is stopping you is not you. It’s all of your conditioned responses that say you shouldn’t even have that experience.

Whatever you’ve done, be present in the moment and judge it in the moment.

Judge it for what it is, and not for what you thought it would be or was told it would be. That’s how we break down racial barriers. Talk with someone from another race and be present for that conversation. Let it be what it is. If you don’t, then you will always have the assumption that somehow you shouldn’t be in that conversation, shouldn’t be traveling to that place, shouldn’t be eating that food, shouldn’t be engaging in that activity. We edit our whole lives and end up with bits and pieces and try to make them whole experiences, and they’re not. Rarely do people have a whole experience.

A whole experience occurs when you’re present and you created it. You own it. You do it. Then you accept or reject it, but only because of what it means to you. When you’re right in this moment, you’re going to judge it differently than you would if you were pre-judging something based on biases and prejudices.

What is awakened awareness? Awakened awareness is that, in the moment I’m in right now. I don’t need anything from my past to be aware that I am thinking and breathing. I am in front of someone. I’m doing something. Just be centered. It’s like a living meditation so that every moment of every day you’re capturing it. Nothing is getting away. It’s like being radar that scans all people and all things.

If you walk through a garden, you’re present in the garden. You see the butterflies. You hear the hummingbird. You see the bees. You see the things that are crawling. You can smell the aromas because you’re present for it. You’re awakening yourself. It’s as if your mind opens up and this wonderful rose comes out. That’s what it means to be awakening. Right now, many of us are not awake. We’re asleep. We’re in a stupor. Why? It’s because it’s uncomfortable to be awake. We don’t want to go through the pain of awakening because all of our illusions will be re-examined. When you’re awakened, you don’t want to live by illusions or metaphors. Reality is far richer than any metaphor.

So you are going to judge things by being awake and present for them. The moment you reach back to the past, you’re not awakened in the moment. Look at life non-judgmentally. How can you do that? Be present for it. Otherwise, you’re going to be judging everything.

Rest, repair and visualize before your journey.

We don’t give ourselves an opportunity to start life correctly. When you go out to do a race, you never see people just jump out of a car and go over and run. You see them stretch and you see them relax and you see them easing into motion. You see them getting an idea of where they are going to go.

Before I run a race, I visualize the entire race. I visualize how I want to do it and how I’m going to feel. Then when I’m in the race, I’m simply present for the energy in each moment. I’m not thinking of anything else. My mind is not distracted. It’s like a laser. I’m focused, but before that, I had to be rested. I couldn’t go in with all kinds of thoughts. That’s why you have to separate out what’s real in the now from all the thoughts you can’t control. What you can’t control is what clutters your mind.

What you keep bringing into your mind is not what you’ve done that you enjoy, it’s what you can’t control, what isn’t working, what is troubling you, and what is challenging. That’s why you keep going over and over and over it again because that’s the only place where you have some control over the outcome you give it in your mind. It’s either excuses or justifications. None of that is positive.

So when you don’t have to do that, you’re just resting. You’re relaxing. Then you start your journey. Visualize what you want. By visualizing what you want, you have an opportunity to get it. If you can’t visualize something, then how in the world are you ever going to achieve it?

We wake up and we just jump into the day. We’re so overly focused on just getting into the rituals and routine of a day that we don’t visualize the greater importance of the day. This is a 24-hour period we can never live again. So what can we do in this 24 hours that’s new and unique and that’s empowering and fulfilling? We can visualize what we want.

Every single dinner I make is original. I refuse to prepare the same dinner twice. I even vary the health drinks I make each time. I will throw in a different fruit or I’ll make it in a new way. Or I will use rice milk or soymilk. I’ll do something that makes it unique each time. Why? I’m going to keep challenging myself because only in a challenged mind do we grow.

Enrich your environment by enriching the challenges that you’re faced with so you can grow.

You start getting old mentally when you no longer look for the enrichment of a challenged environment. Therefore, everything that challenges you enriches you. But if you take it easy, and you just try to do work, or a relationship, that is comfortable, you’re in a circle. It gravitates downward. Then one day, you’ve gone from enrichment to boredom, to tediousness, to indifference and then this is when you become apathetic and depressed.

Why do we find it so hard to understand why we’re depressed? Depression comes from what we can’t control. We go through moods. You never have someone just get depressed. There’s frequently anger or rage or resentment, and when nothing happens that changes anything then there’s resignation, apathy, and then depression with a sense of hopelessness and helplessness. Where is the constructive challenge there? There is none. Every day of our lives we should look for the constructive challenge.

Recently someone was doing an interview with me and they were at my home in Florida. They say, noticing the construction in progress, “Gary, why are you doing all this stuff?” I say, “Because it’s a constructive challenge. Right now you see sand and you see almost jungle. I see a garden with swans and a pond.” They look and they say, “There’s nothing there.” Not today because I have to visualize it before I can create it, but I’m not afraid to visualize. Why? I’m not doing it because I want other people’s acceptance, nor am I trying to prove anything. I’m doing it because it’s a part of the way I challenge myself to keep my life going forward in a constructive way. Dynamic energies do that.

Each energy chooses different ways to express itself. Dynamics like to create. We don’t create for ego. We don’t create because we make money from it. We create because there’s a vital vibration in our energy that gives us the power to create. Don’t waste the power. Use it.

I just had people call me today about an hour ago and they said, “We just came by and the caretaker let us look at the property, and you’ve got some really unusual ways you’ve done gardens. We didn’t know it was possible.” That’s because no one else did it. Everybody else said, “Well, you’re a landscape architect. You just go make me something.” I don’t believe people should do that. I believe you should be the architect of your life and the architect of everything around you.

There was a time when people were more independent and weren’t afraid of being more creative. So many people are just so very sterile. Are they inherently sterile? No. No one I know is inherently sterile. They just act that way when they’re afraid of the consequences of being in charge of their own life. So you’re either transcending your problems by accepting that there’s limitation on how you can think and live and be. Either way, you’re right.

Were you taught to adapt or to transcend your conditioning? You’re right and rewarded if you transcend with a healthy challenge. You’re right if you adapt and just go spiraling downward. There’s a reward for both: disease, depression, anxiety, anger, disillusionment and attachment or health, vitality, happiness, excitement and the pleasure o

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