Introduction

It's All About Me!

For about the past 4 years I have been telling people I have been working on a book. It's true. I had some major realizations around the time that hurricane Katrina hit New Orleans. As a jazz musician, that really was a deep blow to me. I wanted to really pull back and take a long hard look at what was going on in my country and what I was doing to contribute.

You see, I was sort of politically active at the time - in the sense that I was sending my friends lots of articles and interesting fringe information about lots of different topics. But I really questioned how effective my political activism was. What should I really be doing? Why? How did I know that was really effective to make a change in the world.

Why was that a question to begin with? Isn't it axiomatic pertaining to or of the nature of an axiom; self-evident; obvious. to petition for what you believe in?

What did I really believe in? I had been all over the belief spectrum it seemed...

Let me explain and give you a bit of background on my life...

Right now, I am 37. I am a software consultant in Seattle. I play jazz, practice yoga, adore my fantastic toddler, Owen, run, bike, lift weights, read voraciously, and love my amazing group of friends and family. The difference between me as an adult and me as an adolescent is VAST.

As a child, I was a very smart and annoying kid. I had a tumultuous upbringing - my dad was verbally cruel to me. There was even violence at times. I was a short and scrawny unpopular kid in middle school, and less so in High School. I was a band geek and a chess club member. I still play trombone to this day though!

I remember wondering why I was so unpopular - being such a smart and talented kid, I figured I should be getting more accolades and strokes from my peers than I was getting. I was the butt of many jokes. I was low hanging fruit for anyone who needed a quick and easy boost. So why was this?

Then I began to notice that kids who were more mediocre than I thought I was were much more adored by their peers than I was. In fact, they seemed to say very little and just smile comfortably and warmly and that was all they needed. It was a puzzle to me.

I finally began to study and apply the How to Win Friends & Influence People subject matter. If you want to be loved, you must love others. To get someone to be impressed by you, be impressed by them.

To me, this was a new language. It was like trying to learn to speak Mandarin. I eventually got it I think, but I will always have an "accent" so to speak. The love in my life was something I had to really work hard to cultivate. My parents loved me, but it came with a lot of judgments and it was definitely not dependable, so this tarnished my emotions and how available I was to others.

I should say at this point that I love both my parents deeply. A LOT of healing has taken place between us and there has been a lot of authentic conversation and forgiveness.

But my family and I diverge on one topic - religion. I was also raised in a very orthodox Mormon household. It was a religion that I believed to the core. I felt I knew it was true.

After high school, I went to Rick's College for 2 years. Rick's College is now BYU Idaho, but it was a church owned school when I started there in the fall of 89. I loved the chance to try out my more honed social skills on a fresh group of friends to see if I could get on a higher rung on the social ladder. I succeeded to an extent. When I graduated from high school, I was 5'6" or so, but within a few months, I shot up to 6'. So I found more women interested in me than my more compact self ("scrawny ronnie") from high school / junior high.

From there, I went on my Mormon mission. I went back to my old stomping ground in Tempe Arizona where I served the church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints for 2 years. I was born in Phoenix and still had relatives in the area, so it was a strangely familiar place to me - though I wasn't even 6 when my family left Phoenix.

I had amazing experiences and grew a LOT from my time "serving the lord". I wasn't a perfect missionary - I met and fell in love with a girl about halfway through my mission that got me into a bit of trouble. For those of you who don't know what Mormon missionaries do, it is a period of dedication and abstinence from many things - including dating. So though I never dated this girl, we fell for each other over letters and phone calls we made to each other.

I would say I baptized somewhere around 30 people. It was a remarkable experience to watch people's lives change and to be right there in the middle of it.

I had many deeply moving and touching experiences in my time as a missionary - that even moved me to tears. I was proud to be a missionary - though I was never more than a senior companion - no leadership positions for me at this point.

After my mission, I went home to Seattle to tell my family hello and that everything went well, but I wanted to move back to AZ to court this girl I was in love with.

So I moved back. I proposed after a few weeks, she said yes, and then things fell apart due to a lot of immaturity and naivety on my part. Probably her as well, but I mostly remember my own issues.

During this time, I had gotten a job as a diet technician at Mesa general hospital as a diet technician from someone I knew during the last part of my mission. I found that I didn’t mix well in that position after a few months, so I found work elsewhere.

Let’s just say that I don’t have time to list my lengthy career path during this time in my life, but I only lasted one semester in college and had the following jobs (with some overlap).

• Diet technician
• Pizza delivery
• Home theater installer
• Bill collector
• Clip art salesman
• Administrative assistant
• Bankcard customer service
• Fraud chargeback specialist
• Rent to own assistant store manager (yes, I have done repo’s in south Phoenix)
• Youth counselor
• Word processor
• Technical editor

During this time in my life from age 21-26, I opted to stay in Arizona – the Mesa, Tempe, Chandler area (yes, I went through several addresses and many roommates). I was a single bachelor and was really trying to figure myself out and what I wanted to do with my life.

I had nearly flunked out of high school due to a complete disinterest in studying and missing too many days my senior year. Then at Ricks, I suffered the same boredom with anything other than socializing, playing jazz, and meeting women.

When I decided to give college another whirl after my mission, I went to the dean and told him I had just finished a Mormon mission and was ready to get serious about college. I told him I wanted to be in the honors program. He agreed and I enrolled, and I got straight A’s, but I hated it so much, I quit college and have never been back.

During this time in my life, I really snuggled up with Mormonism and had many deep, powerful, and intimate things happen during this time. One was being a youth counselor and another was being a temple worker for the church.

Around the end of 1996, I read a book called Life in the World Unseen that was a book you could buy in the church bookstore. It was a fascinating book and it opened up some deep curiosities within me. A friend of mine introduced me to the publisher and told me he had a remarkable story and had some incredible supernatural experiences related to publishing the book here in the states.

I wrote him letters and made some phone calls and finally got through to him. I am not sure what the logistics were exactly, but I eventually had a conversation with him where he told me sorta non-chalantly that he had been excommunicated. I was incredulous that he didn’t seem super bothered by this. I could tell he was completely authentic and wasn’t trying to sell anything. For a minute I was extremely downcast at his standing with the church, but when I asked him and pressed him about everything, he asked me one question that basically started the crumbling of my religious beliefs. The question was this:

“What do you think the scriptures mean when they say not to trust in man?”

I knew that he was right. I felt like a cat who had been chucked out of an airplane. I was clawing at anything that might give me some traction – some sense of my universe and how to believe.

I drove out to Utah to meet him and some of his friends. It was eye-opening for me to say the least. When I left back for AZ, Mike’s partner Linda gave me $100 because she felt moved to help me. I was pretty broke at the time.

I began evangelizing many of my realizations to my friendship circle and my family over the next few months. I began to be more and more ostracized and isolated in the process. It would be easy to say “those guys were just blind”, but in retrospect, it was ME who was sending out a lot of insecurity out and they responded as anyone would to that kind of energy.

My epiphany about Mormonism happened around age 25 and I was stripped of my church duties and my temple recommend within a couple weeks. The year that followed was the best and the worst year of my life. I spent time alone crying at how many people didn’t respond well to me. I felt such internal conflict. Yet, I was opening to new information faster than ever. I began to devour books like Conversations with God , Life and Teaching of the Masters of the Far East , Saved by the Light , etc.

I also considered many different philosophies in the year or three that followed. I was agnostic, atheist, new age, fundamentalist Mormon, non-denominational Christian, Buddhist, Hindu, Sufi, Shaman (studied shamanism), Rosicrucian, etc., etc.

At every point I thought I saw things clearer. I always seemed to think I had things figured out and other people were kinda blind. It's funny how most people think society is blind and they have the clearer perspective.

Also, during the first year, I had some heavy notions of destruction and Armageddon-type events happening. In the ex-Mormon circle I met up in Utah after meeting Mike, there was a woman who was prophesying the destruction of the Salt Lake valley by an earthquake and a great flood. I read about prophecies of the USA being overrun by the Chinese and the Russians. I felt very, very strongly about all this too.

Gradually, I realized all this was a projection of my psychology and that my inward feelings of having my beliefs tattered to shreds were affecting my perception of what I thought I saw in the world.

I moved back to Seattle in January of 98 – around 10 months after leaving the church.

I should note that when I left Mormonism, I had never had a sip of coffee, tea (other than herbal), alcohol, or god forbid any illegal drugs. I had also never done anything other than make out with girls. I had never touched a bare breast – much less had sex. It was 6 months after leaving the church that I had sex for the first time. I was just blown away that all this stuff I was told was “bad” was really just an experience I could choose to have or not.

After, I got to Seattle, I tried to settle into a normal mainstream life as best as I could. I convinced Microsoft to hire me as a contract technical editor – even though I really kind of sucked at it. It was the only thing I knew that might pay me way more than the 9 dollars an hour I was making as a word processor just a year earlier.

I got hired and then fired within 3 months. Then somehow I got hired by the Windows 2000 Server team to create a welcome screen and be the tech writer / web developer. I learned web development skills in the process. Later, another team picked me up as a web development prototyper. I discovered my inner engineer and have fallen in love with software and web design / development ever since.

I consulted for a few different companies, and contracted and consulted for Microsoft. I helped start a local startup software company (Escapia - still a very viable and successful company). I have done fairly well for an uneducated ex-mormon / ex-scrawny geek.

I eventually started playing trombone again. Have played recreationally now for several years – even with the big dogs who are pros in town.

I learned to fly an airplane off and on shortly after getting hired by Microsoft. I flew my Cardinal to Phoenix AZ in fact – just 10 days before 9/11.

As a Mormon, I was an avid Rush Limbaugh fan. I dabbled in Libertarianism too. In Seattle, I became a moderate, then a liberal.

I have researched many conspiracies. I have never worn a tin hat.

I have dated a LOT. I’ve broken hearts and been heartbroken. I am still single to this day.

I have been to 48 states and 5 countries.

I have landed the space shuttle in the most sophisticated flight simulator on the planet at NASA Ames research facility.

I have been saluted by a general, and partied with wealthy executives.

I have been kicked in the balls in front of my (full) junior high cafeteria.

I have nearly died at the hands of my cousin after a ski trip – taking a Hyundai down a mountain the short way. 3 barrel rolls.

I have rocked myself slowly in fetal position crying my eyes out - feeling like I'd lost every friend I had and no one truly knew me or what I was going through.

I lived with (romantically) a single mother of 3 young children for a year.

I’ve had at least 75 roommates over the years.

I’ve been prescribed and tried a few different antidepressants for ADD, social anxiety disorder, and other lovely perceived psychological maladies.

I’ve hosted many house parties.

I’ve used and abused drugs, smoked cigarettes, and drank heavily at times.

I became a father due to an accidental pregnancy with someone I knew I couldn't marry.

I watched my own father gradually succumb to Multiple Sclerosis to the point where he is quite paralyzed and lives in assisted living. My mom was paralyzed from Gillian Barr syndrome when I was 2 and 3 years old and pregant with my first brother Eric - she mostly recovered but still has weak joints.

I’ve lost many dear friends who didn’t like or approve of things I have done...

I played ice hockey for 6 years.

So what’s the point??

Well my life has been what seems like a sampler course in many different vantage points. Each time I discover some new facet, the picture gets clearer and clearer. I have gained a rather unique perspective in my quest to understand myself, philosophy, politics, science, and our overall culture. It is a perspective that comes with a HUGE amount of context.

So here is this site. It is a culmination of my own discoveries.

What I finally concluded about New Orleans and what to do about it was really simple and beautiful.

Laughter.

Warm, heart-felt laughter. Infusing as many people as I can with the cosmic giggle. People do not change from hearing words. I have learned that time and time again. I will be writing extensively An example of my wry humor. Hope you see the inherent silliness because I may not hit you over the head with the fact that I am messing with you in subsequent writings.

on that. People change when they feel moved or touched. The most universal form of feeling unity and a release of tension is LAUGHTER. Realizing the irony. Hugging it out with ourselves.

Then when we see other people in their myopic, food-chain-mentality, talk-show-driven madness, we do not feel victimized by them, we do not scold them, we don’t evangelize our perspective… no no no.

We wink and say “c’mon baby, the water’s nice.” “Come join the conga line”. It’s THAT energy that is seductively contagious and it is fun for everyone. No pressure. You can play king of the hill for as long as it seems fun for you - but sooner or later you realize WE are having much more fun being in a state of kindness, love, and unity through diversity.

It is that vibe that I have really tried to attain within myself for the past 4 years so that I could convey that to you, the reader.

The content is limited and skeletal for now and will change. It is a process. I reserve the right to change it at will. Think of it as a living site that will expand and grow and adapt just as life does.

I have many thoughts already written (but not published here) that are hard to convey due to the contextual nature of the information. Most of what I have written at this point just doesn’t seem palatable or cohesive without starting out with an underlying psychological soil upon which the seeds of my thoughts may flourish in the garden of your mind. So I am taking the approach of creating bite-sized (or snack sized) topics and connecting them together and rearranging them.

Since I am at this point just self-publishing on the web, I would love feedback – questions, comments, peeves, whadevah. It really means a lot to me to hear what you think while I am in the early stages of developing this book/site. I appreciate you spending your time here regardless. Truly.

Ron Gilchrist (August 5, 2009 - updated November 6, 2010)

Process, Process, Process...

Focus on what is in front of you right now. Get really clear and quiet on the inside so you can savor all the deliciousness of the present moment. A moment is actually a fictitious thing in reality. There is only ever right now, but right now isn’t arbitrarily divided into separate moments. Moments are memories that we define and want to capture. But if you really stop and think about it, life is a stream of experiences woven together sequentially. You are really a verb, not a noun. You are a human being, not a human thing. You are a person becoming, expanding, savoring, experiencing, doing. The process of becoming present is one that often happens incrementally. Meaning you will slowly find yourself being more still, joyful, aware and expanded in the present moment with practice and intention. It is a practice that will enliven your being more than you can possibly imagine.

Process is what you are. The thing you create out of a process cannot be separated from how it was birthed in your mind and shaped into being through your refining process. Admiring a sculpture is admiring someone’s process of sculpting. Whether you are aware of it or not, you are appreciating process.

Process involves the potpourri of energies involved. Your vision for favorable outcome, attention to detail, attitude, level of distraction, experience (think muscle memory), and many, many other factors. Blissful nonchalance and immersive attention is the goal here.

Think about it.

So often with the western monkey mind, we don’t take the time in areas of our life to fall in love with the process itself. Often we are concerned with what’s next on the docket or all the manufactured reasons of I can’t, I shouldn’t, I am worried about xyz AND abc. The joy of the day is whisked away in the illusion of time – the future imperatives and the past failings. The presents (gifts) found in the present moment are not attainable while chewing on so much cud of the failures of your previous experiences. The present moment is pre-sent to you actually... more on that later.

I often would wake up in the morning and go through a routine of pouring coffee, showering, brushing teeth, choosing clothing as a sort of zombie while marinating in my “to do” list and how hard it was gonna be today. I would even go through some gratitude list in my mind because I knew I needed to feel gratitude. But I wasn’t immersed in the process. I was elsewhere. When I was at work, I was thinking about the evening. When I was out enjoying time with my friends, part of me was thinking about the morning.

How much of this can you relate to?

At work, I used to distract myself when faced with a difficult task. When someone at a meeting said something I wasn’t familiar with, I sometimes would even pretend I knew what they were talking about – hoping to find a contextual reference point somewhere else in the dialog. It was a dishonesty and an incongruence. Ultimately that bred more of the same.

This tendancy is true within so many other scenarios involving pretending, dishonesty, and sweeping the inherent guilt under the carpet-like veneer of “everything’s dandy” in so many areas of life for me and others.

Now I calmly and enthusiastically savor work for what it is. It is the process of creation for me. I could make it boring, but I don’t want to finish my work day feeling depleted and empty. That just sets the tone for what I do in the evening to balance it.

Process is what creates EVERYTHING. Remember, you are a process. How you treat you, your relationships, your daily routine, your body, your goals, and anything in your life that you are creating IS how they will take shape in the now AND in the future. This is why the present moment is the moment to immerse yourself in. Dis-traction gives you less traction on the current task at hand. Flooding your mind with other worries, fears, judgments, etc., will infect what you are creating now in the creation process. You’ve lost a degree of traction on what you are doing or creating or experiencing.

How you comb/style your hair is revealed in the way it ultimately takes shape. How you talk and interact with people will define the friendships that are produced out of it. How you prepare food will produce the resulting meal.

People who think of life as a series of milestones, roadblocks, hurdles and events to anticipate, spend way too much time thinking about what is coming. How do I avoid pain, failure, mockery, etc.?

This is all the thinking of someone who perceives themselves as an isolated thing. A noun. Notice the non-u (non you) in the noun? I prefer the very verifiable verbiage of being verb-like. I think our verbiage reveals a lot of truth (veracity). Notice how many words start with ver. There’s a lot of fun to be had with our language here.

People also have a tendency to hide from things that are the most difficult to do or think about – secretly hoping that their inattention will dissolve it. This is the ego’s gift to you when you know deep down that you are not able to really look truthfully at the situation and act truthfully about it as well.

Similarly, how you process this book will produce results commensurate with your current attention and future action. In fact, I am actually writing this part of the book near the beginning of my journey of writing and discovery to remind myself that how I write will reflect the end result. I actually do not know exactly how this book will end. I have many ideas and things I want to convey, but I am savoring the process of expressing so that I can make room for more insight to come through.

My process is to intend to be fun, warm, wise, and open to learning and discovering more of myself and life as I write. I will be truthful – even if at first it seems embarrassing to reveal personal details that would help say what I want to say.

Not surprisingly, this is what I expect from you the reader. I want you to pour as much attention into this process of reading. I ask you to ask yourself as honestly as you can questions about yourself. As with anything, you get out what you put in. This includes skepticism, criticism, humor, wonder, etc. Process shapes the end result. Keep that in mind.

Procrastination is a plague we suffer from in this culture. I have definitely had a scorching case of “procrastinitis”. Eliminating procrastination (or doing my best) has been one of the most amazing awakenings for me. You procrastinate doing the things that contain the largest pearls of wisdom. You also keep a conflicting thought pent up inside your head that infects everything you do with “I need to do x”. After long periods, the guilt of not doing what you think is inside you produces a deeper, more embedded guilt that will surface in areas of your life that will reflect the not-doingness of what is inside you.

The first step to getting out, is the courageous act of examination. Ask yourself. Ask the universe (ask whoever – even your teddy bear or your pet tortoise), what is under the surface of my delaying what I need to do?

The inverse of course is living in perpetual obligation and never enjoying any of it. Constantly finding yourself living a shadow existence waiting for a deep happiness that never appears.

In that case, ask for a way to change the storyline behind what you are doing. Look at yourself in the mirror and say “you silly ass”. But for God’s sake, intend deeply to feel aligned with yourself and joy in your process. You may have to put on happy music, watch some comedy, or have one of your friends come over and spank your butt in order to snap out of it.

Keep doing though. You don’t sculpt by thinking. Muscles don’t grow by meditating.

Think, find a course that brings a grin to your face, move in that direction, and wag your tail throughout the process as much as you can.

I have delayed really immersing myself in writing because part of me felt I needed a PhD or have a long term track record of living and embodying my message. Someone like Wayne Dyer or Deepak Chopra should write this. There was a disparity between the messenger and the message. Yet, when I really questioned this thought, I realized that so often people separate themselves from teachers because they see their life as vastly different from a yogi, a success coach, or someone who has pushed themselves for eight years to attain a PhD. I realized that I can say “If I can do it, so can you.” Ron the average Joe can exemplify the change and offer it as further evidence of every person’s ability to experience true happiness, joy, and evolution.

So let’s look at my personal bout with procrastination in particular. The unexamined, embedded thought felt like hypocrisy, unworthiness, and fear of criticism. The result was a feeling of isolation, boredom with work, and feeling paralyzed into inaction. It got to be pretty ridiculous. I actually couldn’t figure out what was holding me back so many times. I felt like “here I am with all these insights about humanity at large but I can’t seem to apply my own wisdom.” I was the punch line to my own life. I found myself never fully immersed in anything – knowing that I couldn’t find my own joy until I started moving towards what I knew was my next thing. It actually started to make me feel certifiably insane.

Once the writing began (I have started and stopped several times in that first 2 years), I saw that my fears actually formed the basis for some really great fundamental truths and in-sights to share with myself and others as the foundation of this book.

Procrastination can be about anything. Not telling someone (or yourself) how you feel about something. Not exercising. Not cleaning. There is always a lie embedded in the inaction. That lie actually makes you lie asleep in life’s waiting room waiting for you to examine it and find the enthusiasm from doing your next “thing”.

This applies to so many things. So often we are cocooned by the façade of ourselves – our shadow existence. We think (like the inhabitants of the Platonic Cave The Allegory of the Cave, also commonly known as Myth of the Cave, Metaphor of the Cave, The Cave Analogy, Plato's Cave or the Parable of the Cave, is an allegory used by the Greek philosopher Plato in his work The Republic to illustrate our nature in its education and want of education". (514a) The allegory of the cave is written as a fictional dialogue between Plato's teacher Socrates and Plato's brother Glaucon, at the beginning of Book VII (514a–520a).

Plato imagines a group of people who have lived chained in a cave all of their lives, facing a blank wall. The people watch shadows projected on the wall by things passing in front of a fire behind them, and begin to ascribe forms to these shadows. According to Plato, the shadows are as close as the prisoners get to seeing reality. He then explains how the philosopher is like a prisoner who is freed from the cave and comes to understand that the shadows on the wall are not constitutive of reality at all, as he can perceive the true form of reality rather than the mere shadows seen by the prisoners. View animation...

) that the shadows are the reality, when the light was right behind them all along. Most certainly such a light is around you right now in the form of a perspective change about the most stressful aspect of your life.

Now don’t get carried away trying to pick apart your childhood, what you need to deal with and not. Your soul has left you a trail of breadcrumbs for you to follow NOW right back to where it resides – in your ticker – your heart. The things that bring you stress, uncertainty, doubt, and inaction. What do you find fault with? What makes you sad or depressed? What overwhelms you with conflicted mantras in your head of “I can’t but I have to”?

Dive into these scenarios with the wide eyed wonder of a small child. The layers that cover the truth will melt away in the light of your honest inquiry. There will always be layers and there is never a time when you won’t be changing and evolving and growing, so this is a process that is powerful and will form the basis of your continued voyage through life. Indeed, it is a process that by practicing and habituating will impel you faster and faster toward more joyful experiences than you can imagine.

However, don’t rush into this. There is a pendulum effect that can take place when you are learning a new way of being that will inherently want to rubber band you back into the old habitual ways of being.

Have you ever found yourself reading in a book and suddenly realize you’ve just read several paragraphs but can’t remember what the hell you just read? Your mind was off in left field thinking about work, a relationship, really anything. You definitely read every single word, sounded it out in your mind, and maybe even correctly emphasized the punctuation and grammar of the sentence, but haven’t retained a damn thing. So you kinda kick yourself, laugh and start over. The same thing can happen when you are driving and having a conversation with your passenger. Your whole LIFE can happen that way – living as a shadow of a thing, but not the thing itself.

Basically, you separated yourself from the essence of the experience of reading. How much are you paying attention to right now? As an exercise, if you were to stop what you are doing right now and pay attention to all the data that is being absorbed by your brain right now, it would surprise you.

At this moment you are reading this, but you also have probably many sounds – maybe fans, the hum of lights, the sound of birds, wind, rain, crickets, a cat purring, an airplane overhead, background music – I am sure you can identify many more. Stop for a moment and really try to identify all the sounds around you.

Now feel where you are sitting. You have the sensation of the clothes you are wearing, the texture, the ambient temperature of the room, possibly a breeze of some sort, the physical condition of your body (tension, strain, posture, etc), maybe a pair of headphones, change or other contents of your pockets, your wristwatch or jewelry, the surface you are sitting or lying on (or standing on). Again, there are many, many physical sensations you could tune into right now.

Now look at your immediate surroundings. There are many intricate details that you can see with your eyes and focus upon. The lint on your clothing, the dust on surfaces, textures, lighting, shadows, etc. You could spend hours describing in detail the intricacies of what is in front of you right now. Probably you would find out many things about your environment that you didn’t pay attention to before. You may smell something if you focus on where you are at – maybe a combination of smells. You may notice a taste of some sort in your mouth from something you ate, drank, or chewed on earlier.

So all 5 senses are always receiving data from a myriad of sources in every moment of your life. In addition to that, your brain is monitoring many, many things about your body right now – your heart rate, digestion, immune system, lymphatic, your respiratory, etc, etc… You can quickly see that your brain is a busy little bee taking in all sorts of data, but what about your awareness…

You might be puzzling over some problem, making plans, or drinking up the words of this book and find it’s context in your life. But certainly, you don’t have the mental resources to monitor your surroundings the way we just did from all 5 senses. It’s just not efficient for the brain to operate that way.

You actually have to form associations with things in order for them to take root as meaningful data. Who pays attention to every speck of dust or every bit of background noise? We usually can drive to work without even remembering significant segments of time because it is something that the subconscious takes care of for us. We are usually thinking about something related to work or something the night before or listening to the radio. It’s like that for most things. Once you have habituated something and it becomes routine, you pay less attention to the details when you do it. Sports, music (playing an instrument), riding a bike, etc., all begin as much more attention intensive activities before they became ingrained and then you could focus on the finesse or even other things.

That’s just the only efficient way to operate.

When we are babies, the whole experience is very raw. We had all sorts of sensory data streaming in that we had to form associations with. We did everything we could to be able to participate in the experience. We basically put everything we can into our mouth. Babies discover an endless stream of sensation. Yet how does a baby ascribe meaning to something like words? Babies are constantly listening to the sounds that come out of people’s mouths and are ascribing meaning to them. How do you know what the word God or the word cheese means? God is a word that usually carries a strong meaning for most people. People have all sorts of meanings for this word, yet where is it truly derived from? When you grew up, you listened to the beliefs of those who were around you. You HAD to. How else would you have your needs met?

You had to involve yourself with what your parents believed. You learned to respond to them slowly but surely. How else could you have survived? Your parents became your first love (even if your childhood was painful). The way you responded to them in many ways had to do with how you interpret love and became the basis for your relationships and life experiences as an adult.

What happened is you formed a template of habitual thought “processes” the very same way you learned to speak, walk, drive a car, etc. So your kneejerk reactions are set in now and you are immersed in adulthood and all its freedoms and pitfalls with a template you don’t even realize you have.

“You will discover the truth in time”

I got this fortune cookie one time and decided to put it on my mirror. At first I thought it meant that I would figure out the rules of the game completely in x amount of time. Silly Ron. Actually I found it in the study of time itself.

Scott Peck in the Road Less Traveled tells of how he was dismissively and obviously told why he struggled with fixing anything mechanical thusly: “It’s because you don’t take the time.”

What do you take the time to immerse yourself in? What do you quickly say “oh I could never do that!” in response to?

You find out what you love doing or love hiding from by how much time/attention/care you take. Interesting that the timekeeper in your body is your heart – a.k.a. “your ticker”.

So you can very quickly discover what your emotional template contains by examining the rhythms of your own life – the amount of time you spend in various states. How do you feel in the morning? What is your routine? Does it invigorate you? How do you go about your day? How many conflicts do you have and how often. How much time are you just grinning or joyfully immersed in the processes of your life?

Who do you think limits you? How much time are you spent in resistant thinking to things that limit, criticize and judge you? How much do you worry about others’ opinions?

What circumstances do you see as unfair for you? What about others? What world events trouble you?

We spend time organizing our budgets, our to do lists, our belongings, our schedules, but how much do we catalog our THINKING?

I encourage you to try to write out as an observer how much of your mental energy is spent in resistance to life (no matter how, who, what) and how much is spent in gratitude, enjoyment, exploration, and expansion.

Also it would be good to note how and how often you medicate the resistances you struggle with. By medicate, I mean things like calling a friend to gossip about someone you think did something they shouldn’t have to you. Or are you a habitual drinker, drug user, video gamer, sex/love addict? What do you do as an escape?

Don’t get hung up in judgment here. This is just a way of getting a bit more in touch with self and what your patterns are.

As you do this, you might start to see for instance that you spend a lot of time frustrated in traffic, frustrated by your boss not appreciating you, and frustrated at your partner. In other words there is a victim theme. You may notice a correlation between that and what your parents believed when you were growing up.

The relationship between your actions and your parents could be an inverted one to that of your parents. If you were yelled at and abused as a child, you may be more of a coddler and a giver.

You can also be an emotional bully, abusive to others you perceive as weak, or someone who takes advantage of the insecurities of others.

Inventory as much as you can without getting caught up in judging yourself.

The goal is simply to be joyful 100% of the time. Keep that in mind throughout. It makes zero sense to get caught in an overly self critical cycle when rummaging through your thought patterns.

BUT… do allow yourself the release of emotion. Anger is a very productive emotion when a very depressed, fearful person breaks out of depression. This is not the goal, but the vehicle. Anger is the vent that lets out so much pent up steam that was afraid to express. It can very powerfully break cycles of feeling helpless.

Looking someone in the eye and saying “I am not going to stand for this shit any longer!” is a VERY powerful thing for someone who has been controlled by another to say.

Yet, remember this is a vehicle to something you want deep down.

Blissful freedom.

Freedom to act how you want; freedom to believe in your own internal magic. It is the beginning of the awakening of part of your soul.

The Anti-Well-Being Machine...

 

I know it sounds like a poorly written sci-fi novel. But it is very much alive and we all feed into it every day! We do this in a number of ways.

We have a corporate culture that has no love for mankind or even the employees of the corporation.

We support fear and worst case scenarios, and run from love, unity, and connection. This is second nature for us.

We actually support this infrastructure by rewarding the most parasitic characters within our society.

Our movies (Terminator, Matrix, and others) are evidence of this collective nightmare of machines taking over and controlling us.

The Matrix-The Red Pill or The Blue The Matrix-The Red Pill or The Blue

What am I talking about?

I am talking about the responsibility every CEO of every publicly traded corporation in the United States. They have a fiduciary – noun

– adjective
responsibility to increase revenue every quarter. On the surface that doesn't seem so bad, right? Until you really look at how that works today.

• If I am an oil company, someone who could generate energy cheaply and cleanly is threatening to my $20+ trillion / annually (surprised?) revenue model.
• If I am a weapons manufacturer, my revenue model wants to see a perpetuation of war and violence.
• If I am a drug company, people eating healthy, exercising, and living in an authentic, heart-centered place with each other, is bad for increasing profits from the latest antibiotics and antidepressants. Instead, they want the "blue pill" approach as the seductive alternative to living wholistically and authentically.
• A printer company will find it more profitable to sell cheap printers that need ink very regularly. They will deliberately make them not compatible across different brands and have the ink dry up if not used regularly.
• Shoes, toys, etc., are made with cheap child labor.
• Products are made with cheaper ingredients or inferior materials.
• Jobs are replaced by machines, automation, or cheaper labor.

The opening sequence opening sequence to How to Get Ahead In Advertising sums up the culture quite well (watch it).

But that is just the mainstream corporate culture. What about bartering in a market? Or for a car.

I was buying a car last year and the kid who was selling me the car was doing the charade of making offers and I would make counter offers. He would go run the numbers by the finance manager and then come back and talk to me while the finance guy was playing his part of the charade. I was well aware of this and just shrugged and played along - trying to just enjoy the process. But at the time I was a new dad. I had a 1 month old son and he started asking about my baby and fatherhood and started getting personal. Ordinarily, the topic would be fine to bring up, but I knew he was sorta talking out of both sides of his mouth. So I interrupted him...

"It's funny talking to you about something like my baby and fatherhood right now." I said.

"Why?" he shrugged.

"Because you and I both know that the harder you screw me financially, the better it will be for you."

He looked puzzled at my bluntness, but it was true. He shrugged and sheepishly agreed. Here he was trying to establish rapport with me about one of the most intimate details of my life while playing a charade in the back room with his cohorts to get me to pay an unfair price for my new car.

But this unspoken "king of the hill" or "food chain" mentality runs rampant through our society and we almost don't notice it.

It exists in foreign countries too. When I am visiting Mexico and want to buy a nice hand-made blanket, the goal is to get a fair price, and that really gets in the way of connection because of the financial charade. Some people still connect, but the game of trying to bargain for goods gets in the way of true authenticity.

But my well being is affected by how I nurture the well being of those around me.

Then there are banks and the deep fraud that our financial system is. Do a google search for "fractional reserve banking" and the results will amaze you. Check out some of the videos too. It is a system based on debt and scarcity. It also is a financial game of musical chairs that EXPECTS a certain percentage of bankrupcies and foreclosures each year due to the nature of the system itself. It is designed to leave some people without a chair when the music stops.

It is a system that is completely unnecessary. It is shocking that we have let it stay around this long.

We have a media network that largely entertains us by polarizing us against each other - keeping us divided instead of united. The most sensational stories are shown so that people will feel drawn to judge and criticize each other and not look at another person with compassion. Worst case scenarios are portrayed. Watch out for this and steer clear of that. You never know when disastrous situation x may occur.

Our political landscape is also convinced that the media is for the other side. Conservatives say "liberal media" and liberals say the media is in bed with the corporate right. I have heard it all. The point is that what has happened is that in this murky search for who is right and who is wrong, we have lost our sense of community and taking care of each other.

And nearly everyone thinks the government is bloated, spends too much on one thing and not enough on another. They have secret programs that are out of control. The government epitomizes inefficiency.

So what causes this?

How did we get like this? Where is our unity? Even people who believe in unity through diversity and love everyone feel a sense of isolation and loneliness.

If you understand that everything is a process, then you can begin to understand how things have come to being. How deeply are you willing to look?

If I were to look to nature itself for clues on how things grow, I could see that all life springs from an original seed or egg. And where there is an egg, there is a bird who laid it. Where there is an apple there is a tree (likely an orchard). Where there is an anti-well-being machine...

So what is the seed? What could possibly be fueling a world that STILL in 2009 has 80% poverty (mostly utter squalor), wars, genocide, slavery, uncurable disease, etc., etc...?

When asked what is wrong with this country, most conspiracy theorists will say "we deviated from the constitution" or "we allowed a central bank to take over", etc., etc., but let's go a bit deeper...

(I can't resist the Sound of Music reference here.)

Start with the self. As Michael Jackson says "the man in the mirror".

"But it was like this when I got here!"

True - but humor me. Let's look at how you came into being and how you grew into the person you are now so that you can more clearly see how others got to where they are...

The Great Tree / Fruit Mixup...

When you inquire as to the deepest root cause of most any human malady, corrupt institution, company, government, school - really anything counter to well-being, you find one or more conflicted selves not at home inside themselves.

You see, the fruit is getting all the attention and focus, but no one is really paying attention to the tree that is producing a perennial crop of nasty fruit. I truly believe this mixup (rightfully termed "Great") holds the key to most all of our problems as a society.

So what is the fruit, and what is the tree?

To define the metaphor simply, the tree is cause, and the fruit is effect. If you can look deeper, fruit is the sculpture. The tree is the sculptor and the process the sculptor uses.

Within nature, a tree needs a good seed, good soil, sunshine, water, and... TIME! (plucking up a young tree to check on its roots can be detrimental)

Similarly, a sculptor needs an idea (seed), a place and materials to sculpt with, a technique, a process or flow with his technique, and patience to see what blossoms out of his labors.

So the underlying metaphor is there. Now let's see how it applies in our culture. Try to follow along for a minute...

Imagine a scenario involving 5 teenagers who are all sitting around talking about their home situation.

Let's say two of these kids have been hit and yelled at repeatedly by their father since they were 9 due to alcoholism. They have by this point internalized and believed that they are somehow deserving of the cruelty they receive.

Another has been told she is worthless unless she fulfills her mother's goals of her becoming the model child in career x and with values y, but she knows deep down she is child z, so she continually masks her true nature to keep the boat from rocking and keep her life in balance. She hasn't ever met her father. Her mother puts these values in place hypocritically but with good intentions so she will attract a loving husband and have a more stable life.

Another boy is not paid attention to at all or given any guidance or real warmth. His parents are just not really that interested in him and he feels the neglect of being a somewhat ancillary fixture in their lives.

The last kid has a home that is embroiled in drama. Parents continually yelling and saying and doing hurtful things to each other. They often put him in the middle or manipulate each other through him.

Notice that each of them is a tree that will bear behavioral fruits. Trees need nourishment (i.e., good soil, water, and sunshine). These can be metaphors for the environment each teen grows within.

Environment:

• Neglect
• Violence
• Manipulation
• Hypocrisy
• Obligation
• Hurt / Pain

Produces (think of the produce section in the grocery store)

Fruit:

• Shame
• Guilt
• Violence
• Indifference
• Hypocrisy
• Hurt / Pain

Think of this group of 5 troubled teens as an aggregation of people (a collective group) who create and seed their own group tree (group think).

The individual who is hurting is a fruit of a "family tree" that has its roots in another cycle. As they are congregated together as a group, what kinds of fruits (behaviors) are they likely to produce over the next day, week, month, and year? How likely is it that they decide to sit down with the school counselor and sincerely ask for suggestions on ways to ameliorate To make better, to improve; to heal; to solve a problem. their pain and move towards authentic well being within themselves? Do you think that at age 15 or 16, and still in the thick of their domestic situations, they will seek out kids who would be good role models for them who may be able to show them how to deal honestly with their domestic situations?

How likely is it that they will medicate their problems? Medicate by denial, drinking, drugs, violence, etc.? Will they try to suppress and bury their pain by judging and criticizing some of their peers? When groups of kids with deep pain and feelings of deep conflict gather, what is often the result?

Let's say they DO choose to medicate (and generally this is what we all do - more on this later). What is society's response to a child who is in such a painful circumstance that they break the law? Do we look at a child who starts down a path of bullying with understanding and inquiry? What about a group or a gang?

Or do we go into defense mode with the behavior that is showing up?

We punish, we scold, we judge, we condemn, and once they find their way into the prisons, we forget.

Sour nasty fruit. Get rid of it. I don't care what tree produced it or if that tree is still producing fruit or if there are other trees like it, I just want that fruit out of my experience.

It's actually a form of efficiency to see things this way. Especially when you have your own tightrope through life to walk. You are not super interested in the story behind why someone is causing you to wobble on the highwire, you just want them the hell away at all costs lest you fall to your own peril.

When a child is born it is pure sensory awareness and pure absorbtion. A child in China, France, L.A., or Toronto each is born with the same basic clean slate. We do not come out of the womb like a wildebeest in the sahara where the mother says "welcome to the herd - now we have lions closing, so stretch out real quick and try to stay close to me. I will lick you off later." We have precious little preprogramming. This is true of black, asian, Mormon, Jewish, wealthy, or destitute children. Yet all children react with their own unique essence. I have mine, and you have yours.

But we are DEFINITELY imprinted upon by our environments. Trust me

Your own emotional template (let's abbreviate it to just E.T. since it alienates you from your true nature) was formed as you were forming words and learning to walk and use your body. You learned muscle memory so that you don't have to think about moving your body or forming words - they just happen through intention. Similarly, you developed a sense of how welcome your creative imagination was. You learned boundaries to adventurousness. You learned a sense of how you could expect people to react to your authentic pure, creative self. And you learned it from your very earliest years.

When a parent scolds a child for doing something that may cause harm to a child, they think about how they are the protectors of the well-being of their children. But the cosmic joke that most don't realize is that the natural expression of a child is imprinted upon in a very harsh way when they are met with the stern disapproval of a parent over the semantics of what they were doing. A child does not differentiate between the semantics of what they were doing and the feeling of joyful play and creativity and adventurousness that was associated with it.

Let me say that again. A child does not understand adult semantics innately. A child only feels a sense that his or her natural behavior is not ok. This leaves very subtle subconscious imprintings into the mind of a child.

When you were scolded, so was whatever innocent childlike essence that was expressing. You are way too "young and impressionable" to know the difference. It caused an interruption in your natural flow. This flow becomes so subconscious like walking, talking, and driving, that you don't even question it - certainly not before you even know how to add, read, and surf YouTube videos. You are still trying to figure out who you are, so you absorb most all of it.

When I notice my own son (a toddler as of this writing) naturally wandering around and maybe getting into drawers he shouldn't, I rarely tell him "no". Instead I notice that he is simply trying to explore his world. I will sometimes whisk him away and start playing peeeeeek peeeeeek with him, play a game, or dance dance in circles with him. That or find a ball or some other toy he enjoys. I make it my most sincere effort to keep his explorative playful flow going - if not amplify it. My job as the clever parent is to give him as keen a sense of his own value as my child as I possibly can. All children are different and all techniques will vary, but my son seems to have a sense that certain parts of the house are not conducive to exploration and others are, but he himself is ALWAYS welcome to engage in play and exploration and creativity. My job is to provide an environment where he can continue to expand these natural parts of his own nature. I personally love it. When he smiles and looks up at me and joyfully exclaims "DADDY!" and gives me a hug, I know I am doing something right. He reminds me of my own somewhat lost sense of innocence and wonder. What a gift.

But honestly most of us did not have a dad as cool and aware as me . Most of us found ourselves in adulthood surrounded by obligation and a calloused environment asking ourselves "what the hell happened to me?"

When you are old enough to start questioning your identity (I did this around age 14 myself), you have already surrounded yourself with the medicating friends and circumstances to reinforce whatever you believed innately. This produces a self-reinforcing feedback loop that can keep you utterly convinced that what you learned about yourself when you were little is the absolute truth.

So with that understanding, you may want to reexamine the exercise I suggested in the Process Process Process chapter of cataloging your thinking.

I will show in later writings that the most beneficial thing you can do to help society is NOT go out and volunteer, petition for laws protecting the environment, picket against politics, war, corrupt banking - don't get wrapped up in that illusion. There are millions of causes you could join. Animal rights, child abuse, domestic abuse, cancer cures, poverty in 3rd world countries, etc., etc. Some people are annoyed that Barack Obama swatted a fly.

No I am not speaking with a forked tongue here. I really truly am utterly convinced that by LEAPS AND BOUNDS society will be the most benefited by you discovering your own true nature. Way more than involving yourself in one of the aforementioned causes.

You see, the tree that is commensurate with your own true nature is one that bears fruits of utter kindness, compassion, wisdom, and intuition. Also creativity and imagination. The joy that you will experience will be so contagious that it will no longer be cool to live in myopia around you.

You will naturally express your ever expanding self in ways that are naturally promoting well being in ways that are the most beneficial to self and others. You will naturally follow the fully actualized self into paths that will detangle the confusion of things around you and transform them into pearls of discovery.

You see, most everything we do has SO MUCH to do with compensating for this original wound. This dissociation with self. It is transmitted with every word you speak and everything you do. When you are compensating for being out of touch with the true self, everyone around you knows it or they are similarly compensating for the same thing and the delusion lives on through railing against the external world.

No matter how noble you pretend to be or how eloquent you speak or what fancy degree you possess, you won't fool someone who comes from a place of true authenticity. They can't hear what you are saying because who you are shouts so much louder.

You are working on the surface. With the fruit. You are not fully aware of the processes that created what surrounded you. You are not rooted in the present. The present moment that was pre-sent to you. It was preceded or pre-seeded by the actions of your previous self.

Yet in noticing you compensating, an authentic person would never do anything in response but encourage in subtle ways for you to find who truly lives inside you and join the conga line of wholeness.

Of course after you are on the inward journey, you will naturally find yourself involved in kindness towards others, but always remember, you are the most important thing. This world is not served by people serving as a compensatory act to hide the walls they have inside themselves. You come first. Self sacrifice seems axiomatic, but it is not beneficial to either party. Each is compensating for their own internal lack in the transaction. You can see how this plays itself out on a global scale.

The illusion is that we can take parts of the anti-well-being machine and fix them without this authenticity. This balanced, loving, heart-centered connection with self. The various seeds that grow into the anti-well-being forest of trees are seeds of polarity. So we exchange polarities by trying to take shortcuts. We try to grasp for fruit that hasn't grown yet by thinking a new president will solve our societal woes. We think a law, a petition for environmental protection, feeding a child in a 3rd world country, etc., will open up what is missing on the inside. It is putting lipstick on a pig.

A polarity is formed when you take something that just IS and divide it into judgements and evaluations. Here are some polarities:

• I like apples because they are better than oranges.
• I think yoga is good and tai chi is bad.
• I like red heads, but think blondes are dumb.
• I watch CNN, but hate Fox News.

The list is infinite. Watch reality tv or the news. It's full of these types of value judgments. And all of them are traps. They are cosmic jokes.

Polarity is also formed in other more subtle ways. Guilt and resentment/judgment form a match. Abuse and victim are a match. Villian and hero go together. The list is endless.

Within the self, there are endless polarities as well. There are lots of inner mantras we recite subconsciously to ourselves like: "I have to but I can't". "I want to but I shouldn't". "I dream of beautiful reality x, but am not good enough because I live in reality y."

Polarity blinds. It binds. It paralyzes people into inaction. It imbalances the flow of creativity. When people are caught in a struggle in a polarity, they impede their progress. It is a tug of war that hinders joyful loving flow.

Argument is the canvas upon which we play out our imbalanced and polarized perpectives. When two people are caught in polarity and heated argument, they are like two porcupines circling each other afraid to get close. I have noticed that what they really want is... well... look at the bottom of the screen. Connection. They each are holding a piece of the puzzle wanting to be seen for it and they really want to be seen and praised for this puzzle piece. This genius perpective that they have. But there is a saying: "I don't care how much you know until I know how much you care."

Back to the heart. The heart seeks balance, understanding, clarity. Connection is the fruit of a heart-centered life, not an argumentative or evangelizing one. The connection we think we might attain momentarily by winning an argument or being right never lasts. The polarity will continue to seek out new canvases (arguments) until the person finally realizes who the butt of the cosmic joke truly is (look in the mirror).

What is really interesting to me is when I have KNOWN for a fact that I am right about something. Someone could ask me to prove that I have a belly button for instance. I could show them the belly button and they could still say "Nope, I don't buy it." So how do I react? Do I start thinking "what an idiot this ignoramus is..."?? Or do I shrug my shoulders and say "Wow, that is actually a fun perspective." I mean hell, wouldn't it be interesting to find out all the background and context behind someone with such a strange belief?

But when it comes to who you vote for, what religion you believe in, and whether Teri Schiavo should or shouldn't be on life support, the stakes are higher and people claw at each other in the search for what is best.

Instead, self righteousness is the seductive alternative. Self righteousness is a psychological drug that infects the majority of society. We are so proud of our enlarged perspective. We delude ourselves into thinking we have a higher rung on the intellectual ladder. We secretly despise others we perceive as blind. It keeps the anti-well-being machine fueled quite nicely. I've been incredibly guilty of this myself. At nearly every turn, instead of a balanced change, I opt for the pendulum swing to another polarity. Rinse and repeat. History is repeated and the blindness lives on.

Polarity. The seeds of discord. We all suffer from it to an extent.

You can tell that you are in this polarity when you see yourself judging and criticizing others.

You can tell that you are in this polarity when you notice that you are tugging at someone or some group to modify their behavior.

You can tell that you are in this polarity when you notice that you carry contempt for a government, corporation, villian, or group.

People who are non-polarized know how to influence from the heart. They are profoudly effective in spreading neutralizing energy of heart-centered honesty and love. Here is a quick video Here is a quick video of Byron Katie doing an effective job of helping someone find their own open heart.

People like Byron Katie, Eckhart Tolle, Wayne Dyer, and Michael Beckwith are among people (and there are many) who are examples of influential, heart-centered lives. None of them get wrapped up in politics, petitions, fighting for causes, etc. They must know on some level that creating a heart-centered environment with those open to that type of growth, will ripple out create new and brighter realities around the world. Our political landscape, our corporate culture, our raping of the earth's resources, our wars and diseases are all fruits of the environments we magnify within ourselves and with each other.

We can't expect corporations to change how they treat the environment if we do not create our own loving and balanced environment here at home. We can't expect poverty to end while we starve our own true selves of the light inside us. We can't expect wars to stop when we have our own wars between our political talk shows.

It is all a symmetrical connection. The heart knows this. Polarity (ego) will claw and fight and struggle against this. But our social environment carries the seeds (thoughts and behaviors) to the greater societal infrastructures. Our inner environment carries the seeds that create our social environment.

Maybe Mister Rogers Mister Rogers made an impression on me as a child and contributes to why I feel so strongly about the self. His lifetime achievement award lifetime achievement award sums up why I really love his message. Here is his acceptance speech acceptance speech. He is right - and he was trying to create a cohesive neighborhood. He knew the ingredients. Now it is up to us to execute the wisdom of good ole Fred Rogers.

I will share more on this as I have tons more to say about why the self is truly the goal (if you fail to go within, you go without). I will also share my approach to get back inside and really create transformation where it is the most beneficial - with the self. Soon. Click on Connect with me if you want to be added to my mailing list when I update the site... -Ron (11/6/2010)

Get to Know... Your EGO

It seems to me that ego is one of the most misunderstood elements of our being. I certainly do not pretend to fully understand or mimick the Freudian understanding of ego. This section is just my observation and conclusions that are an amalgamation of different understandings, experiences, etc., as to what is the nature of the self and what is the nature of ego.

My friend Mike likes my bookshelf analogy. Thinking of your mind as a mental bookshelf is knowing that you don't need to react to information. Picture your mind as a library. When you hear something that is a new concept to your worldview, you are not displacing information competing for shelf space in your brain. Just take the time to open a new shelf and put this information on that shelf and later on as your own personal context for it grows, the information may be valuable... OR NOT!

In fact, when you react to information, the reaction is a big clue to understanding the librarian and his or her opinions about what material should go on the shelf. But remember, any decent library will contain a wide spectrum of information. You will find books that contradict each other. You actually WANT this. Think about the kind of library that censors books. Sounds like an oppressive dictatorship, right?

So I would put forth that the goal is to have as broad a perspective as possible. Many different vantage points. Balance. Understanding. That is the harbinger of wisdom when coupled with practical experience.

So what is the ego? What are some of its characteristics?

To boil it down, ego is there to maintain your current identity. It tells the story for why you are who you are and where you are. It has a rationale for all current behaviors.

I do not think this is an inherently bad thing. It is maintaining your identity and doing a GREAT job of it. Where ego becomes the bad guy is when the you that you imagine yourself to be is full of compensating habits, behaviors, and identities. Ego will will defend and guard against new information and will also defend what it thinks it knows. Think of your mind as a radio that operates on a subset of frequencies. Ego keeps the radio stations in your mind on the same channels. This becomes a very very crippling thing when you consider that we are continually sowing seeds from the anti-well-being machine and harvesting them and have not known how or been open to planting new seeds and providing the proper nourishment for them.

Ego is also the defender of what you know and why you know it. It is the acquirer of new information and data to build up more of what it is defending against.

Ego is also the defender of limitation. It defends what you can and cannot do. As the egoic armor of adulthood becomes thicker and thicker, you can see how this it is by how afraid you are to fail. How much do you guard against rejection? How much do you guard against new things?

As you go through your day, you can notice the energy signature of ego by the way you react to various things.

You can kinda play some games here. It's like the "You might be a redneck if..." jokes.

You might be immersed in ego if...

• You say "I am not good at x, y, or z"
• You become incensed at someone's opinion about you or something you did
• You see people around you as not as good as you
• You find yourself really trying to convince someone of your point of view
• You are defending yourself
• You are jealous of someone else
• You feel resistant to new information that would potentially attack something you think you know
• You are afraid to shine in front of someone because they are insecure about the very thing you are shining

Huh? I don't get that last one. I was just being humble!

No you weren't. It's just another psycho-logical trap. Playing small or donning the lamp shade seems like a lovely thing to do, but it is just the other side of the coin of ego. Throw it away, find out what lives inside you and start shining through the layers that have imprisoned you. Instead, take the light and in-prism it. Prismatically refract the light of your true self through the jewel of your being and you will see a veritable kaleidoscope of amazing realities reflected back at you as you own and shine the light you carry.

But I have worked on my elaborate defenses for years. I have advanced weaponry too!

Your weapons - you will not need them (hand wave).

This is another part of attachment, ego, intellect, etc. We are afraid of loss. We have a lack mentality. We cripple ourselves into inaction and non-growth because it is hard to say "I was wrong" and give up the old defenses and weapons. It feels like invalidating yourself.

Marianne Williamson said it best...

Our greatest fear is not that we are inadequate, but that we are powerful beyond measure.

It is our light, not our darkness, that frightens us. We ask ourselves, Who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, handsome, talented and fabulous?

Actually, who are you not to be? You are a child of God.

Your playing small does not serve the world. There is nothing enlightened about shrinking so that other people won't feel insecure around you.

We were born to make manifest the glory of God within us. It is not just in some; it is in everyone.

And, as we let our own light shine, we consciously give other people permission to do the same. As we are liberated from our fear, our presence automatically liberates others.

You can find this poem everywhere on the internet. Why more people are not out shining italicizes how ego does not want to be invalidated for all of its hard work over the years. It is just our goofy faulty wiring. It is why we repeat history. It is not something to take personally when we see its effects on us and our environment. Once you really understand the nature of something, you no longer take it personally, but you understand what needs to be done to solve the issue.

Ego is a master at creating the illusion that you are part of the solution and not part of the problem. It hides your hidden motives....

This chapter is still in process. This is still in hodgepodge form. Stay tuned (July 30, 2010)

A Few Good Cosmic Jokes...

I can't resist starting this with a few of my favorite cartoons from Nick D. Kim (lab-initio.com - used by permission)

I thought those were better than another heading, quote, and drawing for the section heading. It's the perfect intro for some scientific surprises that will almost certainly shock you.

So far, I've told you that there is a process involved in creating everything. We know we have somehow created an anti-well-being machine for ourselves. I have discussed the tree/fruit mixup (have you figured out the apple cart before the horse reference in the main image yet?). And we have discussed some of the ways the ego works.

So where is our society today with our academia? We have striped toothpaste, affirmative action, and facebook, so we must be doing something right?

I say we are still living with the same psychology as the flat earthers. I think our science and our scholastics reflects it too. In a world run by an anti-well-being machine, most certainly it is reflected in our sciences and other of our intellectual pursuits. I am going to point out some of the knowledge we have in science that has not made it into our educational system or mainstream at all.

This cosmic jokes chapter is here to help free the mind. The tentacles of limitation have ensnared so many different areas of our lives that we take for granted that we don't notice them. Pointing out the books that we have not allowed on our mental bookshelf will open to a MUCH more enlarged world view as a society. This is not meant to be argumentative. Rather, it will be about a few missing pieces of the puzzle that we need to form a more complete picture of our world and how it works. This chapter will be just a distillation of a few things I have studied and want to share. The idea will be to get you familiar with how the ego hides from certain information and will develop stories about why information should remain hidden and uninvestigated. Often, the anti-well-being machine has its own agenda and has infected society with myopia in regards to certain topics.

One way you can look at our culture as it boasts of its scientific achievements is we are essentially trimming the lawn with toenail clippers. We get PhDs in the best cutting techniques. We can write elaborate mathematical formulas about different cutting angles and how we can slow or speed growth in various ways. We can invent machines that reduce the wear on our hands by 98% when operating toenail clippers - all the while boasting of how many jobs we are creating.

Toenail clippers. Sounds harsh, but that is where I think we are at in many many areas in our life. I mean look around.

I kind of feel like Indiana Jones Indiana Jones here looking around at all the experts hyperventillating about whatever breakthrough they have but noticing a turd in the punch bowl of almost every single academic pursuit so the kool-ade is just not drinkable. This is my way of saying "but the emperor is naked" (watch watch the story if you don't know about the emperor's new clothes).

I will be rolling out information on each of the below topics as well as finishing the preceding two chapters. Soon. I've got content in some of them now, and notes in other sections.

As you can see, I now have 3 unfinished chapters going at once. I am really sort of getting concepts on the page at this point and spending time creating graphics, additional popup behaviors, and working on the structure of how I want to convey my ideas. What will follow is I will point out some glaring holes in each of the above topics - probably some more not listed as well depending on how bold I feel.

-Ron 11/12/2009