Lying, Voltron, Good/bad Advice

I think every piece of good advice or wisdom as at least one (usually more) downsides. These downsides almost always occur when people listen to the piece of wisdom above their own common sense and personal experience. The simple solution then is just to take all pieces of wisdom and advice and subordinate them to the questions:
"is this applicable and important to me, now?"
"Does this seem correct, given my own best common sense?"
"Does this seem to be creating something positive or negative in my life?"

The problem with "advice" is that people and situations are different. Even great wisdom can lead someone down a self-destructive path, if their understanding and application are different than what the speaker intended. You are the final gate that decides to do or not do something. Ultimately the responsibility for doing something that messes up your life falls on you. You can blame it on the person who gave you bad advice, but unless they were intentionally lying to you

(This is a cool tv show based on Paul Ekman's research)

or totally inept, (and ultimately even then) you are responsible for deciding if it applies to you and whether to practice it. You are responsible for figuring out how to do the practice or behavior effectively.

Not blame, not shame. Just responsible. It's actually a good thing. It means you have a degree of power over this. Though if you don't recognize that fact, things tend to behave as though you don't have power.

It's like a puppeteer who pretends his puppet is alive, and his puppet is his boss, and then he forgets its an act and starts feeling dejected and stressed and powerless, running around doing what the puppet-boss says.

This is a general preamble to any advice I or anyone else gives, but the specific thing that I've been chewing on with pleasant results is choice and decision. Specifically, I'm trying to be more aware that whenever I make a choice to do something, that I am simultaneously making a choice not to do any other things. So the question automatically comes up: "Is this the most valuable use of my time?"

I get home, I'm tired, part of me wants to watch some Voltron

and eat snacks.

Then I ask myself: "if you do that, it means those minutes and hours are not going to anything else. Are you sure there's nothing else you'd rather decide to be doing with that time?"

And of course the answer is no, there are lots of other things that are really important to me, and if I had to choose (which I do, but I tend to not realize it.) I would certainly pick one of the other things that is earth-shatteringly important to me, like organizing my room and work flow so I can do all the other things I need to, or taking care of the most time sensitive projects and actions, so they don't become more complex, expensive and/or time consuming because I put them off too long. Or taking a nap because I'm too tired to do anything else productive.

I don't think this would work for most people, perhaps I've laid some good ground work somewhere along the line, but for me, for now, it's pretty awesome in focusing me like a magnifying glass with the sun, turning my attention into a brilliant point that illumines and burns away whatever it looks at.

It makes me think of The Marshmallow Test, a book about research on willpower, and some of the cognitive reappraisal strategies that seemed to be most effective in helping people overcome immediate temptations for long-term rewards.

OK, it seems abrupt, but I'm done. Done and out. What's most important now, is sleep. :D

(I wrote this close to a week ago, but this was the second one that week, so it is fulfilling this weeks quota, and I'm waiting til today, Sunday, to add a few pictures and inform the facebook crowd that it is posted.)

Don't go back to sleep: Mixed Nuts, Fruits, and Two Birds.

The breeze at dawn as secrets to tell you.
Don't go back to sleep.
You must ask for what you really want.
Don't go back to sleep.
People are going back and forth across the doorsill where the two worlds touch.
The door is round and open.
Don't go back to sleep...

-Rumi

-Akiane

Good morning dear children of immortality:

"Arise, awake, stop not till the goal is reached."
-Katha Upanishad

The word decide comes from the roots "de" and "cide" which means literally "to kill" (like the word homicide). When you decide to do something, you must kill something else. A possibility. Many possibilities. Choice. So much in our lives has to do with choice. What choices are we making. But the choice doesn't always lie where we think it lies. Most often, the choice truths (lies) where we decide to put our attention. Remember that behind every life lies (or truths) a combination of habits, good and bad. But we don't choose habits. Habits are made up of tendencies that have be reinforced repeatedly, and tendencies are made up of repeated actions, and actions are caused by thoughts. This sequence is like a snowball rolling downhill; though you can stop it at any point, as it gets further down the hill, it picks up more and more snow, more speed, more momentum, until it requires a tremendous amount of force to alter it's course. That's where we are with habits. The most efficient place to start is altering one's own thoughts. Mind control. The only kind of mind control that's not immoral, self mind control.



Minds don't get controlled by force for very long. That's suppression and it's like one of those cans of mixed nuts that actually contains springy snakes. As soon as you let up pressure on the lid for a fraction of a second, the snakes spring out. Suppressing our thoughts is temporary, and just makes the thoughts and feelings more pressurized.

Like trying to not think of a pink elephant, the act of trying not to think about something makes you think about it. What you need to do is apparent if you've ever worked with small children. If you tell them "no" they just want it even more, they start crying, etc. If you instead present them with something else interesting that's not problematic, and remove the other thing from view, they quickly and happily switch to that. 

It's important to validate and not dismiss feelings, but it's also important to then do something about them, and one of the main things to do is find something else to focus on aside from the stimulus that's getting you upset. This is one of the main purposes of of the various religious practises that use God or Spirit as a focus. Namasmarana, the Jesus prayer, Buddhist prayer beads, etc. They are all about having something really positive to focus on. You can do this in meditation, but as one of my teachers said, meditation ultimately is an all day affair, not just a few minutes with your eyes closed.

To that effect, I ran across a good description of "renunciation of the fruits of action" an idea mentioned repeatedly in the Bhagavad-Gita, and a concept that is somewhat perplexing to me, in how to actually implement it. But it's one of the main ways to be practicing spirituality during every-day life, when you can't be focusing on a mantra or such.

The idea is that you act for the sake of the action, rather than for it's fruits. You renounce the fruits, in a sense. Why would you do that? How would you do that?

Why is because when you're overly attached to outcomes, you loose your equilibrium and peace. You start worrying if you'll succeed, maybe you even do something dishonest to get what your after. If you fail, you feel bad, if you succeed, you start worrying about loosing what you've gained.

The analogy given is: if it's hot (like it is here in Iowa now. Today was up in the 90's) and you don't have electricity so you are fanning someone out of love, you can stop whenever you want. If you are a servant who's fanning someone as a job, expecting a paycheck at the end of the day, you can't stop even if you desperately want to. You are under obligation to your employer. Likewise, when you are over attached to the fruits of action, you are beholden to them. They compel you to action or inaction, even when you don't feel good about it. When you let go of your attachment to the outcomes and simply focus on doing the best action that you can, you are free. No more performance anxiety distracting you, no more fear of failure, no more fear of loss. No more unhealthy compulsions.

To be clear, this doesn't mean you aren't allowed to enjoy the outcomes of your actions. Another visual aid I read about from Phyllis Krystal: imagine you are walking on a tightrope. Flying on either side of you are a crow with cruelly sharp beak and talons, and a beautiful, cute dove cooing softly. you reach out for the Dove, wanting it to land on your hand so you can pet it, but overextend, and fall. Next, you push away and flail at the crow, trying to keep it away, and loose your balance again. 

This is attachment and aversion. If instead, you have a healthy detachment from the good and bad results of your actions, you walk with both hands outstretched, balancing more easily. If the dove comes and lands on your hand, you accept, and enjoy the good fortune. If the crow lands on your hand, digging in it's talons, you accept patiently and keep walking. In either case, you remain balanced, moving swiftly towards your ultimate goal which lies at the end of the tightrope. Focused on your next step, and the next, and the next.

The how is both simpler and much more challenging. As they say, if it was easy, everyone would be doing it. I'm still a newbie at it myself, so I don't feel qualified to teach others, but for myself, sometimes I actually visualize handing over the future results, good or bad to a higher power. Sometimes I just remind myself to do the action that feels right, because it feels right, and let go of worry about how it turns out. Sometimes I remind myself, before starting on a task, that God is present at the point of my focus, wherever that may be, say writing a blog entry, and my spiritual practice for now is focusing with full attention on that point and doing the best job I can with it. I think the thing which tripped me up the most was just thinking it was more complicated that it was. It is exactly what it says on the label. Let God, let the universe, worry about the results. You cannot control those. As Byron Katie and the 12 Step programs say, that's somebody else's business, stay in your own business. Your business is what you choose to focus on, and the actions you take. You cannot control the outcomes.

But if you keep focusing on impeccable action, the results will eventually take care of themselves. You can't control when, but the law of Karma says you will eventually get back the reflection and resound of whatever you are putting out into the universe.

Just remember more important even than action is the feeling behind the action. You can do all the charity in the world but if you doing from a place of pride and self aggrandizement, or judgmentalism and superiority, what you get back will not be good. I could tell a little story about the Buddha and the rich man and poor old woman who went to visit him and give him a gift, but this is getting long and I have to go to sleep. It will just have to be a teaser for next time, or perhaps next time we meet in person, if you remind me of it. ;D

Good night,

-Eye

It's my birthday again! Time, death, love, growth: a retrospective

Since as far back as I can remember, my birthdays have always been a time of introspection, of reflection on the previous year, of my life thus far. For a long time, they were some of the worst days, because I felt so badly about myself. I thought I was shy and awkward, lazy, not good at things, a coward. I thought nobody loved me or ever would, and probably for good reason, and I thought I was doing nothing useful with my life.

The first birthday I remember not being like that was my first year at the Maharishi School, in 11th grade. I got a card signed by many of the girls in the class, with nice messages to me. I'm not sure they knew how meaningful that was to me. It was a totally new idea to me, that girls might actually think I was a cool and interesting person. That they might like me. For some reason, my self image was particularly tied in with what girls thought of me. I think this was because for so many years I had been so unsuccessful with girls. I literally could not get more than a terse sentence or two out to the girls I had a crush on. I was so awkward and uncomfortable and frightened that my mind would shut down, as though someone were pointing a gun at me. As though I was an antelope being chased by a hungry lion, and all I could think about were the terrible things that would go wrong when I said the wrong thing. There was no hope of a simple, natural, easygoing conversation. I think talked more with my 1-8th grade crush during the graduation party (when I finally didn't have to worry about being rejected because I wasn't going to see them again, perhaps ever.) that I had during the entire rest of my 1-8th grade career.

Anyways, that birthday was actually mostly happy. And I began to accept that maybe I wasn't worthless.

Up to then I was generally unhappy, extremely self-critical, and an inveterate procrastinator. I had no idea what I wanted to do as a job, or with my life in general. I was interested in spirituality, but it was very inflexible, dogmatic, and judgmental. I was both obsessed with and terrified by the thought of a romantic relationship, and didn't know the first step to start one.

It took a long time. How long was it? I was.. 16? 17? and now I'm 31. Fifteen years, about. But things have changed. Things have changed so much. I'm comfortable around women, even if I'm attracted to them, and I can be relaxed enough for them to actually get to know me. I no longer hate myself or talk to myself hyper-critically or cruelly. I have a clear focus for my career that feels really good and  I'm actually working in a job that's directly preparing me for the teaching I want to do, that's already letting me do it, and I feel confident in my ability to achieve my professional dreams and goals.

That could be a whole post in itself: the change from working towards my goals with a quiet, defeated stubbornness, that basically said, "I have no idea if I will ever make any progress towards these goals, I don't see how I'll ever achieve them, but there's nothing else for me to do, and I definitely won't achieve them if I don't try, so I'll keep slogging away at them half-heatedly until I die. (When I'm not doing netflix binge marathons to try and distract myself from how bad I'm feeling.)"

To now, working towards my goals with quiet confidence that says, "I seem to be able to achieve just about anything I set my mind to and persist in, so I'm really excited about this goal I'm working on, because it's so big and important, but I really think I'll be able to do it. I just have to keep working at it. I feel so much gratitude to God, to the Great Mystery, who's transformed me and helped me grow into this, who's made this all possible."

I've seen pictures where holy substances have come out. I've been a part of a miracle where I had a super unlikely meeting with a woman who fits me so well it continues to astound and humble me to this day. I've had dreams where I got to talk to the form of God that I worship.

To anyone who's interested, this is not proprietary. There's no secret. I'm not anything special. As far as I can tell, (I'm still figuring this out, I could be a bit off.) this kind of miraculousness in your life is available to anyone and everyone who does a few simple things:
1) focus every last drop of determination and energy you can muster on doing what is good, loving, and truthful. Listen to, check in with, and follow your conscience scrupulously As near to all day every day as you can. (it will be far from perfect, but it will slowly improve (and temporarily devolve, sometimes))
2) Keep God, Divinity, Higher Power, in mind, in heart, as close to always as you can. Talk with him/her, hold their hand, ask them questions, dedicate your action to them. Make divinity the center of your life. (same non-perfection caveat as above)
3) Whatever sadhana (spiritual practice) you determine is the best for you, do it with persistence and consistency. I don't care if it's meditation or seva, whatever it is, do it as best you can, and keep working on it with dedication and focus. Refining the process as needed.
4) Spend time with the most spiritually wise and big hearted people you can.

And I can condense that even more, if necessary:
1) Listen, with uncompromising honesty, to the voice within, your conscience, and commit yourself with all your heart and energy, to following it's dictates.
2) When you're at the end of your rope, when what you have isn't enough, when you can't figure out the next step, pray. Pray from the bottom of your heart, without artifice, without restraint, like a little child crying up to it's mother.

It's not complex. It's not easy. But it is doable. Maybe it will take 15 years like it did with me, but hey, better than never. And honestly, much of that time was just trying different things, searching, experimenting, discarding what didn't work, refining what did. Finding new things that worked even better. Or coming to understand old things in a whole new light.

In any case, I want to end with what is important: I came this far because of so many great people, supporting me, teaching me, pushing me onwards, granting me their wisdom, their strength, their sight. I came this far because of the grace of God. My ego could never have done this. I can't give it any credit. So I just want to say thank you, to my friends, my family, my teachers. All the people in my life, on my path, who have helped me find the next step, and the next. And of course that divine essence which is the source and substance of it all.

And as always, my good friend, death. Life is precious. Some of my closest friends have died, or suffered life threatening disease. Young adults, not even in middle age. Never take a day, a moment for granted. You never know when death will call, and he will not take a message and get back to you later. The thing to fear is not death, but never having lived.

I like this because it's not high-falutin philosophy. It is simple, unavoidable truth. Reality. You will die. You don't know when. Therefor it follows that the only sensible thing to do is to live each moment, to the best of your ability, so that you will not lie on your deathbed with regret.

No amount of reminders about this is too much, unless they become automatically ignored due to quantity. Live well. Live with love, not hatred or jealousy or envy. Don't sweat the small stuff. Don't hold onto the dark stuff. Fill your life with light, kindness (to yourself as well as others), and goodness.

In Truth, Love, and Laughter
-Isaac

Pro's and Con's, Mill and Stepping Stones, Ham-wisdom

This was an interesting weekend. Some good, some very good, some unexpectedly bad.

Pro's:
Got to talk with Maggie! It's been... I don't even know how long. Two months? That we've been trying to connect. (More than the nightly short texts. Well, short on her side. Sometimes short and sometimes long on my part, since my schedule is considerably less crazy than hers.) Despite my worries that the lack of face to face connection may cause the relationship to dry up a bit, when we are back together, it really is like getting together with an old friend. We just start back up where we left off. Despite not knowing each other that well. And yet perhaps we do... here, story time: I wanted to squeeze all the goodness out of the call that I could, so I read through some of Gottman's literature (author of "The Seven Principals for Making Marriage Work" which I definitely recommend if you're in a romantic relationship and you want to make it work) and found a fun exercise to "build love maps" as Gottman calls it. Getting to know each other.

We played a twenty questions game, and even though many of our answers were based purely off of intuition, they ended up being right. I'm chuckling to myself as I right this, at the continued improbability of it all. I was more expecting we'd get it wrong, laugh about it, and then share what the right answers were and get to know about each other that way. But apparently that is to some extent not even necessary. I continue to be dumbstruck in gratitude at the universe for what an incredibly good match it's found for me. One example of many: my favorite instrument is the violin. Her main instrument is the electric violin. I can only fall at God's feet in grateful surrender and do my best to be worthy of the gifts given.

A Con was around the end I said something that accidentally was opening a can of worms a little and felt bad about doing so, but we worked it out fairly quickly, and ended on a nice note. Gratitude to my partner for being able to do that. She is amazing.

I hate hurting peoples feelings. I try so hard not to, but I'm not perfect. And what with needing to be more firm in my teaching style, I'm probably going to have to do things that hurt some small people's feelings a bit, out of care for them and their overall long-term development. Healthy boundaries, high expectations, follow through with my word.

Other pro's:
Mother's day! Got to talk to mom.
Cleaned up much of the living room.
Got some important things on my todo list checked off.
Went contra dancing.

Con's:
Stayed up late and got completely off of my schedule.
Felt really bad about having left the unpacking/organizing in my aunts living room for so long.
Sucked into less important tasks and interesting but time-wasting stories.
So much that I still needs to be done, at least one important thing that is certainly going to be late.


Making lemonade, some of these bad feelings are good fodder for getting into the shoes of students. I can see when kids shut down, when they're being told they've done something bad. And now I have a fresh memory of what it feels like, so I can sympathize. Gottman would call it emotional flooding I think. And the bottom line is once you've emotionally flooded your student, it's close to impossible to get them to listen to you deeply. They can do manual tasks, but the heart is shut down, so if your asking them to engage in empathy or creative problem-solving or self-awareness, you're going to fail.

Gottman talks about "soft start-up" and "complaining without criticizing." These ideas are super useful for any kind of relationship. From husband wife to parent child to teacher student to friends. It's important to voice the issues that are coming up for you, and what you need, but if you want to keep the relationship healthy, and be listened to well, you need to use a soft, non-attacking start up, and then keep the conversation non-attacking, even as you talk about the specific actions that the other person is doing and your own feelings. It seems like a tricky skill, especially if the other person is super sensitive to criticism, but also an incredibly useful one. Any time you have a conflict with another person, this skill is useful. Even without a romantic partner, if you have a work associate that it's hard to get along with, you can use this same principal. (Link is to an article on that subject)

OK, I have the motivation to go to bed early, I have the time to get ready for bed, before it's actually bed time. I've got one more thing I need to do before that, so let's see if I can restart myself now.

This is one of the most useful skills I've learned: when I go off the rails, doing something and then regretting it afterwards, rather than my previous method of just ruminating on how I'm bad and a failure, I simply feel the regret and desire not to do it again, look back and analyse what whent wrong, make a plan to avoid that mistake in the future, and then get on with my life, starting up again on the right track. There's very little drama, there is sadness and regret, but they are not lingering, because I immediatly start making amends, doing everything I can to avoid that same outcome. And I make similar mistakes again and again, but the iteration cycle is fast, and so the learning cycle is fast, and before I know it I've gotten much better at handeling x distraction or situation. Lots of attempts, lots of failurs, no giving up. Just like all fast learning happens. And it's not excessivly stressful, because I'm not dwelling on the mistakes, I'm not fearing them. They are stepping stones that I'm using to climb. This is a very growth mindset way of functioning, and it's also a very enjoyable way of functioning. That question, "What would you do if you couldn't fail?" isn't an impossible hypothetical. It's very much within your grasp with this MO.

Good night! Good week. Or if it's a bad week, may you learn much from it, may you learn from each failure and turn it from a millstone around your neck to a stepping stone towards your dreams.







Is failure a bad thing, or a good thing? Remember it's all just a matter of how you frame it, how you think about it.

"...there is nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so."

-Hamlet

Montessori, beautiful story, much to-do and birthdays for you.

It's Tuesday again  as I write this. That is to say, it's been a busy week and weekend. Things are starting to pile up despite my attempts to work down my prioritized "to do" list. More things seem to be added than crossed off. In fact at this point I would classify it as "utterly buried in things that I need to do."

Great news: I've officially been accepted into the Montessori program I applied to! I thought it was likely given what they're looking for and what I am, but it was ultimately a black box of mystery until an answer came out. So, much gratitude to the universe and all the people who've helped me with that, from my dear writing teacher to my graduate school teachers to the Montessori teacher that inspired me to go for it.

That variable has been solved and now I can begin a whole new set of to-do items such as finding a place to stay in San Diego for the summer that's near the school and reserving my spot with a deposit.

The big projects for the next week and a half are the classes I'm teaching for my volunteer work. The final classes for the kids I'm teaching, and the first class for the human values training for adults and the general public that I need to design and teach to finish up my course work for the Training I did in January. I suppose I should put a shout out to any readers who are interested: all are welcome, there will be no cost and in fact no donations accepted, and I'll be talking about something dear to my heart and related to human values. Right now I'm leaning towards a lesson that gets people really clear on what Carol Dweck's Growth mindset is and isn't and how to cultivate it. Useful for people of any age, and useful for parents and teachers who wish to cultivate it for their little charges. More on that when I've firmed up my plans.

Let's see, what else... my office is beginning to turn into something that's not horribly inefficient and distracting.

Oh, I know: I discovered a good anime. This is akin to discovering a significant artifact, since almost all anime is wretched to the point that anime that is merely bad is generally considered good, or even great. By and large, the artistic merit is nil, with boring backgrounds and minimal character movement. Even when the animation is smooth and detailed, it is usually unimaginative or super derivative, and the stories and plots and characters are enough to make one's brain turn to oatmeal from the sheer cliched, stale, flat unoriginality of it. Often, the non-cliched ones are so weird that they are interesting only for the "what the heck?" factor. And then there is a small pool of anime where the plot and characters and art is well done, but the actual content is reprehensible. Dark, violent, etc.

But every now and then, something makes it through that is actually deep, beautiful, original, and doesn't make you feel horrible afterward. Most Miyazaki moves fall into this category, but there are some others out there. Like with all forms of art, there are some masterpieces, and some creations that, while not quite masterpieces, are still excellent works of art. I sometimes browse through Amazon's or Netflix's collection of anime, trying to find one like that, but they are exceedingly rare. I'd put Avatar: the Last Airbender in the category of "Great" and that's all I can think of. It usually doesn't take me more than  five minutes of watching to get a good idea of the general quality of an anime. I might skip around and watch a minute or two further in or in another episode just to confirm, but it's not really necessary. 95% of the time all I need is the thumbnail and the short blurb.

I think I'd categorize it like this:
90% horrible, you'd have to pay me really well to even sit through an episode.
8% merely really bad. Some redeeming characteristics but not enough to ever want to watch it.
1.9% actually OK. I would watch this when my brain is mush and I want to relax and be transported into another world.
0.19% very good. I would actually make time in my schedule to have the experience this art is providing. This is where the current anime I just discovered fits.
0.01% Masterpiece, something that could stand the test of time and become a classic.

The other nice thing about what I discovered was it is short. Which is a bonus for me, since I don't have time for long series these days.

I should share a screen shot. The main thing it has going for it is the beautiful world and music. It has it's issues though, so if you're interested in watching it, you can ask me about it and I'll give you the disclaimers. I don't endorse it unequivocally, like Avatar or anything by Miyazaki. Though ultimately it is about good triumphing, which is what I love, it's got some scary and dark and weird parts. For some reason it makes me think of Donnie Darko in that way. (A movie I used to love, but I think I've grown out of.)

Anyways, screenshots:

I think there are other important things happening. Oh yeah, my birthday is coming up! And a whole bunch of other people I know who's birthdays are also in May. I'm not actually sure if I'm turning 31 or 32. Does it really matter? I don't know when I'm going to plan it. Speaking of which, I'm well and truly out of time, perhaps past time. I perhaps should have done a shorter post. But this is kind of how I work: slowly, diligently, and with great focus on one thing, until it is done to my satisfaction. Either that, or improv-riff with no concern for output. I think they both have there place, but one thing is constant; I am part of the vast majority of people who functions more efficiently when given long stretches of time to work with deep focus on something. Task switching is inefficient, but often necessary.

Oh, that would be another good topic for a class: the science behind the iPhone effect, multi-tasking/task-switching, and supernormal stimuli (and what can be done about these things. I never want to introduce doom and gloom and leave people without action steps that can be taken. I don't really want to doom and gloom at all...)

Anyways, until next time (quite possibly another Tuesday, given everything going on) this is your friend Isaac, signing off and taking the empty tea cups to the kitchen.