The Fog of Addiction

Societies and families look upon addiction as a blight. Whether from drugs, alcohol, gambling, sex, food, or money, an obsession overtakes the psyche. Cravings trigger undesirable actions that the very addict's consciousness would spurn -- if only he or she were in touch with it. Although pure awareness exists, unsullied in a place and time free of bodily imbalances, sadly, people lost in addiction don't have the road map to get there (here).

In my life pre-cancer, the only uncontrollable urge centered upon food. Every fad diet that came across the airwaves was employed to quell glutinous urges. My boastful mantra: "I don't have an addictive personality except for food."  Inevitably, this hubris would be tested by the gods. 

With extreme pain from radiation treatment inflicted on my mortal coil, narcotic painkillers became a daily friend. They were marvelously effective and truly needed for about one year, during which incalcitrant skin tissue refused to heal. Most opiates made me nauseous, therefore unusable, but after experimenting the doctors found one that made me feel wonderful. So wonderful, in fact, that it was pure heaven to take my daily dose. No matter what trauma physical, emotional, or otherwise came my way, one of those little blue pills catapulted me into a state of euphoria. 

Eventually, a time arrived when the pain, although still an unwanted companion, became tolerable without those happy pills. And that was when the devil and the knowing mind began its ping pong game. 

Devil: "Why stop? I make you happy and the docs will keep writing the script." 

Knower: "It's a cheap shot. It's not a true, grounded happiness and I don't even meditate anymore. I'm spending all the capital I banked in the last 45 years. If I keep taking happy pills, my spiritual bank will be emptied. Bankrupted."

Devil: "Yeah, but I'm easy. And the drugs give you tons of energy. You want energy don't you? Remember that office you never cleaned up? Keeping taking me and you can do anything."

Knower: "Yeah, I want the quick fix but I'm sliding downhill to the bottom of a pit. I'm not going to score pills for godssake and I took an oath decades ago to lie no more. So I have to stop."

Devil: "Try. You won't be able to. You love me."

True, I did love my drug of choice. But this experience gave me a newly found empathy for drug addicts who take the easy route before banking spiritual capital. Luckily for me, having spent decades on the spiritual path, a landing site was perfectly clear and my guides both inner and outer were there with flashing lights to direct me out of the fog to a safe landing. True, my couch had the indent of the physical body for about 10 days until normal, fresh, wonderful aware mind returned. The false gods had disappeared. 

For those who turn to mind-altering substances in order to alleviate emotional pain -- before knowing who they are -- the path is indeed steep to recovery. Without a firm basis in conscious awareness and the tools to practice, it is near impossible to resist the allure of instant escape. Now it is clear why programs like AA have meetings almost every hour of the day, and why a path to recovery must be navigated as carefully as a boat on stormy seas.

Prayers go out to all who have taken the short cut, only to find themselves lost in the thicket. May all return safely to the shores of conscious awareness, with the help of the All-That-Is.

Animal Holocaust

Non-industrial chicken owners know something most of us city slickers do not. These creatures have personalities, likes, dislikes, and can even mother a litter of kittens when necessary. If this last fact seems implausible, it was documented by an amateur videographer and sent to me via a social network. In this case, seeing is believing, despite of our brave new world of altered video realities. 

As a recipient of many inter-species film clips, the truth is stranger than fiction. Not only did I see a chicken watching over an abandoned litter of kittens like a mother hen (oops, she is a mother hen), but also a goat leading a blind horse, a century turtle adopting a baby hippo, a pig nursing a litter of puppies, a baby deer and baby fox huddled together in a rescue shelter, a tiger caring for a baby baboon after eating its mother, and the list goes on and on.

For those who eat meat, consider the following statistics for one year only:

Calculated by Noam Mohr, May 2012

Considering that animals exhibit tremendous humanity, the above figures suggest nothing less than a holocaust of enormous proportion, far outpacing the infamous human holocausts of the 20th century.

If there is a heaven for chickens, not to speak of cows and our intelligent pig friends who lend us their thyroids and hearts, then it is way overcrowded. Although plants also seem to have an intelligence that can sense energy from other beings, perhaps vegetarianism would promote more kindness and good karma for our planet.

If God could sacrifice Christ, his only son, for humanity, then couldn't we sacrifice plants for food in order to save the animals?

Keep Your Eye on the Screen

A revived trend in American movie theaters has arrived on the scene: the movie short. Although the official definition of a short film varies from 5-60 minutes, this type of cinema fare lasts for less than ten minutes at a pop. 

A short film of this ilk might seem like a blip on the radar screen, but it actually takes a lot of time, money, energy and artistic smarts to make a good short film. Bearing this in mind, it seems criminal that potentially little gems never get announced in advertising venues - thus fated to be seen accidentally if one arrives at the theater twenty minutes early.

These underprivileged films are projected with the house lights at full blast and cell phones a-buzzing. And chattering popcorn/candy eaters can't control the noise coming out of their pie holes, even as someone's heart and soul pours onto the big screen.

Seated in one of these typical American theaters yesterday, I became yet more aware of this rude treatment of the short film. A young teenager appeared on the screen to describe an absolutely genius innovation for capturing solar energy. He had observed how the leaves of trees capture sunlight by the way the branches are designed. He then built a model that mimicked the tree-branch-leaf layout and voila! It was able to capture sunlight from dawn to dusk. Luckily, his invention was noticed by the big boys who dole out prizes, and he even got a photo op with President Obama (not the most original cinematic shot but hey, it's the cherry on top of the cake).

With jaw dropped at this marvelous thirteen-year old and his brainchild, I looked around the theater to connect with others; a technological revolution was about to take place! But alas, the rest of the human monkeys were completely oblivious to a jewel being dropped into their laps, simply too busy to pay attention even while confined to seats that orients one's attention toward the screen.

Of course we don't know what we don't know, but the deck would be stacked in our favor if more attention was focused on the what is in our environment. Case in point. The kid who noticed how tree leaves capture sun.

 As for me, I am canceling all of my appointments with the solar energy companies trying to sell me giant panels for my roof. I think I'll wait for this kid to start mass marketing his solar trees.
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Hello Malaysia

Although I don't number myself among Quantitative Self Movement enthusiasts, I have become one of those obsessive-compulsive data crunchers when it comes to blogging, thanks to ingenious Google programmers who've hooked me on their drug of choice.

One of the perks bundled into Google's free site, blogspot.com, is its backend; the Stats section provides decipherable information about the number of readers and from what area of the world they are clicking. This data breaks down numbers and geographic areas by Now, Days, Weeks, Months, and All Time. Wowza. 

While advertising agencies, politicians and other social animals utilize this type of information for marketing purposes and other nefarious schemes, my inner anthropologist follows these demographics in order to understand why certain countries respond more -- or less -- to the musings scratched out in this blog.

The United States remains the largest readership, which makes sense since the issues discussed come from the pondering mind of a transplanted New Yorker turned devout Southern Californian and inveterate neurotic.

Until this week, the second largest readership was France, which also makes sense because my husband is French and thus friendships have developed on the other side of the pond. Predictably or unpredictably depending on your perspective, French readership topped the charts when I was in France for 10 days and blogged about my experiences on their soil. Since returning to the USA last week, that readership has plummeted into third position. ET phone home. 

Amazingly, Russian readership skyrocketed when the blog addressed topics on space programs, yet steadily declined when this blogger moved on to fresh territory. Does the mean that Sputnik lives on as a space station?

Chinese readership remains constant, although it was three times higher when the blog mentioned the Dalai Lama frequently in the first month. One of my friends wondered if it was the government reading the blog or a real public person interested in what was being said about this "splittist" as the Chinese call him ever so falsely. As the readership now remains a constant of one per day, it might be a government censor and not an avid reader clicking in.

The other numbers vary considerably and include people from the United States, France, China, United Kingdom, Canada, Mexico, Germany, Sweden, Switzerland, Ireland, Belgium, Poland, Serbia, the Ukraine, Hungary, Romania, Vietnam, Indonesia, South Korea, Israel, Italy, Spain, Jordan, Gabon, Norway, the Netherlands, Moldova, Finland, South Africa, Slovenia, Saudi Arabia, India, Pakistan, Kuwait, United Arab Emirates, Algeria, the Philippines, Venezuela, Argentina, Peru, Guatemala, Brazil, New Zealand, and Australia.

The most amazing stat derives from Malaysia: it now sits in second place for readership on a daily basis, far outpacing other nations. Originally, Malaysia popped into the Stats section when a post was written about exotic animals, kept as pets by thousands of Americans under deplorable conditions. Parts of Malaysia house the largest variety of flora and fauna on the planet, and some of those rare American hostages might come from their diverse landmass. But a single blog on exotic animals does not explain this consistent surge of readership.

So this is a shout out to the Malaysians who, next to Americans, have now topped the charts in attending to these daily ramblings. Can I visit your country some time? I can only dream of visiting your oldest forest on earth, some 130 million years in the making.

From Los Angeles with love.

The Quantitative Self Movement

With the emergence of popular high tech gizmos, the Quantitative Self Movement encourages entrepreneurs of all stripes to come up with new and improved devices to measure human activity. And hard data, as we all know, provides the gospel truth for modern day man, adding or detracting from the holy books with bottom line facts.

Quantifying one's behavior and its measureable impact on the body and mind is not a new idea in the brave new world of 21st century technology. Leaving aside scientists from past millennia -- in a brainless example, the average bathroom scale tells its owner how much weight one has gained, lost, or maintained as often as the person with the poundage would like. With an explosion of the iPhone-carrying species, the Nike + iPod App can quantify every twitch and how many calories it burns. (As for this app which refuses to leave the phone's desktop, if you live in Los Angeles, home to freeways and a multitude of cars, one could well use this feature; a farmer in the fields of Kenya or bicycle-taxi driver in India needn't worry about burning calories through movement. Just the reverse problem there.)

And speaking of iPhone, the Apple mafia is developing a new ear bud that measures oxygenation, heart rate and body temperature while listening to music or yakking on the phone. But it should come with a warning on the package. Couch potatoes beware. Your guilt factor may rise exponentially while using this device.

Sadly, a high tech doodad for quantifying the evolution of the soul or the consciousness of enlightenment has yet to be invented, even as brain imaging captures information about the astounding benefits of meditation and biofeedback provides a useful tool for stress management and other persnickety emotional issues.

So to all those who are nuts about quantifying every movement, thought and activity, one area remains to be boiled down to a numerical calculation.

Who or what created humankind and all the flora and fauna?

Until we can quantify that, endless rounds of theological debates and blood wars will continue. So my take on all the above: please remember that the hardware and software of mother nature's interconnected world can decipher all matter of things for the attentive observer who uses awareness and intuition -- the most effective gizmos every invented.

Fathers and Families

During Thanksgiving dinner last night, a discussion arose about the role of fathers: the good, the bad and the ugly. All of the "children" at the table were adults ranging in age between 25 to 37 years old. Their maturation process had given them distance and perspective, unlike the tender years of 0-3 when parental energies imprinted heavily on the wide open young soul - or when the hormones of adulthood started churning around in the bodies and minds of burgeoning teenagers. 

Father issues may erupt with volcanic intensity if the formative years are filled with good intentions gone wrong on the part of the father. (This is not meant to be a father-bashing blog as mothers do their fair share of positive and negative actions, but our discussion last night happened to be about the males of the species.)

In the group assembled at our table, the wattage of love, understanding and attention doled out to these young adults from their fathers varied; three out of four had different fathers and two out of four had different mothers. (Don't even try to figure out how this group interconnects unless you are adept at understanding the logic of a Rubic's cube or have studied anthropology.)

Suffice it to say that the upshot of the entire conversation lead to one conclusion. Regardless of whether the father was guilty of benign neglect, total neglect, or blew hot and cold with his gift of love, all of the wonderful "kids" had learned valuable lessons.

To regurgitate a cliched phrase, "It's not the hand you are dealt, it's what you do with it." 

No matter what burdens a father inflicts on his young, usually due to his own childhood traumas, when the offspring achieves independence he or she is free to choose.
Reactive? Depressed? Submissive? Agressive? Or, learn from hard lessons and become more loving, empathetic, insightful and understanding.

As long as every young one growing up understands that he or she is a unique being that was born from, but is not the same as the father (or mother), then self-respect can grow; we are not property. We are human beings fully deserving of dignity and respect.

James Ray Has Nowhere to Sleep

The rise of "New Age" philosophy in the last five decades can be viewed as a positive phenomenon. The gestalt of self-help, motivational psychology, holistic health and a distillation of global religions into a secular western approach fit our evolutionary pattern as we enter into the Age of Aquarius. Thomas Aquinas, roll over.

The gurus of the New Age offer a mixed bag of goodies: many ideas and the tools laid forth on the table of delights do have some usefulness in prying the western mind out of narcissism and self-doubt. But the price of grazing from this table comes at a cost, usually from one's bank account, but sometimes in a more horrific form.

James Ray models a worst-case scenario of faux teachers whose business savvy catapulted him to New Age stardom. His pricey $10,000 weeklong seminar ended with the death of three people in an overly heated sweat lodge. Literally roasted alive, they expired in the midst of a group motivated to expand their consciousness. (The bullshit meter moves off the charts on this one.)

The most interesting aspect of this case comes from a statement James Ray made on a nightly talk show. After spending 20 months in prison for manslaughter, he appeared to have genuine remorse. Nothing like being shackled by guards when showering, or losing all his millions, to make a man think. But he hasn't thought enough.

When asked by the TV host why he ran away from the site of carnage at his sweat lodge and didn't stay to help, he gave some nice pat answers about being scared and not perfect and that he listened to his lawyers advice. (Perhaps he never listened to his own conscience?) But the most astounding explanation that came out of this man's mouth even after his admission of hubris: he had been locked out of his hotel room by authorities and had nowhere to sleep.

James, did it ever occur to you to ask if you could share a room? Or perhaps sleep in a rolled up tarp on the ground next to the dying and sick ones, offering comfort? Have you ever tried to live like a homeless person to understand how they feel? Or gone on a camping trip at the very least?

On this Thanksgiving Day, perhaps he might reflect on all those who have nowhere to sleep and nowhere to eat. And lest this one who points the finger forget, she too shall try to remember that our comforts come at a cost. May we repay our gifts a thousandfold.