Wednesday, April 07, 2004
Are we blind to our own best interests?
As a culture, it sure looks like we are.
We want to live long, healthy lives, but 2/3 of us are overweight, which skyrockets our likelihood of countless ailments, and we are couch potatoes, which is even worse (and we won't even mention all the people who are still SMOKING).
We want to retire early and have enjoyable golden years, but how many people do you know who are saving ANYTHING for their retirement, much less saving enough to make for a comfortable old age?
We want to move ahead in our careers, but a scary % of workers can't be bothered to show up on time, dress appropriately, treat others, even their bosses and the customers, with courtesy, or get off of the internet long enough to get any work done... and how often do you see QUALITY work from anyone?
We want to find true love, but we persist in leaping into bed with anyone who glances at us twice, and then wasting weeks, months or YEARS finding out that we can not in fact have a lasting relationship with them.
We want to be treated with respect, but we walk around half-naked and/or looking like street people, and fill our conversations with trivial nonsense about celebs and that major oxymoron, pop culture.
We seem to be increasingly likely to bite the hand that's trying to feed us, too, which in a way is the worst of all because it's so personal and specific. I know someone who's letting a friend live with her to help her get her life back on track, and the friend makes messes all over the house, leaves the windows open with the heat running, leaves the DOOR open so that the dog runs out in the street and any vermin or crook could stroll right in, and on and on... despite the fact that she'd be living in a cardboard box if not for this friend, literally. Is there even a NAME for that level of stupidity, that degree of inability to act in one's own best interest?
A friend of MINE learned the first installment of a lesson on how to treat people who are doing her favors today; I have been helping her out with events that she organizes for a couple of years, and have in fact taken on a disproportionate % of the tasks, in return for which she handles the onerous drive to the site, picking me up along the way... or, at least she DID. I got a message ONE day before this month's event, in which she chirpily advised me that she now has an alternate way to get to the events that doesn't include me, so she won't be picking me up... and she looks forward to seeing me there. OH REALLY?!! I'm supposed to bite the bullet and get there by myself to help HER out, or am supposed to contact someone I barely know who's driving from my area and ask for them to pick me up and drop me off, every month forever? Needless to say, I did neither, and I hope she enjoyed doing all the work *I* usually do in addition to her own tasks, and maybe has started to re-evaluate the wisdom of bailing out on me at the last minute without having made ANY attempt at providing me with a convenient substitute way to get there AND HELP HER.
It shouldn't need to be said, but I guess it does; if someone is doing you favors, helping you out, sacrificing their time, $ and energy to benefit you, you need to repay that by, among other things, NOT causing them problems, stress or upset... they don't owe you, and they're totally justified in cutting you loose if you can't show even minimal gratitude.
As to all the other elements of not acting in one's own best interest; health, success, respect, love, and all the rest don't just materialize magically in your living room one day, you have to show some common sense and see the cause and effect between your actions and choices and what you end up with in your life... if you don't like how things are going, change the only thing you CAN change-YOU.
We want to live long, healthy lives, but 2/3 of us are overweight, which skyrockets our likelihood of countless ailments, and we are couch potatoes, which is even worse (and we won't even mention all the people who are still SMOKING).
We want to retire early and have enjoyable golden years, but how many people do you know who are saving ANYTHING for their retirement, much less saving enough to make for a comfortable old age?
We want to move ahead in our careers, but a scary % of workers can't be bothered to show up on time, dress appropriately, treat others, even their bosses and the customers, with courtesy, or get off of the internet long enough to get any work done... and how often do you see QUALITY work from anyone?
We want to find true love, but we persist in leaping into bed with anyone who glances at us twice, and then wasting weeks, months or YEARS finding out that we can not in fact have a lasting relationship with them.
We want to be treated with respect, but we walk around half-naked and/or looking like street people, and fill our conversations with trivial nonsense about celebs and that major oxymoron, pop culture.
We seem to be increasingly likely to bite the hand that's trying to feed us, too, which in a way is the worst of all because it's so personal and specific. I know someone who's letting a friend live with her to help her get her life back on track, and the friend makes messes all over the house, leaves the windows open with the heat running, leaves the DOOR open so that the dog runs out in the street and any vermin or crook could stroll right in, and on and on... despite the fact that she'd be living in a cardboard box if not for this friend, literally. Is there even a NAME for that level of stupidity, that degree of inability to act in one's own best interest?
A friend of MINE learned the first installment of a lesson on how to treat people who are doing her favors today; I have been helping her out with events that she organizes for a couple of years, and have in fact taken on a disproportionate % of the tasks, in return for which she handles the onerous drive to the site, picking me up along the way... or, at least she DID. I got a message ONE day before this month's event, in which she chirpily advised me that she now has an alternate way to get to the events that doesn't include me, so she won't be picking me up... and she looks forward to seeing me there. OH REALLY?!! I'm supposed to bite the bullet and get there by myself to help HER out, or am supposed to contact someone I barely know who's driving from my area and ask for them to pick me up and drop me off, every month forever? Needless to say, I did neither, and I hope she enjoyed doing all the work *I* usually do in addition to her own tasks, and maybe has started to re-evaluate the wisdom of bailing out on me at the last minute without having made ANY attempt at providing me with a convenient substitute way to get there AND HELP HER.
It shouldn't need to be said, but I guess it does; if someone is doing you favors, helping you out, sacrificing their time, $ and energy to benefit you, you need to repay that by, among other things, NOT causing them problems, stress or upset... they don't owe you, and they're totally justified in cutting you loose if you can't show even minimal gratitude.
As to all the other elements of not acting in one's own best interest; health, success, respect, love, and all the rest don't just materialize magically in your living room one day, you have to show some common sense and see the cause and effect between your actions and choices and what you end up with in your life... if you don't like how things are going, change the only thing you CAN change-YOU.
Tuesday, April 06, 2004
"Queer Eye For the Straight Guy"
Because I love this show, a friend gave me an old Entertainment Weekly with them on the cover; I'd never seen it before, and it was cool to have it. I read the article, and then decided to tear off the cover and save it; after I got the cover off, I thought I should go back to the article and save IT too, while I was at it, and I asked myself what page it had been on... "62" came immediately to my mind, so I went to page 62... where I found a DIFFERENT article about Queer Eye!! The original story, when I looked it up, turned out to be on page 24-not even CLOSE.
I went back to the table of contents to see if the 2nd article was there and I'd just picked it up subconsciously... and it WASN'T-it was on the SECOND contents page, 2 pages after the only one I'd looked at. The 2nd article was many pages AFTER the one I saw first, so I couldn't have seen it subliminally as I turned to the 1st article. The page #'s aren't inverted versions of each other, eg 24 and 42, so there isn't even THAT as a possibility... I just KNEW the page of an article that I didn't even know existed. Coincidence? Nnnnnnnnnnnope.
As much as I love this show, I'm not surprised I had a psychic blip leading me to an article about it; there's something endlessly entrancing about guys who are so VERY gay. Bravo created the show, not for the gay audience, but for the female audience, which was pretty smart of them, as every woman I know is wild about gay men... which is sort of scary, because the men that women can actually HAVE are very different, and it's sort of twisted for women to like the sort of man that wants another man. It's gotta be some sort of extreme cosmic joke that when gay men finally came out, they turned out to be everything that women had always dreamed of in a man, except not interested in us.
Gay men are generally handsome, charming, witty, well-groomed and -dressed... and, something even more important that you never hear mentioned; openly sexual in their body language, as compared to straight men who usually have very UNprovocative body language. My guess is that THIS is what makes we women so nuts about them, in the same way that straight men instinctively love sexy female body language; after all, we're genetically programmed to look for NATURAL body language cues, and the repressed ones coming from straight men are very different from that, and so of course less attractive to women than the less retrained body language of gay men.
Amazing what thoughts an old magazine and a TV show can give you, isn't it? :-)
I went back to the table of contents to see if the 2nd article was there and I'd just picked it up subconsciously... and it WASN'T-it was on the SECOND contents page, 2 pages after the only one I'd looked at. The 2nd article was many pages AFTER the one I saw first, so I couldn't have seen it subliminally as I turned to the 1st article. The page #'s aren't inverted versions of each other, eg 24 and 42, so there isn't even THAT as a possibility... I just KNEW the page of an article that I didn't even know existed. Coincidence? Nnnnnnnnnnnope.
As much as I love this show, I'm not surprised I had a psychic blip leading me to an article about it; there's something endlessly entrancing about guys who are so VERY gay. Bravo created the show, not for the gay audience, but for the female audience, which was pretty smart of them, as every woman I know is wild about gay men... which is sort of scary, because the men that women can actually HAVE are very different, and it's sort of twisted for women to like the sort of man that wants another man. It's gotta be some sort of extreme cosmic joke that when gay men finally came out, they turned out to be everything that women had always dreamed of in a man, except not interested in us.
Gay men are generally handsome, charming, witty, well-groomed and -dressed... and, something even more important that you never hear mentioned; openly sexual in their body language, as compared to straight men who usually have very UNprovocative body language. My guess is that THIS is what makes we women so nuts about them, in the same way that straight men instinctively love sexy female body language; after all, we're genetically programmed to look for NATURAL body language cues, and the repressed ones coming from straight men are very different from that, and so of course less attractive to women than the less retrained body language of gay men.
Amazing what thoughts an old magazine and a TV show can give you, isn't it? :-)
Monday, April 05, 2004
Brilliant perceptions from Dean Koontz
I think that virtually any successful author has a solid, if sometimes unconscious, grasp of human nature, which (s)he uses both to make characters believable and to manipulate the emotions of the reader; because this sort of thing fascinates me, the authors I love best are masters at these things. Here's a dazzling passage from Koontz's "Odd Thomas":
"It is human nature to want to believe in the wizardry of the magician-but also to turn against him and to scorn him the moment that he commits the slightest error that reveals his trickery. Those in the audience are embarrassed to have been so easily astonished, and they blame the performer for their gullibility."
So true, so true; people ARE gullible, and DO want to believe, whether it's in magic, or that their lover is exactly as they think (s)he is, or that their friend isn't so much smarter than them as to make them seem stupid by comparison, and they'll eagerly follow along with whatever illusion is presented to them, because it makes them feel better... but, when the bubble bursts, they round on the other person, who in most cases just acted the way normal people do to keep a new lover interested, or to protect their feelings, and attacks them as if they were evil incarnate, as opposed to normal, caring people.
Each of us is fooled countless times each day by others; studies show that we all lie pretty much non-stop, even when we think we're being honest, so it's unavoidable to be lied to (although mostly about trivial things, granted). If we "catch" someone out in fooling us, though, we react with rage, not because of whatever minor untruth was involved, but because "you lied to me"... in other words, "you tricked me successfully, and now, although you're far from the only one, you will bear the full brunt of my anger."
Our idols get all this times 100; the beloved athlete becomes hated if he loses one game, or, more specifically, makes one bad play near the end of the game such that he gets BLAMED for the entire loss... as if he'd only TRICKED us into believing in him and his abilities, and so deserves our contempt. Think how many other examples there are in politics and entertainment of people that our culture first idolized and then turned on... think of the model Linda Evangelista, who made one thoughtless, off the cuff comment 20 years ago about how she and the other supermodels didn't even get out of bed for less than $10k a day, and this one crack in the illusion of models as almost magical, ethereal creatures got her excoriated then and for 2 decades afterwards. Now, if Bill Gates had said the same thing, no one would have blinked, because there's no aura around him the way there is around non-business celebrities, and we EXPECT him to be a bottom-liner and plain talker; those whose star-quality we willingly buy into had better not say anything to shatter the illusion, though.
Also from Koontz, on the same page, even:
"Most people desperately desire to believe that they are part of a great mystery, that Creation is a work of grace and glory, not merely the result of random forces colliding. Yet each time that they are given but one reason to doubt, a worm in the apple of the heart makes them turn away from a thousand proofs of the miraculous, whereupon they have a drunkard's thirst for cynicism, and they feed upon despair as a starving man upon a loaf of bread."
This is true of people in reference to small issues in addition to large ones; have you ever treated someone with the most extreme compassion and kindness imaginable, for weeks, months, even YEARS, only to have one preoccupied day, one grouchy, stressed or unhappy day, and all of a sudden they no longer believe in you, and who you are as a person, and how you feel about them, as if they were just WAITING for the moment of "imperfection" so that they could see it as "proof" that you're other than they saw you as, other than you ARE? Have you had such a person go ever farther, and misinterpret some innocent thing to be such a proof, or listen to the poisonous words of some jealous person with an agenda and use THAT as "proof" and reason to turn on you?
And, of course, in the grander sense, people DO look at one instance where something that seemed astonishing really wasn't as reason to disbelieve in the many previous events that WERE astonishing, and demonstrative of the wonder that exists all around us.
If you can look back and see instances where you've built someone up in your mind and then gotten rabid when they showed a "flaw," or evidence of whitewashing the truth or behaving "nicer than their nature" as every human being does, take a moment to promise yourself not to do that again; it's not reasonable or fair, and leads to truly amazing people being driven from your life by your over-reaction.
If you find yourself denying the wondrous elements of universe(s) around us because you saw a fake psychic or whatever, reconsider; just because some people fake being models or millionaires in order to score doesn't mean that models and millionaires don't exist, right? The omniverse IS filled with countless things that no one can explain, and you don't gain points by brushing them all off as government conspiracies or elaborate hoaxes; keep your mind open, and you'll be surprised at how much truth falls into it.
"It is human nature to want to believe in the wizardry of the magician-but also to turn against him and to scorn him the moment that he commits the slightest error that reveals his trickery. Those in the audience are embarrassed to have been so easily astonished, and they blame the performer for their gullibility."
So true, so true; people ARE gullible, and DO want to believe, whether it's in magic, or that their lover is exactly as they think (s)he is, or that their friend isn't so much smarter than them as to make them seem stupid by comparison, and they'll eagerly follow along with whatever illusion is presented to them, because it makes them feel better... but, when the bubble bursts, they round on the other person, who in most cases just acted the way normal people do to keep a new lover interested, or to protect their feelings, and attacks them as if they were evil incarnate, as opposed to normal, caring people.
Each of us is fooled countless times each day by others; studies show that we all lie pretty much non-stop, even when we think we're being honest, so it's unavoidable to be lied to (although mostly about trivial things, granted). If we "catch" someone out in fooling us, though, we react with rage, not because of whatever minor untruth was involved, but because "you lied to me"... in other words, "you tricked me successfully, and now, although you're far from the only one, you will bear the full brunt of my anger."
Our idols get all this times 100; the beloved athlete becomes hated if he loses one game, or, more specifically, makes one bad play near the end of the game such that he gets BLAMED for the entire loss... as if he'd only TRICKED us into believing in him and his abilities, and so deserves our contempt. Think how many other examples there are in politics and entertainment of people that our culture first idolized and then turned on... think of the model Linda Evangelista, who made one thoughtless, off the cuff comment 20 years ago about how she and the other supermodels didn't even get out of bed for less than $10k a day, and this one crack in the illusion of models as almost magical, ethereal creatures got her excoriated then and for 2 decades afterwards. Now, if Bill Gates had said the same thing, no one would have blinked, because there's no aura around him the way there is around non-business celebrities, and we EXPECT him to be a bottom-liner and plain talker; those whose star-quality we willingly buy into had better not say anything to shatter the illusion, though.
Also from Koontz, on the same page, even:
"Most people desperately desire to believe that they are part of a great mystery, that Creation is a work of grace and glory, not merely the result of random forces colliding. Yet each time that they are given but one reason to doubt, a worm in the apple of the heart makes them turn away from a thousand proofs of the miraculous, whereupon they have a drunkard's thirst for cynicism, and they feed upon despair as a starving man upon a loaf of bread."
This is true of people in reference to small issues in addition to large ones; have you ever treated someone with the most extreme compassion and kindness imaginable, for weeks, months, even YEARS, only to have one preoccupied day, one grouchy, stressed or unhappy day, and all of a sudden they no longer believe in you, and who you are as a person, and how you feel about them, as if they were just WAITING for the moment of "imperfection" so that they could see it as "proof" that you're other than they saw you as, other than you ARE? Have you had such a person go ever farther, and misinterpret some innocent thing to be such a proof, or listen to the poisonous words of some jealous person with an agenda and use THAT as "proof" and reason to turn on you?
And, of course, in the grander sense, people DO look at one instance where something that seemed astonishing really wasn't as reason to disbelieve in the many previous events that WERE astonishing, and demonstrative of the wonder that exists all around us.
If you can look back and see instances where you've built someone up in your mind and then gotten rabid when they showed a "flaw," or evidence of whitewashing the truth or behaving "nicer than their nature" as every human being does, take a moment to promise yourself not to do that again; it's not reasonable or fair, and leads to truly amazing people being driven from your life by your over-reaction.
If you find yourself denying the wondrous elements of universe(s) around us because you saw a fake psychic or whatever, reconsider; just because some people fake being models or millionaires in order to score doesn't mean that models and millionaires don't exist, right? The omniverse IS filled with countless things that no one can explain, and you don't gain points by brushing them all off as government conspiracies or elaborate hoaxes; keep your mind open, and you'll be surprised at how much truth falls into it.
What scares you?
Horror movies are designed to showcase what our culture is afraid of at a given time; when nuclear power was new and scary, we got the "bug movies," when young people started being overtly sexual, we got endless movies in which the kids who had sex died (such as the "Friday the 13th" and the "Nightmare on Elm Street" series), and when technology escalated faster than many of us were comfortable with, we got movies like "Fear.com" and "The Ring"... but those are movies targeted to the general audience; what scares YOU? I don't mean things like getting cancer, losing a loved one, or terrorism, which we ALL fear, but what are the elements of the horror genre that really get to you?
It came to me as I was settling into a recent Dean Koontz novel that, although I enjoy ALL the books by him and Stephen King, some "horror concepts" are just entertaining, while some are truly hair-raising, and I rather foolishly started contemplating this at 3AM, with the house making noises of course. It occurred to me that the things that are "personally scary" can say as much about a person as the most common categories of horror movies say about our culture, so I contemplated the things that really scare me.
Things like vampires and zombies do NOT scare me, as they are fictional beings (sorry, Don), but the better-done ghost movies DO scare me a little, because I know that ghosts/spirits ARE real, and because I've had poltergeist problems and know that they CAN interact with the physical world to some extent. A house where murder has been done, as in The Amityville Horror, is something you couldn't get me into even at gunpoint, as what the spirit of a sick, evil person might do given the chance is NOT something I'd want to be present for. It's this same concept that makes the movie, and especially the book, of "The Shining" so terrifying; that hideous evil had been done over and over in the same place, and that all of it was just there WAITING for minds sensitive enough to be affected to show up... brrrrrrrrrrr
One sort of creature has given me the creeps to such an extent that I haven't felt able to do any research about it; the "supernatural" beings portrayed in "The Mothman Prophecies." This movie is based on actual reports from a bunch of hard-headed farmerfolk, reports of... something. Something they couldn't explain, something with powers beyond explanation, something with, at the very least, a desire to stir us up like a little boy with a stick at a hill of ants, just to see us run around in confusion and fear. My reaction to this movie tells me that I have a deep unconscious belief that we are NOT the only intelligent beings in the omniverse, and certainly not the most powerful... or the only ones capable of evil.
The absolute scariest, though, are those stories where one's very surroundings become surreal, such as in "The Shining" when the Overlook became a sort of time warp where all the "evil times" existed simultaneously, and in the heart-stopping short story "1408," also by King, which is about a hotel room where everything is just slightly off, then less slightly, then less slightly, freaked me out so much that I could barely get through it. It didn't occur to me until I read about a room in Koontz's "Odd Thomas" that became some sort of portal from which evil emerged, and got the creeps, that I made the connection... these stories cut close to the bone with me, and remind me of some of my endless nightmares, where everything around me becomes unknown and malignant, where I'm alone and in danger with nowhere to hide... and that feeling, which is clearly tied to my typically high anxiety level, is the source of many of my deepest fears. It's amazing what you can discover about yourself by analyzing something as "trivial" as these books and movies that no one takes seriously.
Think back to all the horror movies and scary stories that ever raised goosebumps on you, and ask yourself... what scares YOU?
It came to me as I was settling into a recent Dean Koontz novel that, although I enjoy ALL the books by him and Stephen King, some "horror concepts" are just entertaining, while some are truly hair-raising, and I rather foolishly started contemplating this at 3AM, with the house making noises of course. It occurred to me that the things that are "personally scary" can say as much about a person as the most common categories of horror movies say about our culture, so I contemplated the things that really scare me.
Things like vampires and zombies do NOT scare me, as they are fictional beings (sorry, Don), but the better-done ghost movies DO scare me a little, because I know that ghosts/spirits ARE real, and because I've had poltergeist problems and know that they CAN interact with the physical world to some extent. A house where murder has been done, as in The Amityville Horror, is something you couldn't get me into even at gunpoint, as what the spirit of a sick, evil person might do given the chance is NOT something I'd want to be present for. It's this same concept that makes the movie, and especially the book, of "The Shining" so terrifying; that hideous evil had been done over and over in the same place, and that all of it was just there WAITING for minds sensitive enough to be affected to show up... brrrrrrrrrrr
One sort of creature has given me the creeps to such an extent that I haven't felt able to do any research about it; the "supernatural" beings portrayed in "The Mothman Prophecies." This movie is based on actual reports from a bunch of hard-headed farmerfolk, reports of... something. Something they couldn't explain, something with powers beyond explanation, something with, at the very least, a desire to stir us up like a little boy with a stick at a hill of ants, just to see us run around in confusion and fear. My reaction to this movie tells me that I have a deep unconscious belief that we are NOT the only intelligent beings in the omniverse, and certainly not the most powerful... or the only ones capable of evil.
The absolute scariest, though, are those stories where one's very surroundings become surreal, such as in "The Shining" when the Overlook became a sort of time warp where all the "evil times" existed simultaneously, and in the heart-stopping short story "1408," also by King, which is about a hotel room where everything is just slightly off, then less slightly, then less slightly, freaked me out so much that I could barely get through it. It didn't occur to me until I read about a room in Koontz's "Odd Thomas" that became some sort of portal from which evil emerged, and got the creeps, that I made the connection... these stories cut close to the bone with me, and remind me of some of my endless nightmares, where everything around me becomes unknown and malignant, where I'm alone and in danger with nowhere to hide... and that feeling, which is clearly tied to my typically high anxiety level, is the source of many of my deepest fears. It's amazing what you can discover about yourself by analyzing something as "trivial" as these books and movies that no one takes seriously.
Think back to all the horror movies and scary stories that ever raised goosebumps on you, and ask yourself... what scares YOU?
Saturday, April 03, 2004
Altered states
Have you ever thought about how many ways we humans have found to achieve what we perceive to be higher levels of consciousness? (Not that I don't think they ARE higher, I just think they might be DIFFERENT rather than higher per se.) Drugs. Prayer. Meditation. Sensory deprivation. Fasting. Ritual. Pain. Even extreme forms of physical exertion can do it for some. We seem, as a species, to eagerly pursue those things that open our minds up to different kinds of perception, to revelations, to... whatever it is that we see in an altered state, real or imagined. Our love of this sort of thing is one of the few things that separates us from the lower animals, and it makes me wonder; do we have this ability, and the desire to use it, as a "reward" for our advanced brains, or is it just a "side effect" of our advanced brains, no more meaningful or insightful than daydreams?
As someone who thinks intensely, feels passionately, but has never gotten to that mental state where deeper understanding (supposedly) comes, I wish that I could experience it at least once, so that I'd know if I'd get epiphanies, in which case I'd want to keep pursuing it, or if I'd just feel high, or disoriented, or whatever, in which case I'd move onto other thoughts. The not knowing keeps it niggling at my mind.
On Mad Mad House this week, Art the modern primitive did a suspension ritual, where his body hung in the air by huge hooks buried in the flesh of his back. I was in absolute AWE watching it happen; he was so calm, peaceful, relaxed, he looked almost half-asleep... and this is while they were putting the hooks in!! He didn't flinch, in fact he gave no sign of being aware that he was being skewered. Once he was hanging, he looked like someone mulling over a pleasant fantasy, rather than someone dangling from screaming chunks of his back. He then got one of the girls who was watching to get up on a ladder so that he could get his arms around her and hold HER weight along with his own. I'd never heard of anyone doing that, and it was mind-boggling to imagine what that experience was like for them, with both of them bonded together with him in what certainly looked like a deeply spiritual state; while it was happening, I kept telling my husband that I'd LOVE to be where she was, as long as I felt REALLY sure that he had held someone of at least my weight before and was in no danger of those hooks ripping through his skin... what would a person feel, buoyed up by someone in the throes of such a powerful experience?
What would a person feel IN the throes of such a powerful experience? I wish I knew. I wonder, if I wish hard enough, will karma grant me a chance to find out? I'm going to try...
As someone who thinks intensely, feels passionately, but has never gotten to that mental state where deeper understanding (supposedly) comes, I wish that I could experience it at least once, so that I'd know if I'd get epiphanies, in which case I'd want to keep pursuing it, or if I'd just feel high, or disoriented, or whatever, in which case I'd move onto other thoughts. The not knowing keeps it niggling at my mind.
On Mad Mad House this week, Art the modern primitive did a suspension ritual, where his body hung in the air by huge hooks buried in the flesh of his back. I was in absolute AWE watching it happen; he was so calm, peaceful, relaxed, he looked almost half-asleep... and this is while they were putting the hooks in!! He didn't flinch, in fact he gave no sign of being aware that he was being skewered. Once he was hanging, he looked like someone mulling over a pleasant fantasy, rather than someone dangling from screaming chunks of his back. He then got one of the girls who was watching to get up on a ladder so that he could get his arms around her and hold HER weight along with his own. I'd never heard of anyone doing that, and it was mind-boggling to imagine what that experience was like for them, with both of them bonded together with him in what certainly looked like a deeply spiritual state; while it was happening, I kept telling my husband that I'd LOVE to be where she was, as long as I felt REALLY sure that he had held someone of at least my weight before and was in no danger of those hooks ripping through his skin... what would a person feel, buoyed up by someone in the throes of such a powerful experience?
What would a person feel IN the throes of such a powerful experience? I wish I knew. I wonder, if I wish hard enough, will karma grant me a chance to find out? I'm going to try...
Friday, April 02, 2004
Another scary one
I was reading a new book, alternating chunks of text with zoning out and working through an unrelated story in my head, as I usually do, and one of the characters in my mental story took a strange turn and said something wildly atypical, as often happens to me (they can really take on a life of their own, and then it's more like watching a movie than a purposeful act of creation), and I took a few minutes to work out how the scene would move forward from the unusual, but interesting, comment. When I was done, I read the little bit at the end of the page, turned to the next one, and a few lines down, there it was... the same , odd, unexpected line that MY character had said, and it was every bit as bizarre of a line in the printed story as it had been in my head-it did NOT follow any logical path from what had gone on before.
So, the line popped into my head before I'd read it; this could be an example of precognition, or just "pure esp" where I saw something in my mind that I hadn't see with my eyes, having no connection to whether or not I was about to "really see it"... my vote is for precognition, but that's just a guess.
The more you open your mind up to this sort of stuff, the more it shows up; not freaking out is important, too, because psychic flow can be like creativity-a little disruption, a little emotional upheaval, and it dries up.
Some nonbelievers say things like, "But, you're forgetting all the times you DIDN'T know in advance," which ignores the fact that this sort of weird stuff popping into your head should NEVER happen in an esp-free world; if you even ONCE know in advance, that's proof that it CAN happen. We're not talking about something vague and general, like looking at the green curtains, thinking "green," and having green grass show up on the next page of a book, and as much as skeptics want to say that even very specific, detailed thoughts, and dreams, are the same as the generalities that are statistically certain to coincide eventually, they're NOT. The clincher; people who don't believe in psychic phenomena don't HAVE these sorts of perceptions... but, if they're something that automatically happens to people, why DON'T they have them? And they call ME illogical, for believing things that I've seen endless proof of, lol.
So, the line popped into my head before I'd read it; this could be an example of precognition, or just "pure esp" where I saw something in my mind that I hadn't see with my eyes, having no connection to whether or not I was about to "really see it"... my vote is for precognition, but that's just a guess.
The more you open your mind up to this sort of stuff, the more it shows up; not freaking out is important, too, because psychic flow can be like creativity-a little disruption, a little emotional upheaval, and it dries up.
Some nonbelievers say things like, "But, you're forgetting all the times you DIDN'T know in advance," which ignores the fact that this sort of weird stuff popping into your head should NEVER happen in an esp-free world; if you even ONCE know in advance, that's proof that it CAN happen. We're not talking about something vague and general, like looking at the green curtains, thinking "green," and having green grass show up on the next page of a book, and as much as skeptics want to say that even very specific, detailed thoughts, and dreams, are the same as the generalities that are statistically certain to coincide eventually, they're NOT. The clincher; people who don't believe in psychic phenomena don't HAVE these sorts of perceptions... but, if they're something that automatically happens to people, why DON'T they have them? And they call ME illogical, for believing things that I've seen endless proof of, lol.
Thursday, April 01, 2004
The real you?
Thursday again, and that means more inspiration from Mad Mad House... and I don't mean just from looking at Don the hot vampire. ;-)
I started out with some teeth gritting as the contestants discussed the reasons it was "right" that the best one of them, the one who was like a mom to people and was doing everything right, had been eliminated; she was too much of a safety net and security blanket for everyone, so of course she had to be kicked out..... GRRRRRRRRRRRRR.
Further teeth gritting ensued when the jerk who tricked one of the judges into doubting the sincerity of the girl who was in the lead admitted for the cameras that he was being a puppetmaster with that judge, bragging that he had totally fooled her and thus screwed the girl's chances; that little sociopath will end up winning, just watch... there's alot of bad karma in the way these sorts of competitions are fought, and that can lead to the lower life forms triumphing.
Then, a NEW aspect of the evils of human nature was demonstrated; after this poor girl had been harangued by everyone, she got upset, and was reacting in an upset matter... and the jerk triumphantly referred to that as the "real her" emerging.
HUH?!!!!!!
When you get upset, and act in a different way than you do when you're calm, do you consider your upset way of acting, that you probably don't show even 1% of the time, as the REAL you, or do you consider the way you are 99% of the time, with a clear head, to be the real you? I know the answer to that, and it makes me very, VERY irritated when someone provokes a person, or joins with a group in provoking a person, and then comes out with some sort of criticism or snide remarks about the perfectly natural, normal and acceptable upset that the victim shows... especially when other people swallow the idea and add further insult to injury for the victim.
In my view, anyone who deliberately attacks a person in public is immature, pitiful, and an asshole... and that goes times ten for people who are cowardly enough to attack as part of a group. Anyone who observes this sort of thing and buys whatever nonsense the attackers come out with, or judges against the victim based on such an attack, is weak, stupid, and a sheep. Anyone who witnesses such an attack, has the opportunity to stand up for the victim or otherwise intervene, and fails to do so, is no better morally than the attackers. Harsh words? You bet... but true nonetheless.
When you see someone who is mad, scared, upset, sick or in pain, make a conscious effort to remind yourself that this is NOT who they normally are, and so NOT what you should judge them by, and hopefully the next time YOU are observed at your worst, people will do you the same favor, and not see that as the "real you."
I started out with some teeth gritting as the contestants discussed the reasons it was "right" that the best one of them, the one who was like a mom to people and was doing everything right, had been eliminated; she was too much of a safety net and security blanket for everyone, so of course she had to be kicked out..... GRRRRRRRRRRRRR.
Further teeth gritting ensued when the jerk who tricked one of the judges into doubting the sincerity of the girl who was in the lead admitted for the cameras that he was being a puppetmaster with that judge, bragging that he had totally fooled her and thus screwed the girl's chances; that little sociopath will end up winning, just watch... there's alot of bad karma in the way these sorts of competitions are fought, and that can lead to the lower life forms triumphing.
Then, a NEW aspect of the evils of human nature was demonstrated; after this poor girl had been harangued by everyone, she got upset, and was reacting in an upset matter... and the jerk triumphantly referred to that as the "real her" emerging.
HUH?!!!!!!
When you get upset, and act in a different way than you do when you're calm, do you consider your upset way of acting, that you probably don't show even 1% of the time, as the REAL you, or do you consider the way you are 99% of the time, with a clear head, to be the real you? I know the answer to that, and it makes me very, VERY irritated when someone provokes a person, or joins with a group in provoking a person, and then comes out with some sort of criticism or snide remarks about the perfectly natural, normal and acceptable upset that the victim shows... especially when other people swallow the idea and add further insult to injury for the victim.
In my view, anyone who deliberately attacks a person in public is immature, pitiful, and an asshole... and that goes times ten for people who are cowardly enough to attack as part of a group. Anyone who observes this sort of thing and buys whatever nonsense the attackers come out with, or judges against the victim based on such an attack, is weak, stupid, and a sheep. Anyone who witnesses such an attack, has the opportunity to stand up for the victim or otherwise intervene, and fails to do so, is no better morally than the attackers. Harsh words? You bet... but true nonetheless.
When you see someone who is mad, scared, upset, sick or in pain, make a conscious effort to remind yourself that this is NOT who they normally are, and so NOT what you should judge them by, and hopefully the next time YOU are observed at your worst, people will do you the same favor, and not see that as the "real you."
Stupid dieting ideas
Americans are fat because we eat far more than people in other countries, choose higher-calorie foods, and are inactive... AND, more and more, because we hear stupid diet advice that we then mis-apply.
A few days ago, a friend of mine, one with a PhD, mind you, who wants to lose weight, was wolfing down slivered almonds; my husband had recently bought me some nut brittles, so I asked her if she liked them. Her response was that she couldn't eat them because she couldn't eat sweets, as she was trying to lose weight; you should have seen her face when I pointed out that the nuts she was inhaling were very high in fat, and, since fat has 9 calories per gram, compared to the 4 calories per gram found in ALL carbs, including sugars, she'd consume far FEWER calories if she ate sweets than if she ate nuts, not to mention being more satisfied because she's be eating what she actually WANTED. She understood what I'd said, but this otherwise brilliant woman had heard enough "carbs are bad" talk to think that some sort of magic made what I said somehow untrue... and she is NOT on Atkins or any of the other equally stupid and unhealthy low carb diets, she's just thinking in terms of calories, and she believes that because something is sweet, it has hidden calories that are not present in other carbs, and that exceed the level of calories in high-fat nuts.
Today, another friend who is attempting to lose weight described with pride how she was only eating sweets on weekends, as opposed to every day... as she scarfed down breaded, fried shrimp and pasta with cheese sauce. I pointed out to HER the realities about sweets, and the high-caloric nature of many NON-sweet foods, and she looked vaguely resentful, as I was removing the pedestal she was putting herself on for depriving herself of harmless food she wanted 5 days of the week while eating foods far higher in calories, and FAT, with no guilt, and wondering why she had gained weight instead of lost it.
Americans gain weight because we get a little bit of info and mis-apply it, usually by telling ourselves that there is some sort of tasty food that we CAN eat unlimited quantities of and still lose weight... and it just ain't so. All those Snackwells cookies that people ate by the boxfull may have had little or no fat, but they were still high in CALORIES. A low-carb diet is often a high-fat diet, which means weight GAIN, not loss. There's nothing magic about giving up sweets, as they are just carbs, and LESS harmful to your calorie count that fatty foods like nuts.
If you want to lose weight, forget the spurious nonsense you hear on TV and read in magazines; you have to reduce the total # of calories you consume each day to the point that your body has no choice but to burn your own fat for fuel-PERIOD. All carbs have the same # of calories per gram, regardless of flavor-4. All proteins also have 4 calories per gram. All fats, even if they are "good fats" or "nutrient dense fats," have the same # of calories per gram-9. Add up the calories you are currently consuming, come up with an eating plan with fewer calories, and stick to it, and you'll lose weight. Make sure you drink enough water, that you get ALL the vitamins and minerals you need, and that you consume carbs, protein and fat-your body needs ALL of these things to be healthy.
Oh, and get off the computer and go get some exercise; it burns calories, raises your metabolism, muscle tone makes you look thinner even if you haven't lost any weight, and muscle burns more calories even at rest than fat does.
And by all means eat something that you LIKE every day; life is too short to have your daily food intake be grim and misery-producing.
A few days ago, a friend of mine, one with a PhD, mind you, who wants to lose weight, was wolfing down slivered almonds; my husband had recently bought me some nut brittles, so I asked her if she liked them. Her response was that she couldn't eat them because she couldn't eat sweets, as she was trying to lose weight; you should have seen her face when I pointed out that the nuts she was inhaling were very high in fat, and, since fat has 9 calories per gram, compared to the 4 calories per gram found in ALL carbs, including sugars, she'd consume far FEWER calories if she ate sweets than if she ate nuts, not to mention being more satisfied because she's be eating what she actually WANTED. She understood what I'd said, but this otherwise brilliant woman had heard enough "carbs are bad" talk to think that some sort of magic made what I said somehow untrue... and she is NOT on Atkins or any of the other equally stupid and unhealthy low carb diets, she's just thinking in terms of calories, and she believes that because something is sweet, it has hidden calories that are not present in other carbs, and that exceed the level of calories in high-fat nuts.
Today, another friend who is attempting to lose weight described with pride how she was only eating sweets on weekends, as opposed to every day... as she scarfed down breaded, fried shrimp and pasta with cheese sauce. I pointed out to HER the realities about sweets, and the high-caloric nature of many NON-sweet foods, and she looked vaguely resentful, as I was removing the pedestal she was putting herself on for depriving herself of harmless food she wanted 5 days of the week while eating foods far higher in calories, and FAT, with no guilt, and wondering why she had gained weight instead of lost it.
Americans gain weight because we get a little bit of info and mis-apply it, usually by telling ourselves that there is some sort of tasty food that we CAN eat unlimited quantities of and still lose weight... and it just ain't so. All those Snackwells cookies that people ate by the boxfull may have had little or no fat, but they were still high in CALORIES. A low-carb diet is often a high-fat diet, which means weight GAIN, not loss. There's nothing magic about giving up sweets, as they are just carbs, and LESS harmful to your calorie count that fatty foods like nuts.
If you want to lose weight, forget the spurious nonsense you hear on TV and read in magazines; you have to reduce the total # of calories you consume each day to the point that your body has no choice but to burn your own fat for fuel-PERIOD. All carbs have the same # of calories per gram, regardless of flavor-4. All proteins also have 4 calories per gram. All fats, even if they are "good fats" or "nutrient dense fats," have the same # of calories per gram-9. Add up the calories you are currently consuming, come up with an eating plan with fewer calories, and stick to it, and you'll lose weight. Make sure you drink enough water, that you get ALL the vitamins and minerals you need, and that you consume carbs, protein and fat-your body needs ALL of these things to be healthy.
Oh, and get off the computer and go get some exercise; it burns calories, raises your metabolism, muscle tone makes you look thinner even if you haven't lost any weight, and muscle burns more calories even at rest than fat does.
And by all means eat something that you LIKE every day; life is too short to have your daily food intake be grim and misery-producing.
