Friday, February 24, 2006
And now, an Omniverse news report
Here are the top stories in the Omni household:
3) The shirt replacement project that I posted about on 2-16-06 is proceeding at breakneck speed; as of when I'm writing this, I've won auctions for ***25*** shirts and sweaters, with more auctions still to go. I actually counted them today, and nearly fainted when I saw just how many I'd gotten; most people in the world don't have that many shirts TOTAL, and I'm just getting these to replace the ones I tossed out, and to have some nicer stuff available should a non-geek occasion arise that I had to dress for... YIKES!! In my defense, these shirts and sweaters cover warm, cold and in-between weather, nice-office and dressy, a couple of things to wear in case I go to a concert or club, and then a couple of casual ones that I spotted in my searches, and... and it's still ALOT, I know. I've been getting smokin' bargains, at least, and my husband, to his everlasting credit, agrees completely that I need to have an adult wardrobe that'll allow me to dress for any occasion short of a ball or other really formal event, so... I really need to wrap this up and move onto the next project; pants other than jeans. And I will. Soon. Really.
2) Bad news; we haven't seen any of our little possum friends for WEEKS now. First the little female vanished, then the alpha male became very sporadic and then stopped coming, then the gamma male didn't show up for a while, reappeared one night with alot of his fur ripped out, and then disappeared for good, and finally the beta male, who for a couple of weeks was the only one left, stopped coming too. We have no idea what happened to them; are they hibernating? Have they been trapped and relocated, even though they're shy and inoffensive creatures who, unlike the other critters targeted for removal, don't dig up the landscaping (ground squirrels), stink (skunks), or scare little kids (coyotes)? Or, are they
(dead)
maybe being scared away by an aggressive dog that's moved in near wherever it is they'd been sleeping? Whatever it is, we're VERY sad to not see them any more, and keep hoping that at least some of them will return, particularly the alpha male, who was our 1st possum and our favorite.
Wild animals will break your heart; it's not a safe world for them, and you're helpless to protect them. Still, I love them passionately, so there'll always be some food and water out there ready for whoever comes to visit.
1) My mother called last night to make sure she still has a ride for her 2nd chemo session, which will be for 5 hours (!!!) on Monday. During this call, she announced that her tumor, which had grown to about 6 cm (!!!) before the 1st chemo session, has, unbelievably, SHRUNK TO 2 CM!!!!!!!!!!!!!! I'm not a doctor, but I've read a zillion cancer-related articles in my life, and I've never heard of anything that could reduce a tumor by 4 cm after ONE treatment... what the heck are they dosing her with?!! I DID ask her, and of course she doesn't know, sigh; I'm going to prod her to get some sort of printout from them describing what they're giving her, so I can look it up, and of course I'll post it here so that any readers with loved ones with breast cancer (or maybe other cancers, I don't know how specific this stuff is) will have something to suggest they ask their doctors about.
When she told me a few weeks ago that the oncologist had said that the chemo might totally eliminate the tumor, I thought he was giving her false hope, especially given the size and aggressiveness of it, but it seems totally possible now; at the very least, she should be able to have MUCH less radical surgery to remove it than the partial mastectomy and skin graft they would have needed to remove such a big tumor in that particular spot (a couple of inches below her collarbone, where there's not much spare flesh) had the chemo not worked. The cautionary note is that the tumor could become resistant to the chemo at any time, and not only stop shrinking but start growing again... and it's always possible that the chemo will become too much for her heart, or mess up the white cell or platelet counts in her blood too much, or that she'll develop an allergy to it (she saw that happen to a man who was being treated at the same time as she was, which really made her nervous); still, we're optimistic.
Never a dull moment...
3) The shirt replacement project that I posted about on 2-16-06 is proceeding at breakneck speed; as of when I'm writing this, I've won auctions for ***25*** shirts and sweaters, with more auctions still to go. I actually counted them today, and nearly fainted when I saw just how many I'd gotten; most people in the world don't have that many shirts TOTAL, and I'm just getting these to replace the ones I tossed out, and to have some nicer stuff available should a non-geek occasion arise that I had to dress for... YIKES!! In my defense, these shirts and sweaters cover warm, cold and in-between weather, nice-office and dressy, a couple of things to wear in case I go to a concert or club, and then a couple of casual ones that I spotted in my searches, and... and it's still ALOT, I know. I've been getting smokin' bargains, at least, and my husband, to his everlasting credit, agrees completely that I need to have an adult wardrobe that'll allow me to dress for any occasion short of a ball or other really formal event, so... I really need to wrap this up and move onto the next project; pants other than jeans. And I will. Soon. Really.
2) Bad news; we haven't seen any of our little possum friends for WEEKS now. First the little female vanished, then the alpha male became very sporadic and then stopped coming, then the gamma male didn't show up for a while, reappeared one night with alot of his fur ripped out, and then disappeared for good, and finally the beta male, who for a couple of weeks was the only one left, stopped coming too. We have no idea what happened to them; are they hibernating? Have they been trapped and relocated, even though they're shy and inoffensive creatures who, unlike the other critters targeted for removal, don't dig up the landscaping (ground squirrels), stink (skunks), or scare little kids (coyotes)? Or, are they
(dead)
maybe being scared away by an aggressive dog that's moved in near wherever it is they'd been sleeping? Whatever it is, we're VERY sad to not see them any more, and keep hoping that at least some of them will return, particularly the alpha male, who was our 1st possum and our favorite.
Wild animals will break your heart; it's not a safe world for them, and you're helpless to protect them. Still, I love them passionately, so there'll always be some food and water out there ready for whoever comes to visit.
1) My mother called last night to make sure she still has a ride for her 2nd chemo session, which will be for 5 hours (!!!) on Monday. During this call, she announced that her tumor, which had grown to about 6 cm (!!!) before the 1st chemo session, has, unbelievably, SHRUNK TO 2 CM!!!!!!!!!!!!!! I'm not a doctor, but I've read a zillion cancer-related articles in my life, and I've never heard of anything that could reduce a tumor by 4 cm after ONE treatment... what the heck are they dosing her with?!! I DID ask her, and of course she doesn't know, sigh; I'm going to prod her to get some sort of printout from them describing what they're giving her, so I can look it up, and of course I'll post it here so that any readers with loved ones with breast cancer (or maybe other cancers, I don't know how specific this stuff is) will have something to suggest they ask their doctors about.
When she told me a few weeks ago that the oncologist had said that the chemo might totally eliminate the tumor, I thought he was giving her false hope, especially given the size and aggressiveness of it, but it seems totally possible now; at the very least, she should be able to have MUCH less radical surgery to remove it than the partial mastectomy and skin graft they would have needed to remove such a big tumor in that particular spot (a couple of inches below her collarbone, where there's not much spare flesh) had the chemo not worked. The cautionary note is that the tumor could become resistant to the chemo at any time, and not only stop shrinking but start growing again... and it's always possible that the chemo will become too much for her heart, or mess up the white cell or platelet counts in her blood too much, or that she'll develop an allergy to it (she saw that happen to a man who was being treated at the same time as she was, which really made her nervous); still, we're optimistic.
Never a dull moment...
Wednesday, February 22, 2006
The karma of lying
A 3rd consecutive spiritual post-HOORAY!! It's either feast or famine with spiritual insights; I hesitate to bog you down with too much consecutive karmic commentary (nifty alliteration, huh?), but I've gotta strike while the iron's hot, so:
I finally managed to sort out the karma of lying, and... it's not good news, sadly. Karma is an engine, NOT an entity making value judgments; it gathers up all the energy we produce, applies certain rules to it, and produces an outcome, just like a computer program receives input and creates output... which means withOUT applying a moral or ethical analysis as part of the process. Because of this, some behaviors we humans consider "bad" don't necessarily lead to bad karma; lying appears to be one of those things.
I'm NOT saying that there aren't ever bad outcomes from lying; if you're caught in a lie, especially if the lie upsets people or has caused problems attributable to you, obviously you could be in for trouble, but that's cause and effect, not karma. People might direct negative thoughts and feelings at you because of your lie, and that IS bad karma, but it's part of the cause and effect, it's not from the lie itself; that sounds like hair-splitting, but hang on a minute and I'll show you why that distinction needs to be made.
Let's take the being caught part out of the equation, to eliminate the cause and effect issue. The next layer to ponder is; isn't there negative karma created by the telling of a lie when you do it with mean intent, because you're radiating negative energy with your thoughts and feelings when you do it? Sadly, no; ugly thoughts and emotions DO create negative energy, of course, but you can have them withOUT lying, so they're a separate issue from the lie itself... we have to look at JUST the lie in order to properly analyze it.
So, then, let's look at the actual telling of the lie; speaking is an action, and so is typing, writing, sending smoke signals or any other method you could use to tell a lie... and doesn't taking an action with bad intention create negative energy? Yes, BUT, and here's an even finer splitting of a hair; the negative energy was created because you were trying to be mean, NOT because you told a lie, and that goes for if you were just lying for the evil glee of it as well as if you were lying to try to do harm.
Ok, now here's what I've been working towards; suppose you told a "pure lie," in other words one with no possibility of causing any sort of harm, one you can't ever be caught at and upbraided for, one backed by no evil thoughts or feelings, just an absolutely plain, emotionless telling of an untruth... that would allow us to do a REAL test of the karma of a lie, wouldn't it? Let's look at a theoretical example of telling a "pure truth," then: Imagine informing a co-worker that you got home from work really late last night and were too tired to cook, and they asked you what you ate; you had a sandwich, but you tell them you had instant mac and cheese... what's the karmic impact of that? NOTHING. Your co-worker wasn't affected in any way by what you said, in fact not a single person or thing in the entire world was affected by it, so the mere giving of an untrue piece of information MUST BE karmically neutral; telling a lie does NOT in and of itself bring bad karma.
Sucks, doesn't it?
This is why people who are compulsive liars, like my husband, don't get the karmic kick in the butt we think they deserve for doing something wrong; people like this often just blither out the 1st thing that comes into their minds without any thought or feeling behind it, or they might see lying as being the most effective way to handle people and be doing it in the same mechanical way they'd shake hands with someone they're meeting for the 1st time... as long as they don't get caught, they suffer no ill karmic effects. It gets worse; they might feel pleasure and pride while they're lying, as if they were accomplishing something admirable by hoodwinking their listener(s), and this would, horrifyingly enough, radiate POSITIVE energy and bring them GOOD karma... how grim is THAT? Even if they're just feeling relief that they're successfully lying their way out of doing a chore or getting in trouble, that's still positive; as long as they don't intermingle the feeling with thoughts like "I tricked you, you stupid jerk," or mean-spirited joy in doing wrong, they're still on the plus side.
The bright spot in this sad state of affairs is that when you tell a so-called white lie, such as assuring a mother that her ugly baby is beautiful, as long as your mental focus is "I don't want to hurt her feelings, so I'll say something nice to make her happy" rather than "Man, that kid is UGLY, I wish I could tell her but I'm gonna fool her instead," you'll be generating positive energy and thus good karma. If you're absolutely emotionless about it, are NOT thinking about how the baby looks like a balding baboon, and are merely reciting what you know is expected of you, you're karmically neutral; that sort of thought control is tricky, but, as always, you really need to make the effort to not focus on unpleasant things, to keep from drawing negative energy into your life.
Here's a final twist; if you tell the TRUTH, and by doing so cause problems or upset someone, that generates negative energy and gets you BAD karma... exactly the opposite of what our concept of morality says should happen. Now, granted, lying WILL usually bring trouble, either via cause and effect or the negative thoughts and feelings which generally accompany it, and telling the truth usually helps AVOID trouble, as do the morally-approved white lies, so most of the time the end result IS what we think it "should" be; you might want to think long and hard about the comparative merits of brutal honestly vs tact and diplomacy, though, if you want to keep your karma clean.
This whole concept has thoroughly bummed me out; I HATE anything that makes it easier for evil people to get away with their wrongdoings. Since karma doesn't "handle" liars for us, we need to make extra effort in that area ourselves; if you catch someone in a lie, I don't mean a trivial social lie but a REAL lie, don't EVER blindly believe them again, and make sure that no one else in your circle of mutual acquaintance does either... and take it as a red flag for other bad behaviors that are just over the horizon, too, because it's a rare person that just has ONE bad thing they do. Remember; the evil people of the world only win if YOU let them.
I finally managed to sort out the karma of lying, and... it's not good news, sadly. Karma is an engine, NOT an entity making value judgments; it gathers up all the energy we produce, applies certain rules to it, and produces an outcome, just like a computer program receives input and creates output... which means withOUT applying a moral or ethical analysis as part of the process. Because of this, some behaviors we humans consider "bad" don't necessarily lead to bad karma; lying appears to be one of those things.
I'm NOT saying that there aren't ever bad outcomes from lying; if you're caught in a lie, especially if the lie upsets people or has caused problems attributable to you, obviously you could be in for trouble, but that's cause and effect, not karma. People might direct negative thoughts and feelings at you because of your lie, and that IS bad karma, but it's part of the cause and effect, it's not from the lie itself; that sounds like hair-splitting, but hang on a minute and I'll show you why that distinction needs to be made.
Let's take the being caught part out of the equation, to eliminate the cause and effect issue. The next layer to ponder is; isn't there negative karma created by the telling of a lie when you do it with mean intent, because you're radiating negative energy with your thoughts and feelings when you do it? Sadly, no; ugly thoughts and emotions DO create negative energy, of course, but you can have them withOUT lying, so they're a separate issue from the lie itself... we have to look at JUST the lie in order to properly analyze it.
So, then, let's look at the actual telling of the lie; speaking is an action, and so is typing, writing, sending smoke signals or any other method you could use to tell a lie... and doesn't taking an action with bad intention create negative energy? Yes, BUT, and here's an even finer splitting of a hair; the negative energy was created because you were trying to be mean, NOT because you told a lie, and that goes for if you were just lying for the evil glee of it as well as if you were lying to try to do harm.
Ok, now here's what I've been working towards; suppose you told a "pure lie," in other words one with no possibility of causing any sort of harm, one you can't ever be caught at and upbraided for, one backed by no evil thoughts or feelings, just an absolutely plain, emotionless telling of an untruth... that would allow us to do a REAL test of the karma of a lie, wouldn't it? Let's look at a theoretical example of telling a "pure truth," then: Imagine informing a co-worker that you got home from work really late last night and were too tired to cook, and they asked you what you ate; you had a sandwich, but you tell them you had instant mac and cheese... what's the karmic impact of that? NOTHING. Your co-worker wasn't affected in any way by what you said, in fact not a single person or thing in the entire world was affected by it, so the mere giving of an untrue piece of information MUST BE karmically neutral; telling a lie does NOT in and of itself bring bad karma.
Sucks, doesn't it?
This is why people who are compulsive liars, like my husband, don't get the karmic kick in the butt we think they deserve for doing something wrong; people like this often just blither out the 1st thing that comes into their minds without any thought or feeling behind it, or they might see lying as being the most effective way to handle people and be doing it in the same mechanical way they'd shake hands with someone they're meeting for the 1st time... as long as they don't get caught, they suffer no ill karmic effects. It gets worse; they might feel pleasure and pride while they're lying, as if they were accomplishing something admirable by hoodwinking their listener(s), and this would, horrifyingly enough, radiate POSITIVE energy and bring them GOOD karma... how grim is THAT? Even if they're just feeling relief that they're successfully lying their way out of doing a chore or getting in trouble, that's still positive; as long as they don't intermingle the feeling with thoughts like "I tricked you, you stupid jerk," or mean-spirited joy in doing wrong, they're still on the plus side.
The bright spot in this sad state of affairs is that when you tell a so-called white lie, such as assuring a mother that her ugly baby is beautiful, as long as your mental focus is "I don't want to hurt her feelings, so I'll say something nice to make her happy" rather than "Man, that kid is UGLY, I wish I could tell her but I'm gonna fool her instead," you'll be generating positive energy and thus good karma. If you're absolutely emotionless about it, are NOT thinking about how the baby looks like a balding baboon, and are merely reciting what you know is expected of you, you're karmically neutral; that sort of thought control is tricky, but, as always, you really need to make the effort to not focus on unpleasant things, to keep from drawing negative energy into your life.
Here's a final twist; if you tell the TRUTH, and by doing so cause problems or upset someone, that generates negative energy and gets you BAD karma... exactly the opposite of what our concept of morality says should happen. Now, granted, lying WILL usually bring trouble, either via cause and effect or the negative thoughts and feelings which generally accompany it, and telling the truth usually helps AVOID trouble, as do the morally-approved white lies, so most of the time the end result IS what we think it "should" be; you might want to think long and hard about the comparative merits of brutal honestly vs tact and diplomacy, though, if you want to keep your karma clean.
This whole concept has thoroughly bummed me out; I HATE anything that makes it easier for evil people to get away with their wrongdoings. Since karma doesn't "handle" liars for us, we need to make extra effort in that area ourselves; if you catch someone in a lie, I don't mean a trivial social lie but a REAL lie, don't EVER blindly believe them again, and make sure that no one else in your circle of mutual acquaintance does either... and take it as a red flag for other bad behaviors that are just over the horizon, too, because it's a rare person that just has ONE bad thing they do. Remember; the evil people of the world only win if YOU let them.
Monday, February 20, 2006
New spiritual insight, part 2
Pleased and relieved to have my spiritual engine revving again, I was casting around for another topic to pursue, and was tentatively starting to analyze the karmic impact of lying vs telling the truth... when an extension of what I said in my previous posted popped into my head:
There are other ways to influence a person's behavior besides taking an action that changes their emotional state.
For example; what if you informed someone that their romantic partner was cheating on them? It's the partner's actions that'll be the cause of the ensuing emotional train wreck, not yours, but do you get NO karmic feedback for being the bearer of bad news?
What if you withhold the information about the cheating, or even lie to protect the cheater (eg if he were your brother), and then he gets his innocent partner pregnant before he gets up the nerve to dump her, leaving her to deal with an abortion or the harsh realities of a lonely pregnancy and single motherhood on top of her devastation from being dumped, and forcing 2 people who by that point despise each other to be stuck in each other's lives forever if she has and keeps the child... what's your karmic burden then?
What if you gave a co-worker some inside info about office politics that allowed them to win a promotion; would you get karmic benefits in addition to their gratitude? When their family starts enjoying having more $ coming in, and thus is sending out positive energy, will any of that be aimed at YOU?
What if you give someone a stock tip and they make a mint... or go broke?
What if someone's spying on a private conversation you're having with another person to whom you give a stock tip, and the eavesdropper uses the tip with major results? Does everything you say hook you up karmically to whoever hears you, even if you weren't aware they were listening, and didn't mean or want them to be?
Does EVERYONE who receives info from you in ANY way have the potential to affect your karma if that info influences their actions, feelings or even thoughts? What does that mean for your karma if you're a journalist... or a blogger?
What about when someone admires you and emulates you, not because you told them to, not because you gave them info that made it seem like a good idea, but purely because they want to do what you're doing? What if a friend buys a flashy sports car because YOU bought one, and gets injured because they can't really handle the stick shift and so get into an accident? Is it ridiculous to think that that'd bring you bad karma? Are you SURE?
I'M not, and I wish I was... but that's a luxury reserved for those who have a religion or other spiritual doctrine that tells them what's what. As a mystic, I'm outta luck where being given answers is concerned; I have to find them all myself.
There are all sorts of ways in which you could, directly or indirectly, deliberately or accidentally, knowingly or unknowingly, willingly or unwillingly, influence how other people think, feel and act; where do you draw the line between which ones lead to karma flowing back to you and which ones don't? How CAN you draw a line, based on what? Wouldn't it have to just be a matter of degree? Do some of those degrees approach zero, or does ANY significant event in which you had some non-zero input pack a karmic wallop?
Reading over what I've written is giving me chills... and I mean that literally, there's gooseflesh on my arms as I type this. Does my visceral reaction mean I've hit a vein of truth, or just that the implications of what I'm talking about are freaking me out? Either way, it shows me that I'm headed in the right direction...
There are other ways to influence a person's behavior besides taking an action that changes their emotional state.
For example; what if you informed someone that their romantic partner was cheating on them? It's the partner's actions that'll be the cause of the ensuing emotional train wreck, not yours, but do you get NO karmic feedback for being the bearer of bad news?
What if you withhold the information about the cheating, or even lie to protect the cheater (eg if he were your brother), and then he gets his innocent partner pregnant before he gets up the nerve to dump her, leaving her to deal with an abortion or the harsh realities of a lonely pregnancy and single motherhood on top of her devastation from being dumped, and forcing 2 people who by that point despise each other to be stuck in each other's lives forever if she has and keeps the child... what's your karmic burden then?
What if you gave a co-worker some inside info about office politics that allowed them to win a promotion; would you get karmic benefits in addition to their gratitude? When their family starts enjoying having more $ coming in, and thus is sending out positive energy, will any of that be aimed at YOU?
What if you give someone a stock tip and they make a mint... or go broke?
What if someone's spying on a private conversation you're having with another person to whom you give a stock tip, and the eavesdropper uses the tip with major results? Does everything you say hook you up karmically to whoever hears you, even if you weren't aware they were listening, and didn't mean or want them to be?
Does EVERYONE who receives info from you in ANY way have the potential to affect your karma if that info influences their actions, feelings or even thoughts? What does that mean for your karma if you're a journalist... or a blogger?
What about when someone admires you and emulates you, not because you told them to, not because you gave them info that made it seem like a good idea, but purely because they want to do what you're doing? What if a friend buys a flashy sports car because YOU bought one, and gets injured because they can't really handle the stick shift and so get into an accident? Is it ridiculous to think that that'd bring you bad karma? Are you SURE?
I'M not, and I wish I was... but that's a luxury reserved for those who have a religion or other spiritual doctrine that tells them what's what. As a mystic, I'm outta luck where being given answers is concerned; I have to find them all myself.
There are all sorts of ways in which you could, directly or indirectly, deliberately or accidentally, knowingly or unknowingly, willingly or unwillingly, influence how other people think, feel and act; where do you draw the line between which ones lead to karma flowing back to you and which ones don't? How CAN you draw a line, based on what? Wouldn't it have to just be a matter of degree? Do some of those degrees approach zero, or does ANY significant event in which you had some non-zero input pack a karmic wallop?
Reading over what I've written is giving me chills... and I mean that literally, there's gooseflesh on my arms as I type this. Does my visceral reaction mean I've hit a vein of truth, or just that the implications of what I'm talking about are freaking me out? Either way, it shows me that I'm headed in the right direction...
