Functional Solutions For Living

Yesterday we started getting into the topic of functional medicine/nutrition.  I touched briefly on my story but would like to go into it a little more.

What happened to me is all to common.  It is actually the norm.

Throughout this journey, I was diagnosed with temporal lobe epilepsy, peripheral neuropathy, depression, ADD, bi-polar disorder, seizure  disorder, mild cognitive impairment, chronic fatigue syndrome, hypothyroidism, hyperthyroidism, Epstein-Barr syndrome and a few more that I just can’t remember.

My personal favorite (and my ex-girlfriend’s) was the diagnoses of evil spirits/entities!

If you are laughing, I understand.  I try to keep an open mind myself but…

The strangest and most disturbing part about this one was that it came from a specialist, an actual medical doctor.  She looked outside the door of the examination room to make sure nobody was listening, pulled her chair really close to me and said that she normally would not discuss this sort of thing in her office but there was something different about me that made her feel comfortable enough to tell me the truth.  She then proceeded to tell me that their was an evil and negative energetic entity attached to me.

In fact, she said there were three.  She continued by telling me that in a past life I made a deal or my father made a deal with these entities and they were my inheritance.

I was cursed!  But she would take care of it.  Her treat and off the books of course!  How do you bill Blue Cross for negative entity removal?

It think it is diagnosis code 666.

She then put herself into a trance and asked them to leave.  When I came back a week later she asked if I felt any better.  When I told her that I did not, she said that is was due to the entities coming back.  Apparently I let my guard down and they proclaimed some kind of netherworldly squatter’s rights.  Anthony sweet home!  “You’re ours motherf$#$%r!”

As an aside, Black Sabbath just started playing on my Internet radio station.  Uh oh!  They’rrrrre Baaaack!

Honestly, I tried to entertain the idea.  What the hell! I could have charged these evil bastards rent, maybe asked them to use their dark powers to give me the ability to turn water into wine, green tea or tarragon into some really good weed or make me play guitar like Hendrix or be as cool as JJ Jalopy or as talented as John Coltrane.  But in the end it was just ridiculous (I mean really, nobody could be as cool as JJ)!

I actually think she became a little scared of me because she had her receptionist call to inform me that she no longer wished to see me (and my dark posse) and good luck.  Back to the drawing board!

I try to have a sense of humor about this now because I feel so much better but it probably isn’t funny.  Too many people put too much trust in their physicians.

It was okay for them to tell me I had epilepsy, depression or a case of Blue Cross diagnoses code 666.

It was not okay for me to tell them that I thought I had been made sick by toxic mold or that I thought I had Candidiasis, intestinal hyperpermeability, multiple chemical sensitivities, food allergies and that my mitochondria were damaged or not working correctly.  That was downright crazy!

In fairness, my family doctor believed me or at least that I was on to something.  He was just out of his league.  He never doubted me and did send me to a specialist who helped some with ordering the right tests, but still pushed the medications which had side effects that were worse than the primary symptoms.

In the end, I was tested and found out that I had all the symptoms of toxic mold exposure (an old house I lived in was eventually torn down for being overrun by toxic mold) and was allergic to every kind of mold they tested me for, as well as wheat, corn, soy, diary, peanuts, various grains, nuts and too many other things to mention.  They found out that I had Celiacs disease and high levels of mercury in my system.

I was also diagnosed with candidiases and intestinal hyperpermeability.

My body, especially my digestive system was under attack and my immune system was going haywire.  Anything that came into my body via my mouth, nose or skin was attacked.  The candida was eating holes in my intestines and food proteins were leaking into my blood stream causing my body to attack them and in the process itself.

So much for being crazy!

We live in a toxic world and we must realize that everything in our bodies is connected.  All the core systems interact as a sophisticated symphony.

We are whole beings and all the parts of our biology and our personalized genetic code interact with the our environments to determine our level of health in each moment.

Our bodies and minds are also intimately connected.  They are a singular and dynamic bi-directional system.  They are constantly interacting.

What we do to our bodies we do to our brains and what we do to our brains we do to our bodies.

We often hear the term psychosomatic thrown around especially when cases are hard to diagnose and/or the patient is female.

What I figured out for myself (and had validated by my study of functional medicine/nutrition) is that in the majority of the cases the shrinks and doctors have it backwards.

It is somato-psychic!

An imbalance in the body is affecting the brain (mind).  Clear that up and you clear up the supposed mental problems/difficulties.

Say we both get a diagnosis of depression.  Is it because our bodies are deficient in prozac or paxil?  No!  So why treat it as such.  It just makes sense to get to the root of the problem.  At least it does to me.

For you it might be your thyroid gland or a deficiency in one of the B vitamins.  For me it might be Celiacs disease or food allergies.

The point is that everyone is unique and has a similarly unique interaction with their environment (which, by the way includes the foods you ingest).  We may have similar symptoms but have them for completely different reason.

Well, I am going to stop for now and pick this up tomorrow.  Thanks for being patient with my story.  I have never actually told it before but I think it illustrates how I came to know what I know and why I am so intimate with it.

Until then…

Kind Regards,

A

There is an epidemic in this culture of ours.  Many of our lives have been touched by it whether we know it or not.

There is something amiss with our brains.

This epidemic goes by many names — anxiety, depression, ADD, bi-polar disorder, Alzheimer’s disease, brain fog, cognitive impairment, autism and the list goes on and on.

Everyone is different so when these things happen to us we view them as individual issues or problems.  But the truth is, they are symptoms of a few underlying causes.

These apparently different diseases and disorders are really the same thing.  They are imbalances.

They are symptoms and not diseases in and of themselves.

Conventional medicine would tell you otherwise but conventional medicine uses the wrong treatment model.

Conventional medicine is in the business of treating symptoms and not people.

Why do I say this?

Am I a doctor?

No, I am not a doctor but I have suffered things most people cannot comprehend.  Many due to the ignorance and arrogance of the physicians I trusted to help me.

I have been at death’s door.  I have literally died and been brought back. I can remember floating above my body while the emergency room staff frantically worked to bring me back.  That of course is story in and of itself!

I have been diagnosed with more diseases and disorders than I can remember, all because the symptoms I was having would not fit into the conventional allopathic paradigm.

Instead of saying the simple phrase, “I don’t know”, my doctors slapped labels on me. In their defense, they often had to to justify tests, treatments or medication to the insurance company.  Which is of course another story in and of itself.

Looking back, even though I did not agree with them, I wanted to call these symptoms something, so eventually after much resistance, I caved in and went with the professional opinion.

Truthfully, I wanted an explanation, wanted to tell the people in my life something to explain the drastic weight loss and changes in my abilities and personality.

I went from being one of the sharpest, most on the ball, talented and physically fit people in my peer group to being an underweight, cognitively impaired, unemployed and distressed mess.

People were absolutely perplexed by the change and of course there were rumors!

How could this guy who eats organic food, meditates, is fit enough to do a triathalon, has a this great job and cool life seemingly turn on a dime over night?

It was a good question.  How did this happen to me?

How did I lose my powers?

How would I get them back?

Could I get them back.

Was this all in my head?  Was it psychosomatic?

Some said yes and some said absolutely not.

The best ones finally submitted to not knowing, which made it much easier to tell the ones who thought they knew  to respectfully take their DIAGNONSENSE and their medications and shove them up their asses.

I then went on a mission to figure this thing out!  Nothing was going to stop me.

Although I figured much of it out on my own, it did not make full sense until I stumbled upon a little known branch of medicine called functional medicine and extracted from it what I call functional nutrition.

All of my questions were answered but more importantly, I was validated.  The things I figured out on my own, intuitively and also from being the one who dwelled in this body day in and day out, were absolutely spot on.

It has been a crazy journey and I am still not back to 100%, but I know too much from first hand experience not to share this with the world.

There are so many people needlessly suffering.  People who are misdiagnosed and therefore receiving the wrong treatment.  Treatment in many cases (like it happened for me) that is making matters worse and more confusing for everyone involved.

Specifically, there are people and children with mental health diagnoses and the guilt, shame and stigma that is attached to them, who do not have mental health problems at all!

This has become one of my passions and I can humbly say that I have shared this knowledge in a legal and responsible way ( beware of the FDA ) and helped many people design nutritional and nutraceutical programs (with their doctor’s help if one was involved) that have changed their lives in dramatic ways.

I also addressed this this topic at a recent county board of health meeting on child safety and had tremendous feedback.  I was blown away by the number of county and state workers who just intuitively know that there are explanations and solutions for the recent epidemic of ADHD and autism.

Well that is all for this evening.  Tomorrow, we will get into more detail about how and why our bodies and brains get into this kind of trouble and learn about functional nutrition/medicine and how it can help us and our doctors help us.

After all, they are not bad guys and gals, they just don’t know.

Luckily that is changing.  Slowly but surely!

Until then…

Kind Regards,

A

Today I was going to write a blog on something near and dear to my heart, to my practice and to my life.

Functional nutrition.

Functional nutrition?

I know, what does that have to do with Zen or psychology or personal growth or success or anything?

Well, I guess we will have to get into that tomorrow because I  changed my mind.

Today I want to talk about resistance and surrender.

What is the difference?

Can they masquerade as one another?

When we make a big commitment in life, whether it is to a relationship, a career path, an educational goal or what have you, we are embarking on a journey.

Along with this commitment comes the fact that we are conditioned beings and being such have already invited much mischief to join us on this journey.

We can give this mischief a name, we can call it unconscious self-sabotage.

We will always encounter varying circumstances on our journey that have nothing to do with our little friend.  Things happen, black swans appear out of nowhere.

We try, we show up, we stick to the game plan but life often has its own game plan.

Now if against all our good intentions, everything starts to work against us in such a way that we are unable to follow through on our commitments, we must accept that that is how things are unfolding and not put up a fight.

We accept that that is what is and allow it to be without resistance.

We don’t like it.  It upsets or discourages us.  We really don’t want it to be that way, but it is out of our control and putting up a fight just causes suffering.

That is surrender.

That is also life’s way of keeping our best interest at heart by rearranging our circumstances.

On the other hand, if there is a feeling of relief, then we are likely resisting.  Then our old friend, self-sabotage, is rearing its ugly head.  Then we are manufacturing things in order to subvert or progress or potential success.

That is resistance.

It is often difficult to know when we are doing these things until they are said and done.  Also, our ego likes to wedge itself in there with it’s two cents and its other assorted bullshit, after-the-fact reasons and excuses.

Come to think of it, the ego never has excuses.  It always has reasons.  Damned good reasons!

Regardless of the ego, if it is a case of resistance then we must pick ourselves back up where we fell, be grateful for the awareness and knowledge, muster our will and determination and continue on.

Because when all is said and done, we only fail if we don’t get back up and finish!

That’s it for tonight.

Had to ramble a bit!

Tomorrow’s post will be more factsy and sciencey (spell check did not like those two words at all!)

Until then…

Kind Regards,

A

Welcome back everyone.  Hope you all made it a great weekend!

Today we will conclude our beliefs exercise.  There should be no need to recap since it is still fresh in our minds.  If you need a refresher, then go back to the previous parts and reread or better yet, redo them.

Today we will look at some of the non-useful beliefs we’ve uncovered to see how they have caused us to distort our experiences to prove that what we believed was accurate.

Again, pretty simple but not so easy.  If you have been following along, you really should have a much better understanding of how you create much of your life with your beliefs.

Awareness is the name of the game.  If you are aware of something while it is happening, in real time, then it will quickly burn up in the fires of that attention.

Remember, we are not talking about knowing we do something.  We often know we do unhealthy and unskillful things in our lives, but that knowing does not stop us does it!

Knowing this intellectually is of little value.  However, when you cultivate awareness and then learn to focus your attention on what you want rather than on what you don’t want, you will no longer be a slave to your unconscious programming and will begin creating the life you want.

Now on to the exercise!

Complete the following using your list of non-useful beliefs:

• How has my being under the influence of my beliefs caused me to distort my experiences in order to validate those beliefs:

• Belief:

• Distortion:

That is it.  Very simple!  Very powerful!

I have no doubt that everyone who participated fully has gained tremendous insight into what their beliefs are, how they work and how we create our lives with them.

I will go much deeper into this in my upcoming ebook and program.  Can’t reveal everything!

Well that is all for now.  Our beliefs sojourn is completed.  Hope you enjoyed it as much as I enjoyed sharing it with all of you.

Until next time…

Kind Regards,

A

Welcome back everyone.  Hope you enjoyed part three of our beliefs exercise and learned a little more about just how deranged your mind is.  In case you haven’t figured it out yet, you are insane.  Yes, you!  You are a slave to your conditioning and unconscious mental programming.  We all are to a greater or lesser extent but there is hope so don’t get bent out of shape.

As long as we are aware of it and understand how it functions, we can put it to work for us.  In case you can’t tell, I’m in a frisky mood.  Sometimes my mind is like a monastery and sometimes it is like a wild party.  Have no fear, the exercise will be unharmed by my wild abandon.

If you’ve done the first three parts of the exercise, you should have a much clearer understanding of your beliefs and how you attract and are attracted to certain people and situations in your life.

For example, I have heard so many people talk about attracting, dating and getting into relationships with the same person in a different body more times than I can remember.  It could be an abusive person, a dishonest person, someone who cheats on them or drinks too much or all combined into one.  If that person is out there they will find each other, fall in love and have a disaster of a relationship.

It doesn’t have to be this dramatic, but the point is that many people repeatedly put themselves into situations that don’t work!

I specifically recall a friend of mine saying how he could walk into a crowed bar or party, sit down, mind his own business and attract the most insane woman in the room every time.  He even knew how it would unfold, how the relationship would begin, end and everything in between.  Despite this knowledge he repeated it on a regular basis.

The problem was not the women, it was his beliefs.  His mind was locked into a particular view of himself and women, especially within the context of relationships.  And, keeping in mind the “we’d rather be right than happy” mantra we have discussed in the past, proved to himself over and over that these beliefs were true.

It is important we emphasize the fact that we do these types of things unconsciously.  As it was taught to me, we either delete the information that does not comply with the belief, distort it so it supports the belief or we generalize in a way that supports the belief.

The end result is we prove our beliefs to be true.

In Neal’s case he proved that he could not attract and be in a healthy relationship with a sane woman. In fact he knew all women were crazy and made it true for himself while simultaneously helping these women prove their beliefs, whatever they were, because it takes two fucked up people to do the fucked up tango!  Pardon the expression.  Told you I was feeling frisky!

I know I keep saying this, but as simple as these exercises are, they are very revealing and potent.  Very potent!

On to the exercise…

Part four

Yesterday, we focused on the beliefs we have that don’t serve us and examined how they might attract us to or make us attractive to certain situations and people that do not help us get the results we want in life.

Today, we are going to flip those things around and ask a more positive and empowering question:

In what ways could more useful and positive beliefs help me attract or be attracted to different situations and people that would help me create what I want in life?

New belief:

How that belief would help me attract or be attracted to situations or people that would help me generate what I want:

Please repeat the above process several times.

I know some of you were having difficulty with this exercise or certain parts of it. That is okay. Please do your best and don’t rack your brain too much.  Have fun with it.

Don’t expect to master something like this over night.  It also helps tremendously if you meditate or engage in some other kind mindfulness practice on a regular basis.

Awareness plays a large role in this kind of work and really, there are only a couple of really effective ways to cultivate awareness.  Meditation is one of them and I will definitely be addressing the topic of meditation in an upcoming post, so stay tuned.

Tomorrow we will complete our belief exercise and move on to something completely different but of equal value.

Until next time…

Kind Regards,

A

Today we are going to resume our exercise on beliefs.  I wanted to give us some time between exercises to let what surfaced integrate before moving on.  Often times just identifying our beliefs and seeing how we create our lives with them can have a powerful and transforming effect on us.

Luckily, we are not going to stop there.

Before moving on to the third part of the exercise, let’s do a quick recap to refresh our memories.

In the first exercise we looked at our more general beliefs.  We completed statements like the ones below, giving as many honest answers as we could think of.  Many of us discovered that the answers were very illusive or changed with our moods and things like caffeine intake.  That’s okay.

I am _____.

People are ______.

Life is _______.

There were many more than this and if you remember, we had the option of adding more if we thought something additional was necessary.

In the second part of the exercise we identified more specific beliefs by using the backdoor approach so we could bypass our conditioned, other than conscious mind and get more accurate answers.

As you may recall, we did this by looking at different areas of our lives, the results we were getting in those areas and then asking what beliefs would lead to such results.

Now that we have done the first two parts, we should have a clearer picture of which beliefs are serving us and which are not.

Now, we are ready for part three.

Today we are going to place our focus on those beliefs we identified in the first two parts that are not serving us.

We will next determine how they have caused us to be attracted to or attract certain people or situations in our lives.

This is a deceptively simple exercise but can be very revealing, so don’t underestimate its value

Complete the following:

1.     Belief:

2.     How has this belief influenced me to be attracted to or attract certain people or situations:

Please do this with all the beliefs you found that were not serving you, because the more you do, the more likely you will be able to find and understand (as far as beliefs are concerned) the blind spots that may be holding you back or causing mischief in your life.

Also, please remember that this exercise is not something we will master on the first go around.  Mastering our beliefs and using them to serve us is not something that can be done overnight.  So have fun with this and know you will have a little more knowledge and understanding about how you are creating your life and as a result more power to direct yourself in the directions you want to go.

Tomorrow, we will get to the fourth part of the exercise.

After that, we will move on to an entirely different topic that is seemingly unrelated but as you will see, has a profound influence on our emotional, physical and mental health.

So, stay tuned!

Until next time…

Kind Regards,

A

Yesterday we touched on the idea of there being a healthy and mature aspect of the ego.  We also took the perspective of viewing the ego (and its beliefs, opinions, preferences, etc) as a useful tool.

There is no need to “kill”  the ego or reject it.  We just have to understand what it is and use it to our advantage and put it down when it is not useful or needed.

Finding that balance can be so hard.  It is simple but we often don’t do so well with simple!

I mentioned the utility of having preferences or opinions when shopping for wine or a video and for choosing which lovely lady to ask out or not ask out.  I don’t want to stand in front of a wall of organic food at the store and say, “Well, they are all the same, as are we.  I am not one with the smoked salmon, I am the smoked salmon itself.”  That is not conducive to getting dinner on the table.

In the Absolute sense of things, all is One.  But we do business and love and die and fuck and kill and heal and build buildings and raise families in the relative world.  However, we don’t want to get caught up in that either.  Which is the cause of an enormous amount of suffering and dissatisfaction in the world.

We can have these amazing transcendent experiences and have glimpses of enlightenment but we still have to go to work,  pay the bills and so on.  Also, we don’t want to over identify with our work, the bills, changing our baby’s smelly diaper, or anything in our life for that matter because when we do, we end up mistaking them for who we are.

So what is it we are supposed to do?  Who really, really knows?

I do know that if you are going to try to transcend the self, you must ironically have a tremendously healthy sense of self.  You need great ego strength to get past the ego.

Or as Jack Engler put it, “You have to be somebody before you can be nobody!”

When I first started meditating and doing Zen, I had all these wild notions of what enlightenment would be like.  I envisioned it was some magical, mystical, esoteric thing that I could just crack the code to.  I’d figure it out and find eternal bliss and omniscience or whatever crazy notion I had.  I thought it would solve my problems.

That it did not do.  In fact, it put a spotlight on them and made me uncomfortably aware of the work I needed to do.  Every person I encountered became a mirror reflecting myself back to me.  I quickly learned that the issues I had with others and with life in general were my own issues and were not generated independently of me.

What I am seeing more and more is that we really are one living, breathing, ephemeral process.  We are one body and we are also its many parts both at the same time.  The relative and the absolute.

The mind likes to play the game of black and white.  It puts this here and that there.  It says, ” This is good and that is bad.”

This categorizing has a definite purpose and can be quite useful, as does the pain we were talking about a few posts ago.

I guess it all comes down to what we do with all of it.  Are we willing to train our minds so that we can respond to life rather than react to it?

That to me is taking responsibility for your life in the grandest of ways.  It is the ultimate act of compassion.  We are then in the moment, not regretting the past or fearing a non-existent future.  When we are present we do the right thing, the compassionate thing, the thing that is fresh and born of freedom and not stale and born of the conditioned, habitual mind.

At one point in my journey I heard the words that liberated me from my seeking and grasping.  I found them in a translation of an old Zen sutra called, The Faith Mind Poem.  The words were so simple and I guess I was ripe enough to get them:

“Do not seek to be enlightened, only seek to stop cherishing your own opinions”

That simple sentence changed my life.  I don’t know why, but I guess that was the code that was needed to crack me open.  I am definitely not enlightened but since I’ve gotten better at remembering to remember to stop the seeking, I’ve come many steps closer and can love, smile, connect, play my drums and appreciate my life a whole hell of a lot better.

I tend not to believe much of what I think these days and definitely don’t agree with many of my own opinions.  There is much freedom in that.

It may sound funny, but once you get a glimpse of your conditioned mind and put some space around it, you realize just how habitual and full of shit you are.  You may be shocked and disappointed at first but then you laugh and become much lighter.  Life becomes lighter.  In fact , it becomes a cause for celebration.

Until next time…

Kind Regards,

A

In writing yesterday’s blog, I realized it was a bit lengthy and decided to break it in half and give you the second part today.  I am new to this kind of writing and while I am finding my voice, I am apt to go on tangents.  Steam of consciousness stuff that has value but often takes too much time and needs organization.  Efficiency!  I am finding this all to be an exciting and tremendous learning opportunity and slowly but surely finding my way.

So without further ado let’s get into the conclusion of yesterday’s post!

We are limited and powerless but we are also infinite and powerful.  The irony is that in our attempts to be something, to be someone, to be going somewhere we often become attached to the outcome and end up feeling like nothing, feeling like nobody and feeling like we are going nowhere, in the worst of ways. 

When we identify with our possessions, our achievements or even our relationships and they change or are lost we die a kind of death.

Think of people who commit suicide when they go bankrupt or fail on a grand scale.  They are so over-identified that when their things, money and/or status are taken or they lose them in some way, they lose their reason for living. 

It does not have to be that way.   

If we cooperated with life, if we saw that not only are we a part of life, but life itself and if from that seeing we learned to be our true selves, to be authentic, we would learn that we really are nothing, nobody, nowhere.  But in a good way.  We would not be cut off from people, places, things and from ourselves.   Nor would we be attached to them.  We would just be the flow that is life.

This is not annihilation.  This is not some delusional blissed out state that renders us passive and ineffective in the world.  This is just realizing our true nature, being it more often and therefore seeing things like the ego or our opinions and preferences for what they are. 

Tools!

The ego comes in handy.  I especially find it useful when I am trying to choose a bottle of wine and a video to rent.  I like that it labels things for my convenience.  I like that it finds one woman appealing to me and another not.  I like that it tells me that I am important and should take care of myself.

I know that I have to remind myself  that the ego is a tool, it is something we put down when not necessary.  It has a mature side and an immature side.  Both of which can and will create much mischief in our lives.  Especially the immature aspect that says, “I am the center of the fucking universe!”  The mature aspect of the ego also says this but in a more balanced way.  It says, “I am the center of the universe, but so are you!”  It smiles, takes care of  relevant business and makes room for others.  It’s smart like that.  It knows that we need each other to get what we want and to be happy.

Like I stated earlier.  This is not annihilation.  Don’t be scared or turned off.  You can still have nice things and have fun.  You can still dress a certain way and look good.  You don’t have to renounce everything.  You can still set goals and achieve them.

You might however, lose interest in many of those things.  You may see them as superficial and unimportant to the big picture.  Then again you may not.

You still might want to be rich, attractive, happy and having fun but you will be doing that in a much different way and for much different reasons!

You will be doing them and living your life as an expression of freedom, an extension of gratitude and an act of love.

Until next time…

Kind Regards,

A

The other day while sitting in my living room, my awareness was drawn to a dull throbbing sensation in my head and a loud ringing in my ears.  I was feeling calm and curious, so I decided to breathe into, watch and allow the discomfort with the intention of following it back to its source.

As I sat and breathed, I noticed how my mind automatically manufactured and attempted to attach certain thoughts to this collection of sound and sensation.  It was reacting and in turn was trying to get me to react to all of this by attaching a dualistic label to it.

My mind wanted to label these sensations as “pain”, categorize the pain as “bad” and put this bad thing into the unacceptable category where it would be disliked and await the action of being gotten rid of.

It wanted to take the ephemeral, freeze it in time, turn it into an object and label it.  I was a call to action.

Seems like our minds are good at that.  “This is no good.  I don’t want this.  I have things to do and places to go.  Wow, this really sucks.  I wonder what I can do about it.  I wonder if  I ate something that triggered a food allergy?  This is no big deal, you’ve had this before and it eventually passed.  Suck it up and get on with your day!”

Then it hit me!

There was no pain.  In fact, pain was just a mental construct, a concept.  It was just a memory of an earlier thing that was a memory of an earlier thing that was a memory of an earlier thing that received the label of pain, was categorized as bad and then given a negative emotional charge.

This was not some huge revelation.  It was however, a small revolution.

I felt grateful and smiled.

There was still the ringing and throbbing in the head but it wasn’t good, it wasn’t bad, it just was.

And because it was allowed to be, without judgement, without a label, without any clinging to or pushing away, there was no “pain!”

It did its little dance and headed off into the sunset.

The things of life will always do their little dance and head off into the sunset.  That’s how life is.  Ephemeral.

And whether or not we enjoy the ride or freak out does not matter and is up to us, because things always end up the same in the end.  Not good, not bad, just as they are.

Well, that is the end of today’s transmission, but not the end of this post.

It ended up being very long so I decided to give you the other half tomorrow.

Until then…

Kind Regards,

A

I have been thinking about discipline quite a bit lately.  I have an amazing and busy life as a father, an athlete, a practitioner of Zen, a working musician, a volunteer, an entrepreneur and the list goes on and on. Lately I have been wondering how to balance all of this.

Initially, the idea of discipline arose. Then I started to question why we are disciplined or why we choose to discipline ourselves.  Then I thought of my son and what and how we are teaching him about life.  There are rules and things he must and must not do.  Lot’s of  them!

When we were children, our parents, teachers, our society taught us that we must be disciplined and under control.  We were encouraged to walk and talk from the time we were born and then we were told to sit down and shut up once we learned how!  We were told to brush our teeth, to do our homework, to study and to go to bed at a certain time.  We were told we must respect our elders, listen to authority and be on our best behavior.

As adults  we often get ambitious and want money, status and nice thing.  We want to have fun, to travel, to be important and recognized.

We also want inner peace, simplicity and to help others.  We want to settle down and have a family.  Then we want things to be a certain way for our family…

We have so many choices and just as many mixed messages from our culture about these things.  They often seem incongruous.  You can have this but not at the same time as that!  If you go here and do that then you are disqualified from…

What does this all mean?

It means that we have to adjust ourselves to something.

It means we have to adjust our minds to what others say, to subdue one desire and submit to another.

What is the result of all this conformity?  This discipline?

Does it free us?

Does it dull our minds?

Is there another way?

A way that is free from conflicting desires?

A way that is integrated and therefore free from struggle?

I think that if we loved and loved completely we would have no inner conflict.

There would just be right action, right livelihood, right everything.

But in order for that, there would have to be enormous trust amongst us all.  Especially the young and the old, the new guard and the old guard.

So until then, don’t be an automaton.  Don’t be a mindless, obedient consumer.  Don’t be an asshole.

Stick it to the man by being authentic and doing things your way, but with great love.

End of transmission.

Until next time…

Kind Regards,

A