Lesson 21 - Knowing

Have you ever met that person who seemed to know everything?  And by “seemed to know everything” I mean, they acted like a know-it-all?  And you wanted to harm them regularly and endlessly?

Perhaps you see them coming and you roll your eyes as you groan quietly because you know what is coming.  They will engage you in a conversation, and no matter what you say, they will claim to know more, or claim that you are incorrect, or both, and proceed to dazzle you with information that not only is suspect, but in many cases you are 100% certain is actually incorrect.

Ya.  You know exactly who I’m talking about.  You probably immediately had someone come to mind the moment you began reading that description.

It is entirely possible that this describes me as a younger person.  Or now.  Probably both.  But much more so when I was young.

You can’t prove otherwise.  Umm…

I remember one time when I was pretty young, I think 8 or 9, I was over at my grandparents house while my parents were away doing something that didn’t involve me.  And I, as all children, made sure I had all my prized possessions with me to ensure my time there was not full of the boring.

One item in particular that I had with me was a car magazine.  I didn’t read a ton of books at that point, but I read car magazines in the same manner as an alcoholic consumes, well, you know.  They were my favorite things.  Cars, and anything that talked about cars.

The issue I had was Car and Driver’s “Complete Automotive Lineup” edition.  What that means is, it contained in it all the cars offered by all the car companies relevant to America, with brief outlines of what they were and a statistics portion detailing all the goodies you want to know.

As far as I was concerned it was, in fact, the greatest thing ever printed on paper.  Or anything else for that matter.  I wasn’t restricted to just learning about a couple cars at a time, I could learn about all the cars being sold that year.  

It was glorious.

I read that magazine non-stop.  I poored through it.  Breathed it in.  I memorized every page.  Every car, every contour, every specification.  I could tell you everything about every car in that magazine.

As I sat at grandma’s table reading through the magazine, again, grandpa came home from work and saw me flipping through it.  He came over and looked at one particular page containing a Cadillac Eldorado and said, “Wow, those Coupe Deville’s sure are nice.”

I said, “No grandpa, that is an Eldorado.”

He said, “No, I’m pretty sure that’s a Coupe Deville.”

I said, “It’s an Eldorado.  I know it is.”

He said, “I’m sorry, I’m quite positive that it is a Coupe Deville.”

Believe it or not, this went on till we were both angry and he finally just walked away.

But I didn’t care.  I knew I was correct.  I knew everything in this magazine.  To prove it to myself I looked back at the magazine and scanned down to the car and read it’s name.

Cadillac Coupe Deville.

I was confused.  How could it be a Coupe Deville?  I had memorized everything here.  I knew what a Coupe Deville looked like and what an Eldorado looked like.  How could I have gotten this wrong?  

Of course, it had never occurred to me during that entire argument to look at the actual name of the vehicle.  I was so self assured of my knowledge it had never crossed my mind to double check.

I thought I knew.

While I am sure none of you have ever taken it that far, I’m sure you have experienced that moment of befuddlement when you realized something you were so sure of wasn’t what you thought at all.  It happens to everyone eventually.  Over time we begin to realize that we really don’t know all that much at all.  As we mature, we accept that it’s best to double and triple check our facts before we stick our heads too far into the noose.

When it comes to the fact in life, and often even of life, we know that there isn’t too much that we can truly know for certain.  At least, not in the details.

But I want to share something that I believe you can know without even a hint of doubt.  It is illustrated quite well in the lesson of the seed.

However, to tell that story, I have to tell you a different one first.

How many of you have ever heard of “physics”?  Yes, yes.  I’m kidding.  Of course you all know what that is.

There is a pretty knew theory in physics called The Amplituhedron Theory.  I’m not going to bore you with all the details.  You can look it up and read all about it.  It is changing the way physicists look at the universe in a number of fundamental ways.  One of those ways is how we view time and space.

If you are a physics geek I both applaud you and then ask your patience with me and forgiveness as I proceed to butcher the idea here.

Up until now, physics has maintained that time and space are fundamental components of reality.  However, with the discovery of a new geometric math model for doing calculations, they are beginning to believe that time and space are NOT fundamental components of reality.  They are not the CAUSE of anything.  They are more akin to an EFFECT.  They are dependent upon other factors.  And depending upon those factors, may not be what we think they are.

This is a big deal.  Time isn’t what we think it is.

The calculations are so good, they have been able to simplify their math from multiple pages full of equations down to a single sentence.

And they work.  More importantly, they work better.

This is huge in the world of physics.

What does this have to do with the seed?  Let me try to pull this together for you.

Have you ever taken a small seed, let’s say an apple seed, and really thought about what it is?  Inside that seed contains everything needed to grow an entire tree full of seed containing apples.  The entire blueprint for that tree is inside that seed.  All you need is water and dirt.  The tree is just waiting to come out.  All of it’s energy and potential is all there inside that tiny seed.

For those of you who are Bible readers, you have probably read the verse about “having the faith of a mustard seed, and you could make the mountains jump into the ocean.”  If you haven’t read the Bible, there is a verse that says this.  Now, you don’t have to believe in the Bible to get the point I’m working toward.  But if you do, maybe this will be fun.  Or you will disagree.  In which case, I’m sure I’m right always about everything and shut up.  (I think we covered my know-it-all tendencies earlier.  Please forgive me.)

Normally this verse gets interpreted with the idea that all you need is faith the size of the a mustard seed (or apple seed?) and you could do crazy impossible things.  But I would like to suggest that is not what Jesus meant.  If you are a Greek scholar, you will note that there is nothing in the original text that implies size.  Neither does the English.  We just assume so because we assume we understand the greater context.

Let’s go back to time.  Even though physics is just now beginning to suggest that time isn’t what we think it is, the ancient spiritual disciplines have been saying that for millennia.  That time isn’t what we think it is.  That time is an illusion and that the reality is something else.  Now, we can argue if they are really meaning the same thing.  It isn’t my point.

The entire life of that tree is written inside that seed.  It “knows” what it is.  The Greek word for “faith” also implies “knowing”.  That seed “knows” what it is.  From a certain temporal, or perhaps extra-temporal, perspective (one could argue that Jesus speaking as God would have this perspective, should you believe in Jesus),one would know that the seed does NOT know that it is going to become a tree.

The seed “knows” that it already is the tree.

There is no “doubt” in that seed.  The period of growth is irrelevant.  The seed IS the tree.  And, if you prescribe to the idea that all time is actually one moment, then it become literally true.  But I’m not pushing that one way or the other.  It’s again, not the point.

Whether you believe in a creator and design or whether you believe in reactive evolution, humans are so much more than we see ourselves as.  You are so much more than you see yourself as.  You can be so much more.  The potential of what a human is capable of is profound and mind boggling.  The things that science is learning every day about the capability and potential of the human being is breathtaking in it’s wondrousness.

But the truth isn’t in knowing what you could become.  That is not the lesson of the seed.

     We need to know that we already are.

Lesson 20 - Lies From Your Eyes

 Hey all.
So, last week I wrote my post from the seat of an airplane high over somewhere. As such, it was a bit more disjointed than usual. I felt the need to continue the topic. I may yet again in the future. However, as such, todays post is a bit shorter than usual. Just a heads up. That said, here you go.


 Do you know what I like about illusions?

Everything.

They are just fun.  And not just the slight of hand illusions.  I love the visual illusions.  The geometric shapes that do not follow standard progression logic.  The things that you stare at and they start to do funky things.

Like the one where you stare at the white page full of blue dots with the black dot in the middle.  As the rules dictate, you stare at the black dot for about 30-45 seconds.  As you do, suddenly, all the blue dots vanish.

Poof.  All gone.

Until you shift your gaze and suddenly they are all right back where they were.

The dots, of course, didn’t actually go anywhere.  Because of your focus (and perhaps the color of the dots), your brain made them not register anymore.

There is also the one where you stare at the black spiral on the white page.  If you stare right into the center, the spiral will appear to swirl.  It isn’t swirling, but your brain started telling you it was swirling.  As soon as you shift your gaze, everything goes back to normal.

Our eyes and brain can play all manner of tricks on us.  They can create a perspective that isn’t quite as accurate as we think it is.

Just ask anyone who is color blind.  They know this as well as anyone.  Is that a red sock?  A green sock?  A blue sock?  A brown sock?  Black maybe?  You and I take the simple ability of seeing colors, perhaps, a little for granted.  Imagine if suddenly you couldn’t see them correctly.

I know one guy who is completely color blind.  He only sees shades of grey.  No pinks, blues, yellows, greens, or orange.  Only grey.

Learning traffic lights was tricky.  Especially when they started turning them sideways and not telling him which way they tilted it.  

He has adapted remarkably well.  So well, in fact, that you would never know he was color blind.  He admits that every once in a while he picks out that shirt that isn’t the color he thought, or gets the socks swapped, but it’s rare.  But when you have NEVER seen a color other than grey, you learn to perceive the shades.  The subtleties of grey and black and the nuances of non-color.  He is so good at it, that whenever I try to stump him on a color, he almost always gets it correct.

One time I held up an object that had lavender in it.  He guessed correctly.  I was pretty impressed.  

Apparently there is more to sight than simply color.

But not everyone is that proficient at it.  A color blind person knows that things are not always what they appear to be.

As we talked about last time, we don’t always perceive things the way they truly are.  Often, our mind fills in the blanks.  It will add things and subtract things, but rarely ever keep the whole picture in tact.  Usually the additions and subtractions are dictated by what we want to see or not see.

Police officers know that if they interview people at a crash site, they will get many versions of the story.  Similar, but different.  Everyone seeing one event different from another who saw the exact same event.

We rarely see what we think we see.

We have a responsibility to ourselves to reevaluate our perceptions and perspectives.  Of ourselves and others.  Learn to see the shades.  Learn to shift our gaze.  Learn to not let ourselves become so focused on one thing that we cease to notice anything else.

        Learning to see is not always about sight.

Lesson 19 - A Peeping Tom

Have you ever done any “people watching”?  If you have, you know that it can be some good times.  

People do strange stuff when they think no one is looking.  Sometimes they do strange stuff even when they know.

You’ve been driving down the road and perhaps glanced across at another driver just in time to see him or her knuckle deep in their nose.  Or you’ve been in a store and observed the people as they go about their business.  Some of them take less care with their attire than others.  The people walking around with with almost a full length of butt crack hanging out.  The people who have been a bit creative with their personal grooming and hygiene (read: none).  There are entire websites dedicated to the observation of the crazy around us.

I remember one day while I was still a designer, I was helping out in the bindery where all the product gets put together into it’s final physical form.  As I was back there this other guy says “Whoa, check this out.”

Our building was a one story building with large glass windows all along one side.  Across the street were small, residential houses.

I looked to where this guy was pointing out across the street.  At first I didn’t see it, but then I did.

The window in the house across the street had the blinds open.  And the super hottie who slept in that room had apparently come back from the shower.

And she apparently was oblivious that were blinds were open.  She proceed to wander around naked in her room, exposed to anyone who drove by, or as it turned out, may have accidentally noticed from across the street and immediately made sure not to stare.  Not, of course after a couple minutes of gaping mouth staring.  I mean, who would do that?  That would be wrong.

Moving on…

Perhaps you’ve watched people struggling with problems and you can look at it and you know exactly what they need to do, but they can’t seem to figure it out.

We are all great observers when it comes to the things outside of us.  

We are not great observers of ourselves.

With others we can be relatively detached from the story happening to them.  We can look at it, see the different sides to it, and find multiple scenarios in which the story can play out.

But with ourselves, we can’t see the whole story.  We only see the part we are playing and become consumed by it.  We are so close to it we can only see the one part.

Once upon a time I was an art type person doing graphic design and other such things.  When you have a digital project on the screen, sometimes you have to zoom in real close to work on different aspects of the layout.  The programs often allow you to zoom in so far that all you can see are a few pixels of the picture or layout you are creating.  When you do this, all you can see are one or two colors of a greater spectrum of pixels.

At this range, you have no idea what the whole thing looks like.  If someone were to walk by and look, they wouldn’t have a clue.

However, if you zoom out, suddenly that one pixel becomes lost in the sea of pixels, and a larger, more complete picture reveals itself.  

Something else that happens when working on projects like that is, we may have to problem solve while working on the layout.  You are trying to accomplish goal X, but can’t quite see the solution.  After banging your head for hours, you go do something else before you start breaking things.

But then something strange happens.  When you come back later and take a look, you suddenly see the solution to your problem staring you in the face.  It was there the whole time, but you just could not see it.  

You were too close.

You weren’t observing the entire picture properly because you were consumed by the problem.  It happened more than once that while I was banging my head, someone would come buy and instantly see the solution that I could not see.  All because they were not caught up in the problem.

Our lives are exactly like that.  We can’t see our way through something because we are simply too close to it.  We are not observing the entire picture.  

We only see the one pixel.

We only see the problem.

We simply have no perspective on the situation.

The other side of this is also true.  Sometimes we refuse to see that there is a problem.

This happens all the time when editing a project or written work.  You can spend hours pouring your heart and soul into the work.  Maybe you have a blog (um…) and you spend all kinds of time pouring words into your computer.  You know exactly what is suppose to be there.  But being the responsible person you are (ahem…) you go back over it and proof read the whole thing.  Two and three times even.

By the third time you stop finding mistakes.  Sometimes you stop finding them after the first time.

Then, happy with your final product, you place it in your blog, save it, and hit the “post” button.  

Then, someone reads it.  Immediately, they find the half dozen mistakes you couldn’t see.

It happened all the time when I was doing layout for a living.  Although never with my blog.  (Shut up, I know there are all manner of errors in my grammar and spelling.  Let me dream…)

I would proof it over and over, and then hand it too my boss and ask him to have a look.  He’d hand it back covered in red ink.

It turns out, I’m terrible at proofing my own work.  And, as it turns out, so are most everyone else.  It’s actually a thing in the editing world.  It’s why editors exist in the first place.  The person who creates something can’t see the “mistakes” because they know what was suppose to be there and their mind fills in the rest.

If you hand me someone else's work, I can find all the mistakes.  But hand me my own, and I find only some.

Interestingly enough, if I come back to it at some later date and re-read something, I start finding all kinds of mistakes.  This is because my brain has moved on to other things and isn’t filling in the blanks anymore.

And, again, this is true with us in our lives.

We are messing things up and we are causing ourselves problems and we can’t even see it.  The people around us are going nuts because of us, but we are oblivious and think its all them.  They are the problem.  They have the problem. 

But not me.

My brain is superimposing a fiction over the reality based on our intentions and our perception of what we thought was going to happen.

No, I wasn’t acting like a moron.  I handled my excess sugar or alcohol or crack just fine.  I don’t know what you are talking about.

What?  I wasn’t out of control.  I wasn’t the angry person.  I wasn’t being a jerk.  They are just stupid.

It wasn’t my fault my kid/wife got hit.  They were out of control.  If they’d just do things like they are suppose to and get it together, it wouldn’t happen.

No, I’ve never hit my wife or nonexistent kids.

But this is how we rationalize things.

Or, just as wrongly, this is how we not see the truth of our lives.

We have to become dispassionate observers of our own lives.  Learn to step back in our heads and take a broader look.  Let the thoughts flow through, but instead of letting them rule us, step away and see what they are.  Our thoughts, our emotions, our impetus to action.

One must learn to take control of their own head.  Learn to slow things down.  Learn to detach ones self from the situation and observe just like you would if it were anyone else.  Learn to not let the situation rule us.  Learn to not let our thoughts rule us.

All of these things are creating a story of who we are and what is happening to us.  But we need to ask ourselves if we are in charge of the story, or if the story is in charge of us?  Can we see our lives clearly, or are we living in a shadow and fog of illusion?

Whichever it is, there is good news.  You have the power to control how this works for you.  Once you accept that, suddenly you see how anything can be changed.

        But first, you have to see it.

Lesson 18 - The Toilet Blog

Let me start by explaining the title of this post.  

Before I sat down to write, I told my wife I was going to call this the “Bathroom Blog” or “Toilet Blog” and then tell everyone that this is where todays post was conceived and executed.

Her reaction was less than positive.

I told her I was doing it anyway as walked off toward the bathroom.  Going to kill two birds with one… well, you know.

And while we all know by now there is a good chance that if I had done that, I’d have no problem telling you from hence this post came, I did not actually do that.

But she won’t know that till she reads that paragraph.

So, yay!  Fun.

That did make me think of something else, though.  Don’t worry, it’s non poo related.

You ever told someone or people or anyone that you were going to accomplish task X at which point once they were not paying attention you accomplished task Y instead?

For example…

“Ok, you have a good day at work.  I’ll be here working on that (insert job related thing, here.)”  At which point you start binge watching Netflix the moment you are alone.

“Ooo… all 10 seasons of Stargate!  I bet those are important…”

Or something else that I’ve never done.  (shifts awkwardly in chair…)

We all know how super easy it is to get distracted.  Especially in this age of everything and anything being available at the tips of your Google typing fingers.

I can’t tell you how many times I sat down to specifically find one thing of importance for work, only to catch myself 40 minutes later watching videos on Youtube because some random thing caught my attention and I just had to find it and see what it was all about.  At which point the things I’m watching have nothing to do with the original thing or even the original distraction.  

Looking for historical information on early Mayan spiritual beliefs.  Oh, they played sports.  I wonder if anyone still plays their games?  Hey look, is that new Assassin’s Creed artwork?  I bet Pinterest has more of that.  Hey, who posted a car video under comic and gaming art?  Ooo, it’s a link to Top Gear (British, of course) on youtube.  Oh sweet!  They have at least 200(million?) different Top Gear clips!  Hey, I didn’t know they tested out that car!  I wonder what they thought of it?  I wonder how much those cars go for used?  Hmm, still pricey… hey, what’s that car?  Oh ya, I remember liking those.  Those were good cars.  I had forgotten about them… holy hobbies!  Look how inexpensive they are now!  I wonder if I could justify that purchase?  Let’s calculate some…

And on it goes.

At some point I look at a clock, or I get hungry, or the sun sets and I remember what I was trying to do in the first place, and proceed to hang my head in shame.  

I suspect at least one of you knows exactly what I’m talking about.

It happens.  Especially if you are like me and don’t have an official “office”.  It’s easy to do.  But as long as the work gets done, we tell ourselves…

And then someone asks you, “So, what did you do today?”

And you reply, “Uhh, heh heh… um, you know, stuff.  I had that, um, thing.  But hey, tell me about your day?”

And then inside, you hang your head in shame.  Again.

But there is a funny thing about shame.  And guilt.  They sink their claws in and never let go.  Those two guys are not our friends.

That’s why we have to murder them.

*Gasp  “He just told us to murder two dudes!!”

What?!?  No.

And yes.

Guilt and shame?  Those two are, well, shameless.  They are not your friends.  They do not have your best interest at heart.  They do not want you to succeed.  They do not want you to change.  They want you to stay right where you are so they can feed off you like pathetic little vampires till there is nothing left of you but an empty husk.

But I hear you ask, “But aren’t guilt and shame tools for us to help keep us on the straight and whatever?”

Yes.  

“Um, what?”

Yes.

“You make no sense.”

Exactly.

(Now I’ve lost my train of … oh yes, I remember.)

You and I?  We are guilty.  Of many things probably.  Some of them are shameful.  When thought about, we are filled with shame.

Now, take that, learn from it, and let those things go.

“Eh?”

When something makes you angry, should you choose to stay angry forever?  If something makes you sad, should you stay sad forever?  Negative emotion begets a negative life.

Be clear.  Emotions are good.  Just make sure you use them properly.  Because they are also very powerful.

Let me try to clear all this up.

You do something stupid once, you feel dumb, then move on.  Then you do it again.  And you feel more dumb.  Then you do it again, and you feel super guilty for making bad choices.  It feels bad.  That’s shame.  And you are consumed by it and you get a little depressed.  This gives you a bit of tunnel vision as you keep looking at the mistake.  You can’t let it go.  You can’t forget it, and now you feel like crap all the time.  Every where you look, you see your guilt whether it’s there or not.

Then we keep spiraling, as long as we keep fueling the guilt and the shame.

Guilt and shame are markers.  Letting us know what’s up.  And once we see it, and have that “Oh, ya.  Oops.” moment, we have to let it go and move on.  Learn the lesson, make a better choice, and then stop dwelling on the mistake of the past.

We can’t change them.  We can’t undo them.  What’s done is done.  Let it be.

It’s ok to be guilty and to feel shame for it.  This tells you that you aren’t actually a bad person.  But if you let the guilt and shame overwhelm you, you become useless.  You don’t function well.

And the worst part is, there is no good reason to let those two jerks rule you.  The more you feed them, the more powerful they become.  Pretty soon, you see nothing else and your life is out of control and you actually start letting yourself make bad choices intentionally because, hey, I’m already way down that road, what does it matter now?

This is the path to many bad things.  Addiction is not the least of the bad things.  It’s also not the worst.

Shame and guilt will kill you.  Literally.  That is not an exaggeration.  People who live under shame and guilt for extended periods of time start suffering health problems, which if not addressed, will kill them.  Unless they become addicts first, in which case, that may kill them instead.  Do I need to mention suicide?

We all know how stress kills.  Guilt and shame are stress multiplied by a billion.  (Not an actual scientific fact.  Just assume it’s “bad”.  That’s close enough.)

If you are caught in the spiral of guilt and shame that continues to feed off you and each other, it’s time to step off that path.  Nothing good will come there.  It is an unnecessary road.  What’s done is done.  Let it go and walk away.  You have problems?  Fine.  So does everyone else.  Yours are worse?  Fine.  That changes nothing.

The crazy thing is, it is super easy to let it all go.  At the same time, it is super hard to recognize that it’s super easy to do it.  You can’t imagine how anything could change or get better.

I wish I could tell you how.  But the truth is that it’s different for everyone.  A therapist would walk you through all kinds of counseling till you had your epiphany.  But that’s the trick.  It has to be your epiphany.  You have to see it.  Truly and finally see it.

Guilt and shame have no control over you.  Those guys only have the power you give them.

        Perhaps it’s time to take that power back.