"What have we become?
A self-indulgent people.
What have we become?
Tell me, where are the righteous ones?"
-DC Talk

I’m degenerating.

It takes 30 days to form new habits.
Selfless for 30 days is what it’s going to take.

I

The anarchists are almost right
Chaos is freedom
In a perfect world

We all want to be free
To float around our planet
Whenever the wind blows us

Happiness is losing control
Or realizing you never really had any
Peace is the dawning
That the sun will rise whether or not
We sleep

When we accept the full burden
Of any of life’s challenges
We take on too much
And the body suffers

Half must always be left to chance
Chance is opportunity
We don’t create opportunity
We invite opportunity

Opportunity is the sum total
Of all the variables our limited minds
Did not consider

We can sense it only
When we are open to chaos
When we stop trying to control
Our situation
Our loved ones
Strangers

We observe the bliss
Of pi
As a circle
Only happens in perfect chaos.

Do more by doing less.

The CNN news story today about the fugitive pilot who defrauded people and went to great effort to run away and kill himself was so sad.

Just when you start to think that you are a failure as a human being, a story like this comes along. Imagine the huge hurdles in front of this man now that he has wronged so many people, and must live to face the consequences.

All of us have done things we regret. We handle situations poorly, sometimes at the expense of others.

If he didn’t have the courage to face those he had wronged before he became a fugitive, imagine how much courage he will need now to humble himself before everyone and accept the consequences of his choices, now that he has caused even more damage to others and himself.

My heart goes out to him that he can face another day and start to make the right decisions, and accept the punishment that will come.

Coolest speech moment last night:
Mickey thanking his dogs, past & present, for being there for him when no one else was.

Second choice would be Kate Winslett making the most wonderful, stereotypical actress acceptance speech. So full of drama…this woman NEEDS to act!

A thought occurred to me after publishing my last post; that the common thread of sexual "misconduct," and subsequent shame, denial, or cover-up, existed in each example given.

It is almost as if these leaders "failed" us within a system they each inherited, but did not necessarily agree to. I believe there are serious consequences of not being totally honest about sexuality. We have very rigid, puritanical sexual standards in our society, which almost no one that I am aware of, actually lives up to. These standards are monogamy (mating with one partner for life) and heterosexuality (attraction to and engaging with only partners of the "opposite" sex).

Religious leaders seem to be under even stricter standards sometimes, i.e. celibacy, or copulating only for reproduction.
This clearly challenges the natural state of existance, and often is later expressed in distorted or twisted sexual episodes.

Dare I say that my aim in researching marriage is driven by the hypotheses that we are neither monogamous nor heterosexual in nature, and that marriage contracts provided by the state ought to be reformed to reflect a less puritanical worldview, that is a worldview which complements man’s natural tendencies while still providing a system/structure which contributes to stability in society.

We need to remove more of the shame, stigma, violence, and deceit from our interactions with each other, and move toward more honest, intimate, healthy relationships.

It’s a hard pill to swallow
When our leaders fail us
The day I realized my parents were human
I felt a loss
And a relief

It is easy to be angry at someone
Who teaches us to be perfect
Then fails to be perfect themselves
Many in my life failed in their examples

A preacher and grandfather
Turned child molester
Bill Clinton
Yoga Swami with the most beautiful teachings
Abusing his power and covering his indiscretions in deceit

"I did not have sexual relations with that woman"

We hate to see the humanity in our leaders
We want to believe that we can be as perfect and beautiful as they say we can be.
But who among us never fails?

As the amount of information available to us in this Information Age continues to increase, our leaders will be exposed 360 degrees for the bruised sack of bones, blood, & nerves that delivers every message and action.

We all have the potential to train our minds and bodies to stay out of the way of the light wanting to shine through us.

Our leaders have a responsibility to admit when they have acted on their lower natures.

And we have an obligation to recognize them for being simply human; holding onto what beauty they delivered, and learning from their failures.

I’ve begun researching the topic of marriage, in the hope of contributing to the debate about where the institution is headed in our country. What arrangement(s) befit a free society like ours?

A bag of bones asked me for a hug
I pressed them close to share the warmth
But they were stiff and empty inbetween

I giggled as its cold fingers let me go
It pulled my joy into the vacuum
That increased with each retreating step

I’m not a good actress
I can’t pretend we are strangers
Even though we just met today

I don’t want to hug someone like
The sun hugs the jagged edge of a rock
I want to hug like the magnet hugs the fridge

But even I cannot polarize a bag of bones.
And if the sun became an overpowering magnet
There would be no space to create a hug.

Happy new year!! The start of a new year is a great time to evaluate what I liked and didn’t like about my life last year, and to set new goals for a new year. See My Profile for this year’s resolutions.

Cheers to our capacity as humans to learn, adapt, and change for new beginnings!

I learned a good lesson today, while I was sick and staying home from work.

I take public transportation every day, and I have noticed horrible behavior from many people. One group of young boys riding next to me brought out a huge marker and began scribbling their “names” all over the windows and ceiling. One large angry woman about my age or a little younger kept talking loud enough for the whole bus to hear about how someone deserved to get her a** kicked and was calling her all kinds of names. Another man was sick with a wicked cough and was spitting on the floor. Another young boy was throwing food over my shoulder to try to hit his friend on the other side of the bus, and ended up hitting me.

These are just some examples of what I see daily that start to drive me nuts. I always think to myself, what can I do to stop them? How can I make them change their behavior?

Then I was watching an episode of “Secret Millionaire” this week on hulu.com. It featured a wealthy “self-made,” first-generation millionaire who said, “If this dumb guy from East LA that has no formal education could be successful and be a millionaire, then you know what, what’s everybody else’s excuse?”

Then a story from Swami Satchidananda’s youth summed it all up for me:

“I still remember a small story from the Pancha Tantra which I was told as a small child. One rainy day, a monkey was sitting on a tree branch getting completely drenched. Right opposite on another branch of the same tree there was a small sparrow sitting in its hanging nest. Normally a sparrow builds its nest on the edge of a branch so it can hang down and swing around gently in the breeze. It has a nice cabin inside with an upper chamber, a reception room, a bedroom down below and even a delivery room if it is going to give birth to little ones. Oh yes, you should see and admire a sparrow’s nest sometime.

So, it was warm and cozy inside its nest and the sparrow just peeped out and, seeing the poor monkey, said, ‘Oh, my dear friend, I am so small; I don’t even have hands like you, only a small beak. But with only that I built a nice house, expecting this rainy day. Even if the rain continues for days and days, I will be warm inside. I heard Darwin saying that you are the forefather of the human beings, so why don’t you use your brain? Build a nice, small hut somewhere to protect yourself during the rain.’

You should have seen the face of that monkey. It was terrible! ‘Oh, you little devil! How dare you try to advise me? Because you are warm and cozy in your nest you are teasing me. Wait, you will see where you are!’ The monkey proceeded to tear the nest to pieces, and the poor bird had to fly out and get drenched like the monkey.”

Satchidananda says:

“We come across wicked people sometimes. We can’t deny that. So what should be our attitude? Indifference. ‘Well, some people are like tht. Probably I was like that yesterday. Am I not a better person now? She will probably be all right tomorrow.’ Don’t try to advise such people because wicked people seldom take advice. If you try to advise them you will lose your peace.”

And at the end of the “Secret Millionaire” episode where the proud millionaire had to live among the very poor for a week, he had this to say: I thought that success was money; but it’s not about the money, it’s about the love.

But no one told him that. He had to learn from experience.