The Myth of Freedom

¡Hola! Everybody...
The midterm elections are coming up and I fear too many people fail to understand exactly what hangs in the balance. In a very real way, how we define freedom and the kind of sciety we want to create is what is at stake. I know many so-called progressives are angry and even disillusioned, but disengaging from the political process is no different from cutting off your nose to spite your face. More on freedom tomorrow on Subversify...

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-=[ The Myth of Freedom ]=-
“A man is either free or he is not. There cannot be any apprenticeship for freedom.”
-- Imamu Amiri Baraka (1934 –)
American playwright, poet, novelist, essayist

I once became lost in a national park in Connecticut many years ago. I was about 19-20, a busload of us city kids planned a trip, and we all trekked up to some park in Armpit, USA. I am a dyed-in-the-wool city boy. And when I say city, I mean city. Please, I’ve traveled around this country and some places that use the term “city” are laughable. Yes, I am a NYC snob: anything above 14^th street for me is Hicksville. Anyway, grew up in the city and the first time I saw a hog live, I thought it was a cow! When I thought of pigs, what came to mind was that pig Arnold from the 1960s TV sitcom, “Green Acres”

Whatever… always the adventurous one, I convinced another poor soul to go “exploring” with me. We got lost for close to 48 hours. LOL! We kept walking in circles. There was this lake not too far from our campsite, you see, and I (being the “Brainiac” of the two) surmised if we followed the lakeshore, we would eventually end up where we started. The thing is we kept walking in circles, not around the lake, but within a confined space. We realized this after hours of walking because we kept seeing a rock formation that looked eerily familiar. The reason for that was that it was the same rock formation! LMAO! By this time, it had gotten dark and there was a pronounced early October chill. Too add to matters, my poor friend had inadvertently fallen into a cascade that hid a cave – he was freezing, but we thought the cave was the best place to stay for the night.

We had nothing – no matches, flashlight, compass, food – nada. We had to stop because of that annoying tendency towards complete darkness in the country. I mean, you can’t even see your own fuckin hand in front of your face. Sheeesh! More troubling, I swore I heard a wolf’s howl. I’m serious! Now, I don’t know if wolves actually exist in some Connecticut state park, but to this day, I swear I heard a howl! In addition, I didn’t make things better by voicing my conviction that the cave we had taken refuge in was some Grizzly bear’s home.

So, there were, hungry, cold, and lost.

Eventually, we somehow found our way to a road the next day, but they had a whole posse of people looking for us, which ruined the trip for everyone else. We walked down the road until we came upon some ranger in a car who then proceeded to ask us if we had seen two Puerto Rican kids walking around lost… DUH?!?! Hellloooo?!?! Fuckin’ hicks…

Of course, being the philosophically inclined one, I found all sorts of metaphors and meaning behind our little adventure, while my companion, who was freezing to death, cursed me the whole time. Still, it fascinated me that, left to our own devices, we kept walking around in circles. Shit, we tried to walk differently, making lefts, where we had previously made rights, and still we walked in circles. What does that say about our own habitual patterns, I asked my friend, as he conjured new swear words in my honor.

For the next fifteen years of my life, that incident was to become a metaphor for how I lived: doing what I wanted, how I wanted, when I wanted, and mistaking that for freedom. I think many people mistake “following their bliss” for freedom when in actuality walking around in circles without a compass is the ultimate prison. It’s the ultimate prison because we can’t see the bars, for they exist in our minds. We’re all “doing time,” when we come to think of it.

True freedom, for me anyway, takes practice. Actually, it takes a set of practices that serve as a guideline and map to freedom. Walk around rudderless without direction long enough and you’ll find you’re creating the same wreackage repeatedly.

Habitual Patterns

I like to joke that I became free while I was incarcerated but this is very true. Many years after that incident in the woods, I found myself at a maximum-security “facility.” LOL! I’m not proud of that, but I have to admit there’s some irony in this story -- at least for me there is, so I find some humor in all this now. when I became free, it was early spring, my favorite time of the year, and I was in a prison yard looking at some mountains and feeling really depressed about being locked up.

Then the realization hit me... I was actually free. Just like that. I realized that though I was physically incarcerated, only I could give anyone permission to imprison my mind. It may not sound like a lot to you, but for me it was transformative experience. The fact that I could choose to be free no matter where I found myself was an option I had never entertained and it literally blew me away.

Looking back, I understand now that this shift in consciousness didn’t happen all at once, that my epiphany that day wasn’t something entirely spontaneous. I understand now my realization came about because of the inner psycho-spiritual work I had put in, but it hit me that day like a bolt of lightning in the middle of a completely dark country night: I was free. Free, right then, at that very moment.

It was an amazing realization. I could choose to be free. a part of me struggled with this -- this couldn’t possibly be so simple and so true. Nevertheless, I felt it in the very fiber of my being, this freedom was real, palpable, a part of me, an uncovering of my heritage as a human being. When I went back to my cell later that day, I shared my revelation with my neighbors and they all started laughing at me. They were like, “Eddie, you in jail, bro!”

And they were correct, of course, I was in prison . However, my realization was that while I could be coerced into prison physically, only I could give another permission to incarcerate my heart and mind. What I saw clearly for the first time in my life was that I was giving the prison authorities this permission to take my mind, to imprison my heart. From that day on, I became free and my life, even within the prison walls, changed dramatically. I no longer was at the mercy of sadistic prison guards or all the other insanity that goes on in prison. From that day on, I was free -- really free -- and all my interactions reflected this realization of freedom. What happened was that people began responding to me differently: guards, who previously were able to press my buttons, didn’t know how to deal with the newer, free me, leaving them confused and anxious.

Other inmates would ask me why I “looked” different: was I exercising more? did I gain weight? Eventually, freedom would influence my immediate surroundings and those in contact with me began doing their own inner work, in the process transforming our collective prison experience. The effect was so palpable that I was eventually transferred from that location because I was deemed too dangerous. LOL! But by then it was too late, even in solitary confinement, they couldn’t take my freedom away.

I became free that early Spring day and though there are times I choose to give up my freedom -- especially when I come into contact with people with hate in their hearts -- I have chosen freedom more often than not these past nineteen years. My personal liberation, I have found, is not individual, dedicated solely to me, but instead it comes with a responsibility and an awareness that it affects everything around me. That other prison we all share: the myth that we are separate from others, has also dissolved and as a result your personal liberation is also important to me.

Ultimately, I have learned that my freedom demands I choose happiness. I never even knew I had that choice. It is my responsibility as a human being, actually, this choice. This is why I always say that everything we ever need for our happiness exists right here, right now, this very moment… this very life. This is true whether your prison is made of concrete and bars or psychic cockroaches.

May you all know true happiness… and freedom.

Love,

Eddie

Sunday Sermon [Your Personal Song]

¡Hola! Everybody…
It’s another beautiful day here in The Center of the Known Universe…

Here's a hilarious take on sexually repressed, right-wing extremist teabagger candidate Christine O'Donnell:

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-=[ Your Personal Song: The Power of Listening ]=-

Sometimes we don’t look at things as much as overlook them. The most important tools to our happiness are right there in front of us waiting. But like an old friend who now suddenly appears as the person you have been looking for all along, we see the power in things we take for granted if we take the time to simply pay attention.

Being present, or paying attention, is a good example of what I’m talking about. We spend so much of our lives lost in the tangle of things past or plotting for a future, that we have no time for the present moment. The fact is that without now, we can’t do anything. We can’t even love without being fully present. Love in the past is merely a memoory; love in the future is a fantasy.

The NY Lottery has an ad campaign with the slogan, “You gotta be in it to win it.” And so it is with life.

Most of us don’t pay attention; we’re too full of assumptions. We don’t actually see our loved ones, we see our own projections. Most of all, we don’t really listen...

I had a teacher who used the following story to highlight the power of something as simple as listening. Some of the details are sketchy, but I think I’ve been able to preserve the essential message.

In an east African tribe (I forget which) a child’s life is counted not from the day it’s born, nor on the day its conceived, as in other cultures, but on the day the child is a thought in the mother’s mind. As soon as the mother realizes she wants to have a child, she will go off alone somewhere, under a tree, for example, and she quiets herself and simply listens. Not listening for anything, or asking for answers or anything like that -- just listening. Simple, bare attention...

She waits to hear the song of the child who wants to be born in her heart. And as she hears this song, she sings it to her herself. When she returns to her village, she teaches the song to her husband. In that way when they make love, when they unite, they sing this song to invite this child to be born. Later, when she conceives, she sings this song to the child in her womb.

She teaches the song to her neighbors so that the first thing the child hears when it is born is its song in celebration of its birth. Later, as the child grows, if it falls and scrapes its knee, an adult will soothe the child’s cries by singing its song. When the child grows into adulthood, the song is sung in celebration of their rite of passage. When there is a marriage both songs are sung.

Finally, when that individual grows older and passes from this existence the song is again invoked.

Imagine living in a society in which such attention and listening skills were truly valued. A world where stopping and being present is like a hit song we all celebrate and dance to...

What would your song sound like? What would our communities look like... ?

Love,

Eddie

Sunday Sermon [The Myth of Freedom]

¡Hola! Everybody…
I’m happy to say that while my back continues to plague me, treatment and some lifestyle changes have made it bearable. Sitting for extended periods is still a no-no, however. Thanks again to all who sent me good wishes and who expressed their concern.

* * *

The Myth of Freedom

A man is either free or he is not. There cannot be any apprenticeship for freedom.
-- Imamu Amiri Baraka (1934 -)

I once became lost in a Connecticut national park many years ago. I was about 19-20 years-old, a busload of us city kids planned a trip, and we all trekked up to some park in Armpit, USA. I am a dyed-in-the-wool city boy. And when I say city, I mean city. Please, I’ve traveled around this country and some places that use the term “City” are laughable. Yes, I am a NYC snob: anything above 14^th street for me is Hicksville. Anyway, grew up in the city and the first time I saw a live pig, I thought it was a cow! When I thought of pigs, what came to mind was that pig Arnold from the 1960s TV sitcom, “Green Acres.”

Whatever… always the adventurous one, I convinced another poor soul to go “exploring” with me. We got lost for close to 48 hours. We kept walking in circles. There was this lake not too far from our campsite, you see, and me being the “Brainiac” of the two decided if we followed the lakeshore, we would eventually end up where we started. The thing is we kept walking in circles, not around the lake, but within a confined space. We realized this after hours of walking because we kept seeing a rock formation that looked eerily familiar. The reason for that was that it was the same rock formation! LMAO! By this time, it had gotten dark and there was a pronounced early October chill. to compound matters, my poor accomplice had inadvertently fallen into a cascade that hid a cave -- he was freezing, but we thought the cave was the best place to stay for the night.

We had nothing -- no matches, flashlight, compass, food -- nada. We had to stop because of that annoying tendency towards complete darkness in the country. I mean, you can’t even see your own hand in front of your face. Sheeesh! To make matters worse, I swore I heard a wolf’s howl. I’m serious! Now, I don’t know if wolves actually exist in some Connecticut state park, but to this day, I swear I heard a howl! In addition, I didn’t make things better by voicing my conviction that the cave we had taken refuge in was some Grizzly bear’s home.

So there were, hungry, cold, scared, and lost.

Eventually, the next day we somehow found our way to a road, but they had a whole posse of people looking for us, which ruined the trip for everyone else. We walked down the road until we came upon some ranger in a car who then proceeded to ask us if we had seen two Puerto Rican kids walking around lost… DUH?!?! Hellloooo?!?! Fuckin’ hicks… LMAO!

Of course, being philosophically inclined, I found all sorts of metaphors and meanings behind our little adventure, while my companion, who was freezing to death, cursed me the whole time. Still, it fascinated me that left to our own devices, we kept walking around in circles. Shit, we tried to walk differently, making lefts, where we had previously made rights, and still we walked in circles. What does that say about our own habitual patterns, I asked my friend, as he conjured new swear words for my edification.

For the next fifteen years of my life, that incident was to become a metaphor for how I lived: doing what I wanted, how I wanted, when I wanted, and mistaking that for freedom. I think many people mistake “following their bliss” for freedom when in actuality walking around without an inner compass is the ultimate prison. It’s the ultimate prison because we can’t see the bars, for they exist in our minds. We’re all “doing time,” in some way or another.

True freedom, for me anyway, takes practice. Actually, it takes a set of practices that serve as a guideline and map to freedom. Walk around rudderless without direction long enough and you’ll find you’re creating the same mess repeatedly.

Habitual patterns mistaken as freedom

I like to say that I became free while I was incarcerated and this is very true. Many years after that incident in the woods, I found myself incarcerated at a maximum-security “facility.” LOL! I’m not proud of that, but I have to admit there’s some irony in this story -- at least for me there is, so I find some humor in all this now. It was early spring, my favorite time of the year, and I was in a prison yard staring at some mountains far off and feeling really depressed about being locked up.

Then it hit me... I was actually free! Just like that! I realized that though the state had my body, only I could give anyone permission to enslave my mind. It may not sound like a lot to you, but for me it was transformative experience. The fact that I could choose to be free no matter where I found myself blew me away.

Looking back, I understand now that it didn’t happen all at once, that my epiphany that day wasn’t something spontaneous. I understand now, my realization came about because of the work I had put in, but it hit me that day like a bolt of lightning in the middle of a completely dark country night: I was free. Free, right then, at that very moment.

It was amazing. I could choose to be free! OMG!!! This couldn’t be true. Nevertheless, I felt it in the very fiber of my being. This freedom was real, alive, a part of me, a part of my heritage as a human being. When I went back to my cell later that day, I shared my revelation with my neighbors and they all started laughing at me! LOL! They were -- like -- “Eddie, you in jail, bro.”

And they were correct, of course, I was incarcerated. However, my realization was that while I could be coerced into prison physically, only I could give someone else permission to incarcerate my heart and mind. What I saw clearly for the first time was that I was giving the prison authorities this permission to take my mind, to imprison my heart. From that day on, I became free and my life, even within the prison walls, changed dramatically. I no longer felt at the mercy of sadistic prison guards or all the other insanity that goes on in prison. From that day on, I was free, really free, and all my interactions reflected this realization of freedom. What happened was that people began responding to me differently: guards, who previously were able to press my buttons, didn’t know how to deal with the newer, free me, leaving them confused and anxious.

Other inmates would ask me why I “looked” different: was I exercising more, did I gain weight? Eventually, my freedom permeated my immediate surroundings and those in contact with me began doing their own inner work, in the process transforming our collective prison experience. The effect was so palpable that I was eventually transferred from that location because I was deemed too dangerous. But by then it was too late, even in solitary confinement, they couldn’t take my freedom away.

I became free that early Spring day and though there are times I choose to give up my freedom -- especially when I come into contact with people with hate in their hearts -- I have chosen freedom more often than not these all these many years later. My personal liberation, I have found, is not individual, dedicated solely to “me” (mini me?), but instead it comes with a responsibility and an awareness that it affects everything around me. That other prison we all share: the myth that we are separate from others has also dissolved and as a result your personal liberation is also important to me.

Ultimately, I have learned that my freedom demands I choose happiness. I never even knew I had that choice. It is my responsibility as a human being, actually, this choice. This is why I always say that everything we ever need for our happiness exists right here, right now, this very moment… this very life. This is true whether your prison is made of concrete and bars or psychic cockroaches.

May you all know true happiness… and freedom.

Love,

Eddie

The Tyranny of Positive Thinking

¡Hola! Everybody...
The first time I posted the following, I lost all the “Power of Positive Thinking” crowd, most of the “Daily Affirmations” crowd, and “The Secret” crowd just continued to stay away... LOL! Last night I was “engaging” yet another “Power of Positive Thinking” disciple, who managed to call it Buddhist meditation. People? mindfulness meditation is not positive thinking!

::rolls eyes::

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-=[ Thoughts, Emotions, Actions ]=-

Smile or die!

I have a favorite story that occurred when Sir Lawrence Olivier and Dustin Hoffman were making the Marathon Man. Just before filming the famous scene in the dentist’s chair, Olivier was waiting and not too pleased that Hoffman was late. In the near distance, he saw a running figure and was surprised to discover it was Hoffman, the Hollywood superstar. He arrived panting at Olivier’s side and the great British stage actor looked down at Hoffman and asked what he was up to. When Hoffman was eventually able to get his breath, he managed to get out that because the scene called for the character to be out of breath from running that was what he had to do to make the scene authentic. The haughty Olivier raised an eyebrow and said, “My dear, haven’t you heard of acting?”

The point here is that just as we can control and change our external behaviors, words, and actions, and our internal processes, thoughts and beliefs, we can also change our responses to our internal thoughts, feelings, emotions, and values.

In my work, I often run into the stiff wall of resistance that is expressed thus, “… because that’s the way he made me feel,” or “… because that’s the way I am!” Perhaps you have come across such phrases, or maybe you have uttered something similar yourself. We go about spending the bulk of our lives believing we’re at the mercy of our feelings, thoughts, and actions (“He made me do it” “My negative feelings defeat me”).

We all do it, period.

In fact, we all concentrate on one area of our perception whether they be our thoughts, feelings, and actions, at the expense of others. What we do here in our culture is concentrate on what we do well -- on the positive. My invitation/ challenge is for you to pay more attention to what you don’t do so well (the so-called negative) and develop more flexibility around those things.

Let me use “health” as an example to better illustrate what I am trying to communicate.

In the West, we believe that it is best to go for the burn, push ourselves to the limit; it’s all or nothing. This explains the constant flow of how to books touting the new diet or exercise program that will change your life. We have to go for one of these completely or it won’t work.

If we look at this from the model of thoughts, emotions, and actions, we get three different worldviews. In the interest of brevity, I will elaborate mostly on thoughts.

Thoughts and Health

In the thought-centered world, the way to health is through -- duh! -- our thoughts. Here we believe that we have created health or illness by the power of our own thoughts. All we need to do is change the way that we think about ourselves and our relationship to health. As long as we believe that we are healthy then -- voila! -- we are!

In the thought-world existence we have certain beliefs about ourselves and the world around us that we probably picked up from our toxic parents, our apathetic teachers, our repressive church, our disjointed community. We start to believe that these are true and in this way our perspective of health is developed. Once we have taken control of this we can then become healthy merely by thinking ourselves healthy. This perspective makes it imperative that we find the “right” (i.e., positive) thought, or the perfect affirmation and then repeat them ad infinitum in order to become healthy. Many New Agers love this world and have developed many techniques for transforming limiting (or negative) beliefs. Got it? In this world, you erase (kill!) negative thoughts and create (cling!) positive thoughts. Annie, go get your gun...

Let’s follow the logic of this worldview, or mindset: if you believe that your thoughts can create health, then it follows that if you’re not healthy then at some level you believe that you have created your illness. In this sense, you are a mind that exists separately from your body. Welcome to the world of The Matrix! LOL

If my analysis seems harsh, then consider the story of a good friend, Danielle. Danielle was a devoted mother of a 15-year-old daughter. She was known within my circle as a healer who had a transformative experience and spent the rest of her life running workshops in the area of personal growth and development. She made a huge difference in her life and the lives of others. People loved Danielle and what she did for them.

It was a shock for all of us when we found out she had been diagnosed with cancer and an even bigger shock when it became clear that the cancer was terminal. My memories of her during her last days are marked by the last time I saw her and she was still wrestling with her problems -- what had she done to bring on the cancer, what had she done to deserve the cancer? This is the legacy of the thought-world -- a good woman, a loving wife, a devoted mother, blaming herself for her cancer.

Emotions and Health

In this world, we forget the body. We disregard all the unnecessary exercising and dieting. Here we achieve our health through our emotions. Once we get in touch with our Inner Child (the one that was badly damaged and abused by our parents and society), we can heal all of the hurts imposed by a life that sucks and that controls us until we take charge.

In this world we believe that our blocked and unhealthy emotions created our own sickness. Only when we have realized this simple fact, we can start to heal. We need to revisit all the traumas that the world has inflicted upon us. We need to emote, emote, emote! in order to clear ourselves of these unhealthy emotions. We look for person-centered, or psychodynamically oriented counseling – or even better – find a group of like-minded individuals where we can share the catharsis.

Once we have sorted this whole mess out, we can then achieve the Eden-like state of childhood innocence and wisdom that was ours before we were defiled by modern society. Again, as in the thought-world, this world seeks to slay the negative emotions. Fight!

Actions and Health

In the action-centered-world we believe our actions and external behaviors are most important; we fall into the trap of believing that is all we need to pay attention to if we are to be healthy. We believe that all we need to do is buy the right equipment of the right video and we too can develop the body of an athlete of the supermodel in the ads.

We believe that if we join the best hi-tech gym with the newest equipment, it will take out the work of exercising (just 20 minutes a day… ). It’s almost as though we believe that a gym membership leads to good health.

The same is true of weight loss. We buy into the latest pill or latest book of the latest system that some celebrity (hello Oprah!) pitches. We all know deep down inside that the key to achieving an optimum weight is simply not putting more stuff into our bodies -- that only by eating more healthily will we be healthy. However, like exercise, this would be hard to maintain and would require work and effort. We know that balance and moderation will lead to a more integrated life, but we battle on regardless.

What we know, of course, is that none of these three worldviews -- thoughts, emotions, and actions -- alone holds the full picture. And no matter how well you affirm, how good you become at being positive, or how much you exercise, or get in touch with your emotions, eventually you will get old, ugly, sick, and die.

What then? What will you do then?

What we really need to do is utilize all three aspects of ourselves in our quest to be healthy. And even then, this is not the full picture. But that is for another time and another day.

I will say this much: if you’re engaged in an inner battle who loses eventually?

Love,

Eddie

Visualizing the World

¡Hola! Everybody...
I haven’t been online much these days. Work and summer conspire to take me away from the cyber world. so if I’m not as responsive as s my usual, it’s not personal, I’m just here as much. And I make a mess of things responding via Blackberry.

I wrote the following several years ago. I know it sounds like a recent popular book and movie, but it is quite different...

* * *

-=[ Visualizing Possibilities ]=-

I don’t think telling someone who’s feeling fucked up, or going through a difficult period to “get over it” helps. This is like coming upon someone who’s beating themselves up and joining in on the beat-up as a solution. People who are feeling fucked are already are beating up on themselves enough, thank you.

Yesterday’s post was about how. People will say shity like, develop a different attitude, or do this or that, but no one ever says how. If you read carefully, I am pointing to a how. There exists a possibility for you to not feel so fucked up. In fact, genuine happiness is a possibility for everyone. Yeah, even you. You’re not that unique, you know. You can be happy too!

Now, ain’t that fucked up?!

If you desire to be happy it’s not as hard as you think. In fact, all it takes is maybe 5-10 minutes a day of simple exercises and poof! All that misery is out. This is true, for less than the time it takes you to watch American Idol, you can be happy. It is that simple. Oh yeah, I am aware that a part of you would rather die than be happy because what the fuck would you do if you were truly happy, right? I mean, we’ve all invested a lot of time and energy into being miserable motherfuckers, that shit ain’t easy to do -- I am aware of this dynamic.

Believe me, there’s a way, it’s not hard, and it’s possible. You can create (actually, you already do!) the world you want. It’s just a matter of understanding how the mind works and replacing your current software with something better and your fears turn into self confidence, self-loathing becomes self-appreciation, and on and on.

People do this all the time, what makes you think you’re that different. Actually, those of us stuck in the shit want desperately to cling to this notion of what I call “terminal uniqueness.” It’s terminal because it kills. It kills as surely cancer kills. I’m serious as a heart attack (LOL! bad play on words, I know!).

There is a world right before your eyes you’re not even aware of and all you have to do is wake up to that possibility.

I’ll leave you with the following. I took a yoga class once as part of an elective in my undergraduate studies. The instructor was this zany “New Age” energy freak type -- at least that was my impression of her. Anyway, we connected somehow and one day while looking directly at me (or at least I thought), she took the class on a guided meditation. She started with the fact that she owned a home on the beach and that it was a beautiful home. She added that before she bought the home she envisioned the home in every detail.

She told us that we too can have what we want if we can envision it and proceeded to take us on a guided image meditation. She asked me to imagine something that I wanted and to visualize it in exacting detail. For example, if it was a moment in time in the future, I should fill in the details of kind of day it would be: sunny, rainy, hot or cold, etc. If it was something material like a home, for example, I should envision its color, location, architectural details, etc.

She went on like this for about 15 minutes. Most of the students were giggling, thinking the exercise stupid. Truth be told, I also thought it was stupid, but I followed her instructions to the letter. The really important part, according to this teacher, was that at the end of the visualization you had to imagine a “big, cosmic mailbox” and you were to place this vision in a “big cosmic envelope” and clearly see yourself putting this envelope in that big cosmic mailbox. By now, people were laughing openly. I thought this part was really stupid, but I did it anyway.

She told us that we had to do this daily in order for it to work and she assured us that this was how she got her beautiful seaside home. She also stated that she used the gift of her home to promote the gifts that she herself received as a yoga teacher/ practitioner. After class, she stopped me and asked me if I really did the exercise and I nodded in the affirmative. She said something along the lines of, “Good, do it everyday because I see an energy surrounding you... ”I was taken back a little, but I felt her warmth and I nodded my head and just smiled at her.

I followed her instructions to a tee and did this visualization for a long time and I’m here to tell you that my vision came true. My vision, you ask? My vision was what my life is like today: the work that I do, my personal life -- everything. My vision, even how I dress and smile, and the sun shining through the window, my office, how I feel -- all of it came true.

Today, I understand a little better how this works and it’s all about reprogramming the mental software folks. And you too can create the world and life you desire. First, you just have to entertain that possibility. For less than the time it takes you to watch American Idol.

Have a great week peeps!

Love,

Eddie

Health

¡Hola! Everybody...
Another cycle of meetings, budget mods, and strategic planning. Not all of my work is that exciting! LOL

Repost!

* * *

-=[ Health ]=-

“And forget not that the earth delights to feel your bare feet and the winds long to play with your hair.”

-- Kahlil Gibran (1883 - 1931)

I’m truly blessed...

Really

My doctor, an attractive young woman, calls me “her miracle.” Of course, this doesn’t help me in terms of my trying to date her, but she loves me in her own special way. Indeed, I am a miracle: most people who have lived as I have -- who have been to the hells I have visited -- are not here to talk about it.

Most are dead, or dying…

My doctor finds it hard to believe that I fought the drug wars on the frontline of suffering. The fact is this: if you would look at suffering as a war, then I was on the frontlines!

LOL!!

Really

Though she’s been my primary doctor for some years now, my doctor finds it hard to believe that I abused myself in the way that I say I did. I mean, I have to let my doctor know about my past lifestyle because she needs to know what to look for. Despite my past transgressions, however, all she finds is a man who possesses the cardiovascular of a person 10 years younger, she sees a man free of usual suspects of diseases that plague people like me: HIV, hepatitis, and various STDs.

I am blessed, but for a reason… or at least I like to think so.

However, my blessing comes with a responsibility and I see myself as a messenger. The responsibility is to embody a message of hope -- to live my life as a power of example for those would despair otherwise. For a while, I used to feel guilty about my “health” -- call it “survivor's guilt.” I didn't understand it at first, until I realized it didn’t matter why. What really matters is that I’m here and what do I do about it. Therefore, there’s a mission in my life. I guess if I had to put it simply, I would say my mission is to make this world a better place than I found it.

I have also come to accept my health as my birthright as a human being. I understand that health is not merely the absence of disease. Furthermore, there’s no need to worry about my health, eventually it will go away.

LOL!

Health is also a matter of perception and attitude. Suppose you stub your toe. What kinds of energy have you been conditioned to send to that throbbing discomfort? Most of us are taught to send fear and anger, even hatred, to our pain. My question to you then is this: which is the unhealed -- the throbbing toe or the hateful response to the unpleasant sensation?

It’s obvious that both factors are involved in our suffering. So true healing, healing that addresses the whole problem rather than the parts of it, involves meeting suffering with love and kindness, awareness, mercy, and balance, instead of trying to drive it away with fear, distrust, anger, and loathing.

I have seen people struggle tremendously at trying to find healing or wholeness. The reality is that grasping at healing, like grasping at enlightenment, results in more suffering, for all grasping results in distress. On the other hand, to allow ourselves to lighten, to allow ourselves to heal, to trust the process and enter into it without models or preconceptions of how we’re supposed to be or who we’re supposed to be, seems to me the very road that healing travels. When we remember that we are the path and the we must walk it ourselves -- lightly, mercifully, and consciously -- then we can begin to claim our birthright as human beings, the healing that goes beyond healing, and we truly discover ourselves.

It’s cold outside today, and the wind calls harshly, beckoning to me. It’s the Earth’s way of reminding me that she delights in me and feeling me, playing her hands through my hair, reminding me that I’m truly alive.

EXERCISE: A MEDITATION ON LOVING-KINDNESS

(Adapted from “A Path With Heart,” by Jack Kornfield)

The quality of loving-kindness is the ground out of which an integrated whole life can grow. With a loving heart as the background, all that we attempt, all that we encounter, will open and flow more easily. While loving-kindness can arise naturally in us in many circumstances, it can also be cultivated.

The following meditation is a 2,500 year-old practice that uses repeated phrases, images, and feelings to evoke loving-kindness and friendliness toward oneself and others. You can experiment with this practice to see if it is useful for you. It is best to begin by repeating it over and over for fifteen or twenty minutes once or twice daily in a quiet place for several months.

At first this meditation may feel mechanical or awkward or even bring up its opposite, feelings of irritation and anger. If this happens, it is especially important to be patient and kind toward yourself, allowing whatever arises to be received in a spirit of friendliness and kind affection.

In its own time, even in the face of inner difficulties, loving-kindness will develop. Sit in a comfortable fashion. Let your body relax and be at rest. As best you can, let your mind be quiet, letting go of plans and preoccupations. Then begin to recite inwardly the following phrases directed to yourself. You begin with yourself because without loving yourself it is almost impossible to love others.

May I be filled with loving-kindness.

May I be well.

May I be peaceful and at ease.

May I be happy.

As you say the phrases, you may also wish to use the following imagery: picture yourself as a young and beloved child, or sense yourself as you are now, held in a heart of loving- kindness. Let the feelings arise with the words. Adjust the words and images so that you find the exact phrases that best open your heart of kindness. Repeat the phrases again and again, letting the feelings permeate your body and mind.

Practice this meditation repeatedly for a number of weeks until the sense of loving-kindness for yourself grows. When you feel ready, in the same meditation period you can gradually expand the focus of your loving-kindness to include others. However, it is important that you work on yourself first, you can’t love others until you love yourself.

After yourself, choose someone in your life who has truly cared for you. Picture them and carefully recite the same phrases, May he/ she be filled with loving-kindness, and so forth. When loving-kindness for your benefactor has developed, begin to include other people you love in the meditation, picturing them and reciting the same phrases, evoking a sense of loving‑kindness for them.

After this, you can gradually begin to include others: friends, community members, neighbors, people everywhere, animals, the whole earth, and all beings. Then you can even experiment with including the most difficult people in your life, wishing that they, too, be filled with loving-kindness and peace.

With some practice a steady sense of loving-kindness can develop and in the course of fifteen or twenty minutes you will be able to include many beings in your meditation, moving from yourself, to a benefactor and loved ones, to all beings everywhere.

Then you can learn to practice it anywhere. You can use this meditation in traffic jams, in buses and airplanes, in doctors' waiting rooms, and in a thousand other circumstances. As you silently practice this loving-kindness meditation among people, you will immediately feel a wonderful connection with them -- the power of loving-kindness. It will calm your life and keep you connected to your heart

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Love,

Eddie

Thoughts Without a Thinker

¡Hola! Everybody...
Decisions, decisions... what to give to the girl who gave me the most BJs this past year...

Kidding!

I’ll be sooo busy today.

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-=[ Thoughts on Thinking ]=-

“Thinking to get at once all the gold the goose could give, he killed it and opened it only to find -- nothing.”

-- Aesop (620–560 BC) The Goose with the Golden Eggs

“Just as we can walk without thinking, we can also think without thinking.”

Marvin Minsky, cognitive scientist

I once met a lovely woman, highly intelligent, beautiful writer. In her early 40s, she had a body that made women half her age envious. I used to joke that she looked as if she lived on a Stairmaster. She was also extremely horny, which was a good thing, though she struggled with that. In short, here was a woman I felt I could enjoy knowing better, maybe even --who knows -- explore the “C” word with her. She had one major drawback, however...

She thought too much.

She was ruled by her thoughts and she wasn’t satisfied with torturing herself with her thinking, she insisted I join in also. I’ll give you an example, we would plan a meet-up (she lived in Boston and I live in NYC) and initially we would talk excitedly about what we would do together, but as the date would draw nearer, all her thoughts stemming from her insecurities would predominate our conversations. At first I was more than happy to help her dispel some of these thoughts. I mean, she would have one thought (“Eddie doesn’t like me, so he won’t come”) and then another thought connected to that thought would appear (“Eddie is just coming because he wants a piece of ass”), which would be connected to another thought (“I’m such a loser”). This would go on until her whole thought process and beliefs around our meet-up would be so totally screwed up, so totally disassociated from reality, that I would have a hard time addressing all of it.

Eventually, I would have to tell her that I didn’t need to hear all her thought processes and she was so offended that she broke off meeting with me. She was so hurt because, according to her, her thoughts were her and I shouldn’t have been so insensitive to her thoughts (or something along those lines). I don’t “do” therapy in my personal life, though friends constantly ask me questions that essentially are invites to “analyze” them. I don’t even adhere to that type of theoretical orientation! LOL

You might judge my ex’s thinking, but I see people do that kind of thing all the time. We like to call it “analyzing,” but it resembles mental masturbation. We create scenarios out of nothing but a tangled web of thought constellations and ingrained belief systems we take as ultimate truth. I will add that my friend’s thinking brought her a lot of misery in the form of clinical depression.

We live in a society in which we’re encouraged to live from the “neck up” at the expense of our bodies and the rest of reality -- we live disembodied lives. I see it all the time in my work. Ask someone how he or she feels and they will quickly proceed to tell you how they’re thinking about their feeling.

Whew!

I often tell my female friends that they shouldn’t think around me because it makes my dick hard. (It doesn’t work, telling someone not to think, makes them think even more intensely.)

Let me be clear: thinking is not bad in itself. In fact, thinking is an essential tool for our well-being and survival. Indeed, our distinguishing feature as a species is the ability to create complex symbols, agree on their meaning, and use them to encode our knowledge and describe our plans. The ability to think allows us to compute, reason, and create, and, most importantly, to share our understanding with each other in the form of speech or writing. We can even record our thinking (on blogs! LOL!) for others!

The issue here is that as a species we have grown to value thinking to the exclusion of other aspects of our being. We have become more identified with our thoughts and the more we become lost in our personal soap operas, the more disconnected we have become from what we have in common with other human beings and our planet. We have surrendered or sense of self to our thinking mind, becoming “lost in thought.”

I should know, because I too was addicted to the non-stop ruminations of my thought-stream. After years of meditation practice, the most significant change ion my life has been my relationship to my mind. We’re still together, my monkey and I, but we’re no longer in a codependent relationship. Slowly, but surely I am gaining my liberation from the tyranny of thinking.

The change was precipitated by the acknowledgment that my mind had a thinking problem. It was a heavy thinker, often engaging in about 70,000 to 150,000 thoughts a day! I got up in the morning and -- bam! -- I was thinking 2-3 thoughts per minute, continuing through the day until night when I thought myself to sleep.

I tried everything from analysis (which made me more attached to my thinking) to screaming and flailing about, which only temporarily diminished the flow of thinking. Eventually, I would turn to drugs in an attempt to “blow my mind” by short-circuiting the neural wiring and I have to say -- one time I even forgot who I was (literally).

Later, I would practice a form of meditation in which the goal was not to stop thinking, but rather expose my mind to itself. Before my meditation practice I was completely absorbed on the content of thoughts, how to manipulate them and extract meaning from them. That is what we’re taught and graded on in school and what our culture values.

But no one had taught me how to look at my thoughts. Ordinarily, we go through life with what psychologists call a pre-conscious stream of thoughts coursing through our minds. Barely noticeable, this thought stream exerts an enormous amount of influence in our lives. We do this mindlessly without awareness. In fact, modern science shows that our thoughts aren’t the dominant player in our lives. Brain research finds that most of our interpretations of the world as well as our decision-making process takes place on what evolutionary psychologists call the “sub-personal” level, without a rational thinking self directing the process.

When I first sat down to meditate, I was almost overwhelmed by the sheer magnitude of the thought stream. Eventually, I learned the simple task of watching the stream without making judgments, or running around to analyze them. A resentment thought pops up, I acknowledge it gently and then let it go. Sure enough, some time will pass and another thought will present itself and I do the same thing -- I see it, acknowledge it and let it go. Eventually, this has a stabilizing effect -- you’re not stuck on the thoughts that seem to come from nowhere. You are not stuck on the content of your thoughts but engaged in the process of the thought-stream.

Eventually, with lots of practice, I was able to observe the “gap” between the thoughts. This is pure consciousness, pure awareness -- the most powerful healing force I’ve ever encountered... but that’s for another blog for another time.

It may not sound like a lot, but it’s a huge thing for me to say that the main difference between my experiences today and those of 18 years ago is that I catch myself quicker these days. Essentially, today I’m less prone to be carried away by every thought that comes along -- I don’t get caught up in my delusional personal soap opera as often as I used to. This is especially true in the area of resentments and personal relationships -- the thought-stream is ruling my responses or filtering my reality as much as it once did.

Today a thought can come up in my mind and I can say, “thanks for sharing, but I’m not engaging that today, I’m too busy doing something more important.”

Love,

Eddie

Monday Madness (Nintendo Dharma)

¡Hola! Everybody,
I just realized this morning that the memerial Day weekend comes a little early this year -- it’s next week! lately, I’ve been soooo unprepared and behind in all my dealings. Maybe it’s a combination of a new position, new home, and perhaps a new relationship?

I dunno...

Welcome back, Latina. Missed ya!

Today? Repost! LOL

* * *

Many people ask me to post on meditation. I’ve run into so many people who say, “I tried it, but I can’t do it.” But this is like saying you tried seeing... if your vision works, then it follows that you should be able to see, no?

It’s the same with meditation: if you’re not in a vegetative state, then you have the tools with which to meditate. A part of human evolution is the emergence of what some scientists now call the “opposable thumb of consciousness” -- mindfulness. It’s hard to describe, but it’s the part of your consciousness that watches the watcher. The simplest way I can put it is that mindfulness is the ability to be aware that you’re aware. In any case, the only way you can access this function is by doing it.

Below, you’ll find a short article by a former teacher who explains in clear and elegant language, the notion of concentration and the development of mindfulness.

Enjoy.

Nintendo Dharma
Goldstein, J. (1993). Insight meditation: The practice of freedom. Boston: Shambhala.

You may have noticed how easy it is to stay present when you engage in an activity you enjoy, like playing some sport, watching a movie, reading a book, or even playing Nintendo. Why can we be so concentrated in these activities, and yet find ourselves distracted and restless when we meditate? Surprisingly, this simple question can lead us to a profound understanding of suffering and freedom.

What we call mind is the naturally pure knowing faculty‑invisible, clear, and lucid. In some Tibetan texts it is called "the cognizing power of emptiness." But mind includes more than just knowing, because in each moment of experience different qualities, or mental factors, arise with it and color the knowing in various ways. For example, greed, hatred, love, mindfulness, concentration, and wisdom, among many others, are all mental factors arising and passing in different moments, each functioning in its own way.

When we engage in various activities, different mental factors are at work. In Nintendo, we need to be right there with the game or we lose. The mind needs to be steady and one-pointed, with the factor of concentration quite strong. In addition to concentration, another quality of mind plays a critical role‑the mental factor of perception. Perception recognizes, names, and remembers appearances by picking out their distinguishing marks. Through the power of perception we recognize each appearing object of experience: woman, man, pine tree, Abraham Lincoln, computer, car, and innumerable others. Concentration and perception keep us present and absorbed in whatever life-game is happening.

Meditation practice is different. In order to develop insight and wisdom, we need to add the factor of mindfulness to the mental equation of concentration and perception. Mindfulness goes beyond the simple recognition of what is happening. It goes beyond keeping the mind steady. Through its strong power of observation, mindfulness uncovers the characteristic nature of experience itself.

Absorption in a movie or in Nintendo does not reveal the momentariness of phenomena. We do not see the impermanence and insubstantiality of all things and events, nor do we notice the empty nature of awareness itself. Perception and concentration arise in every moment; even when the mind gets lost in thought, we still recognize what it is we are thinking. But only mindfulness reveals that we are thinking. This is a critical difference. Perception by itself does not lead to insight into impermanence and selflessness, because it engages us in the content and story of what appears. Mindfulness emerges from the story and notices the moment-to-moment arising and passing of sense impressions, thoughts, and consciousness itself.

If we understand these three important factors of mind clearly -- concentration, perception, and mindfulness -- then their coming into balance becomes the field of freedom.

* * *

Sunday Sermon (The Myth of Freedom)

¡Hola! Everybody,
My fever is gone (thanks Princess for the bath suggestion ), but I still feel like crap. I feel like grits and eggs this morning… I wrote the following a couple of years ago.

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-=[ The Myth of Freedom ]=-
“A man is either free or he is not. There cannot be any apprenticeship for freedom.”
-- Imamu Amiri Baraka (1934 –)
American playwright, poet, novelist, essayist

I once became lost in a national park in Connecticut many years ago. I was about 19-20, a busload of us city kids planned a trip, and we all trekked up to some park in Armpit, USA. I am a dyed-in-the-wool city boy. And when I say city, I mean city. Please, I’ve traveled around this country and some places that use the term “City” are laughable. Yes, I am a NYC snob: anything above 14^th street for me is Hicksville. Anyway, grew up in the city and the first time I saw a pig live, I thought it was a cow! When I thought of pigs, what came to mind was that pig Arnold from the 1960s TV sitcom, “Green Acres”

Whatever… always the adventurous one, I convinced another poor soul to go “exploring” with me. We got lost for close to 48 hours. LOL! We kept walking in circles. There was this lake not too far from us, you see, and me being the “Brainiac” of the two decided if we followed the lakeshore, we would eventually end up where we started. The thing is we kept walking in circles, not around the lake, but within a confined space. We realized this after hours of walking because we kept seeing a rock formation that looked eerily familiar. The reason for that was that it was the same rock formation! LMAO! By this time, it had gotten dark and there was a pronounced early October chill. My poor friend had inadvertently fallen into a cascade that hid a cave – he was freezing, but we thought the cave was the best place to stay for the night.

We had nothing – no matches, flashlight, compass, food – nothing. We had to stop because of that annoying tendency towards complete darkness in the country. I mean, you can’t even see your own hand in front of your face. Sheeesh! To make matters worse, I swore I heard a wolf’s howl. I’m serious! Now, I don’t know if wolves actually exist in some Connecticut state park, but to this day, I swear I heard a howl! In addition, I didn’t make things better by voicing my conviction that the cave we had taken refuge in was some Grizzly bear’s home.

So, there were, hungry, cold, and lost.

Eventually, we somehow found our way to a road the next day, but they had a whole posse of people looking for us, which ruined the trip for everyone else. We walked down the road until we came upon some ranger in a car who then proceeded to ask us if we had seen two Puerto Rican kids walking around lost… DUH?!?! Hellloooo?!?! Fuckin’ hicks… LMAO!

Of course, being philosophically inclined, I found all sorts of metaphors and meaning behind our little adventure, while my companion, who was freezing to death, cursed me the whole time. Still, it fascinated me that, left to our own devices, we kept walking around in circles. Shit, we tried to walk differently, making lefts, where we had previously made rights, and still we walked in circles. What does that say about our own habitual patterns, I asked my friend, as he conjured new swear words for my edification.

For the next fifteen years of my life, that incident was to become a metaphor for how I lived: doing what I wanted, how I wanted, when I wanted, and mistaking that for freedom. I think many people mistake “following their bliss” for freedom when in actuality walking around in circles without a compass is the ultimate prison. It’s the ultimate prison because we can’t see the bars, for they exist in our minds. We’re all “doing time,” in some way or another.

True freedom, for me anyway, takes practice. Actually, it takes a set of practices that serve as a guideline and map to freedom. Walk around rudderless without direction long enough and you’ll find you’re creating the same mess repeatedly.

Habitual Patterns

I like to say that I became free while I was incarcerated and this is very true. Many years after that incident in the woods, I found myself incarcerated at a maximum-security “facility.” LOL! I’m not proud of that, but I have to admit there’s some irony in this story – at least for me there is, so I find some humor in all this now. It was early spring, my favorite time of the year, and I was in a prison yard looking at some mountains and feeling really depressed about being locked up.

Then it hit me... I was actually free! Just like that! I realized that though the state had my body, only I could give anyone permission to enslave my mind. It may not sound like a lot to you, but for me it was transformative experience. The fact that I could choose to be free no matter where I found myself blew me away.

Looking back, I understand now that it didn’t happen all at once, that my epiphany that day wasn’t something spontaneous. I understand now, my realization came about because of the work I had put in, but it hit me that day like a bolt of lightning in the middle of a completely dark country night: I was free. Free, right then, at that very moment.

It was amazing. I could choose to be free! OMG!!! This couldn’t be true. Nevertheless, I felt it in the very fiber of my being, this freedom was real, alive, a part of me, a part of my heritage as a human being. When I went back to my cell later that day, I shared my revelation with my neighbors and they all started laughing at me! LOL! They were – like – “Eddie, you in jail, bro.”

And they were correct, of course, I was incarcerated. However, my realization was that while I could be coerced into prison physically, only I could give another permission to incarcerate my heart and mind. What I saw clearly for the first time was that I was giving the prison authorities this permission to take my mind, to imprison my heart. From that day on, I became free and my life, even within the prison walls, changed dramatically. I no longer felt at the mercy of sadistic prison guards or all the other insanity that goes on in prison. From that day on, I was free – really free -- and all my interactions reflected this realization of freedom. What happened was that people began responding to me differently: guards, who previously were able to press my buttons, didn’t know how to deal with the newer, free me, leaving them confused and anxious.

Other inmates would ask me why I “looked” different: was I exercising more, did I gain weight? Eventually, my freedom permeated my immediate surroundings and those in contact with me began doing their own inner work, in the process transforming our collective prison experience. The effect was so palpable that I was eventually transferred from that location because I was deemed too dangerous. LOL! But by then it was too late, even in solitary confinement, they couldn’t take my freedom away.

I became free that early Spring day and though there are times I choose to give up my freedom – especially when I come into contact with people with hate in their hearts – I have chosen freedom more often than not these past sixteen years. My personal liberation, I have found, is not individual, dedicated solely to “me” (mini me? LOL!), but instead it comes with a responsibility and an awareness that it affects everything around me. That other prison we all share: the myth that we are separate from others has also dissolved and as a result your personal liberation is also important to me.

Ultimately, I have learned that my freedom demands I choose happiness. I never even knew I had that choice. It is my responsibility as a human being, actually, this choice. This is why I always say that everything we ever need for our happiness exists right here, right now, this very moment… this very life. This is true whether your prison is made of concrete and bars or psychic cockroaches.

May you all know true happiness… and freedom.