Don't let this happen to you!

1. When you tell someone that their behavior is hurtful and unacceptable, there are several possible outcomes. She or he can: Hear what you say, hold themselves accountable, respect your feelings and actively try to change. Translation: I love and respect you. I care about your feelings and will make every effort to change.
2. Hear what you say, hold themselves accountable, respect your feelings, communicate which of your behaviors are contributing to the situation and you both actively try to change. Translation: I love and respect you. I care about your feelings and will make every effort to change.
3. Acknowledge their hurtful behavior, but hey, you knew what they were like when you married them so get used to it and stop complaining. Translation: I don’t care about your needs and feelings. I won’t change.
4. Acknowledge their hurtful behavior and then blame you for it. Translation: I’m not responsible for my actions. It’s your fault. You deserve it. I don’t care about your feelings. I won’t change.
5. Acknowledge their hurtful behavior, make a lame apology while justifying their actions (blame you), repeat the same hurtful behavior over and over again as if you never talked about it and become angry if you don’t forgive them. Translation: What I want is more important. I don’t care about your feelings. I won’t change.
6. Deny their hurtful behavior and accuse you of being the abusive one. Translation: I’m above reproach. You’re crazy. My needs and feelings are the only ones that matter. You need to adapt yourself to my silences and rages and pretend like nothing is wrong. I don’t care about your feelings. I won’t change.
7. Minimize their hurtful behavior and accuse you of being oversensitive and unreasonable. “It’s not that bad. Don’t be such a baby. You’re so thin-skinned.” Translation: I’m not accountable. Your nose broke because it got in the way of my fist, so your nose should apologize to my fist. I don’t care about your feelings. I won’t change. - Me: It is hard to describe for the uninitiated how much a person such as this, can get so deeply into your head. Your most lofty of goals and your most mundane of tasks are questioned until you second guess your every action, your every motive: you find yourself living a life divided between defensiveness and surrender. It's like having a devil living on your shoulder. Everything that you once held dear is questioned, misaligned and portrayed as being something other than what you once believed. Your introversion is beaten into isolation: your family, your friends, your associates are all brought into question. In time, you only know alone.  

New England Patriots - One game, one play at a time.

The New England Patriots won the AFC Championship game yesterday. In a nail biting, you never know what's going to happen next kind of game, the tough and formidable Baltimore Ravens saw their field goal kicker, Billy Cundiff (the new Bill Buckner?) miss a 32-Yard field goal attempt with eleven seconds left on the clock. Instead a tie and a run into overtime the Ravens were sent packing with their wings and the hopes of receiving any Super Bowl rings defeathered, plucked and dashed upon the rocks of broken dreams.
Sucks, huh?
But isn't that just how life goes? One day we're the victor, one day the conquered. And this is not a signal to get all down and defeated. No. It's a reminder that you need to play one game, one play at a time. You never know what the outcome may be. Sometimes you win. Sometimes you lose. And sometimes a loss can be a win or a win can be a loss.
What a page turner!

Dharma in disguise...

Gaia Girl has given me a copy of the workbook, Get Out of Your Mind & into Your Life; The New Acceptance & Commitment Therapy. I must say that this book confirms most of what I have learned from the teachings of the Buddha on groundlessness. You cannot have your cake and eat it too.  My struggle to free myself from suffering amplifies my suffering; running away from pain only serves to leave me as exhausted as the man who ran through the marketplace attempting to outrun his own shadow.

Let me use the words of Alan Watts, from that wonderful book, The Wisdom of Insecurity, to try and describe a little of what I mean:

"We are all familiar of this kind of vicious circle in the form of worry. We know that worrying is futile, but we go on doing it because calling it futile does not stop it. We worry because we feel unsafe and want to be safe. Yet it is perfectly useless to say that we should not want to be safe. Calling a desire bad names does not get rid of it. What we have to discover is that there is no safety, that seeking it is painful, and that when we imagine that we have found it, we don't like it. In other words, if we can really understand what we are looking for - that safety is isolation, and what we do to ourselves when we look for it - we shall see that we do not want it at all. No one has to tell you that you should not hold your breath for ten minutes. You know that you can't do it and that the attempt is most uncomfortable....The principal thing to understand is that there is no safety or security."


In a well presented format Hayes & Smith, without the use of robes, incense, or being thus infused with all the beautiful and colorful iconoclasm of Buddhism, present a Dharma talk that I feel, the Dali Llama himself would approve of. The Buddha taught, "Suffering and the end of suffering" and never sought a patent on the teaching. If this book unveils another view on suffering and impermanence and the impact of how dualism impacts our mind, is this not good? If examining delusion, which is created by the constant use of aversion and craving  (the exact opposite of mindfulness) leads us towards living a mindful and compassionate life, then I expect that good karma is being made manifest.

The book is designed to present the reader with a list of tools and exercises that are designed to help the reader understand in a very compassionate way, why we think and act and do as we do. As the Buddha said, "What you think, you become."

And I think this book is a very good thing.

A Wood Horse and a Water Rat living in a Water Dragon year

The dragon, as seen in the East, is associated with the divine. As seen from the West, the dragon is hunted and slain or driven from existence.
How interesting.
But I'm not about to launch into some soliloquy about the East vs the West. Nor do I want to speak of China or Chinese thought, economics, philosophy or politics. I am after all, no Jacob Needleman for God's sake!
In ten days the Chinese New year will begin on January 23 and will come to its close on February 9 2013.  It should be an interesting if not a very revealing year.

No winter for New England -2012

On the day before Halloween 2011, we found ourselves shoveling, plowing and snow blowing two feet of snow. The horror of a long and brutal New England winter filled everyone with fear as the surprise attack  found most ill prepared. Panic set in. Snow blowers were sold at the rate of several a day; depleting last years stock since the new arrivals hadn't arrived yet. Shovels and gloves flew off the store shelves. Snowmobile dealers found themselves happy as used car salesman dancing in a booming economy. The mind's eye of every New Englander envisioned ice dams, snow piled high as mountains and piles of firewood being buried under several feet of snow. Many in the snow zone envisioned oil companies rubbing their greedy little hands together like a preying mantis waiting to go in for the kill.

And then.....

Nothing!

Warm temperatures. Light jackets. Green grass. Right through Christmas!

Today's forecast is for unfavorable weather beginning tonight and continuing right through tomorrow. Word of the day? Ice pellets! (Another bad word!) After the ice storm of 2008, when millions lost power and millions of trees lost their limbs, everyone that hears the word "ice" is as nervous as a cat in a room full of rocking chairs! I cannot describe how amazing a sight it is when as if on cue, like a horde of lemmings, the masses flood the grocery stores to gather the proverbial "Milk and Bread" whenever the forecasters even hint of coming ice or snow.

And this is New England?

I've begun to feel that most of the population has been shipped in from the states that I never think of. Like Oklahoma, Nebraska or Delaware! And don't get me started about winter driving! Is everyone that drives our roads new to New England? Is this your first time?

Well, I for one have had it. Not with the snow and ice. Although the deep cold, I can do without. No. It's the people who act like New England virgins every time the snow falls or when we get a nice sheet of ice turning the landscape into Boston Garden and the Bruins play-offs!

Put all the virgins in the penalty box until Spring - and give me a rest....

"We're not gonna take it"

 The gig is up.                               

We're not gonna take it.
Gonna break it. 
Gonna shake it.
Let's forget it better still!

 Thich Nhat Hanh reminds us, "People have a hard time letting go of their suffering. Out of a fear of the unknown, they prefer suffering that is familiar."


We are all guilty sometimes of putting up with way too much, for way too long. Fear of change and fear of where the unknown may lead, can leave us clinging to doing absolutly nothing;  laying our heads on a pillow of suffering in search of a rest that will not come. 


Yet sometimes, in the quietness of our hearts, we are moved to stare down the bullies, to push against the wind, and make the brave decision to take the path with heart. We gird up our loins or lift up our skirts and decide that, "We're not gonna take it."


As a highly skilled and widely recognized Paramedic, Gaia Girl has responded to many emergency calls that you or I would run from. And like the many who don a uniform in recognition of their career calling; be it Firefighter, Policeman, Paramedic or Soldier, high stress calls, shootings, suicides, accidents and death in all it's myriad forms, can and often does take a toll. Nightmares may surface revealing just the tip of the iceberg. Disruptive sleep patterns, self medicating, internalized stress,  all serve to make "off days" seem like "on days" - Ever at the ready, never relaxed, ready to respond.

And the bad calls? The really bad calls? They just continue to roll through the mind's eye just out of reach like an itch that refuses to be scratched. 

Gaia Girl loves her job. She is good at it. A natural. She is often recognized for her ability to seem at rest and take charge when it would appear that the whole scene is going to pot. She alone knows what her body and her mind experiences when an emergency call comes to an end.  


Yet she knows that she has not been at her best. She has been unable to rest in the moments of the day. It's easier to become comfortably numb with the help of three or four vodka tonics every night while in search of sleep. And the effects like to carry on into the morrow to remind her that she is still not free. Like a whisler in the dark trying to ignore the shadows, the creaks and the rustle of things unseen, she has come to rely on the end of day relief found on ice, in tea or tonic.


The Uniformed Services Program located in the beautiful and historic southern Vermont town of Brattleboro, serves just such a purpose: providing relief.  The program offers tools designed to help with the anxiety, depression, addiction, and post traumatic stress so often found in the ranks of those professionals in uniform. Utilizing cutting edge tools such as neurofeedback, or the ancient science of mindfulness, and yoga, the program offers a wide array of training, education and support. 


When Gaia Girl made the decision to act it was the age old process of, "what to do, where to go, where to start." Me and my ever sense of being pragmatic is often balanced by her view that, "The universe will figure it out" and we sought to hash things out together. Mystery unfolding, her old partner is dating the daughter of the CEO of Brattleboro Retreat. A few calls and she is in. No special treatment. Just a big fat arrow pointing to THIS IS IT!


And I am proud of her strength and courage. 


And I"m her champion?? 

Ten reasons why I Google Blog

a day in the life

Unemployed due to company downsizing, writing a book, planning to get back into shape starting tomorrow. I have been drinking too much since the permanant lay off on January 7th, and the morning meditation has become almost non existant.
A web associate stated that this time has been selected as the "reinvention of Tao". I hope to use this space to vent, speak of my sucess, hear from some of you comments and perspectives that will allow a deeper personal insight into what it means to be a human being.

This was my first post to Google Blogger - February 14, 2005. Much has happened since then. My book, a labor of love and solace, as well as being the source of my "going Hemingway" for a season, was lost due to my faulty backing up practices. A lengthy novel lost forever and no strength to repeat the story. What tale to be told is next? 
 My marriage has come to an end. Enough said.
 I'm working now, but at 60% less the pay of what I earned when in my previous position - and I don't feel special. I see the readjustment of the American workforce coming into the store all the time. Working retail, I hear my story being told over and over again. I soon realized that this is no longer my story, but our story. My story retold about being down-sized, laid off, fired, outsourced or excused and finding only menial service and/or retail positions readily available for a fraction of an earlier wage. It's discouraging.
And the Blogger community that I once traveled with has all but disappeared.  Ghost 91, Desultory Butterfly, Alix, capegirl, transience, Rowan, De.vile, Loralee Choate, hear no evil, buddhamonkeydevil, James, Mystic Wing....and many, many more. Yet I continue to write.  
In the spirit of yearly traditions - of top tens and countdowns, I decided to list the top ten reasons for my continued blogging - 


10) Like a smoldering coal buried deep within the ashes of a forgotten fire, I have a hidden  punch you in the face, snap like a mouse trap reaction buried deep inside my being. Since one cannot possibly go around punching people in the face I use Google Blogger to help vent my frustrations and to let off a little steam. It works!


9) I enjoy writing. Google Blogger is like a good stretching routine. I have no need to be at my writer's polished best and it keeps me flexible while I prepare for my next book adventure where possibly I will have a editor at my disposal.


8) "Clearly it's a process".  Google Blogger allows me a venue wherein I can try and unwind the mysteries of life. Like a therapist at my finger tips, blogging helps me reflect and untangle the knots that would tie me up and seek to steal my bliss. Like the "little foxes that spoil the vine" journaling assists in employing a little bit of a one man psychology aimed at creating self understanding and empathy. 


7) Blogging can help to find friends and associates of like mind, interest and passion. A great big world may be found on Google Blogger.. 


6) I like Sharing a wee bit of what I have learned from my travels through Christian World, from my traversing the hidden hills of the Tao, and from listening to the teachers of Buddhism. As my bio states, I have known monks and musicians, preachers and physician, the religious, agnostic and atheist; they have all come as teachers and to all of them, I bow in gratitude.


5) To introduce to those who have not yet read his works, I like to quote and reference time and time again Alan Watts. Every field has had its blazing pioneers and its masters. Alan Watts has thoroughly guided the Way of Zen and Taoism and Buddhism into the west with the same degree that Bruce Lee brought martial arts to the west.. Their contributions were extraordinary and are often forgotten.


4)  Google Blogger is used by people the world over. I have and continue to have communication with persons I would have never encountered without having this blog.. In South Africa, Copenhagen, Hawaii, India, and across the U.S. It's amazing.


3) Google Blogger is better than Wordpress. At least in my experience. I have created a few Wordpress blogs and they may possibly still be in existence (?). I will admit that I have encountered some fanciful Wordpress layouts, but as the driver of a Karmann Ghia and the owner of three pairs of jeans, K.I.S.S.http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/KISS_principle is my kind of acronym.


2) I blog to remind myself and others that the meaning of life is just to live. It is so plain and so simple and so obvious.

1) And the No.1 reason why I continue to blog? I thought that it may have something to do with Legacy. In fact, I wrote several paragraphs on the subject. But then I realized that that's all fiction. The past or what we may leave behind through stories about ourselves may have purpose. However, it should never serve as my legacy. 


As Anais Nin once said, "We write to taste life twice, in the moment and in retrospect".    

A hint of contradiction?


Guilty as charged.

 .